The Death of Legion Field in Birmingham: Paul "Bear" Bryant's True Legacy

PK Note: Tomorrow, we tug on Superman's cape. Tonight, read up on this VDare article (Alabama’s Iron Bowl And Integration—Was Football Victory Worth It?, November 26, 2012) and this important article on why Birmingham Southern College - located in the heart of one of the worst Black ghettos in America - built a high-security fence around the school (Martyrs, Civil Rights and Quenette Shehane: The Tale of Birmingham, January 14, 2011). One man is directly responsible with the horrible state of 2012 Birmingham, Montgomery, Mobile, and Huntsville.

In 2012, the only industry that 71 percent Black Birmingham can produce - outside of payday loan stores - is to live off the legacy of "Civil Rights" (Birmingham Civil Rights District named Attraction of the Year, Birmingham News, August 30, 2012); the sorry condition of the city being the ultimate legacy of "Civil Rights."

Bear Bryant at Legion Field, once the capital of football in a long dead America

Though the University of Alabama had already started recruiting Black athletes in the late 1960s to play on the famed Crimson Tide football team, coach by Paul "Bear" Bryant, the 1970 season would mark the final year an all-white team would be fielded. And it was on September 12 of that year in a game played at legendary Legion Field in Birmingham that an undersized Crimson Tide team (coming off of the two worst seasons since Bryant took over the team in 1958 -- largely due to changes in the rules that ended the era of "two-way" players and created the modern-era of specialized offensive and defensive units) would be soundly defeated by an integrated University of Southern California team:

On Sept. 12, 1970, a freshman basketball player named Wendell Hudson rode a bus packed with athletes to Birmingham, taking his seat at Legion Field. He watched as Sam Cunningham, the black USC fullback, torched the all-white Crimson Tide defense for 135 yards and two touchdowns in a 42-21 Trojans win. Hudson didn't like seeing his school embarrassed, but there was something sweet about a black player showing the holdovers from the Jim Crow South what they were missing. It was a loss for the Crimson Tide, but it represented something different, Hudson says, to the black community.

"I don't think there's any question," he says. "It was a win."

Later, it was suspected that Bryant brought the Trojans to Birmingham to show locals that it was time to desegregate his team. Was this all it took to be a contender again, five years after Alabama's most recent national title?

Bryant's actions, whether they were premeditated or not, prevented the Tide from falling behind -- despite resistance from boosters and even in the statehouse. Some say that game at Legion Field was the turning point; others say the story has been overblown, its significance mythologized.

Hudson says that, if nothing else, that fall Saturday helped to open minds and to ease the stress directed toward young black players.

"If Coach Bryant thought it was OK," Hudson says, "the state of Alabama thought it was OK."

Alabama was coming off of an 8-3 and 6-5 season (1969 and 1970) and though the Tide would field only two Black players in 1971 ( a virtually all-white team exacting revenge and beating heavily favored USC 17-10 en route to an 11-1 season - after going 6-5-1 in 1970 - thanks to the institution of the wishbone offensive attack),the idea that Black players were the key to winning national titles was set in the eyes of Bryant and his faithful -- the Crimson Tide Nation.

Starting the 2012 season, the University of Alabama football program is more than 70 percent Black: at a school whose enrollment is less than five percent Black male. And yes, Alabama has won two of the last three national titles; yes, Alabama won national title in 1992; and yes, Bryant would win 1973, 1978, and 1979 (teams that were overwhelmingly white), but the question of at what cost is never, ever asked.

The answer rests in the sorrowful state of what was once the south's greatest city, Birmingham, a veritable Black hole full of decaying memories of a storied past. The saddest building still standing that reminds those who look upon it of an era long dead is Legion Field, the 85-year old football stadium that played host to many of the Bear's most famous wins: (Alabama Forced to Abandon Unsafe Legion Field, NBC News, August 19, 2004)

So much for “The football capital of the South.”

Once proud to proclaim itself as the gridiron hub of an entire region, the city of Birmingham’s 77-year-old Legion Field is in such disrepair it’s no longer safe to use the 9,000-seat upper deck, which has structural problems. Its metal supports are dappled with peeling gray paint and rust.

With renovation or repair unlikely, the city and the University of Alabama on Thursday said they were ending their contract, meaning the Crimson Tide would no longer play any home games at the 81,000-seat stadium. The announcement marked the end of a long association between one of the South’s most storied football programs and the old field on Graymont Avenue.

“The Crimson Tide has played some of its greatest football at Legion Field, and Alabama fans will forever enjoy fond memories of those wonderful games,” athletic director Mal Moore said in a statement.

But none of those hold a candle to images of the stadium’s past: coach Paul “Bear” Bryant leaning on a goalpost during pregame warmups or Alabama vs. Tennessee on the third Saturday in October.

Legion Field was allowed to decay because the white tax-base fled Birmingham after the post-Civil Rights world made it untenable for white people to live safely and peacefully in the Magic City. Once Black people took control of City Hall, the precious little tax-revenue collected had to pay for basic services; maintaining a stadium that was but a symbol of the old "Jim Crow" was luxury that Black people couldn't afford.

At exactly the moment the University of Alabama football integrated (1971), the city of Birmingham died

In 1992, the inaugural Southeastern Conference Championship (SEC) game would be played at Legion Field. After one more game in 1993, it was announced that the game would be moving from Birmingham to Atlanta, largely because the Georgia Dome was a more adequate facility for hosting the game. Also, because the city hadn't gone as Black as Birmingham, Atlanta offered more attractions and safer streets for the alumni and fans who would attend the game.

In 1998, the last Iron Bowl - the Auburn University/Alabama football game - would be played at Legion Field, depriving the city of one of the last big revenue generating events (The House That Bear Built
Birmingham's Legion Field is, sadly, no longer a football mecca, Sports Illustrated, by Jack McCallum, November 29, 1999):

Nothing captures the fall from grace of the self-proclaimed Football capital of the South better than this: As 85,214 fans were preparing last Saturday to go to Auburn's Jordan-Hare Stadium, where Alabama would defeat Auburn 28-17, only about 5,000 people, many of them mommies and daddies, were gathered at 83,000-seat Legion Field in Birmingham to watch 12 of the city's youth football teams play six games in the 32nd annual Shug-Bear Bowl. For much of the 20th century it was the games played at Legion Field that allowed Birmingham to adopt the aforementioned billing, which stretches in large, painted letters across the facade of sections 33 through 37 of the 72-year-old stadium. The slogan was particularly true on those Saturdays when the Crimson Tide and the Tigers engaged in the blood rivalry that brought all other activity in the state to a halt. But when Alabama made it official in February that beginning in 2000, as part of a new contract, it would host its renewals of the season-ending civil war on campus rather than at Legion—a change Auburn had made 10 years ago—big-time football at the House That Bear Built effectively came to an end.

Ah, but it breathed once. It was at Legion in 1970, after Sam Cunningham led Southern Cal to a 42-21 rout of the Crimson Tide, that Bear Bryant finally became convinced that 'Bama needed a new kind of player—one with a black face. No doubt you've heard the line that emerged from that game: Sam Cunningham did more for integration in Alabama in three hours than Martin Luther King Jr. did in a decade. It was at Legion in '81 that Bryant passed Amos Alonzo Stagg's career victory mark of 314 with a 28-17 win over Auburn.

