Racism Is Alive and Well In America.
THE SAGA OF SHIRLEY SHERROD: AN AMERICAN STORY
By Helen L. Burleson, Doctor of Public Administration

The second best thing that has happened so far in this century in this country, other than the election of an American of African descent to become President of the United States, is the saga of Shirley Sherrod.

America has always moaned, groaned and empathized with Israel and the Jewish people, because like the Jewish people, they repeat the ever popular slogan - NEVER AGAIN! Regardless of what positions Israel takes whether they are right or wrong, the United States stands up to be counted as the symbiotic twin of Israel.

I, too, empathize with the Jewish people, and unfortunately, I have to turn to the old cliché, “some of my best friends are Jewish.” In elementary and high school, many of my classmates and very dearest friends practiced and followed the Jewish religion. On the Jewish holidays, my classrooms were at least a quarter empty. I befriended and extended a welcoming hand to the Jewish children referred to as the Class of 1942; the Jewish children who were sequestered and smuggled out of Nazi Germany by the underground Zegota group in order to avoid the gas chambers to which many of their parents, siblings and neighbors were sent.

During my generation, circa 1929, gifted children were referred to as “whiz kids.” These were children that could qualify for Mensa (the organization of people with the highest I Q’s).

Gunther Hollander and I were selected by my school to appear on a radio quiz show called, “It’s A Hit.” Questions were about a variety of issues, international, national and local. For those of you who have read my previous blogs, you know I was well prepared because it was a requirement at my home to come to the dinner table prepared to report on newspaper articles we had read dealing with these very issues.

Gunther and I represented Hyde Park High School on the quiz show and did very well. I was devastated and mourned for months after Gunther was struck by a CTA bus when he ran in front of it. Newly arrived in the country and short in stature, he did not realize that a bus driver could not see him as the bus drove off. There’s Ruthie Dreyfuss, my dear friend, who as an adult became my son’s math teacher when he attended the University of Chicago Laboratory School. There was Shirley Parks (whom I don’t believe was Jewish), whose father was one of my professors when I was a graduate student at Northwestern University. There was Edward Rothschild who later became my MONY insurance agent, selected because he was a friend and classmate of mine. There was Jay Goodman, a friend and classmate whose parents brought Goodman ice cream cups to school on Jay’s birthdays. Then there was Sandy Banks who got a zero on a spelling test while I got 100. So accustomed to copying off my papers, Sandy gave himself away when he jumped up after grades were announced and said, “How could I get zero and Helen get 100 when I copied off her paper?” Need I explain to you how I taught Sandy a lesson that I hope he learned for life?

Other than children of the Jewish faith, I had Catholic friends, Protestant friends and friends of every ethnic and religious group.

To the point, America has always welcomed and integrated into her belly the people from all over the world, that is, except for those whom they brought here in chains or people of color. Those who labored in the fields and worked from sun up to sun down (from can to can’t), raped, brutalized, stripped of their language, heritage and culture, separated husbands from wives, snatched children out of their parents hands, were denied the American dream. Look at us and that tells the horrors of rape. We range in color from midnight Black to freshly fallen snow.

Slavery, the white man’s shame, remains engrained in every fabric of American life from its inception to this very day. This is a defining part of who Shirley Sherrod is; and, yet she is still being treated like a slave. Father murdered by the Klan, educated in segregated schools, portrayed as the anti-hero in this recent flap up, she and her racial group are being portrayed as the perpetrators of racism. Racism is the white man’s sickness. Racism is one of the most insidious forms of mental illness. Racism is a mental system designed expressly and exclusively to deny another human’s dignity and humanity. Held in contempt and institutionalized as being less than a human, white people have exploited this system to the fullest in order to validate their very existence.

The Jewish Holocaust was one isolated period in world history. The American Slave system is a self-perpetuating Holocaust inflicted on Americans of African descent, every day of their lives. This is undeniable and indefensible. There is more than one way to lynch a person: there is physical lynching and there is mental, emotional and spiritual lynching. Why do we have the concept of the letter of the law and the spirit of the law? One can be violated without the other or with both. Slavery is a violation of humanity and constitutes the cruelest form of “Man’s Inhumanity to Man." Every day, a Black person, or person of African descent walks out of his door he faces a Holocaust. Remember Amadou Diallo and Oscar Grant. In many instances lying in bed, the Holocaust is going to visit. Cases in point are Emmett Till and Fred Hampton. Policemen in America, possess powers that exceed the powers of the President of the United States. They can assume the role of judge, jury and executioner when they deliberately manhandle and frequently kill innocent, unarmed, Black people. The policeman has the discretion to place a “drop gun” beside the body of the deceased, and or drop a dime bag of cocaine beside a voiceless, defenseless, lifeless body.

