History – Page 2 – TIM HAYES'

July 10th 2016 where I think we are ….where I think we need to go..Part one

July 11, 2016 by Tim Hayes Comments

As I begin writing this it is Sunday morning. All the news shows on TV are doing stories on the Dallas police shootings..and just as I was getting my coffee the kitchen radio tells me that there have been several incidents of “police ambush”…This sends a horrible chill up and down my spine….for reasons I will get into later. First let’s set the stage. In the last few days seemingly back to back we have had a Black man shot, on camera, lying down, subdued with two huge white men on top of him and suddenly he is shot several times. Then the next morning we see a video of a desperate Black woman with a baby in her car. And next to her is a Black man in a Bloody shirt, and as the scene goes on we see a policeman still pointing a gun inside the car as the woman, who remarkably managed to remain calm tells us and the now screaming officer that she thinks her “boyfriend” is dead. For me it seems just hours later that I find out that while I was sleeping ( I’m on a lot of meds because I am dealing with a cardio/pulmonary condition ) What at first seemed like several gun-toting people had shot more than several police officers during a “Black Lives Matter” rally ..killing at least five. .I am in my mid sixties….we have been here before. The years 1969 and 1970 were some fierce times. Police brutality and abuse have led to the formation of the Black Panther Party a few years before. The Party started out as a reaction to police brutality and cruelty in the extreme..And yes, the police were what we in those days called “trigger happy”..I feel compelled here to say that even in those days there were police officers who felt bewildered by the behavior of their fellow officers. And in the part of the country where I lived every year you would hear about some officer who “broke the code” and complained about excessive force used by some other officer…most of the time these people ended up leaving the force. We began to hear about these “whistle blowing” cops less and less…I now assume that it does not happen any more..The Black Panther Party in the beginning would follow police around, and when the police stopped a driver or confronted a citizen for any reason we would observe the situation and make sure the police followed procedure. This alone could be called a revolutionary action…in case you don’t know…..it got a lot worse. As the years went on the government began to position itself more and more in opposition to the BPP. We began to be raided ..ambushed and murdered at an alarming rate….and as time went on partially out of frustration but we know now partially because of people planted among us for the purpose of agent provocateur. There came to be people who wanted to declare “war” on police…punish them for every incident of abuse….Now let me say here that this is NOT a history of the Black Panther Party…I’m just setting the stage to tell you about how some very specific events came to happen. By late 1969, I began to meet people..some had been in the BPP at some point often having been thrown out…but even more who had never been a part of the Party. People who were trying to form underground armies..and Police assassination brigades. And yes …some people who I knew or had met actually carried out some of these actions..the most spectacular was when police were called to an address and got there and picked up a package in the room and it exploded. I was told later that this was an “initiation”..There are many of these people still being hunted by the government today…This is the memory that sent waves of fear through my body..Because I remember what happened after that…it became open season on Black activist of all kinds. I lost many really good friends and many people including myself went into exile moving to Cuba, parts of Africa and the Middle Eastand to South America …..some live there still ..in places I won’t talk about….did it make police behave any better toward citizens ? …..no…What it taught us is that when you live inside the cruelist most violent country in the world ..that society will spare no expense to preserve the status quo…and will throw both caution and morality out the window..to crush what opposes it. These actions brought down on even peaceful “non-violent” activists The full wrath of American Law enforcement. Well over a hundred people were killed who had NOTHING to do with any police ambush action..No little brigade of nuts who hate cops and start shooting them, ambushing them will succeed at changing the behavior of what we used to call the “Occupation army” of the oppressor…Okay that’s just one small part of what needs to be said before the idea to some how to retaliate against the police takes hold of some poor soul…it’s a road we have traveled down before…and I remember the consequences too well. There is more to say about the events of the last few days …For instance what’s broken with our police force and how or can we fix it…That’s tomorrow