So whither Legion Field? Around Birmingham there seems to be little of the warm and fuzzy feeling attached to Legion that there is to Rickwood Field, the city's historic minor league baseball park, which is being lovingly restored. Art Clarkson, a Birminghamite who once owned the minor league Barons, has a plan for Legion: "Let's get 30,000 people lined up around the stadium, sing a few songs, make a few speeches and—wham!—blow the thing up."

Perhaps it was the sad story of losing the Alabama High School championship games to the campuses of Auburn University and the University of Alabama that illustrate the sad ability for those Black people in control of modern-day Birmingham for allocating money to keep the buildings and infrastructure they inherited from white flight in working conditions:

The Super 6, Alabama's annual high school football championship series, is leaving Birmingham and will be played in Auburn and Tuscaloosa for the next six years.
The Alabama High School Athletic Association on Wednesday approved a six-year agreement to move the state football championship games from 83-year-old Legion Field. The series will alternate between stadiums at Auburn University and the University of Alabama. 

Birmingham's Legion Field had hosted the football championships every year since 1996. The championship games for the state's biggest high schools have been at Legion Field for four decades.
Jefferson County Commissioner Sheila Smoot said she was stunned by the decision.
"For me, it's a loss of sales tax once again in this county that we just can't afford. We're going to have to figure a way to replace not only this event but the money it generates," Smoot said. 

Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford said the city's bid included doubling financial support for both events. The mayor's office said it had budgeted $50,000 in financial support for the basketball game playoffs and doubled its pledge to $100,000.

"I had sweated what the results would be," Langford said. "All and all, I'm delighted because, to be perfectly candid, we raised the offer so high because we knew what we were faced with -- inadequate facilities."

Langford said the city continues to risk losing events unless new venues are built. Both the BJCC and Legion Field are outdated and inadequate, he said.

"Had we moved on that domed stadium or just shown the intent, the football games would never have gone to Tuscaloosa," he said. "No matter how much paint we put on Legion Field, it is a stadium that has served the state well, but is outdated."

Legion Field: Won't be demolished because of its "Civil Rights" importance

Jordan-Hare Stadium at Auburn and Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa are both old stadiums as well, but the alumni of each school are able to engage in capital campaigns that bring revenue and donations in to the schools for improvements to both the stadium and to the campus. The 71 percent Black residents of modern-day Birmingham... lack that financial acumen and planning ability for ensuring the structural integrity of the buildings they inherited from white flight and long-term initiatives for building capital to pay for renovations.

In 2007, the Birmingham News published a special report called Birmingham at a Crossroads: the reality is the city of Birmingham crossed the Rubicon on September 12, 1970.

It is a dead city as long as Black people are in control of the city's destiny, and a recent story about the inhabitants of the neighborhood that surrounds Legion Field illustrates this point powerfully (Neighbors around Birmingham's Legion Field languishing with blight, Birmingham News, December 4, 2011):

Boarded-up houses, darkened storefronts and a gutted hotel line the path thousands took recently on their annual caravan to Legion Field, where vendors and spectators indulged in a weekend of entertainment, celebrity and football.

Long after the echoes of music and roaring crowds of the Magic City Classic drifted past her house and faded until next fall, Iris Billups remains in Legion Field's shadow, where blight and neglect are her closest neighbors.

"After a period of time, I guess nobody cared," said Billups, a retired New York schoolteacher who returned four years ago to her family home off Graymont Avenue, one of only a few occupied houses on her block. "People moved away, and the people who owned houses died.

"Their children didn't move back and it just deteriorated."

Residents, planners and development experts say that's a problem not just for residents of Birmingham's Smithfield community, but for anybody who wants to keep Legion Field viable and attract more events to the 84-year-old stadium. Its future is linked to the struggling neighborhood in which it sits, they say.

With longtime plans for a domed stadium in the city shelved and a proposed UAB on-campus stadium axed by University of Alabama trustees, Legion Field remains the sole venue for major football games in Birmingham. Mayor William Bell has said he's working on bringing more games to the stadium and has announced upgrades to be completed in time for next month's BBVA Compass Bowl.

But some say revitalizing the surrounding community is just as crucial a need as improvements to the stadium itself.

Redevelopment plans have been pitched over the years, most recently in 2003, with little action. But with work under way on the city's first all-new comprehensive plan in 50 years and Bell proposing a $75 million bond referendum for yet-to-be-named projects across the city, hopes have been rekindled for improvements to the area around the stadium.

"What do you have to offer the people to come into the neighborhood?" Billups said, citing the scarcity of retail, restaurant and other development in the area for both visitors and residents. "The city has to think in terms like that. Why would we want to lose Legion Field? That's the only thing we have going."

The marketability of facilities such as Legion Field depends on visitors' experiences both inside and outside, said David Fleming, president of Operation New Birmingham.
"In general, it is clear from the trends of stadiums and sports facility development that people think about developing those facilities in context and not in isolation," he said.

Improving the condition of the area around the stadium is critical to the venue's marketability, said Arthur Allaway, a University of Alabama marketing professor.

"Some of it is just cleaning the streets and painting, because empty buildings that look good aren't dangerous-looking, while burned-out buildings don't look too attractive," Allaway said. "It will take private money in the long run, but in the short term, a commitment to the area from the city would go a long way."

Allaway said cosmetic improvements, along with incentives for redevelopment, should be the city's first steps.

Billups' father and uncle built the family house the same year she was born, 1950. After retiring, she returned to a street and community drastically different from the one she had left in 1972.

"You don't hear anything about this community until the next Classic comes," Billups said, sitting in the living room where black-and-white portraits of her mother and father still sit on the vintage furniture of her youth.

Back when the photos and furniture were new and Billups' house was filled with family, Legion Field was a premier sports destination hosting several Alabama football games a year, including the Iron Bowl matchup with Auburn. Those teams are long gone, and the statue of Paul "Bear" Bryant just past the resting lions at the gate stands as a memorial to Legion Field's place in sports history.

But Billups and others say the stadium and its neighborhood need not be consigned to sports manuals, yellowed newspaper clips and old television reels.

In 2003, the Graymont and College Hills neighborhood associations commissioned Auburn University's Center for Architecture and Urban Studies to canvass the area and draft a master plan for its rebirth.

The group led by Cheryl Morgan, director of Auburn's Birmingham-based urban studio, produced concepts that included preservation of historic homes, new neighborhood-based businesses and landscaping changes at Legion Field, making the area more park-like.

Morgan said she knows the drawings of trees at the stadium, and of fresh new homes mixed with renovated older ones near a new retail commercial district, are visionary.
"We really believe that you should set the bar high," Morgan said. "Part of what we believe is that the neighborhoods really do have the most responsibility and opportunity to make things happen locally, but they need tools to help them build partnerships to attract economic development to their area."

Morgan said Smithfield's location just west of downtown and its long history are assets that could aid in a revitalization.

"I'm a stubborn optimist. I look around and see so many amazing things in the city," she said. "Neighborhoods are living, breathing things, and change happens incrementally. Managing the change is one of the things that good planning helps you do."

