Dr. Benjamin Hooks, the first Black American appointed to the (FCC) Federal Communications Commission and famed civil rights leader Rev. Dr. Benjamin L. Hooks announced his plans on Sunday to retire from the church he has led for more than half a century.

Hundreds of Memphians turned out for what was a bittersweet Pastor Appreciation Day at Greater Middle Baptist Church, where Hooks began preaching 52 years ago.

He said he has enjoyed preaching the gospel, and laughed when he said he "had the reputation of being a pretty good preacher."

Hooks, 83, has been a guest preacher at some of the nation's most prominent churches, from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta to megachurches in Detriot.

But Hooks says health problems have forced him to retire from the pulpit. "Well, at the point I made my decision to retire, I was very, very ill. I had missed three or four Sundays in a row out of church, several times, and I didn't feel it was fair to people to remain as pastor," he said. "And number two, for my own sake and health, it would be better to retire."

Dr. Benjamin Hooks is currently serving as a distinguished adjunct professor for the Political Science department of the University of Memphis. In 1996, the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change was established at the University of Memphis. The Hooks Institute is a public policy research center supporting the urban research mission of the University of Memphis, and honoring Dr. Hooks’ many years of leadership in the American Civil Rights Movement. The Institute works to advance understanding of the legacy of the American Civil Rights Movement – and of other movements for social justice – through teaching, research and community programs that emphasize social movements, race relations, strong communities, public education, effective public participation, and social and economic justice.

The Memphis native also lead the NAACP for 15 years. On November 6, 1976, the 64-member board of directors of the NAACP elected Dr. Hooks executive director of the organization. In the late 1970s the membership had declined from a high of about 500,000 to only about 200,000. Hooks was determined to add to the enrollment and to raise money for the organization’s severely depleted treasury, without changing the NAACP’s goals or mandates. “Black Americans are not defeated,” he told Ebony soon after his formal induction in 1977. “The civil rights movement is not dead. If anyone thinks that we are going to stop agitating, they had better think again. If anyone thinks that we are going to stop litigating, they had better close the courts. If anyone thinks that we are not going to demonstrate and protest, they had better roll up the sidewalks.”
In 1980, Benjamin Hooks explained why the NAACP was against using violence to obtain civil rights:

QUOTE: There are a lot of ways an oppressed people can rise. One way to rise is to study, to be smarter than your oppressor. The concept of rising against oppression through physical contact is stupid and self-defeating. It exalts brawn over brain. And the most enduring contributions made to civilization have not been made by brawn, they have been made by brain. UNQUOTE


He also served as an FCC commissioner. In 1972, President Richard Nixon appointed Dr. Hooks to be one of the five commissioners of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The Senate confirmed the nomination, and Benjamin and Frances Hooks moved to Washington, D.C. in 1973. As a member of the FCC, Hooks addressed the lack of minority ownership of television and radio stations, the minority employment statistics for the broadcasting industry, and the image of Blacks in the mass media.




Memphis' Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library and the Benjamin Hooks Institute for Social Change at the University of Memphis are named in his honor.

Early in 1990 Hooks and his family were among the targets in a wave of bombings against civil rights leaders. Hooks visited President George H. W. Bush in the White House to discuss the escalating tensions between races. He emerged from that meeting with the government’s full support against racially motivated bomb attacks, but he was very critical of the administration’s apparent lack of action concerning inner city poverty and lack of support for public education.

On the other hand, Hooks would not lay all the blame for America’s ills at the feet of its elected officials. He has been a staunch advocate of self-help among the black community, urging wealthy and middle-class blacks to give time and resources to those less fortunate. “It’s time today... to bring it out of the closet: No longer can we proffer polite, explicable, reasons why Black America cannot do more for itself,” he told the 1990 NAACP convention delegates. “I’m calling for a moratorium on excuses. I challenge black America today—all of us—to set aside our alibis.”

By 1991 some younger members of the NAACP thought that Hooks had lost touch with black America and ought to resign. One newspaper wrote: “Critics say the organization is a dinosaur whose national leadership is still living in the glory days of the civil rights movement.” Dr. Frederick Zak, a young local NAACP president, was quoted as saying, “There is a tendency by some of the older people to romanticize the struggle—especially the marching and the picketing and the boycotting and the going to jail.”

Hooks feels that the perilous times of the civil rights movement should never be taken for granted, especially by those who were born in the aftermath of the movement’s gains. “A young black man can’t understand what it means to have something he’s never been denied,’ Hooks told U.S. News & World Report. “I can’t make them understand the mental relief I feel at the rights we have. It almost infuriates me that people don’t understand what integration has done for this country.”

