KOREA   VIETNAM   DESERT STORM

The United States of America has engaged in many wars over the span of its short history. Blacks fought and died on the battlefields from the French-Indian Wars to Desert Storm, but many more died at home.

Medgar Evers (1925-1963) died in the driveway of his home. Shot from ambush for attempting to register voters in Mississippi.

A civil rights leader, Medgar was born in Decatur, Mississippi. He served in the United States Army during World War II (1939-1945). After graduating from Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College in 1950, Evers became a recruiter for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The next year he married Myrlie Beasley (now Myrlie Evers-Williams). In 1954 he was named its field secretary for Mississippi. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Evers was a leader in the struggle to gain equal rights for blacks in his home state. He conducted campaigns to register black voters and organized boycotts of firms that practiced racial discrimination.

Evers was killed by a gunman in front of his home in Jackson, Mississippi, on June 12, 1963. Byron De La Beckwith, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, was tried several times for the murder but was not convicted until February 1994. Beckwith, then 73 years old, was sentenced to life imprisonment, and he died there. Evers's brother, Charles, who succeeded him as Mississippi field secretary for the NAACP, served as mayor of Fayette, Mississippi from 1969 to 1981.

Yes, Medgar Evers was murdered because he encouraged others to exercise their rights as citizens.

The sixties, in the nineties, have been labeled years of decadence when it fact the sixties may well be the last time America was America in the true sense.

The Civil Rights Movement launched in the 1950s really took off the next decade. The 1963 March on Washington awoke the consciousness of many Americans to the daily injustices sustained by people of color. The murder of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, a champion of the civil rights cause, left a legacy that demanded that the United States live up to its written mandates. In 1964, 1965 legislation was passed guaranteeing black Americans what is theirs through birth.

By 1966 most blacks had reached the boiling point and were ready to strike back.

Murder, however, silenced the strong voices for freedom. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy fell from assassins bullets, and along with them died the Civil Rights Movement.

The next decade many began to seriously question the wisdom, and justification for the Viet Nam War. Peace protests were daily occurrences until the U.S. finally withdrew its troops in defeat.

Then came the eighties and the selfishness that prevails today. The "me generation" was in full swing caring only about profits, new cars, and themselves. Church attendance dropped dramatically. Contributions to charitable organizations declined. And, with the introduction of a term called, "diversity" those in corporate America converted the glass ceiling to one of steel. Affirmative Action programs came under attack using a slogan based on "reverse discrimination" as conservatives declared victory over racism at the same time that minority school enrollment dropped to an all time low.

If the eighties focused on self it seems that the nineties focused on nothing. The U.S.A. became the "spin nation" with a catchy phrase for all occasions. Money ... money ... show me the money became, and remains, the true driving force. Tokenism returned with a few blacks, women, and other minorities being allowed to hold responsible positions as long as they did not compete with their mediocre white colleagues. Whites began to return to the re-developed inner cities while blacks, seeking to live with whites, continued to rush to suburban communities only to find more black folks, and few of the "privileged class".

Now words mean nothing. Old words like "liberty" are sneered at. Racial equality is no longer a goal and racial discrimination can be successfully denied even with video tape evidence. Repeatedly white dominated juries turned their back on real crimes, but sent a record number of black men into the penal system. And CRACK, imported by the United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) saturated communities converting people into zombies. Hypocrisy becomes acceptable to all; victim and offender alike.

My Country Hypocrisy

copyrighted by Ollie Morgan, 1980-2001, all rights reserved

In 1776 all Americans were declared free

Endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights

But for some those right could never be

Those stolen from their village during the night

While one man spoke of freedom and long life

Another feared the sale of his lawful wife

Yes, this is my country hypocrisy

Land of selected freedoms and liberty

Home of the red man who offered corn

Only to be pushed from his land and scorned

Land where the black man was deemed to wear chains

To toil the earth, never to see their birthplaces again

A nation where justice is found at the end of a rope

Where armies are formed to free the world

And churches are bombed bringing death to little girls

My country hypocrisy

Sweet land of discriminated liberty

The province where the Japanese were placed in pens

in the name of security but really for having yellow skin

So why no pens for the Germans and Italians, also enemies at the time

A land where we fail to acknowledge the policemen's crimes

You must understand that the blindfolded lady does see

That is why so many blacks hung from the trees

But our forefather's words do have meaning

The beautiful sound of freedom singing

Words that have inspired mortal men to do heavenly things

To sustain the ideas that liberty brings

Oh yes, I love my country hypocrisy

It just pains me to see her brutalities

I want my nation to be what it was meant to be

A haven for all people who demand to be free

I want us to remember whence we came

And that there is no true freedom while others live in chains

To know that one's color is no more than tint

That differences in speech is but an accent

To accept that GOD has no favorites

And that happiness should be for all who grave it

I no longer want America to be the warm bed of hypocrisy

I want those who defend liberty to truly understand the meaning of democracy

To embrace all man as one

Only then with the Creator's work be done

 
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Two black athletes that won the gold at the 1968 Olympics lost that gold for their political beliefs. Free speech don't count if you're black. 

 The World of Entertainment

Equal? Fair? No, this is still the United States of America. But, entertainment (along with the military) has been a successful avenue traveled by many black Americans that have gained some notoriety and fortune. Singers, dancers, athletes, and others whose job it is to entertain have brought dollars into the pockets of many. Their successes, for the most part, also included better times for their families, friends, and business associates.

Morgan Freeman was born in Memphis, Tennessee on June 1, 1937, and graduated high school in May of 1955 in Greenwood, Mississippi. Morgan then moved to California, where he studied Dance, then Theater Arts at Los Angeles City College from 1959 to 1960. He made his Broadway debut in 1967 with Pearl Bailey in "Hello Dolly!"

The roster of successful black actors and actresses is growing but a better indicator of progress are those black producers, directors, and screenwriters that bring to the screen more positive images of black life.

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