Thank God for Shirley Sherrod and her saga, for hers is America’s saga; the saga of unequal justice under the law. Now the theme song of the racists is that Blacks are racists. This is called PROJECTION, another aspect of mental illness. To qualify as a racists one must have influence and power to set a negative tone and then to legislate and institutionalize this behavior. The majority of Black people have neither of these capabilities.

Former Virginia Governor Douglas Wilder was allegedly roughed up by police and Mae Jemison, M.D., surgeon, engineer and former astronaut, was also roughed up by police. These are just two examples of high profile, contributing members of our society, who because of their skin color were treated in the fashion to which far too many Blacks are subjected daily.

Mrs. Sherrod’s treatment demonstrates to the world what life is like on a daily basis according to the double standard practiced in America.

Her saga also underscores another deficiency in America. The information systems are almost exclusively controlled by a few super rich people who have a monopoly in controlling what Americans see, hear and think. In the hands of these few, some of whom are racists, the news (or THEIR story is almost always slanted in the message or impression they WANT to convey). This PROPANDA is passed off as NEWS.

The venerable civil rights organization, the NAACP, co-founded with white activists and Americans of African descent, was “snookered” by the viral, perpetual video of a truncated speech given by Mrs. Sherrod detailing an experience in forgiveness and divine intervention in a situation that occurred some 20 years ago. Why is her lesson and her saga so important? Her story proves beyond a shadow of a doubt, that despite the meanness, the evil, the vindictive, cruel and unusual treatment to which Americans of African descent have been subjected, without relenting or relief, Americans of African descent can rise above the petty, the mean-spirit, the torture and the treachery to forgive.

Americans of African descent and the people of Africa are the most forgiving people on the face of the earth. Go to any country and the prejudice awaits them. My friends of the Class of 1942 said they were told on the boat on the way over to America that they were not to associate with Blacks because Blacks were inferior. Is that not a Holocaust? Restrictive covenants were incorporated in property deeds stressing that the property was, “never to be sold to colored people.” I learned this from a personal experience similar to that of the Hansberry family of “Raisin in the Sun” fame. Is that not racism? I am a member of the African Methodist Episcopalian faith because of Richard Allen’s refusal, as a Black person, to be moved from the front row, to the back row, to the balcony of a Methodist church in Philadelphia (the City of Brotherly Love). Is that not racism? Recently Black children, desiring to swim, were denied use of a facility in this same City of Brotherly Love. Visit churches on Sunday mornings, the Lord’s Day, and you will see a pot that is not melting. Is that not racism? Visit the Administrative offices of most American colleges and universities and you will see an absence of Blacks. Is that not racism? Visit the board rooms of the Fortune 500 and most American commercial and industrial institutions and you will see an absence of Blacks. Is that not racism?

By now, you get it America! Black people are the victims of racism, not the victimizers. It is time to do a massive national soul searching to extricate racism and to purify our hearts and our minds. Much of the wealth of this country was built on the backs of Blacks. Have they, or their ancestors, ever been compensated for that? Is that not racism? Black farmers, to whom Mrs. Sherrod referred in her speech, have never been compensated by the federal government for their losses despite the fact that White farmers have been compensated.

Until President Harry Truman ordered the military integrated, Black service people were segregated and assigned to the menial tasks of cooking, doing the laundry, serving as sentinels or used as cannon fodder. Is that not racism? What about Black heroism in every war since America became a nation on the Native Indian’s land? There’s Doris (Dorrie) Miller, General Colin Powell, the Tuskegee Airmen, the369th Regiment, the 761st Tank Battalion, the Montford Point Marines, the Triple Nickel, the Buffalo Soldiers and the list is endless. Despite the racism they experienced, they delivered for America and the preservation of this Nation.