Hooks spent his entire career campaigning for civil rights, and as he prepares to retire from preaching, he says he'll never retire from the fight for social justice and the desire to inspire young people. "And I'll say to you young people today, millions of opportunities black and white...don't fight change. Get with Obama. Help make this a better nation," he said. "Lets tear down the walls of discrimination and segregation, and march forward...sisterhood and brotherhood, from sea to shining sea."

Benjamin Hooks was born in Memphis, Tennessee. He was the fifth of seven children of Robert B. Hooks and Bessie White Hooks. His father was a photographer and owned a photography studio, and the family was fairly comfortable by the standards of Black people for the day. Still, he recalls that he had to wear hand-me-down clothes and that his mother had to be careful to make the dollars stretch to feed and care for the family.

Young Benjamin’s paternal grandmother, Julia Britton Hooks (1852–1942), graduated from Berea College in Kentucky in 1874 and was only the second American black woman to graduate from college. She was a musical prodigy who began playing piano publicly at age five, and at age 18 joined Berea’s faculty, teaching instrumental music 1870–72. Her sister, Dr. Mary E. Britton, also attended Berea, and became a physician in Lexington, Kentucky.

With such a family legacy, young Benjamin was inspired to study hard and prepare himself for college. In his youth, he had felt called to the Christian ministry. His father, however, did not approve and discouraged Benjamin from such a calling.


Dr. Hooks enrolled in LeMoyne-Owen College , in Memphis, Tennessee. There he undertook a pre-law course of study 1941–43. In his college years he became more acutely aware that he was one of a large number of Americans who were required to use segregated lunch counters, water fountains, and restrooms. “I wish I could tell you every time I was on the highway and couldn’t use a restroom,” he told U.S. News & World Report in an interview. “My bladder is messed up because of that. Stomach is messed up from eating cold sandwiches.”

After graduating in 1944 from Howard University, he joined the Army and had the job of guarding Italian prisoners of war. He found it humiliating that the prisoners were allowed to eat in restaurants from which he was barred. He was discharged from the Army after the end of the war with the rank of staff sergeant.

After the war he enrolled at the DePaul University College of Law in Chicago to study law. No law school in his native Tennessee would admit him. He graduated from DePaul in 1948 with his J.D. (law) deg


Hooks said he attributes his many successes in life to his faith in God and the love of his wife Frances. "Well, without her, I couldn't have done it... put it that way!"

Eartha Kitt, who rose from the Southern cotton
fields to captivate audiences around the world with sultry
performances as a singer, dancer and actress, died on Christmas Day, 25 December 2008 at the age of 81.

Kitt died of colon cancer for which she was recently treated at
Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York, said Andrew Freedman, a
long-time friend and publicist.

The cancer was detected about two years ago and treated but recurred
after a period of remission.

"She came back strongly. She had been performing until two months
ago," Freedman told Reuters by telephone from Los Angles. "We had
dates booked through 2009."


Slinky, sensuous and cat-like, Kitt described herself as a "sex
kitten" and used her seductive purr to charm audiences across the
world.

Actor-director Orson Welles once called Kitt "the most exciting woman
alive" and, along with Lena Horne, she was one of the first
African-American sex symbols.



Kitt picked up a string of awards during her long career, winning two
Emmys and being nominated for a third, as well as a Grammy. She also
had two Tony nominations.

Her hit songs included "C'est Si Bon," "Let's Do It" and "Just an Old
Fashioned Girl." She also was widely associated with Christmas because
of her hit "Santa Baby." The song, recorded in 1953, went gold this
year and she received the gold record before she died, Freedman said.

Despite those accolades, Kitt may have been at her best in her
nightclub act, which allowed her to use her feline, seductive manner
to its fullest.

"She loved cabaret performances," Freedman said. "If there was ever an
opportunity to do a small intimate venue with about 150 people, that
was always her preference."

BLACKBALLED

Kitt was blackballed in America for speaking out against the Vietnam
War in the 1960s -- most notoriously at a White House luncheon in the
company of first lady Lady Bird Johnson. "You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed, They rebel in the street. They don't want to go to school because they're going to be snatched off from their mothers to be shot." Sound like
you heard that on CNN last week? No, that was Eartha at the White House
luncheon. Eartha took her act to Europe while being investigated for
almost half a decade by the FBI and CIA who found her " foul mouthed
and promiscuous."

Kitt then began performing in
Europe, where she had been popular early in her career, and eventually
returned to the United States to great acclaim.

"She was never one to look back on her life," Freedman said. "She was
a true individual who believed that if you had a true belief in
yourself, your talent was authentic."

