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October 30, 2003


Subject:    Food for Thought

Dear MAFAAC Group Discuss:

One of the things that struck me as odd about the email message sent to
MMSD Superintendent Art Rainwater by a group identifying itself as
MMSDTeach1960, was the intensity that their racially fueled attack on
mainly African American school district students and their families
took. The message was highly stereotypical of black students, as well as
of their families thus rendering a verdict [by MMSDTeach1960] that
blacks are the root cause of many of the social ills and other things
that are dysfunctional in the educational process within the MMSD and
its Schools. This is in specific reference to people of color in
Madison. MMSDTeach1960, is indeed a throw back to the beginning of that
turbulent decade where the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
[SCLC], a highly organized group of tight knit and determined Southern
Black Churches under the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
sought to challenge the age old Southern system of racial apartheid.

The 1960's were also a decade where America in general came butt up
against many of its past inequities toward blacks in general that had,
up until that time, been inflicted on mainly black people and Native
Americans Indians through harsh and often brutal segregation and land
ownership negation laws enacted through out America and especially in
the south. Dejure Segregation was one such injustice and its byproduct
of Separate But Equal was handed down in a U.S. Supreme Court Decision
in 1896, in Plessy v. Ferguson while the U.S. Government was completing
its obliteration of the Red Man's culture by stealing Indian Lands and
resettling tribes on often barren reservations. Contrary to this, the
Plessy ruling made it legal for any state in the Union to abridge the
rights of its mainly black citizens and its legacy and aftermath
accounts for many of the problems faced by black and Native American
students in Madison Public Schools today whether our enlightened
teachers and administrators are willing to acknowledge it or not.

What MMSDTeach1960 has demonstrated, with its ill contrived letter
about Glen Singleton and the mandatory MMSD Workshop on Racism that
Singleton facilitated, is that the work began by Dr. King and the SCLC
in Montgomery, AL. in 1955, is far from complete. What is also clear
regarding the anonymous communication, still unclaimed by the self named
clandestine group "calling itself MMSDTeach1960", is that this masked
cadre is definitely in need of some kind of educational intervention
itself, in so far as its general tone toward people of color and how
those people are negatively viewed in its demeaning letter to Art
Rainwater, which undoubtedly displays the letter's rather limited
understanding of race and cultural issues that can most likely be traced
back to the authors' racial and class attributes. Many of the racist
acronyms used by MMSDTeach1960, are a direct throwback to a troubled
period, at the start of the 1960's, when America was just embarking on
its long journey to racial and class equity, which by the way has not
been completely obtained in many places across our country like Madison,
Wisconsin.

Barbara Golden and myself, along with other caring and concerned
individuals, have been working on getting the MMSD and its
Superintendent, Mr. Art Rainwater, to respond to this open and hateful
attack on our children, their families, and the African American
Community in such a demeaning resentful tone. In our draft, we call for
a public denunciation of the position staked out by the cowardly
MMSDTeach1960, which is nothing more than a modern version of the KKK
operating in the obscurity of anonymity. They are, as Barb Golden said,
a cyber [modern] version of the Ku Klux Klan, which in the past rode
hooded in the night burning crosses and hiding their real identities
while working respectable jobs in their communities during the daylight
hours. What we hope to accomplish, by sending our letter, is to get a
formal response in the form of a public denunciation of the views
presented in the letter to Art Rainwater and the MMSD. We included the
Madison School Board in our demand. In such a response, we hope that the
MMSD Administration, and the Madison School Board, will do the right
thing, and the only thing, by condemning this atrocity against our
children, their families, and our community.