What is needed in America is an honest recognition of the contributions made by Americans of African descent for their valor, their creativity and their innovations that have been excluded from the teaching of history in this country. If the masses knew that every single day, they wake up, they have to thank some Black person who was responsible for the things we take for granted in making this the richest, most powerful nation in the world, their mindset would be different.

We need to put a stop to racism immediately because we need mental and emotional healing. Failure to do so keeps us on the treadmill that has been and continues to be passed down from generation to generation. When you hear young children use the N word, you know this was a lesson learned in the home, fueled in America’s classroom and fostered by all American institutions.

We all could learn from Mrs. Shirley Sherrod, a heroic American lady, who has learned and is teaching the lessons of our respective religions. Her Saga should be the turning point in American justice and culture.

NAACP: Useful Idiots of Liberal Racism.
(By LTC Allen West (USA, Ret.))
Let me make one thing very clear, my Mother, Elizabeth Thomas West, was a lifetime membership holder with the NAACP. Therefore growing up in our home I clearly understood the mission and vision for this organization. It was a mission and vision that enabled me to have the pride in myself and the heritage of my parents, grandparents, and extended family. It was a mission and vision that, to me, fostered a desire to excel beyond the standard and have a commitment to excellence regardless of skin color.

However, something has happened to that mission and vision, something horrific and inconsistent with the principles and values I recalled emanating from the “ole school” black community. Somewhere along the way victimization mentality has taken root in the black community resulting in astronomical unemployment rates, high incarceration rates, appalling murder rates, breakdown of the black family, and embarrassing teen pregnancy rates.

And in the light of all these negative socioeconomic indicators the NAACP decides that the preeminent focus of their national convention would be on issuing a resolution castigating the Tea (Taxed Enough Already) Party movement as racist. Even Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee of Texas was so compelled as to state that the Tea Party is filled with Klan members…..but we will get to the Congressional Black Caucus a bit later.

Instead of maintaining its mission and vision, the NAACP has now become the “useful idiots” (a term coined by Vladimir Lenin) for liberal racism. They have made themselves into a political hack job organization which now seeks to maintain the liberal progressive socialist control of the 21 century plantation. It is on this new economic plantation where the liberals seek to enslave the black community in order to maintain a devoted, monolithic, voting electorate.


I find it interesting that the NAACP was silent when Senator Harry Reid made his insidious comments about President Obama was favorable, likeable, because he is “light-skinned” and did not speak in “negro dialect”. I recall that the NAACP said nothing when Vice President Joe Biden referred to Barack Hussein Obama as “clean and articulate”. The NAACP said nothing when liberals attacked Clarence Thomas, Condoleeza Rice (birthing tubes cartoon), Michael Steele, and General Colin Powell.

In 2008, where was the NAACP to denounce the obvious case of voter intimidation by the New Black Panther Party? Why did the NAACP not demand President George W Bush, and now, Attorney General Eric Holder, and the Obama adminstration, to prosecute this case to the fullest extent? Does the NAACP now support the same tactic which targeted the black community seeking to restrict the most fundamental of American individual rights, the right to vote? And shall the NAACP distance itself and condemn Malik Shabazz and the New Black Panther Party?

It is this duplicitous hypocrisy which allows me to state that the NAACP is shamefully now a liberal racist enabler. The upcoming mid-term elections have the Democrat party in certain peril. Therefore they have turned to their tactic of first and last resort, race baiting.

The resolution issued by the NAACP against the Tea Party is just a strategy to focus this coming election not against liberal progressive policies, which are anathema to our Republic. No, the NAACP, in conjunction with their masters, the Democrat party, seek to make this into an election based upon an insane charge of racial hatred.

We even see charlatan blasts from the past such as Julian Bond stating that Martin Luther King Jr was a socialist, a feeble attempt to garner black community acceptance of the liberal progressive agenda. We are truly on the verge of a dangerous situation in America. And yes, this also includes the lawsuit being brought against the sovereign State of Arizona, an attempt to win Hispanic votes…..an extension of liberal racism to another minority group.

We can fully expect from now until 2 November 2010 to see the usual suspects come out to promote the dishonest tyranny of the liberals. You will find the Congressional Black Caucus, Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton out to ensure blacks remain wedded to the failing liberal social welfare policies, all the time shouting how the Democrats know what is best. I find it comical that Al Sharpton has already leapt forward to head up a new left-wing grassroots group to counter the Tea Party called “One Nation”.