"My greatest challenge was to be able to survive in the business and
to be able to survive according to what I was doing. Not what other
people were doing," Kitt told Reuters in a 2005 television interview
at the Newport, Rhode Island jazz festival.

"I just stuck to my own guns and I think that was one of the way's I
have survived. The audience is not supposed to know that I'm scared,
the shyest person in the world.
Kitt was born to a black-Indian mother and a white father on a
plantation in South Carolina in 1927. She once described herself as
"that little urchin cotton picker from the South, Eartha Mae" and
often spoke of a tough childhood in the impoverished segregated South.
She was often harassed for being light-skinned before being sent to
live with an aunt in New York City.

But Kitt's life in New York also was marred by abuse and poverty until
she got her start as a member of the Katherine Dunham Company and made
her film debut in "Casbah" in 1948. On television she was perhaps best
known for her role as the sexy Catwoman in the 1960s TV series
"Batman."

In an interview with The Times of London in April Kitt described her
approach to performing by saying: "I do not have an act. I just do
Eartha Kitt ... I want to be whoever Eartha Kitt is until the gods
take me wherever they take me."

She was married in the 1960s to real estate developer Bill McDonald
and they had a daughter, named Kitt.



She also was known for her
relationships with Welles, cosmetics mogul Charles Revson and Arthur
Leows Jr. of the U.S. movie theater chain.

A Case Of Racial Kidnapping.
Amazingly we keep hearing that this year will mark the first time that a Black person or a Black male has been nominated by a major political party as its presidential candidate and that if elected for President of the United States, Senator Barack Obama would become the first African American President in our history. This is simply just not the truth and if we are going to be considered African Americans in America we need to stop living on false truths, no matter what white America chooses to do.
The truth is that this nation has been served by 7 Black President's in the past and Bill Clinton was not one of them, even though the Congressional Black Caucus honored him as the nation's "First Black President" in 2001 at their annual dinner.

The following presidents where able to pass for White and never acknowledged their Black ancestry. Barack Obama, if elected, would not be the nation's first Black president -- just the first to acknowledge his Black ancestry.

Makes you wonder why white people are suddenly talking about they can't trust a black man to serve as president? Do you think it is because he doesn't wear a white wig to conceal himself? Could it be the fact that he mentioned his father was a black man that had abandoned him making it impossible for them to conceal his true identity as they did with the 7 other Black President's before him? Maybe it's the fact that "THAT ONE" they will have to write down in history and all the world will know that we now have another black leader to read about and it's not Dr. Martin Luther King? Do you think their afraid that we would demand another holiday and name it Black President's Day? What ever it is, it totally contradictory to what has already taken place in America. Check it out!


The 7 Black Presidents before Obama

John Hanson (a Moor) was the 1st President of the United States, he served from 1781 - 1782 and he was black. The new country was actually formed on March 1, 1781 with the adoption of The Articles of Confederation. This document was actually proposed on June 11, 1776, but not agreed upon by Congress until November 15, 1777. Maryland refused to sign this document until Virginia and New York ceded their western lands (Maryland was afraid that these states would gain too much power in the new government from such large amounts of land).

Once the signing took place in 1781, a President was needed to run the country. John Hanson was chosen unanimously by Congress (which included George Washington). In fact, all the other potential candidates refused to run against him, as he was a major player in the revolution and an extremely influential member of Congress.

As President, Hanson ordered all foreign troops off American soil, as well as removal of all foreign flags. He established the Great Seal of the United States, which all Presidents since have been required to use on all Official Documents. He declared that the 4th Thursday of every November to be Thanksgiving Day, which is still true today. Even though elected one variable that was never thought through was that America was not going to accept a Black President during the heart of the enslavement period.

Thomas Jefferson was the 3rd President of the United States, he served from 1801 - 1809 and he was black. His mother a half-breed Indian squaw and his father a mulatto (half white and half black) from Virginia.

Andrew Jackson was the 7th President of the United States, he served from 1829 - 1837 and he was black. His mother was a white woman from Ireland who married a black man. His brother was sold into slavery.

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, he served from 1861 - 1865 and he was black. His mother was from an Ethiopian Tribe and his father was an African American. It was told that his father was Thomas Lincoln a man to cover the truth, but he was sterile from childhood mumps and was later castrated, making it impossible for him to have been his father. Lincoln's nickname "Abraham Africa-nus the First."

Warren Harding was the 28th President of the United States, he served from 1921 - 1923 and he was black. Harding never denied his ancestry.
When Republican leaders called on Harding to deny the"Negro" history, he said, "How should I know whether or not one of my ancestors might have jumped the fence."