If Mr. Rainwater and the MMSD Administration, along with the Madison
School Board, aren't willing to take these steps, including undertaking
a thorough investigation into who or whom is behind the letter, and by
providing truthful and accurate information as a rebuttal, then I will
assume that they agree with the view point published in the anonymous
email message from MMSDTeach1960. That assumption will go for the
Madison School Board as well, if they don't publicly respond in an
appropriate manner. My next observation as follows, is that in the
1960's [the decade that this group uses as its logo] George Wallace
blocked the doors into the University of Alabama to seven black
students' entry [one of those students was James T. Hood former M.A.T.C.
Administrator],

Georgia Governor, Lester Maddox, ordered his state police forces to
brutalize, jail and torture black civil rights demonstrators in order to
stall their drive toward desegregation in public accommodations,

states like Mississippi killed multiethnic / racial civil rights /
peace advocates and allowed Byron DeBeckwith, the man who killed NAACP
Director Medgar Evers in Greenville, Ms. in 1963, to go free for the
next 33 years,

President John F. Kennedy was killed in broad daylight on a busy urban
street in Dallas, TX. on a November afternoon in 1963 in front of
thousands of spectators while on a campaign / good will trip there. Now,
as we are coming up on the 40th anniversary of his murder, the American
people have yet to learn the real truth about his assassination,

in April 1968 Martin Luther King, Jr., a Baptist Minister and a
gentleman, that preached peace, love / nonviolence and who also won the
Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, was shot to death as he stood on a balcony at
the Lorain Motel in Memphis, Tn., after coming to the aid of mostly
African American sanitation workers striking for basic equality and
human dignity,

and finally, the death of Robert F. Kennedy the 1968 Democratic
Presidential Candidate that openly supported civil rights [marched in
Dr. King's funeral procession] and opposed the Vietnam War was
assassinated in Los Angeles, CA., after winning the California Primary
on his way to securing the Democratic Nomination for President of the
United States that year. With that historical look at the 1960's, is it
any wonder why things today are as they seem to be concerning the
playing field between the majority and American minorities?

I remember the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, IL. that turned
into a demonstration against the government and its resulting
persecution of the Chicago Seven, where then Mayor Richard Daley Senior,
with violent and unrelenting brutality and force, crushed the protesters
and where his brutality had repercussions that were felt around the
world. Yet the average American said or did little in response including
our own Madison City Council, except for one dissenting voice belonging
to a young Alderman named Paul Soglin.

The above philosophy, my friends, is what MMSDTeach1960 is advocating,
as they hypocritically proclaim that they are for getting to the root
causes of why black students are failing on their watch. Perhaps they
don't know this history or just don't care, as they write their self
serving poison that will only serve to divide us further in Madison [and
in America] over why black kids can't seem to succeed in predominately
white schools systems [like the MMSD] in any real and consistent
numbers. All I can tell you is that it will do this MMSDTeach1960 nor
anyone else any good to blame Glen Singleton, black children as students
in these educators' class rooms nor black parents for the conditions
that an ever growing number of black families find themselves dealing
with in Madison, WI. and across America. Which are namely the conditions
of racial and class indifference on the part of many Caucasian teachers
whom indeed harbor racist beliefs while proclaiming their innocence.
They let those beliefs out when they feel attacked or threatened by
becoming defensive and by striking out at the source of their guilt,
which in this case is the victims of the achievement gap that is being
addressed by the MMSD.

In my opinion, Madison is at a cross roads in 2003. That cross roads
bisects at many different sectors, such as the criminal justice sector,
the social services / assistance sector, healthy neighborhoods and
involved citizens sector, race / cultural  relations sector, and in the
public education sector. I've researched the subject of demographics in
Madison and found that Madison is 13 percent (%) minority with about 5.7
percent (%) of that being African American, Dane County is 4 percent (%)
meaning of all combined minority groups, Wisconsin is 5.6 percent (%)
black with the majority living in Counties east of Madison over near
Milwaukee.

Yet, African Americans are twenty (20) times more likely than whites to
end up in the Dane County Jail or the State Prison System. Black people
account for roughly 8 percent (%) of the nation's drug users while
whites account for 76 percent (%). So why are nearly 80 percent (%) of
all those serving time for drug convictions in state and federal prisons
either black or from another minority group? I guess Rush Limbaugh's
latest experience yields an answer. That answer is that whites believe
in jail time for black folks with drug problems but rehab programs for
themselves, which is both racial and hypocritical.

