SCOPE50 Newsletter - August 2018

             SCOPE50 News                     

 

The Struggle Continues!                                                                

       SCOPE50.org                                                                                                                                         August 2018

 

 

 

Voter Registration

The Voter Registration Deadline is fast approaching.  In most places there is less than a month to get people registered to vote and to assist them with absentee ballots.  And the time is even less for those states that allow early voting.  Below is the flyer we have been using in our efforts.

 

In an effort to get clergy members to promote voter registration, the following letter is being sent to churches.

 

 

My brothers and sisters of the clergy,

 

Faith and action go together.  Hebrew 11:29-30 talks about  faith and how faith can change the lives of people and their circumstances.  It talks about faith and action.  It gives as an example the Israelites who are escaping slavery in search of freedom and that the Red Sea opened up so they were able to cross it as if on dry land.  Another example given is the walls of Jericho tumbling down when the people marched around the city.  

 I'm sure I don't have to remind you that the faith community – the church – is supposed to stand in the gap and speak for those who have no voice.  To speak for those who are suffering.  That is the call of the church.  And Jesus demonstrated that to us when he overturned tables in the temple because the voice of the church was silent.

 

So I'm calling upon you in our time to speak.  I'm calling upon you to promote voter registration and to get out the vote here in 2018.  We can't just simply say that we have nothing to vote for; sometimes you have to vote against.  Sometimes you have to take a stand against evil and corruption.  And I dare say this is what we are facing today.  We are in a moral dilemma.  Our families are falling apart.  Violence is taking too many lives.  The world seems to be changing rapidly.

 

As leaders of the church, we must speak truth.  We must speak the truth of Jesus.  We can't just say that the church doesn't get involved in social action and that we don't get involved in politics.  Jesus was involved in social action.  Jesus healed the lame man on the day of rest because he saw a need.  The church cannot afford to be silent.

 

I would encourage you to make sure that every member of your congregation is registered to vote, and that each member votes in November.  We must preach it from the pulpit – this is a part of the work of God.  Jesus did not sit by when he saw pain.  He tried to ease it.  When he heard crying, he tried to wipe away the tears.

 

Brother and sisters, now is our time to go into the wilderness.  I ask you over the next three weeks to get as many people registered as possible.  If people need rides, use your vans.  In the first two weeks of October, preach to your congregation about the importance of voting, about their responsibility to one another, to our society.  Because that is what our faith calls us to do.  Our faith calls for us to love one another, to stand up for one another, to fight against sin and evil no matter where it takes place. 

 

Thank you for your efforts and for doing the work of our God here and now.

 

                                                                        Sincerely,

 

 

                                                                        Rev. John Reynolds

                                                                        President, SCOPE50

 

SCOPE50/March for Our Lives Partnership

We have been working with the national March for our Lives organization in their Road to Change tour of 75 cities, which started in Chicago on June 16 and ended in Newtown, Connecticut, on August 12.  We have been getting information from them as they moved across the country.  One of their stops was Charleston, South Carolina, on July 31.  More than 500 people attended the rally in Charleston, which was held at a downtown theater.  A number of the students from Parkland spoke at a rally at the rally.  They spoke primarily about gun violence and promoting voter registration.  They also met with the survivors and the families of victims of the Emanuel AME Church shooting.  They registered students and other unregistered voters as they entered the Sottile Theater.

 

 

We have been working with local leaders, such as Jacob Gamble, even before the tour reached Charleston and have continued to work with the South Carolina leaders of March for Our Lives.  Jacob did a video/audio PSA (public service announcement) on behalf of SCOPE50, promoting voter registration.  He also did a video interview with John Reynolds, SCOPE50 President.  These videos and audios will be posted on social media sites as well as urban radio, hopefully within the next week or so.  They will be made available to SCOPE50 members as well as members of March for Our Lives and can be used in various communities across the country.

 

 

Oral History Project

We sent letters out to SCOPE50 members in mid-July asking them to participate in the Oral History Project.   For those of you who may not have received the letter, a copy is attached to this Newsletter.  

 

As we said in the letter, we are moving ahead with our Oral History Project, but we need your help.  Our goal is to record 50 oral histories that will be made available to the Library of Congress and to students and scholars in the future.  We ask that you participate in one of three ways:  (1) Contact one of our Board Members to set up a time for a 15-20 minute phone or personal interview:  John Reynolds (Email:  JohnR99773@aol.com)

                                   Lanny Kaufer (Email:  CivilRightsVet@gmail.com)

                                   Sherie Labedis (Email:  Sherie@surewest.net)

 

(2) Be interviewed at a future group gathering to be held in Atlanta and other locations with a large number of SCOPE veterans, and (3) Provide written answers to a short questionnaire via email.