Muhammad Ali January 17, 1942 – June 3, 2016

June 4, 2016 by Tim Hayes Comments

I don’t remember the date, it was in September of 1970, I knew I was hungry, as I had almost nothing to eat the day before. Not an unusual thing in those days when I was full time in the Black Panther Party. On the streets of Atlanta Georgia, I had decided to go to Chestnut and Fair Street, in the center of the Black College complex. Clark College on one corner Spelman College a block away Morehouse College where I was technically still a student on the opposite corner. I was standing there trying to sell Black Panther News Papers. If I sold enough to cover the cost of food for the Free breakfast program I would be able to keep what ever was left for myself. I was busy trying to sell a paper to a really pretty Clark College girl and didn’t notice until I turned around that there was this really tall guy standing right next to me. After I sold a paper to a passing car I noticed the look on the face of the buyer when he looked at the tall guy. I stepped back on the sidewalk and looked up and sure enough it was Muhammad Ali. It was him who struck up a conversation. He said how he respected the BPP and the work we did and was sorry that he had not done more to donate money to our community programs. I told him that we all knew what he was going through, and that to us he was always the “People”s Champion” we went into a lot of subjects Like Abdul Nassar who had just died and how the new Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was a real Egyptian …a Black man and not an Arab. I told him that it meant a lot to many of us that he had taken this stance on the war.Ali kept saying that he had not planned any of this…he just had to do what he thought was the right thing…”suppose ” he said ..”when they grow up …my kids ask me what did I do about this” …”I don’t want to have to say I did nothing ” simple words …but I knew exactly what he meant….You have to understand that during the time Ali had been suspended from boxing the number of Black as well as non-Black men drafted to go and fight that war had grown enormously This was over forty five years ago so a lot of the words have faded away. But what got me was after about ten minutes somebody across the street said “HEY LOOK ….IT’S ALI “..all of a sudden his voice changed, his posture changed, he began to speak more in a “ghetto dialect” and got really loud.It was like a switch was thrown and he turned on his other persona….I think in that moment I learned more about him that in any of his interviews ….he knew who he was, he knew what he was. I knew in that one second that Ali was not being manipulated by Malcolm or Elijah Muhammad. Within seconds there were dozens of people ….trying to get close to Ali. I noticed that a bright yellow limo drove up..Ali pushed through the crowd ..gave me a ten dollar bill..I gave him the Black Panther newspaper, he got in the car and was gone. I found out a few minutes later that Ali had been using the gym at Morehouse College to train for his up coming comeback fight..against Jerry Quarry…it was an easy win about a month later. A lot of things happened to me during those Black Panther years but this day is one memory that I treasure…To guys in my generation maybe Stokely may have made Black what we called ourselves..but it was Ali who maybe not alone but in terms of the loudest voice, taught us how to BE Black men and women…real Black men and women…We were under no obligation to aide America in it’s imperialism …and it fact had more in common with the people America wanted us to kill…The most powerful words spoken by a Black American ..ever, were “NO VIET CONG EVER CALLED ME NIGGER” This took what we were still calling a “civil rights” movement and turned it into something much bigger. That’s what Malcolm died trying to do…it’s what MLK came to embrace at the end of his life…and despite all the money and being the “worlds most famous person” This is and will be what made Muhammad Ali….”The Greatest”…don’t have to tell Ali to “rest in power”…..we know he is.