Allaway said the area, which includes Birmingham-Southern College to the west, has elements that could be marketed to developers, including a natural customer base of students, residents and stadium users in addition to a supply of cheap land.

"There's got to be a market, and if there's a market, then there's an opportunity," he said. "All the commercial real estate guys are pretty smart in knowing what an opportunity looks like. Every place goes down and comes back up eventually.

Somebody could get in and get in cheap, and bring in some retail."

Fleming -- the former director of Main Street Birmingham, a neighborhood revitalization agency -- said plans such as the Auburn study require extensive support to analyze what is doable and put it into action.

"Somebody's got to be focused on making that happen and in that specific place," he said. "That's one of the challenges with redevelopment, keeping a focus and sustained effort of what's truly going to work in the marketplace."

City Councilwoman Maxine Parker, chairwoman of the Parks and Recreation Board that oversees Legion Field, agreed that Smithfield redevelopment should be tied to any effort to promote the stadium.

Birmingham is at a disadvantage in part because other cities have what is absent here, she said.

"When people go to other cities for games, when the game is over they want additional activities," she said. "Every time I went to a game I wanted to find the next place to have dinner and the next place to shop. You don't have it now, but if you make it a top priority you could have it soon."

City Councilman Johnathan Austin, whose district contains the neighborhood, agreed the city must shift more attention to the area.

"It's as if everybody has forgotten that there is a neighborhood around Legion Field that once was a thriving neighborhood," he said.

Change can occur gradually with city support, he said. Austin cites the recent vote to allow a Family Dollar store off Graymont. While that rezoning created a dispute between residents who backed it and members of a nearby church who opposed it, Austin said the store is an example of fledgling commercial interest in the area that must be championed.

"That may seem like something small, but in the large scheme of things, when is the last time we've had a new building built in Smithfield?" he said. "We don't have to go in and build huge grocery stores, but we can build neighborhood markets. We have an opportunity for neighborhood revitalization that we can mimic and replicate throughout the city."

Birmingham's project to develop a new city-wide master plan could shine new attention on the Auburn study, said Paul Neville, president of the College Hills neighborhood and Smithfield Community. "Moving from ideas to resources and implementation -- that's been our challenge," he said.

Neville said Legion Field, with its proposed green space and redesign of McLendon Park, could mimic the success of other neighborhoods where parks serve as anchors.
Capital needed to begin any major overhaul could come in a proposed $75 million bond issue that Bell announced recently.

Bell, who lives in College Hills and represented the area for years as a councilman, wants a citywide vote by early 2012 to finance projects across the city. The mayor has not named specific projects but said he would meet with each council member to compile a list of needs.

Repeated efforts to reach Bell for comment on possibilities for the area around Legion Field were unsuccessful.

Billups can easily give city officials her own list of needs, pointing out the number of empty houses on her street. That includes the Parker House, the home of A.H. Parker, founder and principal of the high school bearing his name. That house, and others in the area, were designed by Wallace A. Rayfield, whose other work included Sixteenth Street Baptist Church downtown.

The late principal would have to look closely to recognize his former home past the boarded-up windows. The city bought the house in 2001 and has stabilized it, but efforts to reuse it remain stalled.

"There are plans that the city has had for Smithfield, and they need to blow the dust off of them," said Emanuel Ford, a Birmingham Board of Education member and former longtime neighborhood officer. "It's not that the citizens have not raised their voices and given their ideas. It's just that sometimes it takes a long time to get something done. When you ride through Smithfield and you see all the blight and lots where houses used to stand, you wonder what happened."

What happened, Ford said, was that city officials turned all their attention to downtown revitalization while the neighborhood just west of downtown declined.

After years of little progress, Ford admits his optimism has dimmed a bit.

"You still keep pushing; you don't give up," he said. "I guess as we get older we learn to keep working, but then we also learn to deal with reality."

 Urban Blight? Declining property value? Virtually no legitimate economic activity? Crime and poverty? All hallmarks of a community that is all-Black. And not once in Joseph Bryant's article for the Birmingham News do you learn that the area around Legion Field has been all-Black for decades.

Once, the driveways of Black homeowners around Legion Field served as parking spots (and big-time money generators) for Alabama alumni and fans when they would attend games where the beloved Coach Bear Bryant would the Crimson Tide to victory. This all ended when Black political power took over Birmingham and completely neglected the infrastructure and public buildings they inherited from white flight, Legion Field included.

Now, the neighborhoods around Legion Field no longer accommodate University of Alabama alumni, students, and fans tailgating before a big game; they instead accommodate the camera crews of A&E's The First 48, with 71 percent Black Birmingham serving as one of the main cities for this show about murder and the police response to heinous crimes 

Legion Field needs to be demolished, like all of Birmingham; bulldozed, razed and ultimately, rebuilt again. But it won't: it will sit, decaying (with echos of a glorious past haunting all who enter the stadium; if you close your eyes you can even see the shadows of the 1971 Iron Bowl participants, as undefeated Auburn and Alabama battled in the last true game between the schools -- when both schools only had two Black players each, who were recruited for both academics and their athleticism), with the "blight" created and sustained by the Black residents of the neighborhood surrounding the stadium a reminder of the type of community they can create.

This is the true legacy of that September 12, 1970 game; the destruction of an entire state, though people are still too busy yelling "Roll Tide" or "War Eagle" to notice.

Tomorrow, we pull on Superman's cape. 

Reverse the Polarity

Atlanta, Birmingham, New Orleans: Miniature South Africas

The United States of America is nothing more than a loose confederations of present-day South Africas, with tax-paying (white people) serfs keeping alive once-thriving metropolises that, were they left to stand on their own devices, would die overnight.

Down in Atlanta, Georgia, the reality of this situation became glaringly apparent, with the overall fragility and health of the system being on full display (Jury: Fulton discriminated against white, male job applicant, Atlanta Journal Constitution, August 30, 2012):

In a case that rings alarm bells about race and politics in upper tiers of the Fulton County government, a federal jury has found that county officials snubbed an applicant for a director’s job because he is white and male.

It ordered Fulton to pay $300,000 in back wages to former Human Services Deputy Director Doug Carl, who sued five years ago.

The sum could triple next month when a judge decides whether to add in future lost wages, pension benefits and attorneys’ fees, according to Carl’s attorney, A. Lee Parks.

But Fulton County Attorney David Ware said, in a written statement after the verdict last week, that Carl lost the job because he “completely blew the interview” and he expects the verdict to be overturned on appeal.

“The only reason Mr. Carl alleges that race played a part in the selection process is because the person chosen happened to be an African-American female,” the county attorney’s statement said. “Mr. Carl was incredulous that a black woman would be chosen over him and thus decided to accuse the county of a race-based decision.”

Parks said in response to Ware’s statement, “It’s sad. What it is, it’s disrespectful to jury.”

Ware said the jury shouldn’t have heard secondhand testimony that Commissioner Emma Darnell played a role, allegedly telling a deputy county manager that she had “too many white boys” in Human Services and the new director should be black and female.

The commissioner has denied making that statement, Ware said.

Darnell said the county attorney has told her not to talk about the case but she will speak out after the litigation ends.

Also during the trial, former County Manager Tom Andrews admitted calling employees “black marbles” and “white marbles” in weighing personnel decisions. While the jury found that Andrews discriminated against Carl, it declined to make him pay punitive damages.

