** Visit AAM's new website! http://www.africanassociation.org **

Is our sister Mabel Enwemwa (sp) still on this server?  Reverend Susan
Quigley was a good friend and I want our sister to know of Sue's tragic
demise on Wednesday night of this week.  Susan Quigley was a wonderful
person and truly rare human being who was killed by a hit and run driver.  I
believe that she is in God's embrace.  For all who would, please lift up a
prayer for her family.  FABU


>From: Hedi Rudd <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: "AAM (African Association of Madison)"
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: MMSD Responses
>Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 16:21:29 -0600
>
>** Visit AAM's new website! http://www.africanassociation.org **
>
>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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