Memorial Day 2014

June 2, 2016 by Tim Hayes Comments

I actually wrote this one morning two years ago but a friend of mine saw it recently and suggested that this remembrance belonged here……May 26th 2014…I woke from a fitful dream this morning , in my sleep I kept seeing guys I knew who never came back from the war Viet Nam..in that way that dreams can be, some of them were real guys that I knew in high school or from my “hood” but some of them were just faces. I think it’s because I went to sleep with the TV on and there was so much stuff on about Memorial day… But yes I knew a lot of guys and even a few women who went to “the NAM” many never came back. As high school was ending for me and my generation, you had many people who lived in complete fear of the day they would get “called up” in the draft to go fight that war To be honest I also grew up with guys who grew up watching all those WW II movies with John Wayne and Audie Murphy..( I know none of you young people know who Audie Murphy was…do what you do best google him) and these people could not wait to get in uniform and go fight and kill some communists. You have to understand that everybody I mean EVERYBODIES Dad had fought in WW II in fact you could not buy a house in our neighborhood unless you were a veteran. Also I have to mention that not as many Black men went to college as they do today some didn’t have the grades , even more could not afford it. I was in that few who were sought out by the colleges both Black and White. We didn’t have Affirmative Action back then so all the big white colleges would literally hunt down Black “super students” …you only needed two or three in your school then no one could say Cornell , or Dartmouth were “racist” ..but you really had to be that “super student” ten times better than the white student to be what we called in those days “the nigger who sat by the door”..I didn’t have the best grades but in my IQ tests I scored in the 160s ..by the time I was in 11th grade it was not unusual for there to be a big black car sitting in front of my parents house when I got home from school two or three times a week ..all asking us to sign an agreement for me to go to their University … I don’t say this to brag .in fact it was a curse that inflicted a lot of pain on my parents and to this day colors the relationships I have with my siblings. But that’s a story for another day, the point here is that I seemed to be in a position to not be “cannon fodder” in that war….But they got a lot of us…I feel bad about it today that the stupid young man I was would make fun of these guys..”hey man you a little brown guy who is treated like shit in your own country going off to kill little brown guys on the other side of the world who just want to run their own country, man you’re a complete fool”. That was easy for me to say …I would have a student deferment and would not have to go…or so I thought ..that’s another story too for another day or for my blog. But the point here is Uncle Sam took a lot of boys through no fault of their own .Money and class for the most part decided if you had to go or not.0ver 58,000 never came back.. and today I salute every single one of them. This picture is of a statue that sits in the park where the Viet Nam Veterans Memorial is….I kind of like it ..look closely at the soldiers faces ….I think it says it all.

WHO AM I ?

December 1, 2015 by Tim Hayes Comments

When time permits I have been writing here for a few years. Today I was asked for a “bio” by a group that will put me on a panel discussion about a new book dealing with the civil rights movement. I also realized that I had never done that here…so from now on I guess this little blurb that we put together this morning will be my “official” bio. Tim Hayes has been an activist all his life. Inspired by the freedom riders in 1961, Tim still in elementary school sought them out. Even sneaking out of his Mothers church on Sundays to attend meetings of the Atlanta Student Movement. Later Tim spent most of his high school years following the older members of the new organization SNCC. Just doing anything he could just to be around them and a part of the organization. Making coffee , getting sandwiches ,or what ever it took.In January of 1965 while on a trip to New York for the National Science fair. Tim met and talked with Malcolm X . Who he had seen speak several times in Atlanta but had never got a chance to actually meet. This was where Tim got the idea that the civil rights movement was really only a small part of an international struggle to rid the world of Imperialism and colonialism. In March of 1965 Tim was allowed to go on his first real civil rights demonstration. He was a part of the group who marched across that bridge in Selma Alabama on “Bloody Sunday”. On that day he was teargassed and beaten and was run over by a horse before getting away. After high school Tim attended Morehouse College and Yale Univ.. But dropped out when he was asked to join the Black Panther Party . This was directly related to the words he remembered from Malcolm X. Tim founded the Atlanta Ga. chapter of the party and worked in the Chicago , New Haven, and Los Angeles chapters and several offices in New York city..The Black Panthers were an organization that developed solidarity with most of the liberation movements in Africa and Asia at the time.Tim used this opportunity to visit and work in many countries , Cuba, Angola, North Viet Nam and Israel/Palestine.During this time he dug wells in Guinea, inoculated children against TB in Angola during the middle of the war for liberation there and spent time in an Israeli prison under some of the harshest conditions you can imagine. When Tim decided he wanted to settle down and have a normal life and raise children. He found this was impossible to do in his home town of Atlanta Ga. It seemed that he was simply too well known by law enforcement to just be a “regular” citizen. So he moved to Philadelphia in 1973..Taking jobs first in drug rehabilitation and then with the Philadelphia board of education. When Tim moved to the Germantown area in 1978 he found his new mission . and has mostly devoted his time to voter education and registration.And from time to time if the candidate inspires him he works in political campaigns most notably the Irv Ackelsberg and Sherrie Cohen city council campaigns. In 2014 Tim registered over 4000 voters in the Philadelphia area..Today Tim spends most of his time trying to be a good grand father and still plays music with among others the legendary Philadelphia band Philly Gumbo.