Andrews did not return messages seeking comment.

Carl, who said he retired in 2010 after his position was eliminated, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “I just think people should be employed based upon their merit, and not on their race. Discrimination is wrong, period, and discrimination has no color bounds.”

Carl said he wasn’t upset that the county hired a black woman, but felt he was passed over just because he is a white male. He said he thought his interview went well.

Ware, disputing a news release from Parks’ office about the case, said there is no evidence that Andrews’ decision not to promote Carl was based on race.

Former Human Services Director Valarie Wilson testified that her boss at the time, then-Deputy County Manager Keith Chadwell, relayed Darnell’s alleged “white boys” comment to her. Ware noted that at the trial, Chadwell denied saying that.

Comments others have attributed to Darnell also figure in a whistle-blower lawsuit pending against Fulton County, also being handled by Parks’ law firm.

Fired Deputy County Manager Gwen Warren and demoted internal investigator Maria Colon claim they were retaliated against because they planned to hand the district attorney evidence of embezzlement by a group of employees, even after County Manager Zachary Williams told them to hold off.

According to her complaint, Warren claims Williams quoted Darnell as telling him, “At Fulton County, we don’t investigate ourselves.”

White boys? Merit? These  mean little in Black-Run America (BRA), especially in the epicenter of where many of the policies that other municipalities copied and duplicated originated. But what if Fulton County has participated in "reverse-racism" at a scale that makes Doug Carl's claim look like chump change?

A story published in early August of 2012 (Taxpayer smackdown 'wave of the future'?
'We the people, you have to earn our trust before asking for more money', WND) exposed the depths of discrimination present in The City too Busy to Hate:

WND acquired the breakdown of  2012 employment for Fulton County and found that of the 4,851 full time county employees, 3,980 of them are black (82 percent). Fulton County has a population that is only 47 percent black. Of the 916 county employees who are classified as “other than full-time employees,” 787 are black (85 percent).

A quick breakdown of certain departments shows a trend of exclusion in Fulton County public jobs, with 86 percent of the Arts and Culture Department personnel black; 93 percent of 140 people in the Behavioral Health Department black; 81 percent of the 98 people in the County Managers Department black; 90 percent of the 65 people in the Emergency Services black; 89 percent of the 118 in the Finance Department black; of the 353 in the Health and Wellness Department, 306 are black; of the 37 people in the Purchasing Department, 100 percent are black; of the 19 in the Registrations and Elections Department, 100 percent are black; of the 150 employed in the Tax Assessor Department, 84 percent are black; of the 185 employed in the Tax Commissioner Department, 94 percent are black.

A city like Atlanta is kept alive because of white tax-dollars; remove them, and you have the conditions that are present in Detroit 2012. Emma Darnell is no stranger to antagonizing white people, having behaved in the 1970s (when Mayor Maynard Jackson was elected the first Black mayor of Atlanta) much as the African National Congress - ANC - acted when they took control of South Africa:

As the mayor’s administrative services commissioner, Darnell had become Jackson’s battering ram on affirmative action, and an admired figure in black Atlanta. A graduate of Howard Law School, Darnell monitored city contracts to make certain white contractors compiled with joint venture requirements.

Devoted in her task and headstrong in her style, Darnell told white contractors hoping to land city contracts, “If you want to do business with us I’ve got to see who you’re hiring. Are you hiring minorities?”(Where Peachtree Meets Sweet Auburn, by Gary Pomerantz, p. 465)

 Darnell was too aggressive in her push for affirmative action and white dispossession, and she was forced out:

Emma Darnell, Jackson’s commissioner of administrative services, was removed from office in 1976 and her department abolished, according to her statement, because white business leaders had viewed her as overly aggressive regarding the airport’s joint venture program. She claimed that the mayor fired her because of complaints from the white business community. (African-American Mayor: Race, Politics, and the American City, by Jeffrey Adler, p. 187)

 But don't think that the changeover of power from white to Black (and the South African-like actions of the new Black political class) is germane to only Atlanta. Just prior to Hurricane Katrina's arrival in New Orleans, the story of mass firings by the first Black District Attorney resulted in a lawsuit against the city (Jury Says Official's Mass Firing Of Whites Was Racially Based, Washington Post, March 31, 2005):

The jury, made up of eight whites and two blacks, returned the unanimous verdict in the third day of deliberations in the racial discrimination case against District Attorney Eddie Jordan.

Jordan acknowledged he wanted to make the office more reflective of the city's racial makeup, but denied he fired whites just because they were white. He said he did not know the race of the people fired.

Under U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval's instructions, jurors had to find Jordan liable if they concluded the firings were racially motivated. The law bars the mass firing of a specific group, even if the intent is to create diversity.

"We thought the facts as well as the law favored us. I still maintain that I did not use race as a factor in my hiring practices," Jordan said.

Jordan said the district attorney's office, which is liable for the award, cannot afford to pay the verdict. It was not immediately clear whether state or city, or both, would be responsible for paying the money.

Plaintiffs' attorney Clement Donelon said he was elated. "The plaintiffs' civil rights, every single, solitary one of them, were violated," he said.

The judge could order that the fired white workers be reinstated, but lawyers consider this unlikely. Such mandates are rare, as they require continuing court supervision.

The whites' lawyers argued that many of those who were fired had far more experience and scored higher in job interviews than blacks who were either hired anew or kept on.

The whites testified that they found themselves jobless in late middle age, after years of working in law enforcement agencies, including the New Orleans Police Department.

Were an enterprising lawyer prepared, a cottage industry for so-called "reverse-discrimination" lawsuits exists in Black-Run America (BRA). Birmingham, Atlanta, Memphis, Baltimore, New Orleans, Chicago, Philadelphia... the list of mini-South Africas in America is long and particularly undistinguished. They limp along on the redistribution of white tax-revenue to support a Black political class (the only way to create a Black middle class is through government jobs) ensconced in power because no one dares challenge them in court.

Remember, there are no "double standards" or "reverse racism/discrimination" in BRA; only "The Standard."

Reverse the polarity.

Living in America

Maybe it was when Clint Eastwood said he cried the night Barack Obama was elected (in reference to his being the first Black president) that something inside me said I should leave.

But it was as balloons and glitter fell from the ceiling and the pulsating chords of James Brown's song from Rocky IV "Living in America" bellowed through the arena that I realized I know longer cared.

At all.

Turning to walk out in disgust (and thinking the GOP might actually have hired Brown to perform the song were he still alive) an attractive woman smiled at me and said, "Aren't you so glad! America's back!"

Swatting away a balloon and removing glitter that had rudely irritated my eye, I replied coolly, "You know it!"

Taking my jacket off, flipping it over a shoulder, and callously loosening my tie, I left the arena thinking to myself, "I know how Ivan Drago felt."

To paraphrase Mr. Brown, "I don't feel good."

The Dome is Still Tarnished: Notre Dame, Criminals, and Lower Academic Standards for Black Athletes

PK Note: In a week or so, the most personal book I've done yet (Opiate of America: College Football in Black and White) will be released. Tomorrow, SBPDL will publish an article on Paul "Bear" Bryant that will correctly argue his legacy is far worse than the one of Joe Paterno at Penn State.