Does One Nation believe in higher taxes and bigger government? Will this counter group promote individual rights and freedoms, liberty, and adherence to our US Constitution? I presume this group will seek to intimidate and put forth the ideals of collectivism combined with victimhood and expansion of the “nanny-state”.

I find the Tea Party, to which I have spoken to several times, stands for fundamental principles and values consistent with that which has made America an exceptional Constitutional Republic.

Therefore, under the “leadership” of Al Sharpton, this counter group One Nation obviously stands for principles which are antithetical to our Republic.

One Nation under God Indivisible with Liberty and Justice for All

In closing, I am sure you are asking why did the ole Colonel just cite the last sentence in the Pledge of Allegiance?

Liberal Racism does not believe in One Nation under God. They believe in a Nation of subjects organized into collective groups under which they shall rule, not govern, in a secular humanist based society.

Indivisible, Liberal Racism does not believe in “e pluribus unim”, they prefer a balkanized America where they can pit us against each other through their manipulated messages….such as Tea Party racism.

Liberal racism does not believe in Liberty and Justice for All, they believe in freedom defined by a ruling class elite while creating more victims who become dependent upon their dishonest benevolence. Justice in the world of Liberal Racism means social and economic justice rooted in a principle of leveling, which founding father Samuel Adams spoke against. Al Sharpton defined justice as everyone having the same in every home in America…..government engineering of results and outcomes.

The mid-term elections of 2 November 2010 comes down to “One Nation under God Indivisible with Liberty and Justice for All” or the concept of One Nation under the proprietor of victimization Al Sharpton, a simpleton crony of Liberal Racism. Which shall you choose?
(By LTC Allen West (USA, Ret.))
Lieutenant Colonel Allen West (US Army, Retired) was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia and is third of four generations of military servicemen in his family. His parents instilled in him a very basic principle, love of God and Country. In 2004, when it was time to retire from more than twenty years of service in the US Army, he brought his wife and two young daughters to Broward County, Florida, where he taught high school for one year. He then returned to Afghanistan as an advisor to the Afghan army, an assignment he finished in November 2007.

Allen West received his Bachelors degree from University of Tennessee and Masters degree from Kansas State University, both in political science. He also holds a Master of Military Arts and Sciences from the US Army Command and General Staff Officer College in political theory and military operations.

“Education is the great equalizer,” he says. “With a good education, any child in America can live his dream.”

Allen West knows that for our children to live their dreams, they need to be safe. He has served in several combat zones: in Operation Desert Storm, in Operation Iraqi Freedom, where he was battalion commander for the Army’s 4th Infantry Division, and in Afghanistan, where he trained Afghan officers to take on the responsibility of securing their own country.

In his Army career, Col. West has been honored many times, including a Bronze Star, three Meritorious Service Medals, three Army Commendation Medals (one with Valor), and a Valorous Unit Award. He received his valor award as a Captain in Desert Shield/Storm, was the US Army ROTC Instructor of the Year in 1993, and was a Distinguished Honor Graduate III Corps Assault School. He proudly wears the Army Master parachutist badge, Air Assault badge, Navy/Marine Corps parachutist insignia, Italian parachutist wings, and German proficiency badge (Bronze award).

Allen is an avid distance runner, a PADI Master certified SCUBA diver, motorcyclist, and attends Community Christian Church in Tamarac Florida.

Excellence is a West family tradition. His wife, Angela, holds an MBA and PhD. and works as a financial planner. His oldest daughter, Aubrey, attends Archbishop McCarthy HS and his youngest daughter, Austen, attends Cooper City Christian Academy.

THE SAGA OF SHIRLEY SHERROD: AN AMERICAN STORY
By Helen L. Burleson, Doctor of Public Administration

The second best thing that has happened so far in this century in this country, other than the election of an American of African descent to become President of the United States, is the saga of Shirley Sherrod.

America has always moaned, groaned and empathized with Israel and the Jewish people, because like the Jewish people, they repeat the ever popular slogan - NEVER AGAIN! Regardless of what positions Israel takes whether they are right or wrong, the United States stands up to be counted as the symbiotic twin of Israel.