Tim Hayes with his two grandsons Julian and Milo

Remembering What happened to us on Bloody Sunday …..and What it means fifty years later

March 7, 2015 by Tim Hayes Comments

It’s Saturday morning March 7th 2015, I’m listening in the background to all the newscasters and politicians give their take on the events that happened one morning 50 years ago today. Since the recent film “Selma” was released the subject “Bloody Sunday” has been talked and talked about…and in more than one forum I have talked about how I was there. I was there for the Bloody Sunday attempted march but I was not there for the two marches that came later. it’s strange how when you are in the middle of an event that will become history..or in this case almost legend, you don’t really think of it in that way. I was very young, in my mid teens. I had been an admirer of the college students who became the “freedom riders” since 1961..they replaced ,TV cowboys and Superman as my heroes..Names like Diane Nash, Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth. James Bevel, Jesse Harris there were many more names but the two who would inspire young Tim Hayes the most at that time where C.T. Vivian and and John Lewis and the people who would later become SNCC. I was in grade school when the Freedom Riders became my heroes in 1961 ..after the Atlanta student movement and the sit ins in the Carolina began. Black student mobilization gained a momentum that was unstoppable. I began to read about SNCC almost every week. And since I lived in the capitol of the old South and it’s largest city Atlanta, Ga. there was plenty to read about. Atlanta is also a city with several historically Black Colleges and Universities Morehouse, Spelman, Morris Brown and more. And it was only a matter of time until the Black Student arm of the civil rights movement would become centered there. I began to hang around these people as much as I could..and as I grew and got older I heard and observed many things..One thing that impressed me the most as a youngster was how SNNC was not governed from the top down…but in the meetings I was sometime able to attend or at least listen from outside these people who were really not that much older than I was, became committed to a type of participatory Democracy….ruling by consensus as described here from a Wike article…. ” SNCC was unusual among civil rights groups in the way in which decisions were made. Instead of “top down” control, as was the case with most organizations at that time, decisions in SNCC were made by consensus, called participatory democracy. Ms. Ella Baker was extremely influential in establishing that model, as was Rev. James Lawson. Group meetings would be convened in which every participant could speak for as long as they wanted and the meeting would continue until everyone who was left was in agreement with the decision. Because activities were often very dangerous and could lead to prison or death, SNCC wanted all participants to support each activity” ….By the time I was in my mid-teens I was just itching to go on a real march or get in the field and do some real work…In 1965 I was still in High School..and in fact on that Sunday in March 1965..I had to sneak out of my parents house to catch the ride to Selma. Before I got there all I really knew was the James Bevel a SCLC operative who has been organizing in Selma wanted this march to happen …and that most of SCLC did not like the timing..But after the death of Jimmy Lee Jackson at the hands of a State Trooper during a small peaceful march…Bevel and other people decided that the March was on…John Lewis of SNCC along with Hosea Williams of SCLC were at the head of the march..I was actually surprised to see that Andrew Young who I did not know at that time but I knew what his position in SCLC was there..as we had all been told that MLK did not approve of this march…Voting rights was the call for this time for us and the Selma Voting Rights Movement was intended to be a model for other communities in the South as we pressed for a voting rights act…Well the rest is well known and was portrayed very well in the film “Selma” We marched across that Edmond Pettus Bridge on U.S. Highway 80 ..and then we were stopped,.. they made an announcement that we were to disperse …and I remember the words from a bull horn saying “I have nothing further to say to you” then they walked towards us slowly at first and then faster …then the gas came..the way I remember it was a woman screamed, then I saw the people in front of me falling down, then I was struck in the head and fell down, shortly after that as I tried to get up and help a lady who had fallen something almost crushed my ankle..I looked up and saw that it was horse..the white people who were standing on the sidewalks were clapping their hands and cheering..those of us who had not started running back across the bridge helped other people to their feet …..and we ran …and we ran ..and we ran….most of us who were no locals .met back at the church where we had started out from..there was cursing, and crying, and there were men and women who went home to get guns…I went back inside ..limping as my ankle was injured ..even then I wondered what my parents would say when I got back home….Those were the events of March 7th 1965 as I can best recall them….All this began over the right to vote ..and the hopes of a Voting Rights Law that we could count on to serve us for the ages….As people today seem to be jumping on a bandwagon to be seen observing this day….what I think of mostly ….the brave local people of Selma who put there lives at risk …on that day and the next….and it really pisses me off that many of the people who are trying to dismantle the hard won Voting Rights Act are today going to observances of Bloody Sunday …like they actually give a damn ..This is just a lesson that the struggle is never really over..we have to maintain a constant vigil ..if we want to maintain our hard won rights