Much will be made about the recent comments by former Notre Dame fullback and current radio analyst for the Irish football broadcasts Allen Pinkett, who on an appearance on WSCR-AM 670 in Chicago said (Allen Pinkett: Notre Dame needs 'criminals' to be successful, South Bend Tribune, August 29, 2012):

Controversy is brewing over comments made by Notre Dame football radio analyst and former Irish running back Allen Pinkett.

During an appearance on WSCR-AM 670 in Chicago, Pinkett said Notre Dame needs a few “bad citizens” in order to win.

"I've always felt like to have a successful team you've got to have a few bad citizens on the team," Pinkett. "That's how Ohio State used to win all the time. They would have two or three guys that were criminals and that just adds to the chemistry of the team. I think Notre Dame is growing because maybe they have some guys that are doing something worthy of a suspension which creates edge on the football team.

"You can't have a football team full of choirboys,” Pinkett continued. “You get your butt kicked if you've got a team full of choirboys so you've got to have a little bit of edge. But the coach has to be the dictator and the ultimate ruler. Here's my opinion: You don't hand out suspensions unless you know you've got somebody behind that guy that can make plays."

Pinkett’s words were part of a discussion over the recent two-game suspensions of Cierre Wood and Justin Utupo on top of the earlier one-game suspensions for Tommy Rees and Carlo Calabrese.

Given a chance to back off his comments, Pinkett kept going.

"I absolutely meant that," Pinkett said. "The chemistry is so important on a football team. You have to have a couple of bad guys that sort of teeter on that edge to add to the flavor of the guys that are going to always do right because that just adds to the chemistry of the football team. You have to have ... you look at the teams that have won in the past they have always had a couple of criminals."

Let's be honest: Pinkett wants the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame to field teams that resemble the coal Black football squads of the Southeastern Conference (SEC). Caste football reports that since 2005, Notre Dame has started (out of 22 players 11 on offense and 11 on defense) 10, 11, 11, 11, 10, 10, 11, and now 12 white players, which is well above the average of the your typical SEC squad.

Last year, the University of Georgia started two white players in the opening season loss to Boise State (which started 16 white players); three years ago, the University of Florida secured an all-Black recruiting class, which now Ohio State head coach - then the Florida head coach - correctly stated was full of thugs.

But he recruited them all. It would be in this past years Gator Bowl between Florida and Ohio State that we would see the type of "thug" athlete Pinkett hopes to one day wear the cherished golden helmet at Notre Dame (Buckeye linebacker calls foul on race-baiting Gators, Graham Watson, January 3, 2012, Yahoo! Sports):

Trash talking is as old as football itself. A player baiting another player with a taunt or threat is usually par for the course during any game, especially a game between rivals or with championship significance.

So, it was no surprise that Monday's Gator Bowl between Florida and Ohio State — two teams that have loved Urban Meyer — had a little more vitriol than usual. What was surprising was the type of caustic comments being said.

Ohio State linebacker Tyler Moeller said Florida players hurled racial slurs at him throughout the game and that that sparked some of the chippiness during the 24-17 Florida win.

"They're classless. That's the way I'd put it," Moeller said, according to Marcus Hartman from Buckeye Sports Bulletin. "I've never seen more people swing at our players and call us racial slurs. I've never been called a 'cracker' more in my life than I have today. So I don't really have much respect for them in terms of that but they're a good team. They came out and outplayed us today."

Notre Dame prides itself in having high academic standards, which Heisman Trophy winner Paul Hornung asserted in 2004 was the reason the Irish were having so much trouble winning games on the gridiron (Hornung: Irish should still lower standards, April 1, 2004, ESPN.com):

Former Notre Dame great Paul Hornung has apologized for controversial comments he made on how the Fighting Irish can improve their football fortunes.

Hornung told Detroit's AM-1270 The Sports Station, an ESPN radio affiliate, on Tuesday that Notre Dame must ease up on its academic restrictions because "we gotta get the black athlete. We must get the black athlete if we're going to compete," Hornung said.

Hornung was asked in the interview about the state of college football and why it seems that there "just aren't giants anymore."

"No, no," Hornung said in agreement. The interviewer asked, "Is it limited scholarships?" Hornung then gave his response.

Hornung said that Notre Dame's schedule was a factor in his having that opinion.
"You can't play that type of schedule," Hornung said. "We're playing eight bowl teams next year ... and it's always year in and year out ... one of the toughest schedules.

"You can't play a schedule like that unless you have the black athlete today. You just can't do it, and it's very, very tough, still, to get into Notre Dame. They just don't understand it, yet they want to win."

Notre Dame spokesman Matthew Storin called Hornung an illustrious alumnus but objected to his comments.

"We strongly disagree with the thesis of his remarks," Storin said in a statement. "They are generally insensitive and specifically insulting to our past and current African-American student-athletes."

 Like Stanford, perhaps only 350 - 400 of the 3500 high school athletes who sign letters of intent with Football Bowl Series (FBS) schools meet the academic requirements to get into Notre Dame. Michael Rosenberg pointed out that Notre Dame still prides itself in maintaining high academic standards, while football factories in the SEC accept partial qualifiers into their schools; thereby cheapening the degrees real students earn:

This is an ongoing debate at Notre Dame, between playing like a champion today and excelling in school from Monday to Friday. The school boasts one of the great winning traditions in American sports history, but it also has a history of worrying that football is too important at such a fine university. When the team has been too successful, the administration sometimes tightened academic standards or otherwise tried to reel it in. Notre Dame never wanted to be Alabama.

And even in this big-money era, when the entire enterprise feels like pro sports, Notre Dame is determined to be Notre Dame. When the NCAA announced its Academic Progress Rate scores in June, 17 Irish teams posted multi-year scores in the top 10 percent of the sport. That was more than any other Division I school in the country. Duke was second with 13. Boston College, Northwestern and Stanford each had 10. (The Irish football team was not one of the 17, but the football team has posted consistently strong APR scores.)

Notre Dame has tried to blend its athletes into the rest of the university, to make them go to class, to treat them like regular students.

You could say Notre Dame is stuck in the past. I think the rest of college football is stuck in the present.

Pinkett should be applauding his school. Columnists who rip Notre Dame for not winning enough (I have occasionally made cracks myself) should also be congratulating Notre Dame for remembering that the football team is a branch of the University, not the trunk or the roots. Twenty years ago, Notre Dame was one of the top five programs in college football. The Irish won the 1988 national title and came within a field goal of winning one in 1993. Lou Holtz brought in top-five recruiting classes every year. The program created future NFL stars like Tim Brown, Jerome Bettis and Ricky Watters.

Those were the glory days, but there were also some days that made administrators uncomfortable. A book called "Under the Tarnished Dome: How Notre Dame Betrayed Ideals for Football Glory," included accusations of steroid use, academic misconduct and a coach (Holtz) who cared only about winning.

Administrators decided to make some changes. Holtz desperately wanted to bring in a young, troubled receiver from West Virginia who loved Notre Dame. The administration denied him admission. His name was Randy Moss. He might have helped the passing game a bit.

Holtz left. The school has not won much of consequence since, in part because of poor hirings, and in part because, in this ultra-competitive age, even Notre Dame needs to do a lot of things really well in order to have a chance to win.