I am also curious why Dane County is consistently among the leaders in
America, in sending black teens and young adults, men and women [between
the ages of 18-27] away to prisons and those under 17 to lock up type
juvenile security facilities at such high rates? This my friends is in
no shape, way or form coincidental, neither is it unintentional and
without design and anyone attempting to tell you that it is, is either
uninformed or not being totally truthful. We don't hear about the State
of Wisconsin, County of Dane, City of Madison or MMSDTeach1960 extolling
the above statistics and numbers in their real context. Neither do we
hear them talking about serous solutions to the many serious problems
resulting from the above realities either. Instead what we hear is
groups like MMSDTeach1960 feeblely blaming children, whom are
unmistakably the victims of this quasi racist educational, and social
system from the top down! This group needs a wake up call regarding how
to work in the field of educating black and other nonwhite children in
Madison and throughout this entire state.

I say it again, MMSDTeach1960 is indeed uniformed about the stark
realities related to being black or nonwhite in Madison-Dane County.
"What's more is that they also have no honor and therefore,  more
relevantly this group of excellent educators has no shame." Because if
they did, they would all be ashamed of writing such a rag while hiding
their identities, as they full well knew that their published views
would be perceived as racist and classis. Now we know that they have no
shame and yet they still endeavor to peddle their view as being
legitimate educational observations made as professionals after debate
and dialogue in professional circles regarding a community they seem to
have no real contact with or no social and cultural bridges to either.

Instead their understanding and approach to solving these complex
problems contributing to the achievement gap resembles many of my above
characterizations of what the period of the 1960's meant to African
Americans alive at that time in America, as opposed to their children
and grand children here today. An era many of us thought had gone bye
that, thanks to the teachers belonging to MMSDTeach1960, we are now
seeing and are experiencing the affect again in the Madison Public
Schools. I went to Southern mandated segregated schools in the late
1950's early 1960's and therefore, can tell MMSDTeach1960 a thing or two
about them and about their absence of racism and the psychological
affect it has on black students. I noticed the stark difference and
contrast in Madison in 1962, after I got back up here and began
attending Franklin Elementary.

Inclosing, this group of MMSDTeach1960 teachers [or more appropriately
Klansmen], no doubt needs to participate in more of Glen Singleton's
Workshops or more correctly get their sorry behinds into one of the
Study Circles on Race as participant study circle groups members
quickly, as the City of Madison has determined study circles aren't
needed in 2003. If I had it my way, MMSDTeach1960's members would all be
ferreted out and fired from their positions as teachers in the MMSD for
their zeal and debauchery but under the current MMSD regime they don't
have to worry.

The MMSD Administration will probably try to convince us that the
racist reactions to Glen Singleton and black students, by the teachers
in MMSDTeach1960, aren't racist at all. They will float idioms past us
like, "you're jumping to unfounded conclusions [as all minorities in
Madison commonly do], as our community will hopefully call for decisive
disciplinary action up to and including termination. Either they will
pursue that tract or like Art Rainwater will play of the seriousness of
the MMSDTeach1960 email or they [the MMSD] will ignore this whole deal
and hope that it simply goes away. I'm not saying that a study circle
will change the dark nature and views toward black people currently held
by MMSDTeach1960, but it might perhaps wake them up to where their
consciousness will at least make them aware that there is a serious
breech of ethics and fairness here that was demonstrated in their angry
diatribe to Art Rainwater about black students, their families and the
state of black people in Madison. Perhaps it will also motivate them to
stop, pause and think before sending out anymore racist, stereotypical
and class bias communications about [our] black people to Art Rainwater
or to anyone else!

Thank You!


Lenny Alston

Interim President Berkley Oaks Neighborhood Association

Member of the Northside Regional Planning Council

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