I, too, empathize with the Jewish people, and unfortunately, I have to turn to the old cliché, “some of my best friends are Jewish.” In elementary and high school, many of my classmates and very dearest friends practiced and followed the Jewish religion. On the Jewish holidays, my classrooms were at least a quarter empty. I befriended and extended a welcoming hand to the Jewish children referred to as the Class of 1942; the Jewish children who were sequestered and smuggled out of Nazi Germany by the underground Zegota group in order to avoid the gas chambers to which many of their parents, siblings and neighbors were sent.

During my generation, circa 1929, gifted children were referred to as “whiz kids.” These were children that could qualify for Mensa (the organization of people with the highest I Q’s).

Gunther Hollander and I were selected by my school to appear on a radio quiz show called, “It’s A Hit.” Questions were about a variety of issues, international, national and local. For those of you who have read my previous blogs, you know I was well prepared because it was a requirement at my home to come to the dinner table prepared to report on newspaper articles we had read dealing with these very issues.

Gunther and I represented Hyde Park High School on the quiz show and did very well. I was devastated and mourned for months after Gunther was struck by a CTA bus when he ran in front of it. Newly arrived in the country and short in stature, he did not realize that a bus driver could not see him as the bus drove off. There’s Ruthie Dreyfuss, my dear friend, who as an adult became my son’s math teacher when he attended the University of Chicago Laboratory School. There was Shirley Parks (whom I don’t believe was Jewish), whose father was one of my professors when I was a graduate student at Northwestern University. There was Edward Rothschild who later became my MONY insurance agent, selected because he was a friend and classmate of mine. There was Jay Goodman, a friend and classmate whose parents brought Goodman ice cream cups to school on Jay’s birthdays. Then there was Sandy Banks who got a zero on a spelling test while I got 100. So accustomed to copying off my papers, Sandy gave himself away when he jumped up after grades were announced and said, “How could I get zero and Helen get 100 when I copied off her paper?” Need I explain to you how I taught Sandy a lesson that I hope he learned for life?

Other than children of the Jewish faith, I had Catholic friends, Protestant friends and friends of every ethnic and religious group.

To the point, America has always welcomed and integrated into her belly the people from all over the world, that is, except for those whom they brought here in chains or people of color. Those who labored in the fields and worked from sun up to sun down (from can to can’t), raped, brutalized, stripped of their language, heritage and culture, separated husbands from wives, snatched children out of their parents hands, were denied the American dream. Look at us and that tells the horrors of rape. We range in color from midnight Black to freshly fallen snow.

Slavery, the white man’s shame, remains engrained in every fabric of American life from its inception to this very day. This is a defining part of who Shirley Sherrod is; and, yet she is still being treated like a slave. Father murdered by the Klan, educated in segregated schools, portrayed as the anti-hero in this recent flap up, she and her racial group are being portrayed as the perpetrators of racism. Racism is the white man’s sickness. Racism is one of the most insidious forms of mental illness. Racism is a mental system designed expressly and exclusively to deny another human’s dignity and humanity. Held in contempt and institutionalized as being less than a human, white people have exploited this system to the fullest in order to validate their very existence.

The Jewish Holocaust was one isolated period in world history. The American Slave system is a self-perpetuating Holocaust inflicted on Americans of African descent, every day of their lives. This is undeniable and indefensible. There is more than one way to lynch a person: there is physical lynching and there is mental, emotional and spiritual lynching. Why do we have the concept of the letter of the law and the spirit of the law? One can be violated without the other or with both. Slavery is a violation of humanity and constitutes the cruelest form of “Man’s Inhumanity to Man." Every day, a Black person, or person of African descent walks out of his door he faces a Holocaust. Remember Amadou Diallo and Oscar Grant. In many instances lying in bed, the Holocaust is going to visit. Cases in point are Emmett Till and Fred Hampton. Policemen in America, possess powers that exceed the powers of the President of the United States. They can assume the role of judge, jury and executioner when they deliberately manhandle and frequently kill innocent, unarmed, Black people. The policeman has the discretion to place a “drop gun” beside the body of the deceased, and or drop a dime bag of cocaine beside a voiceless, defenseless, lifeless body.

Thank God for Shirley Sherrod and her saga, for hers is America’s saga; the saga of unequal justice under the law. Now the theme song of the racists is that Blacks are racists. This is called PROJECTION, another aspect of mental illness. To qualify as a racists one must have influence and power to set a negative tone and then to legislate and institutionalize this behavior. The majority of Black people have neither of these capabilities.