If all schools played by the same academic rules, then recruiting "criminals" (Black players) as Mr. Pinkett put it, wouldn't happen. Starting in 2016, the NCAA is adopting new academic rules that will hit Black athletes hardest, making it difficult for the SEC to continue to enroll "criminals" into their institutions:

The latest changes in eligibility standards will apply to this fall's high school freshman class, but we won't know their full effect until 2016, when those students prepare to step foot on college campuses. They are already sending ripples through the college community because they are so drastic -- a jump in the required minimum GPA from 2.0 to 2.3 and, perhaps more challenging, a rule that requires high school athletes to complete 10 of their 16 required core courses before their senior year of high school.

35.2: Percentage of football players who enrolled in 2009-10 but would not meet the 2016 academic standards

This measure sounds interestingly like that of Prop 48 from the 1980s, which the New York Times whined in 1988 kept Black athletes ineligible for enrollment at major universities:

The majority of college football recruits disqualified because of Proposition 48 this year are black, according to a survey by The Associated Press. The survey also found that the overall number of academically ineligible recruits has stabilized. 

The survey was able to identify the race of 213 of the 274 recruits disqualified this year by Proposition 48, or 77.7 percent. A total of 185 of those recruits are black, 86.8 percent.

Critics have said that these numbers show that standardized tests such as those used under Proposition 48 are culturally biased.

''We know that standardized test scores are correlated with socioeconomic status,'' said Ursula Walsh, director for research for the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

Walsh said black recruits accounted for 81 percent of football ineligibles in 1986 and 90 percent in 1987, according to an N.C.A.A. survey. Aptitude Tests Defended.

Proposition 48 requires recruits to score a minimum 700 out of a possible 1,600 points on the Scholastic Aptitude Test, or 15 out of 36 on the American College Test, and have at least a 2.0 high school grade-point average in 11 mandatory courses to be eligible. Difference in Average Scores

In 1987, the average S.A.T. score nationally for all students was 906. The average score for blacks was 728.

The 274 recruits who failed to meet the N.C.A.A.'s academic requirements this year was a slight improvement over the 278 last year.

 Having academic standards (and character standards) would put schools in the same category as that of Brigham Young University, with its dreaded "honor code" and academic requirements that harken back to a world untouched by the "criminals" who now populate major college football rosters. Especially in the SEC.

Steve Sailer has a great writeup on Notre Dame, race, and academic standards (from the mid-2000s), with this particular admission worth noting:

And Brian S. Wise in Intellectual Conservative has some inside sources on how Notre Dame won its last national championship back in 1988:

Having been born and raised in South Bend has allowed me the chance to accumulate a few sources inside Notre Dame’s football program over the years; one was unavailable for this column, another told me that the things people should know are generally those they aren’t supposed to know at all. For example, that academic exceptions have been made when it mattered most, especially under Lou Holtz between 1986 and 1990. Todd Lyght (cornerback), Tony Rice (quarterback), Raghib Ismail (wide receiver), Bryant Young (defensive lineman) and Jerome Bettis (running back) are just five examples of very good players admitted with less than stellar academic backgrounds. All but Rice played in the NFL, they all managed to graduate. The point is that if the University truly had standards set in stone – as it suggested in a press release Wednesday – none of those players, and in that I mean none of them, would have ever been admitted.

Said my source, “If Tony Rice’s transcript and SAT scores were brought into the admissions office today, they would be set on fire.”

Nothing ever changes. In 2022, we'll be having this same conversation: why can't Notre Dame recruit more non-white athletes to help the Irish win football games, when SEC schools like Auburn, Alabama, Georgia, LSU, Florida, Tennessee, and South Carolina recruit Black athletes (excuse me, "Criminals" per Pinkett's lexicon) who couldn't spell S-E-C if you spotted them the S and the E.

The book Beyond the Cheers: Race as Spectacle in College Sports by C. Richard King and Charles Springwood has some hilariously honest quotes from Father Theodore Hesburgh, the man who served as president of Notre Dame during some of its greatest football heights (p. 146- 149):

During his tenure, he engineered Notre Dame’s precarious balancing act of synthesizing, at once, its continually emerging Catholic, secular, American, athletic, academic, and Irish identities.

Interviewed in the Black Issues in Higher Education, in 1992, Father Hesburgh acknowledges the existence of racism in the Catholic Church, but he noted that is prevalence mirrored the presence of racism in the United States generally. He also criticized what he termed Afrocentric scholarship, ghetto schools, and Black English. On inner city schools, he said:

"Schools are so bad in the ghetto... I think we need to clean the place out and have a campus like we have here at Notre Dame or at most state universities. Organize the thing just for educating poor kids, but make the schools so good that white kids will want to attend. I’m talking about 500 acres of a park or something. You could create it in Harlem; you could create it in Chicago. In fact, the first thing I would do [after it is built] is put a fence around it. In fact, two fences, 20- feet high with wild dogs running between them."

On black English, he remarked, “Black English is not good English. It may be spoken by a certain class of people, but [they are not] the most successful or educated.”

During the same interview, Hesburgh attempted to address the question of why so few African Americans attend Catholic universities such as Notre Dame:

"I often ask myself why we don’t do better. I think one problem is most blacks are City people. They tend to be in large cities where there is work. For someone from Harlem to come to Notre Dame it would be a culture shock. It’s a different atmosphere. It’s rural. We have everything we need here to live, have fun and learn. For city kids used to jive and Black kids around, that might be a bit strange. It’s a very quality school. The average SAT’s are about 1,250. Another problem would be social adjustment."

 Well, according to Mr. Pinkett, Notre Dame must do everything possible to get "criminals" Black athletes enrolled in the school if the university hopes to remain competitive. Father Hesburgh doesn't seem to believe this will happen. More importantly, the statistics of Black males enrolled at Notre Dame offer a telling glimpse into the academic quality of these "ghetto" dwelling scholars (Brains & Brawn:Black players want 'student' put back in student-athlete, Daily Northwestern, March 3, 2004):

About one in four NU [Northwestern] black males played a varsity sport last year, according to NCAA statistics from fall 2002. The disproportionately high number of athletes within the black male population influences student life.

The NCAA also shows the disproportionately high numbers of black male student-athletes wasn't exclusive to NU. At both Stanford and Duke universities, about one-fifth of black males are athletes. Half of black males at the University of Notre Dame are on an athletic scholarship.

Unless you lower academic standards, and become an academic joke like that of the coal Black SEC (hilariously, all the now 14 SEC schools boast student body populations that are majority white, with the University of Georgia having the paltry Black male student population of under two percent), then Notre Dame will just have to stick to recruiting "choir boys" predominately white players who can meet the academic requirements of the university.

Only after integration of college sports have we had this problem: now, all schools are populated with "criminals" Black players that force each academic institution to regress to the mean in a veritable "Cold War" for the best Black talent, all the while trying to maintain some modicum of academic standards.

Once, even the SEC recruited athletes who would try and live by the standards set by BYU's "Honor Code"; of course, that was a much different world and it was Bear Bryant who helped bring that world down for good, leaving us with the plantations at Oxford, Tuscaloosa, Baton Rouge, Columbia, Auburn, Athens, Gainsville, Miami, Tallahassee, Starkville, and Knoxville that we have now.  