 

 

 

 

Of the three options we gave, the response has been split between people who want to do personal interviews and those who want to do phone interviews, although some have chosen the third choice – to fill out a questionnaire and return it.  We had set a deadline of August 31, but since we have not yet reached our goal of 50, we will extend the deadline to September 11, for those who never received the letter or who were unable to respond because they were on vacation. 

 

We are also working on planning for future group gatherings in different locations where SCOPE50 members could be interviewed.  The first one will be in Atlanta, hopefully this fall, and is being organized by Barbara Williams Emerson.  We hope to announce the dates within the next couple of weeks.  Working with Barbara on the interviews will be Board member Mary Whyte, David Childs, and John Reynolds.

 

 

 

Photo of SCOPE volunteers at the 50^th anniversary Reunion

 

 

 

 

 

The Queen

We recently lost the Queen of Soul – Aretha Franklin.  We were all affected by that amazing voice of hers, and I think we are all better for the music that she shared with us and the music that she leaves behind.  Aretha was also an amazing piano player; she could make the piano sing.  Aretha Franklin was a supporter of the Civil Rights Movement and the Women's Movement.  She was an especially strong supporter of SCLC.  Aretha did not just make donations, but she was also out in the field where people lived their lives.  She was with Dr. King on numerous occasions.  She attended SCLC's conventions.  She was there when Dr. King was taken from us.  She was there at West Hunter Street Baptist Church when Ralph assumed the leadership of SCLC.  She was there in Resurrection City walking through the mud in 1968.  So all of us lost a great singer.  But for those of us who were a part of the Movement, we lost a friend and a supporter.

 

 

Report on Two Events in Northern California by Rugsy Ruggiero

In October 1-4 of 2015 there was a 50th Anniversary Re-Union of the SCLC/SCOPE Project in Atlanta, Georgia.  We sang, we had workshops, and at the end we were asked to be Civil Rights Workers once again.

 

For 2 1/2 years Jennifer Westerman and I, Rugsy Ruggiero, had small meetings and we worked with other groups and registered people to vote.  Along the way 50 people joined SCLC and 10 people joined SCOPE.  This February it was decided that we would have SCLC Celebrations.

One was held in San Francisco at the end of June. Another was held in Antioch, California at the end of July.  (SCOPE member Bruce Hartford was the main speaker at the Antioch event.)

 

Both events drew about 60 people, which was the number of Ministers who formed SCLC after the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott.  We were able to add 70 new SCLC members and another 10 SCOPE volunteers.  The only groups that participated in both events were Reverend Ishmael Burch's Church in San Francisco, SCOPE 50, SCLC and the NAACP.

 

Both events had speakers from the 60's, speakers from the Churches, and speakers active in their local communities. In the 60's the civil rights groups did not work together, each had its own agenda. There is strength when we band together and support activists.  The NAACP and ACLU do the legal work.  SCOPE 50 and SCLC do the in your face demonstrating the problem, and by the use of Non-Violence which is the key to win our struggles on the way to FREEDOM and EQUALITY.

 

Clayton Valley Presbyterian Church attended the Antioch Event and will host a SCLC Celebration in March of 2019.  Next year San Francisco and Antioch will hold a 2nd annual SCLC Celebration.  Anyone living in Northern California can contact me for SCOPE50 or SCLC meetings.  Email:  y1rugsy@sbcglobal.net.  Phone:  925-470-3764    ALL ARE WELCOME!

I want to thank Reverend John Reynolds for the support SCOPE 50 has given to our group.

 

Rugsy Ruggiero

Field Director for SCOPE 50

Treasurer of SCLC of Contra Costa County

 

 

Exhibit and "Post and Courier" article remembers the Charleston Hospital Strike

On the eve of its 50^th anniversary, a photo exhibit remembers the Charleston Hospital Strike.  The exhibition called "Unforgettable: Celebrating a Time of Life, Hope and Bravery," at the Charleston Public Library, features the photographs of Cecil Williams.  Williams, an accomplished photographer of the freedom movement, said the hospital strikers deserve recognition as the 50th anniversary of the event approaches.  "I wanted to pay tribute to their brave leadership, thank them for their great courage," he said.  Following are excerpts from an article written by Adam Parker which appeared in the July 29 issue of The Post and Courier. 

 

"The direct-action phase of the civil rights movement — from the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 and '56 to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968 — left no part of the South untouched. 

