The Day is Here – Montgomery, Alabama

Those four simple stances by Langston Hughes says it all about the upcoming Mayoral and City Council election in Montgomery, AL on August 25th, 2015.

It’s true.  For many, many years….too many years….Black folks in Montgomery have been meek, sweet, and docile.  We have allowed the descendants of our slave owners past,  to appoint some of us to what we have thought were “high places”. Afraid (and back in the day, justifiably so) to say, “No…that’s all right, boss”, many Blacks were placed in big positions and given big names, also known as “overseers”,  to keep “Boss'” power structure in line.

How?

By placing an African American figure in the community who the masses of Black people could relate to and turn to, pacified the masses.   Mind you, bosses know how to make it look like a “high placed” appointee has his or her own authority to make decisions.   Little did we know then, and even do some of us know now – that every single word that we have spoken to “Overseer High-Place” has been relayed to the boss.

But today we KNOW better and ask,

“How high will a White City Hall “PLACE” Black people in a BLACK MAJORITY CITY?”

Especially when that BLACK MAJORITY CAN RUN THE CITY ITSELF BETTER THAN ITS EVER BEEN RUN!

You see, an overseer’s “high place” is akin to a highchair.  A highchair is a child’s place.  It’s designed to only feed and watch who’s put in there.  

• Someone has to pick you up and put you in there.
• You only get to sit beside the big table and get portions of their food.
• But how far can you really reach?

From a highchair, one cannot even reach the table where the “blessings” are made over the full feast.   It’s not until one reaches for more than what has been parceled off to them, do they realize that their “high place seat” has them strapped in tight and restrained to their position.

The view from the highchair is positioned so that one can look around, and over their left and right side.  The center is where the child is fed and instructed by he or she who controls the table.  So the cycle becomes:

1. Look over your left
2. Look over your right
3. Look around
4. Look ahead and speak of what you see
5. Get portions from the table
6. Repeat

We know that we brought a CHANGE to the White House and now it’s time to bring a CHANGE TO OUR HOUSE!

Listen to what President Barack Obama said just 5 months ago in Selma:

IT’S VERY HARD TO ADMIT, BUT MONTGOMERY’S POLITICAL SYSTEM TODAY STEMS FROM THE HORRORS AND HISTORY OF SLAVERY OF OUR PEOPLE … RIGHT HERE, IN MONTGOMERY.

Atlanta was just like Montgomery a litte over 30 years ago, did you know that?  Yes…Atlanta, Georgia was a majority Black city which was run by White politicians with overseers forever.

What made Atlanta, Ga change from a completely White controlled city with “overseers”, to one of the most wealthy cities in America for Blacks and THE HOTTEST SPOT IN THE SOUTH FOR BIG CORPORATIONS TO LOCATE?

Atlanta’s first Black Mayor:  Maynard Jackson and subsequently of course, Andrew Young. 

Don’t sleep on this one, Family.  PLEASE CLICK THIS LINK AND READ EXACTLY WHAT JACKSON DID AS THE FIRST BLACK MAYOR ELECTED TO ATLANTA (he also was the first Black Mayor elected to ANY MAJOR CITY IN THE SOUTH)

Part of the link reads:

As mayor, one of Jackson’s main priorities was to ensure that minority businesses received more municipal contracts, and he succeeded in raising the proportion from less than 1 percent to more than 35 percent. His crowning achievement was building the massive new terminal at Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport with significant minority participation, and in his own words, “ahead of schedule and under budget.” (In 2003 the airport’s name was changed to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Jackson’s honor.) Jackson’s insistence on affirmative action, his emphasis on public involvement in neighborhood planning, and other issues created a rift between the mayor and much of the white business community in Atlanta.

Jackson also transformed the police department in an effort to reduce charges of police mistreatment

Maynard Jackson

of African Americans and to help blacks rise in the ranks. Jackson later broke with his public safety commissioner, Reginald Eaves, and Eaves resigned in a promotion-exam cheating scandal. Meanwhile, a series of murders of black youths, known as the Atlanta child murders, terrorized the city from 1979 to 1981, and Jackson worked to maintain calm in the city until Wayne Williams was caught and convicted in connection with the crimes.

Facing a legal limit of two consecutive terms, Jackson helped convince congressman Andrew Young to run to succeed him, and Young won easily…Jackson had become a successful municipal-bond attorney as the Atlanta representative of a Chicago law firm. His political and business prominence led to service on numerous boards in the 1980s and 1990s, including those of Morehouse College, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Georgia Department of Industry, Trade, and Tourism (later Georgia Department of Economic Development).

Jackson remained influential in city politics behind the scenes during the Young administration, and he decided to seek a third term in 1989…

.Although Payne, Young, and others were more intimately involved in the bid to bring the 1996 Olympic Games to Atlanta, Jackson assisted the effort and represented the city at the 1992 games in Barcelona, Spain. During the 1980s Jackson mended ties with much of the white business community, and as a result more of his support crossed racial and economic lines…”  (http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/government-politics/maynard-jackson-1938-2003)

THIS IS WHAT MONTGOMERY HAS BEEN DEPRIVED OF FOR NEARLY 200 YEARS.

The day is here, Family….It’s our time.

Your Advocate,

M. Kita Williams, Founder/Publisher

http://www.civilrightsagenda.com