News — black community

An infamous White Supremacist shop and museum in South Carolina that was also the meeting place of the Ku Klux Klan and was once regarded as the “World’s Only Klan Museum”, is set to be converted into a community center in an effort to educate and combat racial injustice.

The project is being spearheaded by Rev. David Kennedy, pastor of the New Beginning Missionary Baptist Church, and Regan Freeman. The two are the founders of the Echo Project – a “nonprofit dedicated to healing racial division and standing against hatred through dialogue, empathy, and understanding.”

Formerly known as the Redneck Shop, the establishment, which is situated on the same building as the now-closed and previously segregated Echo Theater in downtown Laurens, was opened in 1996 until it was forced to ultimately shut down in 2012, according to CNN. The shop once sold White nationalist and neo-Nazi paraphernalia as well as Confederate memorabilia and Klan attire.

“We don’t want to just have a museum to tell this story, the struggle for justice, and the fight against the Klan, but we also want to detail what happened here to make sure it never happens again,” Freeman told the news outlet. “The Echo Theater went from being a segregated movie theater to a literal Klan’s store to being in the possession of a Black minister, and it is about to become a place for reconciliation, justice and healing.”

Following the opening of the shop in 1996 by its previous owners and KKK members, John Howard and Michael Burden, Kennedy actively and vehemently protested against its operation and called for its closure – an action that put him in the bad books of the KKK. The Klan members even contemplated killing him at a certain point.

Things, however, took a very positively shocking turn when Kennedy surprisingly became friends with Burden after the latter had a dispute with his former partner, Howard. Kennedy told CNN he offered Burden security as well as accommodation and food for him and his family despite his background. Their unlikely friendship inspired the 2018 true-life movie, Burden.

After the two established their friendship, Burden, in need of cash, sold the property’s deed to Kennedy and his church, The Post and Courier reported. Burden had earlier become the owner of the property in 1997. A clause in the deed agreement, however, stated Kennedy was prohibited from doing anything to the property until Howard passed away.

The shop was, however, forced to close in 2012 after a judge declared Kennedy and his church as the rightful owners of the property following a 15-year court battle between the preacher and Howard.

With that being sorted, Kennedy later set his sights at transforming the shop, with Freeman eventually partnering with him. The two have so far raised over $375,000 to convert the building into a community center. Upon completion, the new establishment will showcase paraphernalia and memorabilia from the Redneck Shop, as well as set up educational classrooms, all with the aim of fostering remembrance and reconciliation, CNN reported.

Ghanaian-British politician Kwasi Kwarteng was this month named as a business secretary by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, making him the first Black secretary of state and currently the only Black politician in the cabinet.

As business secretary, his responsibilities will include “reassuring businesses in the wake of Brexit, addressing Britain’s future energy needs and pushing through a new, tougher corporate takeover regime, as well as liaising with business groups over Covid-19 restrictions,” according to FT.com.

Commenting on his appointment, the shadow business secretary, Ed Miliband, said: “Kwasi Kwarteng has a massive task. Businesses need support and a plan to help them through this year, not the inadequate sticking plaster measures we have seen.”

Born in Waltham Forest in 1975 to parents who migrated to the UK from Ghana as students in the 1960s, Kwarteng has been serving as a Member of Parliament for Spelthorne since 2010. At age 13, he won a scholarship to study at Eton College and later read history at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he earned Bachelor and Ph.D. degrees in British History.

Before entering parliament, Kwarteng worked as a financial analyst and author. He authored the book “Ghosts of Empire,” about the legacy of the British Empire and also co-authored “Gridlock Nation” with Jonathan Dupont in 2011, on the causes and solutions to traffic congestion in Britain.

He first ventured into politics when he stood as the Conservative candidate in the constituency of Brent East at the 2005 general election. He was unsuccessful but in 2010, he won the parliamentary race for Spelthorne. He was re-elected as Conservative MP for Spelthorne on May 7, 2015.

Kwarteng has served on a number of Select Committees since being elected and has served as Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to the Leader of the House of Lords and the Chancellor of the Exchequer as well as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Exiting the European Union.

He was a strong supporter of Johnson in both the 2016 and 2019 Conservative Party Leadership elections. Following Johnson’s victory, he was appointed Minister of State at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

In a mini reshuffle on January 8, Kwarteng replaced Alok Sharma as Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, making him the first Black Conservative to have been appointed to the level of Secretary of State.

Kwarteng has been a strong advocate of local enterprise and reforms in the business environment to make the UK business-friendly. He launched an initiative in 2013 dubbed the “Spelthorne Business Plan Competition” to find the local entrepreneurs of tomorrow. The competition has run successfully every year since it was launched.

