Black History Film & Discussion "Freedom Riders"

Right now, the first black president of the US, is sending 3 warships to attack Iran, the USS Carl Vinson, John Stennis and Abraham Lincoln. Most people know about Pres Lincoln as the president who freed the slaves in the rebelling states during the Civil War, guaranteeing the defeat of the Confederacy as the Confederacy lost its labor force when slavery ended. He was also, sadly, a supporter of the wars against Native Americans. However, segregationist Democratic Congressmember from Georgia Carl Vinson, and segregationist Democrat Senator from Mississippi John Stennis may not be remembered by the younger generation.
1. Carl Vinson (1883-1981)
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Vinson
He was a segregationist Democrat representing Georgia from 1914 to 1965.
2. John Stennis (1901-1995)
Unfolding Provocation In the Strait of Hormuz: And Who, By the Way, Is John C. Stennis?!? by Toby O’Ryan (from Revolution Newspaper)
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28647
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Stennis
He was a segregationist Democrat representing Mississippi from Jan 3 1947-Jan 3, 1989.
Quoting from O'Ryan's article:
"Stennis was the U.S. senator from Mississippi from 1947 to 1988—41 years. During the majority of his tenure, Black people in Mississippi did not have the right to vote. Indeed, during his time in office, Black people in Mississippi were often lynched—including the notorious lynching of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black youth visiting from Chicago who was taken out and murdered in 1955 for the crime of allegedly whistling at a white woman and whose killers sat laughing in the courtroom as they were acquitted and then sold their story to Look magazine. During John C. Stennis' reign in the Senate, numerous people were murdered for the offense of attempting to register Black people to vote or otherwise fighting for basic rights—including Medgar Evers, who was assassinated for organizing a boycott of local stores in Jackson, Mississippi (an incident which is included in the popular book and movie The Help), as well as the civil rights organizers James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, not to mention dozens of unsung and unmentioned Black activists working in local areas of Mississippi. During his long career of dignified deliberation, other African-American people were routinely imprisoned, put into mental hospitals, or severely beaten for similar acts of political resistance or often just for "acting uppity," as the saying went." [The murders of Till, Evers and Chaney-Schwerner-Goodman were all national news at the time.]

"During the over 15,000 days that John C. Stennis held office in the U.S. Senate, Black people in Mississippi were first maintained in a state of semi-feudal, slavelike conditions as sharecroppers (and, again, often threatened or physically harmed if word got out that they even were thinking of moving away from the plantations on which they worked) and then, as cotton farming increasingly became mechanized and their labor was no longer profitable to the plantation owners, driven off the land and more often than not into even worse poverty than before. During most of the decade-after-decade tenure of John C. Stennis, all this was backed up by laws and customs that forced Black people to live as a class of people whose basic humanity was denied in every interaction with white people and who were constantly stigmatized, through legal and de facto segregation."

"John C. Stennis never said a word against any of the crimes touched on above, and indeed John C. Stennis stood FOR such crimes and the system that enabled and required those crimes. Stennis helped author the so-called "Southern Manifesto" of 1956 that upheld segregation of the schools and signaled approval from on high for the blood-soaked reaction that would follow. Stennis not only opposed every piece of civil rights legislation up until 1982, he spearheaded the hard core of that opposition. He even opposed funds that went toward Head Start programs for small children in Mississippi because it might aid Black people (and re-channeled those funds to segregated, all-white programs). He campaigned as, and truly was, an ardent upholder of segregation and all the horror that it entailed for decades for millions of people—from the largest questions of society to the most intimate details of their lives. In fact, Stennis first gained notoriety as a county prosecutor who convicted three sharecroppers of murder based on confessions that were discovered to have been coerced through torture, including flogging. This marked him as a man with a future in America."

"But that was hardly the limit of John C. Stennis. Stennis also backed up the U.S. military invasions and proxy wars against countries all over the world, at a time when these invasions were taking millions and millions of lives, and ruining tens of millions more—from Korea to Indochina to Central America, from southern Africa to the Middle East and beyond. Indeed, John C. Stennis was so reliably cold-blooded that he was made head of the Senate Committee on Defense from 1968 to 1980, and presided over the beginnings of the massive buildup of nuclear weapons by the U.S. that reached a climax during the '80s. During this whole period of time the U.S. claimed the right to a "nuclear first strike"—that is, the U.S. openly proclaimed as part of its strategic doctrine the supposed right to obliterate the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons if the Soviets dared to attack any European country with conventional, non-nuclear weapons. There was no war too genocidal, no weapon system too horrible, no doctrine too unspeakably obscene in its willingness to endanger human civilization and the species itself for what the U.S. ruling class perceived as its interests that John C. Stennis would not proudly thump his chest and approve it."

In case the younger generation is wondering why more has not been done to eliminate capitalism, the likes of Vinson and Stennis is what we had to fight, whose racism was supported by the majority of white Americans, who were then, and now, the majority of Americans. Then and now, not all whites supported this fascist agenda, but the racism was more widespread and openly promoted before the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

Please do your part in opposing the horrors of war and fascism perpetrated by the Democrat-Republican Party and register either
1. Peace and Freedom Party
http://www.peaceandfreedom.org/home/
or
2. Green Party
http://www.cagreens.org/
http://www.gp.org/index.php
You can register online at
https://www.sos.ca.gov/nvrc/fedform/
Choose the default: Fill out a voter registration form online and print to sign and mail.
or you can register at your County Registrar of Voters, Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and be sure to sign up to be a permanent vote by mail voter so you can vote from the comfort of your home within 30 days of election day and do not have to worry about voting on a Tuesday, listed at:
http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/elections_d.htm