Thinking about Malcolm X fifty years Later

February 22, 2015 by Tim Hayes Comments

I was intending to post this Saturday, which was the 50th anniversary of the murder of Malcolm X..but family duties and getting ready for another snow/ice storm got in the way. I was still in grade school the first time I heard anyone mention Malcolm. It was my father and his sister Aunt Stella, they were arguing, Dad was saying how he could not stand those “Black Muslims” but somebody needed to say what Malcolm was saying, Aunt Stella just kept saying that her pastor said that Malcolm’s statements actually came straight from the “devil”. It was I think 1959 or maybe 1960.I did not think much about it after that..But in Atlanta where I grew up I would still hear grownups many times speaking in whispers. About the Muslim Minister who made so much sense. As I got older I was scooped up many times by members of the Nation of Islam when they were out “fishing” ….that’s what they called it when they would go out looking for people to bring to one of the temple meetings or on Fridays and Sundays for services. At first I never told my parents where I was going..although they knew I went to hang out with the older guys in SNCC..which they didn’t seem to mind as my father saw a type of nobility in what the SNCC people were doing …he still told me not to let my mother know where I was.But with the “Black Muslims” and later when I was starting to get involved with the Black Panther Party my father “just knew” I was going to get killed or at the very least bring the FBI down on our whole family…Dad would prove to be right about the FBI but that is another story. the first time the guys out fishing brought me to see Malcolm speak it was at Clark College. At first his speech was pretty much the same speech that all the ministers gave…in fact many of the famous quotations attributed to Malcolm today were actually standard phrases all the ministers used..and I mean all of them.. as I must have heard over twenty before I heard Malcolm..It was maybe the third time I went to see Malcolm speak and this would have been about 1963..that Malcolm began to include more than just the standard “Black Muslim” rap….he talked about the Bandung Conference in Indonesia, he talked about wars agaisnt colonialism ..he talked about how Ho Chi Minh had been betrayed after WW I and had not trusted the European again..he opened up a whole international struggle that I had never thought about..Of course when I would go back and talk to many of the SNCC guys about this it made me seem knowledgeable beyond my years. And those of you who knew me back then may remember how it scared many of the teachers at our high school. ….It was right after this that Malcolm left the Nation of Islam..and I began to follow every thing he did or said..most notably how Malcolm had begun to reject much of the teachings of Elijah Muhammad …I looked forward to the next time Malcolm came to Atlanta to speak……..It never happened….in 1965 just before Malcolm was killed I did get to see him again …you can read about our meeting by clicking on the link at the bottom of this post…but fifty years ago it was a Sunday and I was on the way home from church with my Mother and my siblings when the news came over the radio that Malcolm had been killed…in the same hall he had me passing out leaflets about… I went into a real depression for days after…but some good came out of this… about two weeks later I agreed to go to Selma Alabama on my first real civil rights march…..That was March 7th 1965…it became known as “Bloody Sunday” That was the attempted march where we were gassed, beaten, and I was trampled by a horse…..My.life was never the same. You can read about my meeting with Malcolm here http://www.timothyhayes.net/2014/05/19/what-does-malcolm-still-have-to-say/