 

In the Charleston area, Esau Jenkins and Septima Clark ran citizenship schools during the 1950s where black residents were taught to read and registered to vote.  Blacks in Clarendon County mounted a legal challenge to school segregation, resulting in the 1952 Briggs v. Elliott case.  Burke High School students, including Harvey Gantt (who would go on to integrate Clemson University and, later, become the first black mayor of Charlotte), organized lunch counter sit-ins at the Kress store on Lower King Street in 1960.  Students, including Millicent Brown, integrated Charleston County's public schools in 1963. That same year, young demonstrators confronted The News and Courier over the newspaper's stance on integration.

 

 Then, as the civil rights movement increasingly focused on economic justice issues, nurses at the Medical College Hospital, now the Medical University of South Carolina, and Charleston County Hospital, now defunct, went on strike.  It was March 1969, and the events of the 113-day hospital strike would prompt labor leader Walter Reuther and civil rights leaders Ralph Abernathy, Andrew Young and Coretta Scott King to join the protest.  It would result in several high-profile arrests and culminate in the last big protest march of the era.

 

Photograph by Cecil Williams shows Andrew Young and Ralph Abernathy

 

It would also shake the local economy so forcefully that merchants and business people quietly pushed civic leaders to reach a compromise.  Among the strikers were Mary Grimes, Vera Smalls, Priscilla Gladding, Rosalie Fields and Louise Brown.   Brown was among 12 workers fired on March 20, 1969, after collectively attempting to lodge complaints against their employer about low pay and racial discrimination. That moment signaled the start of the strike, though nurses, including Mary Moultrie, and local civic leaders had begun organizing workers for several months by then.

 

"We were having meetings," Louise Brown, 83, recalled in a telephone interview. "This particular day, Mary Moultrie had a meeting with Dr. McCord."  William McCord was president of the Medical College Hospital and fiercely opposed unions. A group of black workers gathered during their lunch hour to meet McCord, but he failed to show up before the nurses had to return to their posts, Brown said.  Soon, the director of nursing told 12 of the workers she wanted to see them, one by one, after their shifts.  "Oh no, you'll have to speak to us together," they replied, according to Brown. All 12 were fired. That decision effectively transformed a labor confrontation into a larger civil rights protest, one that quickly escalated into a full-fledged strike involving more than 400 employees.

 

Cecil Williams shot this image in the spring of 1969 during the major march

of the Charleston Hospital Strike, led by Coretta Scott King

 

Cecil Williams was working for Jet magazine at the time. The black press was acutely interested in the strike, eager to portray the unfolding events from the perspective of the exploited workers and curious about the role of Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference, he said.  "They were interested in whether or not Coretta Scott King would assume the role of her slain husband, whether she would continue his work in a prominent way," said Williams.

 

The strike ultimately led to a settlement that restored jobs, provided workers a modest raise and resulted in a new grievance procedure. No formal contract was negotiated and signed, and the hospital refused to recognize the union or permit collective bargaining. Such was the compromise. Before long, the local union 1199B fell apart.  Nevertheless, most people on both sides of the dispute considered the settlement a victory that helped workers and improved race relations generally. 

 

Louise Brown says "I have not seen many changes for the underprivileged and poor people.   The cost of living has climbed even as wages have remained stagnant.  And affordable housing in Charleston is lacking."  Brown now is active in the Poor People's Campaign and has traveled to Columbia to join protests calling for economic justice. Recently she was among those arrested near the Statehouse.  She said she is distressed by the current political climate. "Stop talking about color, stop talking about black and white," she said, offering a prescription for social woes. "We're all people, we're all hurting. Until we realize we're all individuals, we're not going to make it. People need to be united as one."

 

 

Anniversary of Charlottesville

Jo Freeman passed along an interesting description of the recent rally in Washington held on the anniversary of the rally in Charlottesville last year: 

 

"On August 12 I tried to see the rightists hold a rally in DC on the anniversary of the one they held in Charlottesville in 2017.  They were enveloped in such a security cocoon that I never saw one even from a distance. However I wrote a story, and a photo essay, on what I did see."  See the photos at:  http://www.publicseminar.org/2018/08/unite-the-right-2/

 

"When Unite the Right announced it would hold another rally on the anniversary of the one it held in Charlottesville in 2017, it caused a great amount of consternation. They received a permit to hold it in Washington, D.C., at Lafayette Square across from the White House, raising specters of carnage in the nation's capital.  Violence had permeated the 2017 event, resulting in the death of a counter-protestor. 

 

In their effort to avoid a crisis, DC police spent weeks in planning. The officers turned out in such great numbers that the scene almost resembled a uniform convention.  Additional officers were scattered around the various counter protest sites.  Streets were closed for several blocks.  Police posted signs saying no firearms within 1000 feet of the Square. Unite the Right's permit application said they expected one to four hundred participants.  They planned to meet in Virginia, take the Metro to DC, then march to Lafayette Square.  Their numbers dropped drastically by August 12; roughly two dozen rightists were protected by about 200 police.