Calvin Coolidge was the 29th President of the United States, he served from 1923 - 1929 and he was black. He proudly admitted that his mother was dark but claimed it was because of a mixed Indian ancestry. His mother's maiden name was "Moor." In Europe the name "Moor" was given to all Black people just as in America the name "Negro" was used.

Dwight E. Eisenhower was the 33rd President of the United States, he served from 1953 - 1961 and he was black. His mother, Ida Elizabeth Stover Eisenhower, an anti-war advocate, was half black.


Carter G. Woodson wrote: "If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated." In order for us to avoid extermination, we Black people must rediscover our history and our good name. I look forward to the day when someone asks: "What have Blacks contributed to mankind?" and any 1st grade child can answer:
"We gave you the human race, and then helped to civilize it.

Proverb 22:1 "A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favor rather than silver and gold."

The good name of African American people has successfully been stolen and destroyed.

No He Can't; or, Why One Black PhD did Not Vote For Obama.
She is Dr Anne WORTHAM.

Anne Wortham is Associate Professor of Sociology at Illinois State University and continuing Visiting Scholar at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. She is a member of the American Sociological Association and the American Philosophical Association. She has been a John M. Olin Foundation Faculty Fellow, and honored as a Distinguished Alumni of the Year by the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education. In fall 1988 she was one of a select group of intellectuals who were featured in Bill Moyer's television series, "A World of Ideas." The transcript of her conversation with Moyers has been published in his book, A World of Ideas. Dr. Wortham is author of The Other Side of Racism: A Philosophical Study of Black Race Consciousness which analyzes how race consciousness is transformed into political strategies and policy issues. She has published numerous articles on the implications of individual rights for civil rights policy, and is cur rently writing a book on theories of social and cultural marginality. Recently, she has published articles on the significance of multiculturalism and Afrocentricism in education, the politics of victimization and the social and political impact of political correctness. Shortly after an interview in 2004 she was awarded tenure




This article by her is something else.
No He Can't
by Anne Wortham



Fellow Americans,

Please know: I am black; I grew up in the segregated South. I did not vote for Barack Obama; I wrote in Ron Paul's name as my choice for president. Most importantly, I am not race conscious. I do not require a black president to know that I am a person of worth, and that life is worth living. I do not require a black president to love the ideal of America.

I cannot join you in your celebration. I feel no elation. There is no smile on my face. I am not jumping with joy. There are no tears of triumph in my eyes. For such emotions and behavior to come from me, I would have to deny all that I know about the requirements of human flourishing and survival – all that I know about the history of the United States of America, all that I know about American race relations, and all that I know about Barack Obama as a politician. I would have to deny the nature of the "change" that Obama asserts has come to America. Most importantly, I would have to abnegate my certain understanding that you have chosen to sprint down the road to serfdom that we have been on for over a century. I would have to pretend that individual liberty has no value for the success of a human life. I would have to evade your rejection of the slender reed of capitalism on w hich your success and mine depend. I would have to think it somehow rational that 94 percent of the 12 million blacks in this country voted for a man because he looks like them (that blacks are permitted to play the race card), and that they were joined by self-declared "progressive" whites who voted for him because he doesn't look like them. I would have to be wipe my mind clean of all that I know about the kind of people who have advised and taught Barack Obama and will fill posts in his administration – political intellectuals like my former colleagues at the Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

I would have to believe that "fairness" is equivalent of justice. I would have to believe that man who asks me to "go forward in a new spirit of service, in a new service of sacrifice" is speaking in my interest. I would have to accept the premise of a man that economic prosperity comes from the "bottom up," and who arrogantly believes that he can will it into existence by the use of government force. I would have to admire a man who thinks the standard of living of the masses can be improved by destroying the most productive and the generators of wealth.

Finally, Americans, I would have to erase from my consciousness the scene of 125,000 screaming, crying, cheering people in Grant Park, Chicago irrationally chanting "Yes We Can!" Finally, I would have to wipe all memory of all the times I have heard politicians, pundits, journalists, editorialists, bloggers and intellectuals declare that capitalism is dead – and no one, including especially Alan Greenspan, objected to their assumption that the particular version of the anti-capitalistic mentality that they want to replace with their own version of anti-capitalism is anything remotely equivalent to capitalism.
So you have made history, Americans. You and your children have elected a black man to the office of the president of the United States, the wounded giant of the world. The battle between John Wayne and Jane Fonda is over – and that Fonda won. Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern must be very happy men. Jimmie Carter, too. And the Kennedys have at last gotten their Kennedy look-a-like. The self-righteous welfare statists in the suburbs can feel warm moments of satisfaction for having elected a black person. So, toast yourselves: 60s countercultural radicals, 80s yuppies and 90s bourgeois bohemians. Toast yourselves, Black America. Shout your glee Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Duke, Stanford, and Berkeley. You have elected not an individual who is qualified to be president, but a black man who, like the pragmatist Franklin Roosevelt, promises to – Do Something! You now have someone who has picked up the baton of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. But you have also foolishly traded your freedom and mine – what little there is left – for the chance to feel good. There is nothing in me that can share your happy obliviousness.