Former Virginia Governor Douglas Wilder was allegedly roughed up by police and Mae Jemison, M.D., surgeon, engineer and former astronaut, was also roughed up by police. These are just two examples of high profile, contributing members of our society, who because of their skin color were treated in the fashion to which far too many Blacks are subjected daily.

Mrs. Sherrod’s treatment demonstrates to the world what life is like on a daily basis according to the double standard practiced in America.

Her saga also underscores another deficiency in America. The information systems are almost exclusively controlled by a few super rich people who have a monopoly in controlling what Americans see, hear and think. In the hands of these few, some of whom are racists, the news (or THEIR story is almost always slanted in the message or impression they WANT to convey). This PROPANDA is passed off as NEWS.

The venerable civil rights organization, the NAACP, co-founded with white activists and Americans of African descent, was “snookered” by the viral, perpetual video of a truncated speech given by Mrs. Sherrod detailing an experience in forgiveness and divine intervention in a situation that occurred some 20 years ago. Why is her lesson and her saga so important? Her story proves beyond a shadow of a doubt, that despite the meanness, the evil, the vindictive, cruel and unusual treatment to which Americans of African descent have been subjected, without relenting or relief, Americans of African descent can rise above the petty, the mean-spirit, the torture and the treachery to forgive.

Americans of African descent and the people of Africa are the most forgiving people on the face of the earth. Go to any country and the prejudice awaits them. My friends of the Class of 1942 said they were told on the boat on the way over to America that they were not to associate with Blacks because Blacks were inferior. Is that not a Holocaust? Restrictive covenants were incorporated in property deeds stressing that the property was, “never to be sold to colored people.” I learned this from a personal experience similar to that of the Hansberry family of “Raisin in the Sun” fame. Is that not racism? I am a member of the African Methodist Episcopalian faith because of Richard Allen’s refusal, as a Black person, to be moved from the front row, to the back row, to the balcony of a Methodist church in Philadelphia (the City of Brotherly Love). Is that not racism? Recently Black children, desiring to swim, were denied use of a facility in this same City of Brotherly Love. Visit churches on Sunday mornings, the Lord’s Day, and you will see a pot that is not melting. Is that not racism? Visit the Administrative offices of most American colleges and universities and you will see an absence of Blacks. Is that not racism? Visit the board rooms of the Fortune 500 and most American commercial and industrial institutions and you will see an absence of Blacks. Is that not racism?

By now, you get it America! Black people are the victims of racism, not the victimizers. It is time to do a massive national soul searching to extricate racism and to purify our hearts and our minds. Much of the wealth of this country was built on the backs of Blacks. Have they, or their ancestors, ever been compensated for that? Is that not racism? Black farmers, to whom Mrs. Sherrod referred in her speech, have never been compensated by the federal government for their losses despite the fact that White farmers have been compensated.

Until President Harry Truman ordered the military integrated, Black service people were segregated and assigned to the menial tasks of cooking, doing the laundry, serving as sentinels or used as cannon fodder. Is that not racism? What about Black heroism in every war since America became a nation on the Native Indian’s land? There’s Doris (Dorrie) Miller, General Colin Powell, the Tuskegee Airmen, the369th Regiment, the 761st Tank Battalion, the Montford Point Marines, the Triple Nickel, the Buffalo Soldiers and the list is endless. Despite the racism they experienced, they delivered for America and the preservation of this Nation.

What is needed in America is an honest recognition of the contributions made by Americans of African descent for their valor, their creativity and their innovations that have been excluded from the teaching of history in this country. If the masses knew that every single day, they wake up, they have to thank some Black person who was responsible for the things we take for granted in making this the richest, most powerful nation in the world, their mindset would be different.

We need to put a stop to racism immediately because we need mental and emotional healing. Failure to do so keeps us on the treadmill that has been and continues to be passed down from generation to generation. When you hear young children use the N word, you know this was a lesson learned in the home, fueled in America’s classroom and fostered by all American institutions.

We all could learn from Mrs. Shirley Sherrod, a heroic American lady, who has learned and is teaching the lessons of our respective religions. Her Saga should be the turning point in American justice and culture.

Vernon Baker, Black American Hero. Vernon Baker is a U.S. soldier who belatedly received the Medal of Honor for his World War II battlefield valor after historians concluded he'd been wrongly denied the military's top award because he was Black, died at his home near St. Maries, Idaho. He was 90.