Omni Consumer Products (OCP) Couldn't Save Camden Now

It might be time to start a private security firm...

An interesting week in Black-Run America (BRA) with one of the nations most dangerous cities, Camden, ditching its police force (One of most dangerous cities in US plans to ditch police force, NBC News, August 30): 

One of the most dangerous cities in the U.S. is getting rid of its police department.

Amid what they call a “public safety crisis,” officials in Camden, N.J., plan to disband the city's 141-year-old police department and replace it with a non-union division of the Camden County Police.

Camden city officials have touted the move as necessary to combat the city’s growing financial and safety problems. The entire 267-member police department will be laid off and replaced with a newly reformatted metro division, which is projected to have some 400 members. It will serve only the city of Camden starting in early 2013.

“It’s not a money-saver, it’s living within the budget you’ve got to get more boots on the ground,” Camden County spokesperson Joyce Gabriel told NBC News. “There has been an uptick in violence this year, and the city decided to go with the county’s police department.”

Afflicted by homelessness, drug trafficking, prostitution, robbery and violence, Camden has consistently ranked high among the top 10 most dangerous cities in the U.S. since 1998, according to Morgan Quitno Press, a research firm that compiles statistical data on cities. In 2010, Camden had the highest crime rate in the U.S., with 2,333 violent crimes per 100,000 people, more than five times the national average.

Camden is afflicted by homelessness, drug trafficking, prostitution, robbery, and violence because of its Black population, which drove away law-abiding, community building white people. More than half of Camden's 80,000 people (largely a Black and Hispanic city) live in poverty, meaning the population is incapable of sustaining any public employees.

Now the residents of Camden get to live the libertarian dream, with the absence of state power a reminder of why the goal of the Ron Paul acolytes only makes sense in a city that is almost all-white (with an over-abundance of social capital and trust within the community -- something an all-Black city can't replicate).

Fitting that the seventh anniversary of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans (NOLA) is greeted with Hurricane Issac, with the government taking no chances in a repeat of the lawlessness and the images of Black violence, Black ineptitude, and Black dysfunction dominating the news. So how did the government respond? (Hurricane Isaac zeroes in on fortified New Orleans, August 29, 2012, Daily Star)

Earlier on Tuesday, officials from Mitch Landrieu, the mayor of New Orleans, to Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, to US President Barack Obama, scrambled to get ahead of the storm's impact, mindful of the chaos and botched relief efforts in the wake of Katrina.

Landrieu assured residents that this time around, "your city is secure," and said emergency services were ready for search and rescue missions, if needed.
"We're in the heart of this fight," Landrieu told an evening news conference. "We are in the hunker-down phase."

About 1,000 US National Guard troops in military vehicles took up positions in the mostly deserted streets of New Orleans, brandishing automatic assault rifles to ward off any threat of the looting that spread after Katrina. Police cars patrolled darkened streets with blue lights flashing.

Obama urged residents to take cover and heed warnings, saying that now was "not the time to tempt fate." . He issued emergency declarations for Louisiana and Mississippi earlier this week.

The threat of Black people engaging in a repeat performance of the actions we saw in 2005 was enough to bring out roughly 1,000 US National Guardsmen to keep the natives at bay.

Think about that for a second.

Okay, done?

So many good people talk about America becoming a third-world nation; guess what - it already is a third-world nation. Now, all we do, is survive what is coming.

Camden should be the city that the Free-State Project that Libertarians have long championed migrate toward. The state is completely inept there, removed because of the inability of the majority Black and Hispanic population to sustain any semblance of economy that can provide tax-revenue to pay public employees.

Violence is the only form of capital left, with the state-monopoly on violence (the police) now completely removed, though Camden's place as - for decades - one of America's most violent cities illustrates perfectly the point that the majority Black and Brown population there were already in control of the streets.

So, when do we see National Guard troops deployed into Camden? Or cash-strapped Baltimore? Birmingham? Memphis? Detroit? Or New Orleans on a full-time basis?

All the aforementioned cities are afflicted with the same problem -- a majority Black population subsisting on individual welfare, and a redistribution of state and federal tax-revenue to keep these shanty towns alive. Concentrated poverty (interesting, this phenomenon seems to plague all communities that go majority Black in whichever geographic region of the country it occurs) that is the hallmark of the Black community means that EBT/Food Stamps and Section 8 Housing (not to  mention TANF/Welfare) will be the bedrock of the economic activity found in these areas.

Whereas white poverty is spread throughout the nation, with pockets of majority white communities in need of state and federal assistance, every majority Black city/community has abnormally high rates of government dependent citizens, meaning that eventually the "Camden Option" (the removal of police due to budgetary cuts) will happen in each city that becomes a shanty-town in America.

The future is now.

Cleveland 1968: The Year McDonald's Went 365Black

In John F. Love’s book McDonald’s: Behind the Arches, we are introduced to a story on p. 359 that serves as the genesis for that company’s decision to go 365Black:

The first, and one of the most threatening, took place in Cleveland in 1968 when McDonald’s came under bitter attack from a loose coalition of black activist groups led by a militant named David Hill. McDonald’s had already begun a nationwide search for its first black franchisees, but that effort was initially unsuccessful, and McDonald’s had franchised only four units to blacks when Hill called for a boycott of McDonald’s in Cleveland. Before the chain had time to react, hundreds of black demonstrators were picketing the six white owned McDonald’s on the town’s predominately black East Side.

It was the worst time and the worst place for McDonald’s to become involved in a racial controversy. Martin Luther King Jr. had just been assassinated, and Cleveland was one of the most racially divided cities in the country. It had elected the first big city black mayor, Carl Stokes, but rather than ease racial tensions, Stokes mayoralty aroused them. Stokes had courted the support of the Black Panthers and other militant groups and in so doing had fanned the fires of prejudice that burned in the hearts of thousands of politically active residents on the town’s mostly white West Side.

The city was racially split- East Side against West Side – and McDonald’s became one of the first victims of that division. Hill and the other black groups refused to remove their pickets until McDonald’s removed the white franchisees from the six black neighborhood stores. The pickets became violent, intimidating patrons by carrying night sticks and wearing ammunition belts and eventually by hurling rocks through store windows, and escalation that forced McDonald’s temporarily to take of the operation of the stores. The company brought in experienced managers from its newly acquired 43-restaurant Gee Gee operation in Washington to run the six Cleveland units and relieve the besieged franchisees.

Bob Beavers, the veteran black corporate manager from Washington whom McDonald’s selected to supervise the reopening, might well have qualified for battle pay. To prevent a riot, the police had pulled back from the pickets, and before he entered the area of his first unit, Beavers got some frightening advice from a white Cleveland police sergeant. “I suggest that you change your hotel and change your name,” the sergeant told him. Then, to Beaver’s astonishment, the officer handed him a revolver. “If you have to use this,” he told Beavers, “shoot to kill.”

McDonald’s quickly began negotiating with the black coalition but even those talks took place in an environment of intimidation.