November 6, 2008

Anne Wortham [send her mail] is an individualist liberal who happens to be black and American.
Copyright © 2008 LewRockwell.com

LONDON, June 3 (Reuters) - A double blast from al Qaeda against Barack Obama shows the group is as worried as ever by the persuasive skills of the U.S. president, who makes a speech to Muslims on Thursday.

Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, in an audio recording aired on Wednesday by Al Jazeera television, said Obama had planted the seeds of "revenge and hatred" towards the United States in the Muslim world and he warned Americans to prepare for the consequences.

A day earlier, the militant network's second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri urged Egyptians not to be seduced by Obama's 'polished words' when he makes a major address in Cairo seeking to repair ties with the Muslim world.

For some, al Qaeda's concerted attempt to upstage Obama is a propaganda own goal that shows its normally media-savvy operatives in disarray following the departure of Obama's predecessor George W. Bush. They found Bush easy to stereotype as a belligerent, Muslim-hating cowboy.

"Zawahri is right to be worried," said Edwin Bakker, a senior research fellow at the Dutch Clingendael Institute in the Hague.

"Al Qaeda partly lives on anti-Americanism and the 'war on terror'. Now Bush has gone and been replaced by a guy who's second name is Hussein. And they fear his speech really is going to have a positive effect."

Obama has chosen Egypt to make an address to the Islamic world that he had promised for early in his presidency.

He will seek to dispel resentments inflamed by U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan following the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington by militant Islamists

"Obama and his administration have planted seeds for hatred and revenge against America," the Saudi-born bin Laden declared, saying Obama was treading in the footsteps of his predecessor.

"Let the American people prepare to continue to reap what has been planted by the heads of the White House in the coming years and decades," bin Laden said.

In an audio recording posted on an al Qaeda-linked Islamist website, Zawahri, an Egyptian, said Obama was not welcome in Egypt and urged Egyptians to "stand united in the face of this criminal".

Zawahri's language was somewhat milder than his denunciation of Obama published in November in which he accused Obama of betraying his race and his father's Muslim heritage.

Zawahri then attacked Obama as a "house Negro," a racially-charged term used by 1960s Black American Muslim leader Malcolm X to describe Black slaves loyal to white masters; except, Malcolm did not use the word Negro; he said "N....r".

But Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor of London-based daily al-Quds al-Arabi, said Zawahri's words showed al Qaeda was panicking.

"They know Obama is popular in a huge part of the Arab and Muslim world because the man is actually trying to address America's record in the region," he said.

9 October 2009 President Barack Obama Awarded Nobel Peace Prize.


OSLO – President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday 9 October for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples," the Norwegian Nobel Committee said, citing his outreach to the Muslim world and attempts to curb nuclear proliferation.

The stunning choice made Obama the third sitting U.S. president to win the Nobel Peace Prize and shocked Nobel observers because Obama took office less than two weeks before the Feb. 1 nomination deadline. Obama's name had been mentioned in speculation before the award but many Nobel watchers believed it was too early to award the president.

The Nobel committee praised Obama's creation of "a new climate in international politics" and said he had returned multilateral diplomacy and institutions like the U.N. to the center of the world stage. The plaudit appeared to be a slap at President George W. Bush from a committee that harshly criticized Obama's predecessor for resorting to largely unilateral military action in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Rather than recognizing concrete achievement, the 2009 prize appeared intended to support initiatives that have yet to bear fruit: reducing the world stock of nuclear arms, easing American conflicts with Muslim nations and strengthening the U.S. role in combating climate change.

"Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future," Thorbjoern Jagland, chairman of the Nobel Committee said. "In the past year Obama has been a key person for important initiatives in the U.N. for nuclear disarmament and to set a completely new agenda for the Muslim world and East-West relations."

He added that the committee endorsed "Obama's appeal that 'Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.'"

President Theodore Roosevelt won the award in 1906 and President Woodrow Wilson won in 1919.

The committee chairman said after awarding the 2002 prize to former Democratic President Jimmy Carter, for his mediation in international conflicts, that it should be seen as a "kick in the leg" to the Bush administration's hard line in the buildup to the Iraq war.

Five years later, the committee honored Bush's adversary in the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore, for his campaign to raise awareness about global warming.