Baker died July 13, 2010 of complications of brain cancer, Benewah County coroner and funeral home owner Ron Hodge said.

Then-President Bill Clinton presented the nation's highest award for battlefield valor to Baker in 1997. He was one of just seven Black soldiers to receive it and the only living recipient.

"The only thing that I can say to those who are not here with me is, 'Thank you, fellas, well done,'" Baker told The Washington Post after the ceremony. "'And I will always remember you.'"

In 1944, 2nd Lt. Baker was sent to Italy with a full platoon of 54 men. On April 5, he and his soldiers found themselves behind enemy lines near Viareggio, Italy. When concentrated enemy fire from several machine gun emplacements stopped his company's advance, Baker crawled to one and destroyed it, killing three Germans. Continuing forward, he attacked an enemy observation post and killed two occupants.

With the aid of one of his men, Baker attacked two more machine gun nests, killing or wounding the four enemy soldiers occupying these positions. Then he covered the evacuation of his wounded soldiers by occupying an exposed position and drawing the enemy's fire.

On the following night, Baker voluntarily led a battalion advance through enemy mine fields and heavy fire.

In all, Baker and his platoon killed 26 Germans and destroyed six machine gun nests, two observer posts and four dugouts.

He said later he felt the company commander, who said he was going to get reinforcements, had abandoned his group of men.

"It made me all the more determined to accomplish our mission," he told the PBS series "American Valor." "Because at that time the Army was segregated. It was thought that we were unable to fight."

No Black soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor during World War II, although Baker did receive the Purple Heart, a Bronze Star and Distinguished Service Cross.

In 1993, U.S. Army officials contracted Shaw University in Raleigh, N.C., to study whether there was a racial disparity in the way Medal of Honor recipients were selected.

Historians did not find official evidence suggesting racial bias in the Army's award policy. But the study's authors say the political climate and common Army practices guaranteed no Black soldier would ever receive the military's top award.

The university researchers recommended 10 soldiers to receive it. From that list, Pentagon officials picked seven.

But there was one problem - the statutory limit for presentation had expired. Congress was required to pass legislation that allowed the president to award the Medals of Honor so many years after the action.

Vernon Baker was the only recipient still living; the other six soldiers received their awards posthumously, with their medals being presented to family members.

Baker was initially rebuffed when he tried to join the Army. Baker said in an interview with public television that a recruiter told him there was no quota for enlisting "you people."

Reflecting on life in a segregated Army unit, he told The Washington Post, "I was an angry young man. We were all angry. But we had a job to do, and we did it." He added that he "knew things would get better, and I'm glad to say that I'm here to see it."

Baker returned to his northern Idaho home after the war. When he received a call telling him he was to receive a Medal of Honor, at first he was astonished. Then he was angry.

"It was something that I felt should have been done a long time ago," he told Idaho public television. "If I was worthy of receiving the Medal of Honor in 1945, I should have received it then."

Baker called his 1997 memoir "Lasting Valor."

U.S. Rep. Walt Minnick said he met Vernon Baker in the 1990s when the soldier spoke at a College of Idaho event. Minnick said he'd been expecting a battle-hardened soldier but was instead struck by Baker's gentle demeanor. Minnick said Baker's valor on the battlefield in Italy was a rebuke of racist policies that dominated the U.S. military into the middle of the last century.

"His actions on the front line demonstrates better than words can describe why discrimination and segregation in the military was both unfair and absolutely inconsistent with an effective fighting force," Minnick said. "He demonstrated a degree of courage few people have. He was prepared to give his life for his country - a country in which he was considered a second-class citizen."

Baker was born in 1919 in Wyoming. Orphaned as a small child, he was raised by his grandparents in Cheyenne. He was working as a railroad porter when he decided to join the Army in mid-1941, a few months before Pearl Harbor.

In 2004, Baker underwent emergency surgery to remove a malignant brain tumor. Before he fell ill, he had failed to sign up for benefits from Veterans Affairs and Medicare, not realizing what the requirements were. Community members and politicians in Idaho pitched in to help him get aid for his unpaid medical bills.

Hodge said Baker continued to battle brain cancer over the next years, and he recently began receiving hospice care at his home. Baker was surrounded by his family when he died Tuesday evening.