This is Black Panther Party History Month

October 5, 2014 by Tim Hayes Comments

Black Panther Party Logo

In October of 1966 The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was formed. We are now using this month for Black Panther Party History. I look back on that long ago time when groups of young Black people all over the country got together and organized. And showed this country something it never saw before and has not seen again..To this day it remains the only American organization that ever made the philosophical as well as actual physical contact with the African, Asian and Latin American liberation movements of the time. Many of us including myself actually ended up meeting and training with liberation fighters from around the world. Those of us who are left now have the task of protecting our legacy.. knowing we can’t trust mainstream history books to deal with who we were fairly…Not to even mention the silly posers and Black racists organizations like the so-called New Black Panther Party.. rising up and using our name to get some legitimacy they have never earned..so all this month from time to time all over the country people will be gathering writing about and remembering the real Black Panther Party and we can begin at the Beginning the core of our belief system from the very beginning …..The Ten Point Program WE WANT FREEDOM. WE WANT POWER TO DETERMINE THE DESTINY OF OUR BLACK AND OPPRESSED COMMUNITIES.
We believe that Black and oppressed people will not be free until we are able to determine our destinies in our own communities ourselves, by fully controlling all the institutions which exist in our communities.

2.WE WANT FULL EMPLOYMENT FOR OUR PEOPLE.
We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every person employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the American businessmen will not give full employment, then the technology and means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.

3.WE WANT AN END TO THE ROBBERY BY THE CAPITALISTS OF OUR BLACK AND OPPRESSED COMMUNITIES.
We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules were promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of Black people. We will accept the payment in currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of our fifty million Black people. Therefore, we feel this is a modest demand that we make.

4.WE WANT DECENT HOUSING, FIT FOR THE SHELTER OF HUMAN BEINGS.
We believe that if the landlords will not give decent housing to our Black and oppressed communities, then housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that the people in our communities, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for the people.

5.WE WANT DECENT EDUCATION FOR OUR PEOPLE THAT EXPOSES THE TRUE NATURE OF THIS DECADENT AMERICAN SOCIETY. WE WANT EDUCATION THAT TEACHES US OUR TRUE HISTORY AND OUR ROLE IN THE PRESENT-DAY SOCIETY.
We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of the self. If you do not have knowledge of yourself and your position in the society and in the world, then you will have little chance to know anything else.

6.WE WANT COMPLETELY FREE HEALTH CARE FOR All BLACK AND OPPRESSED PEOPLE.
We believe that the government must provide, free of charge, for the people, health facilities which will not only treat our illnesses, most of which have come about as a result of our oppression, but which will also develop preventive medical programs to guarantee our future survival. We believe that mass health education and research programs must be developed to give all Black and oppressed people access to advanced scientific and medical information, so we may provide our selves with proper medical attention and care.

7.WE WANT AN IMMEDIATE END TO POLICE BRUTALITY AND MURDER OF BLACK PEOPLE, OTHER PEOPLE OF COLOR, All OPPRESSED PEOPLE INSIDE THE UNITED STATES.
We believe that the racist and fascist government of the United States uses its domestic enforcement agencies to carry out its program of oppression against black people, other people of color and poor people inside the united States. We believe it is our right, therefore, to defend ourselves against such armed forces and that all Black and oppressed people should be armed for self defense of our homes and communities against these fascist police forces.

8.WE WANT AN IMMEDIATE END TO ALL WARS OF AGGRESSION.
We believe that the various conflicts which exist around the world stem directly from the aggressive desire of the United States ruling circle and government to force its domination upon the oppressed people of the world. We believe that if the United States government or its lackeys do not cease these aggressive wars it is the right of the people to defend themselves by any means necessary against their aggressors.

9.WE WANT FREEDOM FOR ALL BLACK AND OPPRESSED PEOPLE NOW HELD IN U. S. FEDERAL, STATE, COUNTY, CITY AND MILITARY PRISONS AND JAILS. WE WANT TRIALS BY A JURY OF PEERS FOR All PERSONS CHARGED WITH SO-CALLED CRIMES UNDER THE LAWS OF THIS COUNTRY.
We believe that the many Black and poor oppressed people now held in United States prisons and jails have not received fair and impartial trials under a racist and fascist judicial system and should be free from incarceration. We believe in the ultimate elimination of all wretched, inhuman penal institutions, because the masses of men and women imprisoned inside the United States or by the United States military are the victims of oppressive conditions which are the real cause of their imprisonment. We believe that when persons are brought to trial they must be guaranteed, by the United States, juries of their peers, attorneys of their choice and freedom from imprisonment while awaiting trial.