 

An opportunity to protest white supremacy attracted considerable attention from various left-wing groups.  At least two groups had permits for rallies from the National Park Service.  The Shut It Down DC Coalition set up its stage at Freedom Plaza. After three hours of speakers, it marched to Lafayette Square in mid-afternoon.  The ANSWER coalition set up in Lafayette Park, but it wasn't in the usual place for such rallies.  The National Park Service put them in the far northeast corner, where they could only put up a small stage and had to supply their own generator.  Most of Lafayette Square was blocked off by barricades, monitored by Park Police. Hours before the rightists were scheduled to appear, one couldn't get within 100 feet of where they were supposed to be, in the far southwest corner.

 

 

Black Lives Matter and cognate groups rallied on 16th St., above Lafayette Square before marching to the Square.  Jews United for Justice held discussions several days before; they joined the short march from Freedom Plaza to Lafayette Square.  It's fortunate there wasn't much actual marching because the day was hot and humid.  Freedom Plaza has no shade.  Lafayette Park is well endowed with trees, but the NPS put the rally in a spot where trees were few.

 

 

Photo by Jo Freeman, "Nazis Are Un-American", "Good-Night, Alt-Right"

 

 

  The "hottest" group (literally) was Antifa, a term applicable to a loose collection of groups and individuals that organizes locally to oppose anything they deem fascistic.  Politically, they combine anarchism with socialism, but what distinguishes them from other left-wing groups is their embrace of physical confrontation.  Opposition to white racism is a core belief, but they are not descendants of the 1960s civil rights movement because they reject non-violence.

 

 By mid-afternoon about 50 Antifa had gathered in Farragut Square a couple blocks NW of Lafayette Square.  With a couple exceptions, they were dressed in black from head to toe, including face masks and helmets.  It's amazing they didn't drop from heat stroke.  As soon as they pulled out their banners and prepared to march, a couple dozen cops materialized to line the edge of the square.  As Antifa marched down 17th St. toward the Pennsylvania Ave. entrance to Lafayette Square, the cops kept pace.  Trucks and police cars blocked any attempt to march down side streets.

 

Carrying a large banner that proclaimed NO HATE, NO FEAR, they chanted "Any time, any place, punch a Nazi in the face."

 The rightists had announced that they would march on Lafayette Square from a Metro stop seven blocks away.  Efforts by counter-protestors to meet them there were thwarted by the police.  Not only were all streets blocked, but the right-wingers had left the Metro station two hours before they were supposed to arrive there from Virginia.  Deception, as well as overwhelming numbers, was part of the police strategy to protect them.

 

Metro had planned to run separate cars for the rightists from a stop in Virginia but backed off when its union — Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689 — publicized the plan, declaring it outrageous.  However, the police thought that separate was safer, so that's what was done.  Since there were fewer rightists than would normally fit into one Metro car, this might have staved off some confrontations. 

 

When they emerged from the Metro station two hours early, only a few counter-protestors were there to greet them.  Surrounded by police, they marched to Lafayette Square, where they spoke for over an hour.  In the meantime, Antifa clustered at Pennsylvania Ave. and 17th St. in order to keep the rightists out.  Since their intended target was not there they hassled the cops with chants, eggs, flares and firecrackers. By the time Antifa dissipated, the rightists had completed their rally and been hauled back to the Metro in three police vans.

 

Estimates of total numbers of protestors ranged from one to fifteen thousand.  My best guess is about five thousand, made uncertain by the fact that people came and went from two rally locations.  In the end, everyone was sent home by Mother Nature, who turned on the spigots soon after the rightists left Lafayette Square. There was only one arrest in DC.  Four were arrested in Charlottesville, which held a commemorative counter-protest without a protest. The DC Mayor's office stated that the taxpayers spent $2.6 million to protect two dozen rightists – roughly $100,000 each.

 

 

Sherie Labedis

We are sad to report that Board member Sherie Labedis recently lost her husband Joe.  We need to be in prayer for our sister as she goes through this difficult time in her life.  Not only should we keep her in prayer, but we should reach out to her and embrace her.  Sherie will be working with those of you who indicated that you wish to do a phone interview for the Oral History Project.  She will be reaching out to you.  We appreciate her dedication to SCOPE50 and serving on its Board of Directors.

 

 

Outreach

At the SCOPE50 Board meeting in May 2018, the Board decided it would reach out to the members of SCOPE50, asking if they would make themselves available to high school and college students who would like to do personal interviews with Civil Rights veterans.  We get requests from time to time from students asking about this.  It would be an opportunity for members to share their stories and the history of the Movement.