Carl Stokes had provided an office at City Hall for a negotiating session between McDonald’s corporate managers and representative of the black groups, but that turned out to be something less than neutral turf. When Ed Blood, McDonald’s vice president of franchising, showed up at the meeting two doors down the hall from the mayor’s office, he was greeted at the door by “guard” from the coalition forces wearing bandoliers. Hill and the other militants at the meeting demanded that they be appointed agents of McDonald’s to supervise the selection of black franchisees for the stores. While Blood – supported by all of the white licensees involved – agreed to refranchise the stores to blacks, he rejected Hill’s terms. Only later did he realize how menacing the meeting was: one of the coalition representatives sitting across from him was holding a gun under the table.

Only when Dr. Kenneth Clement, a black physician, publicly called the boycott a “shakedown” did the tide turn in McDonald’s favor. Clement was the genius behind the campaign to elect Stokes, but following the election he broke with the mayor. Not long after Clement spoke out, the boycott of the McDonald’s units ended, and black franchisees were soon found for all six restaurants. Clement’s description of the boycott seems to have been justified. Hill was later convicted of blackmail stemming from his efforts to force the sale of McDonald’s restaurants in Cleveland to blacks, and was later a fugitive living in Guyana.

 But it didn’t matter: the boycott worked. McDonald’s effectively went  365Black in 1968, when Black militants demanded that Black owners be found to run the McDonald’s stores located in the majority Black areas.

This story symbolizes the reality of Black-Run America (BRA): the post-1964 Civil Rights world has been one where Black people have had the go-ahead to "shakedown" every segment of American society without any repercussions. 

Not only has McDonald's been 365Black since 1968; so has the United States of America

And now you know the rest of the story.  

Let Them Die

Remember, of Chicago's K-12 Public School enrollment (just under 415,000 students), 40% are Black; 44% are Hispanic; and only 8 percent are white.

Heather Mac Donald recently wrote at City Journal (Undisciplined, Summer 2012):

Arne Duncan, of all people, should be aware of inner-city students’ self-discipline problems, having headed the Chicago school system before becoming secretary of education. Chicago’s minority youth murder one another with abandon. Since 2008, more than 530 people under the age of 21 have been killed in the city, mostly by their peers, according to the Chicago Reporter; virtually all the perpetrators were black or Hispanic. 

Between September 2011 and February 2012, 25 times more black Chicago students than white ones were arrested at school, mostly for battery; black students outnumbered whites by four to one. (In response to the inevitable outcry over the arrest data, a Chicago teacher commented: “I feel bad for kids being arrested, . . . but I feel worse seeing a kid get his head smashed on the floor and almost die. Or a teacher being threatened with his life.”) So when Duncan lamented, upon the release of the 2012 discipline report, that “some of the worst [discipline] discrepancies are in my hometown of Chicago,” one could only ask: What does he expect?

What is life like in those schools? Natalie Pardo, back in September of 2007, wrote this for the Chicago Reporter (Chicago Public Schools: Expulsions Rise, But Safety Issues Persist):

At a time when schools in rural and suburban America have been shocked by random acts of unexplained violence, Chicago schools continue to crack down on what, by most measures, has become regrettably commonplace. The number of students expelled from city public schools has jumped dramatically in the last three years, from 57 in the 1995-96 school year to 318 last year, according to an analysis of school records by The Chicago Reporter.

And while schools are seizing more weapons than ever, students are devising ways to beat the system. Five Chicago public school teens told the Reporter how they smuggled weapons–"for self-defense, they say–"past metal detectors and other security stops.

"It's a terrible commentary on society in the 1990s when people feel the need to have a weapon to protect themselves," said Chicago Public Schools Chief Education Officer Cozette Buckney.

But the former high school principal said the system cannot tolerate any violations. "The school has a right to a safe environment," Buckney said. "When you bring a gun, you bring a gun, you bring a gun: It's hard to see a gray area."

The board's zero tolerance policy, initiated in the fall of 1995, required principals to report all acts of misconduct. And now all high schools must have metal detectors. Lawmakers also have acted. On July 31, Gov. Jim Edgar signed legislation making the unlawful use of weapons on or within 1,000 feet of a school a class 3 felony, which carries a two- to five-year prison sentence. And last year the Chicago City Council prohibited the possession of utility knives and box cutters by anyone under 18.

Heavy Metal 

In June, Vallas announced that metal detectors would be installed in the remaining 11 high schools that do not have them.

But on Aug. 25, no detectors were in place at Whitney M. Young Magnet High School, 211 S. Laflin St.. The school, considered the crown jewel of the Chicago system, has expelled seven students since 1995. It has three metal detectors, but it should have nine, board records show.

The Local School Council has voted against metal detectors, said Principal Joyce Kenner. "We feel it's under the control with security personnel and staff in the building."

Still "we are very vigilant about safety. Everyone has their eyes and ears open."

"I feel fortunate –¦ privileged to say that I have never viewed any type of metal detector inside of Whitney Young," said senior Khandicia N. Randolph, 17.

Because of the high caliber of the students and parental support, metal detectors aren't needed on a daily basis at Kenwood Academy High School, 5015 S. Blackstone Ave., said Assistant Principal James Williams. The school has security cameras and personnel, and the walk-through detectors will be up soon, he said.

Sixty-one high schools and four elementary schools have a total of 270 hand-held metal detectors, board documents show. But the Reporter's survey in July and August found the schools only could account for 196 of the devices. The schools told the Reporter they had 149 walk-through detectors; the school board counts 169.

 K-12 schools for Chicago Public Schools (remember, only 8 percent of the 415,000 are white) are basically low-level detention facilities; they exist to babysit the detritus, the children of parents who can only care for their kids because of the generosity of the welfare state (free school lunches, EBT/Food Stamps, Public Housing/Section 8 Housing).

The Chicago Reader provided us more details on just why the public school system in Chicago operates as a low-level prison facility (More young people are killed in Chicago than any other American city, By: Kari Lydersen and Carlos Javier Ortiz / January 25, 2012) ):

In Chicago, more than 530 people under the age of 21 have been killed since 2008 and many more have been shot or have otherwise suffered violence—often at the hands of their peers and particularly in the city’s African-American and Latino communities. Nearly 80 percent of youth homicides occurred in 22 black or Latino communities on the city’s South, Southwest and West sides—even though just one-third of the city’s population resided in those communities. The rate of youth homicide in West Englewood on the city’s South Side, for instance, was nearly five times higher than the citywide mark.

In contrast, there have been 22 other Chicago communities with no more than 1 youth killing since 2008. Many were located on the city’s North Side, but others like Beverly, Garfield Ridge, Hyde Park and Mount Greenwood did not lose any youth to violence but are next to or just a few minutes drive from others with some of the highest youth homicide rates in the city like Woodlawn, Roseland and Morgan Park.

It's time to turn off the welfare spigots. It's time for those remaining 8 percent white students in Chicago Public Schools to be evacuated out of the city (perhaps to Gary, Indiana, where they and their families will be tasked with fixing up that city) and for one thing to happen: concede control of Chicago to those who the administrators of the Chicago Public School system work so hard to baby-sit.

Turn the metal detectors off in the schools (how racist of the CPS to deny freedom to the 84% Black and Brown students enrolled there!) and desist in suspending unruly Black - and Brown- students, which brings so much chagrin to Crusading White Pedagogues (CWP) like Duncan.

Give control of Chicago to --- the people.