10.WE WANT LAND, BREAD, HOUSING, EDUCATION, CLOTHING, JUSTICE, PEACE AND PEOPLE’S COMMUNITY CONTROL OF MODERN TECHNOLOGY.
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are most disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpation, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

Free Huey Rally 1968

Remembering the Murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner

June 21, 2014 by Tim Hayes Comments

Today is actually for me a hard day to write about. I’ve been thinking about it for more than a week because I knew it was coming. Fifty years ago today James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. went missing in Philadelphia, Miss.. All members of COFO ( Council of Federated Organizations) a coalition of national and regional organizations engaged in civil rights activities in Mississippi. Established in 1962 with the goal of maximizing the efforts of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Congress of Racial Equality, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). After visiting Longdale Miss. the three workers went missing. I already knew of the movement in Miss. that summer, Centered around the need to register Black people to vote, but also revealing the serious need for local people themselves to step forward and take over the struggle. Outsiders were easy to spot and often targets. Also mostly they were students and would be gone after a while. This struggle really belonged to the local people. I was in high school and spent most of that summer being a busboy at an Atlanta nightclub ..but I already had friends in SNCC and CORE who went down to set up “Freedom Schools” …to train local people to set up voter registration drives and provide an atmosphere of solidarity that would last beyond the “Freedom Summers”. I got to go down for a couple of weekends but was not allowed to stay long…they even then knew there was danger and I was one of the youngest people in SNCC.. James Chaney I had met several times..a young brother with powerful vision..The bodies of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were found after 44 days in what has been called an “earthen dam” . They had been killed by a “lynch mob” of at the very least 10 Klansmen and “wannabes” after a pursuit on Highway 19..Miss State officials refused to prosecute the killers for murder,a state crime..the Federal Government tried the “mob” for conspiracy to deprive the civil rights workers of their civil rights.They indicted Sheriff Rainey, Deputy Sheriff Price and 16 other men. Only Seven were found guilty most received a sentence 0f 3 to 10 years…This would become a “watershed” moment for many people ..and for myself pretty much mark the end of my childhood. I had been watching the civil rights movement in the newspapers and on TV since the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955….and in recent years ’62—’65 we had seen the Miss. Riots ( white people who literally went mad..over James Meredith,the first Black student accepted, trying to enter the University of Miss)…the Freedom Riders: groups of Black and White students who broke the rules riding segregated inter state buses …and the Bombings one after another in Birmingham. I was still a kid …living in the biggest city in the deep south and all these people , mostly just three or four years older than I was were literally risking there lives to change a way of life that was so intrenched in the culture we almost thought of it as “normal”. The “whites only” and “colored area ” and “no colored served here” signs were as common in our lives as “STOP” signs are today…I can remember how most of our parents and grand parents didn’t even dream of things changing any time soon…. And those who did did not want their child to be among the people who tried …Almost every family had a story of some relative or neighbor who defied “Jim Crow” ….always with a tragic ending …But this generation ..literally took a deadly “Tiger by the Tail”..I was the first and for a long time the only kid in my school or my neighborhood who took an interest in the movement…. I went from Science nerd and “that brainy kid” to the “movement guy” during the course of the summer of 1964 and as the 1960s went on I began to disappoint and even anger many of the adults in my world. “Timothy you had so much potential..and you are just throwing it away”..But life simply could not be the same after that summer. Those brave students just a little older than I was became real heroes ..Lonnie King, John Lewis . Willie Ricks, Bob Moses, Julian Bond..Diane Nash….many more…I would try to sneak into meetings …run errands ..anything just to be around those people In the year to come I would have my “baptism in blood” ..1965 would mark the first time I actively participated in a march…. As this website grows and develops I will talk about a lot of what happened in later years but today …..let’s remember the lives of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner.