"The exciting and important thing about this prize is that it's given too someone ... who has the power to contribute to peace," Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said.

Nominators include former laureates; current and former members of the committee and their staff; members of national governments and legislatures; university professors of law, theology, social sciences, history and philosophy; leaders of peace research and foreign affairs institutes; and members of international courts of law.

The Nelson Mandela Foundation welcomed the award on behalf of its founder Nelson Mandela, who shared the 1993 Peace Prize with then-South African President F.W. DeKlerk for their efforts at ending years of apartheid and laying the groundwork for a democratic country.

"We trust that this award will strengthen his commitment, as the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, to continue promoting peace and the eradication of poverty," the foundation said.

In his 1895 will, Alfred Nobel stipulated that the peace prize should go "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses."

Unlike the other Nobel Prizes, which are awarded by Swedish institutions, he said the peace prize should be given out by a five-member committee elected by the Norwegian Parliament. Sweden and Norway were united under the same crown at the time of Nobel's death.

The committee has taken a wide interpretation of Nobel's guidelines, expanding the prize beyond peace mediation to include efforts to combat poverty, disease and climate change.

Attorney General Eric Holder, the first African American Attorney General in the history of the United States and Gov. George C. Wallace's daughter celebrated the Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march on 8 March - 44 years after state troopers from her father's administration beat marchers starting the landmark journey.

Peggy Wallace Kennedy introduced Attorney General Eric Holder at a historic Selma church filled to overflowing.

"It's reconciliation and redemption," Wallace's daughter said.

Selma's annual Bridge Crossing Jubilee, commemorating the 1965 voting rights march, brought together civil rights leaders Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Joseph Lowery in addition to the attorney general and several members of Congress, including Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., who was beaten in the original Selma march.

Holder and Kennedy embraced at Brown Chapel AME Church, where marchers organized on March 7, 1965, to begin their 50-mile march to Montgomery.

A few blocks into the march, they were beaten by state troopers on Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge-an event that became known as "Bloody Sunday."

The march to Montgomery was later completed under federal protection, with Martin Luther King Jr., leading it. It prompted passage of the Voting Rights Act, which opened Southern polling places to Blacks and ended all-white government.

"I am a beneficiary of Selma," Holder said.

Wallace's daughter endorsed Barack Obama for president last fall, but she and Holder had never met until Sunday. U.S. Rep. Artur Davis of Birmingham, a Democrat who is campaigning to try to become Alabama's first Black governor, asked her to introduce Holder. But the ties between Holder and Kennedy go back decades in Alabama history.

Her father stood in the schoolhouse door at the University of Alabama in 1963 in an unsuccessful attempt to keep Holder's future sister-in-law, Vivian Malone Jones, from integrating the university.

"I so wish Vivian had lived to see this moment," Holder said after hugging Wallace's daughter.

Kennedy said that as a child watching the Selma-to-Montgomery march, "I knew their cause was just." But she said she never spoke out politically until she endorsed Obama, who appointed Holder.

Selma's Black mayor said it was appropriate that the 44th anniversary of the voting rights march followed the inauguration of the nation's 44th president.

"What happened in Selma 44 years ago set in motion events that led to the election of our 44th president, Barack Obama," Mayor George Evans said.

Holder said no one dreamed on "Bloody Sunday" that George Wallace would later apologize for his segregationist views or that his daughter would one day support Obama for president.

But he said it's not time to rest.

"It will take much more than the election of the first African-American president to make Dr. King's dream a reality," Holder told an audience of more than 500 people earlier at Wallace Community College.

Holder also said it's vital to protect a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed in January to review a lower court ruling upholding a portion of the law that requires all or part of 16 states, including Alabama, to get federal approval before implementing any changes in the way elections are held.

"We must commit ourselves to continuing to defend the Voting Rights Act, which is under attack," Holder said.

Holder did not make direct mention of his remarks last month to Justice Department employees marking Black History Month. In that speech, Holder said that while the country has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, "in things racial we have always been and I believe continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards."

President Barack Obama said he would not have used that language.

In Selma, Holder said there are still injustices to address. "We need to do more including communicating more, about the difficult challenges we face as a nation," he said.

After Holder's speech, more than a thousand people marched from the church across the Edmund Pettus Bridge to commemorate "Bloody Sunday."



Attorney General Eric Holder, the first African American in the history of the United States to hold that position, on his first day on the job, signaled a clean break with past policies of the Bush administration and promised to hold Wall Street accountable if any major financial institutions engaged in fraud that contributed to the global financial crisis.