James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner

The bodies of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner..as they were found 44 days after the murder

How my Great Grandfather found me in my late forties

June 10, 2014 by Tim Hayes Comments

This is my great grand father Charlie White. Papa as we called him. Papa died when I was about 7 or 8 years old, I think ..I could have been younger, but in my memory he looms as a huge mythological person. Frankly I don’t know how tall Papa was. He certainly seemed to us taller than any one else. Charlie White was the father of my maternal Grand mother Jessie White. Jessie died young and left behind three little girls..my mother Hattie , the oldest, Rosa Mae, and Ludi ..the baby .The girls were raised by Charlie and his wife “Ella” ..and until I was in my teens I thought they were my actual grandparents.

Charlie White My Great grandfather from Dawson Ga.

In Dawson Georgia, Terrell county Charlie White is said to have in his time been the only Black man who was addressed as Mr. rather than “boy” if you were young or ‘Uncle” if you were middle aged or over. Charlie was “Mr. White” where ever he went. His tall lean frame and his Stetson hat most of the year But a straw fedora in the summer …Mr. White was the man to go to if you had trouble…. Over a time it became hard to separate. The man from the myths. We knew he was a union organizer, but we were too young to know what that was. The people in the other picture are supposed to be some of Papa’s “union folks”. It was this picture that peaked my interest and made me want to learn more about a man who was a Black union organizer in the 20s, 30s and 40s in the deep south and why his “union folks” were Black people and White people and even as a child in the 1950s I knew that was unusual.I spent a lot of time over the period of my life searching for history about real people in the southern labor movement …every few years I would come across someone who had heard of Charlie White …many times it turned out to be someone else…I thought that for sure that a union organizer of Black and White workers would stick out some how… It turns out there were many attempts to organize workers in the early textile mills and even to old cotton mills in the deep south. Many people ended up dead.. and I did find a White guy named Charlie White who was murdered in Albany, Georgia in 1942…Finally when I was in my late forties ..and in Philadelphia where I now live. I met Vince Pieri ..an old lefty and something of an expert on Paul Robeson. Vince remembered meeting a Charlie White. I went home and got him a picture to see. And it was the same man…Paul Robeson had come to Dougherty County, Georgia to sing a concert to raise money for the Cotton Mill Workers United…There it was I now knew the name of at least one of the unions Papa had worked for…and it just knocked me out that he probably knew Paul Robeson…. Vince sad the reason for Papa’s trouble was he was constantly being called a “RED”…a communist..Vince said Papa not only denied this but said he didn’t even know any….in another conversation years later he called him self a “peoples” Socialist ….Vince is now long gone..but meeting him and becoming his friend was to me a miracle…It’s a good feeling to know that Charlie White’s genes are running through my veins,and it explains a lot about who I became in my life.

Tribute to an old friend and the truth about the Horror of Mt. Rushmore

June 9, 2014 by Tim Hayes Comments

This is a moving video I came across from Julia Christopher Perri Moreno last year. this is moving to see how a typical “dorky” white guy gets exposed to the truth of reservation life and how he is changed…I’m posting this in memory of my old friend the late Robert Cruz . who I met when we were both at the Yale Summer High School in 1967. The Yale Summer High School was a program for so-called gifted high school kids from impoverished backgrounds. I went there for two years Robert went there for two years and worked there for one summer. Robert was a part of the “Rosebud Sioux Tribe” or ” Sicangu Oyate Lakota” He grew up on the Rosebud Reservation .He was s champion Gymnast and like the rest of us in the program blessed with a brilliant intellect but cursed to be born in a place where there was no opportunity…and we would stay up late at night comparing life on an Urban housing project where I came from and The Reservation that he came from …Robert was the first person to explain to me how the sculptures on Mount Rushmore could be compared to Hitler carving his likeness on the “Wailing Wall” in Israel ..The constant insult of seeing those horrible sculptures on what to his people was sacred Land.( see this link http://www.nps.gov/wica/historyculture/history-of-the-black-hills.htm) .he called Mt. Rushmore a “monstrosity” and he was right.To this day I can’t imagine living with such a constant reminder that his whole nation and people are still “prisoners of war..so please watch this video when you have time …it’s not what you may expect. Try this link.. http://www.upworthy.com/a-journalist-went-near-mount-rushmore-to-take-some-photos-what-he-found-changed-his-life-forever