Attorney General Eric Holder described the United States on 18 February 2009 as a nation of cowards on matters of race, saying most Americans avoid discussing awkward racial issues. In a speech to Justice Department employees marking Black History Month, Holder said the workplace is largely integrated but Americans still self-segregate on the weekends and in their private lives.

"Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and I believe continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards," said Holder, nation's first black attorney general.

Race issues continue to be a topic of political discussion, Holder said, but "we, as average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race."

He urged people of all races to use Black History Month as a chance for honest discussion of racial matters, including issues of health care, education, and economic disparities.

Race "is an issue we have never been at ease with and, given our nation's history, this is in some ways understandable," Holder said. "If we are to make progress in this area, we must feel comfortable enough with one another and tolerant enough of each other to have frank conversations about the racial matters that continue to divide us."

He told hundreds of Justice Department employees gathered for the event that they have a special responsibility to advance racial understanding.





Vice President Joe Biden swore in President Barack Obama's choice — the first African-American to hold the post — in a Tuesday morning ceremony before dignitaries and employees at the department.

Atty Gen Holder with his Mother, Miriam, and his wife, Sharon, and the children after the swearing-In ceremony.

The lanky, 58-year-old former prosecutor, federal judge and No. 2 official during the Clinton administration promised the start of a new era at the Justice Department, which was wracked by Bush administration scandals over politically motivated hirings and firings.

General Holder has pledged to restore its reputation.

"This is a place that has I think been hurting, but I think it's ready to heal," he told reporters.

"I am determined to ensure that this shall be a new day for the dedicated career professionals that I am so honored to call my colleagues," Holder said after taking the oath. He said he was committed to remaking the department "into what it once was and what is always should be."

Biden said the department, under Holder, would return to a past standard of "no politics, no ideology. Only a clear assessment of facts and law."

Shortly after the ceremony, Holder was questioned about Wall Street, reviled by some Americans for extravagant company bonuses while seeking taxpayer dollars to remain solvent.

"We're not going to go out on any witchhunts, and yet we'll drill down and see" to what extent the economic troubles are the result of fraud or misconduct, Holder said. "We'll find it and hold people accountable."

Holder was confirmed Monday, 2 February, evening by a 75-21 Senate vote, with all the opposition coming from Republicans.

His first official act as attorney general will be to attend a national security meeting, then head to the White House for a meeting on homeland security, aides said.

Holder's inbox is overflowing with pressing legal issues from the prior administration.

For starters, the new attorney general will learn the secrets of the Office of Legal Counsel, whose lawyers justified the use of controversial interrogation tactics and even declined to provide Bush administration documents to internal Justice Department investigators.

Holder also will play a major role in the future of terrorism detainees.

Obama, in a major policy shift, signed an executive order to close the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, within a year. He also created a special task force to review detainee policy; Holder and Defense Secretary Robert Gates will serve as co-chairs.


That panel will look at options for apprehension, detention, trial, transfer or release of detainees and report to the president within 180 days.

18 Feb 2009. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal appeals court today overturned a ruling that 17 Chinese Muslims who have been held for years at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba must be freed in the United States.

The appeals court ruled that a federal judge did not have the authority to order the U.S. government to bring the members of the Uighur ethic group to the United States for their release. It said only the executive branch, and not the courts, could make such immigration decisions.

The new administration of President Barack Obama says it will close Guantanamo within a year but has not yet decided what to do with the detainees, who were picked up as foreign terrorism suspects after the September 11 attacks.

At the Justice Department, Attorney General Eric Holder, who will play a leading role in deciding what to do with the approximately 245 prisoners left at the base, said he would visit Guantanamo next week.

Holder told reporters he would go to the base on 23 Feb "to really see what is going on down at the facility, to see how people are being detained, to talk to people down there about the interrogation techniques that are being used."

He called the visit "an important first step."

In the case of the Uighurs, U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina had ruled in October that there was no evidence the detainees, who have been held at Guantanamo for about seven years, were "enemy combatants" or a security risk.

He ruled they should be freed and allowed to live with Uighur families in the United States.

But the three-judge panel of the appeals court overturned his decision.

The fact that the detainees were no longer considered "enemy combatants" did not mean they qualified for admission into the United States, the appeals court said, adding, "Nor does their detention at Guantanamo for many years entitle them to enter the United States."

The Uighurs have remained at Guantanamo because the United States has been unable to find a country willing to take them. The U.S. government has said it cannot return them to China because they would face persecution there.

The appeals court said the Uighurs were being held under the least restrictive conditions at the base while diplomatic efforts continued to find a country willing to accept them.

Lawyers for the Uighurs denounced the ruling.

Emi MacLean, staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, said, "The new administration must act quickly to remedy the failings of the old. If President Obama is committed to closing Guantanamo, he must allow these stranded Uighurs into the United States."

20 Feb 2009 WASHINGTON. The Pentagon says the Guantanamo Bay prison meets the standard for humane treatment laid out in the Geneva Conventions, according to a report for President Barack Obama, who has ordered the terrorist detention center closed within a year.

The report recommended some changes, including an increase in group recreation for some of the camp's more dangerous or less compliant prisoners, according to a government official familiar with the study. The report also suggested allowing those prisoners to gather in groups of three or more, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the report has not officially been released.

Some of the hard-core prisoners are not currently allowed to meet with other prisoners for prayer or socialization and are kept in their cells for 23 hours a day. Alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed is among the prisoners who could be affected by the change. Prolonged social isolation has been known to harm mental health among prisoners.

The 85-page report by Adm. Patrick M. Walsh, the Navy's second in command, was written in response to Obama's Jan. 22 executive order to close the facility at the U.S. naval base in Cuba within a year.

Attorney General Eric Holder, meanwhile, named a top federal
prosecutor, Matthew Olsen, as executive director of Obama's Guantanamo Detainee Review Task Force, which will recommend where to send each detainee. Obama has ordered the task force to consider whether to transfer, release or prosecute the detainees, or figure out some other "lawful means for disposition" if none of those options is available.

The report found the camp to be in compliance with the Geneva
Conventions Common Article 3, the international rules that require the
humane treatment of prisoners taken in unconventional armed conflicts,
like the war on terrorism. The camp's controversial force-feeding of
prisoners on hunger strikes was also found to be compliant with the
Geneva guidelines, a second government official confirmed.

Guantanamo was selected for legal reasons: As a military base, it is
sovereign U.S. territory but, according to Bush administration
lawyers, was outside the scope of the Constitution. That would allow
prisoners to be prosecuted for war crimes using evidence that would be
difficult to use in the U.S. civilian court system.

Holder promised senators he would review why career prosecutors in Washington decided not to prosecute the former head of the department's Civil Rights Division. An inspector general's report last month found that Bradley Schlozman, the former head of the division, misled lawmakers about whether he politicized hiring decisions.

Another key question facing Holder is how to advise Obama on the order by President George W. Bush that three of his former top aides — Karl Rove, Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten — should not testify before Congress about firings of U.S. attorneys. Rove and Miers were former aides when Bush gave his order.

If Obama reverses Bush's policy, it would create a new legal issue: whether a former president's order against testifying would still be valid.

The Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program is certain to come under Holder's scrutiny.

After a lengthy and heated debate that pitted privacy and civil liberties concerns against the desire to prevent terrorist attacks, Congress last year eased the rules under which the government could wiretap American phone and computer lines to listen for terrorists and spies.




Eric Holder, First Black Attorney General of the USA.
President-elect Barack Obama has decided to nominate Eric Holder as attorney general, according to a source close to the Obama-Biden transition team.

The source said that Obama recently offered Holder the position, and that he had accepted. No one on the transition team has publicly confirmed the pick, and Holder would still need to undergo a formal "vetting" review by the Obama transition team to finalize the selection.

Holder, 57, was deputy attorney general during the Clinton administration and more recently, he has been a prominent attorney at the Washington, D.C., law firm of Covington and Burling. If confirmed, Holder would be the country's first African-American attorney general.

Holder has been a close friend and prominent adviser to Obama throughout the campaign, helping him to lead the search for a vice presidential candidate.

With more than 55 Democrats in the Senate, Holder's confirmation seems likely, though there may be some concern about the role he played in the 2001 pardon of fugitive Marc Rich by Clinton at the end of his presidency.

Holder helped vet the pardon and said he was "neutral, leaning towards favorable." He later publicly apologized and said had he given the issue more attention, he would have cautioned against a pardon.

(28 Jan '09) The Senate Judiciary Committee has approved the nomination of Eric Holder to become attorney general.

The vote was 17-2, reports The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times. A full Senate vote could come as early as tomorrow.

The only senators voting against Holder were Republicans John Cornyn of Texas and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, the Associated Press reports. The ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter, had been Holder’s harshest Senate critic. But before the vote, he said he decided to support Holder because of his good record and support within the law enforcement community.

Specter had questioned Holder’s role in the pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich, but said today that Holder allayed his concerns. "I think it was important that Eric Holder was willing to admit publicly his mistake in the Marc Rich pardon," Specter said.

Specter also said Holder had addressed Republican fears that he would prosecute officials involved in harsh interrogations of terrorism suspects. Specter says he discussed the issue in a meeting with Holder. "I got a satisfactory answer,” Specter said.