Justin Volpe, the cop accused of beating and sodomizing Haitian immigrant, Abner Louima, in 1997, is asking for an early release after contracting COVID-19 in prison. Volpe sodomized Louima with a jagged wooden handle in August 1997 after claiming that Louima had punched him during a fight at East Flatbush, Brooklyn’s popular Club Rendez-Vous, Daily News reported.

Louima was arrested amid the fight that broke out, and reports said Volpe assaulted him while in the police car after the arrest. Volpe assaulted him again later that night at the police station. He then went ahead to sodomize a handcuffed Louima with the wood handle from either a broomstick or plunger, trial testimony and witnesses said. Authorities never found the instrument.

Louima, who claimed he was repeatedly called “n—-r” during the attack and was left bleeding on the floor of a cell, spent two months in a hospital after surgery for his injuries. Reports said he suffered a ruptured colon and bladder, and his teeth were destroyed in the attack. When news of the attack broke, mass protests were held in the U.S.

Volpe, who has since been at a federal prison in Texas for 21 years over the incident, now wants an early release. “I tested positive for COVID-19 and had several symptoms. No medical treatment of any kind was provided or offered,” Volpe wrote in a release filing on his own behalf.

“Please let me have the chance to meet any needs with private insurance and at home with my family’s love.”

Louima now lives in Miami. He said even though he has forgiven Volpe, he will never forget the attack. He believes that it is up to the justice system to decide whether or not to release Volpe. “It’s so many years after the crime. Twenty-one years is not 21 days. I think at least he’s spent enough time thinking about his actions,” Louima told Daily News.

Former Miss USA 2008 winner Crystle Stewart will become the national director of the Miss USA and Miss Teen USA pageant system, making her the first Black person to ever hold the licensing rights to the pageants, Good Morning America reported Wednesday.

“I’m so thrilled and I’m so excited for the new things and new ideas that I want to bring to the Miss USA system,” Stewart said in an interview with Good Morning America.

The former titleholder, actress and entrepreneur said she will work assiduously to boost the brand, saying it would be like “UFC times America’s Next Top Model times the presidential elections. That’d be the new Miss USA.”

Since its founding in 1952, Miss Universe and Miss USA have always been run by the Miss Universe Organization. For the first time, the two have separated management, a report noted. “In this political climate, the racial injustice, I hope being this African American for this national company inspires and influences women like myself of different colors and races, and also men as well, to pursue your dreams without fault and with confidence and go for it and reach higher and larger,” Stewart said.

The first pageant that will take place under the former beauty queen’s leadership will be Miss USA 2021 and Miss Teen USA 2021.

Stewart became Miss USA in 2008 and went on to become an actress and model. She featured in various projects including Acrimony directed by Tyler Perry, For Better or Worse and Too Close to Home. She is also behind the Miss Academy, a pageant training school with her husband Max Sebrechts in Houston. The actress and entrepreneur is now set to take on her new leadership role for the Miss USA and Miss Teen USA pageant system.

Miss Universe Organization president Paula Shugart said Stewart exemplifies the best qualities in a Miss USA. “…I am so excited for the women who will grow under her guidance and mentorship, and for our state directors, who will have a loyal partner in Crystle,” said Shugart in an Instagram post, further explaining Stewart’s role.

“Crystle will be a licensee just as we have licensees all around the world. We have been working on this for quite a while and I am excited it has become a reality.”

The South African activist, Bantu Steven Biko, was born on December 18, 1946. Biko was an African nationalist and socialist at the forefront of the anti-apartheid campaign known as the Black Consciousness Movement in the 1960s and 1970s.

Influenced by Martinican revolutionary, Frantz Fanon, and the African American Black Power Movement, Biko developed and spread the idea of Black Consciousness, that espoused that “blacks had to overcome the feelings of inferiority instilled into them, the ‘oppression within’ before they could deal with whites as equals.” He also popularized the Black Is Beautiful movement which started in the U.S., in Africa.

Biko explains further in his book, I Write What I Like: “This is the first truth, bitter as it may seem, that we have to acknowledge before we can start on any programme designed to change the status quo. It becomes more necessary to see the truth as it is if you realise that the only vehicle for change is these people who have lost their personality. The first step, therefore, is to make the black man come to himself; to pump back life into his empty shell; to infuse him with pride and dignity, to remind him of his complicity in the crime of allowing himself to be misused and therefore letting evil reign supreme in the country of his birth. This is what we mean by an inward-looking process. This is the definition of ‘Black Consciousness’.”

Biko contributed significantly to the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa through his leadership and vision at a time when African National Congress and the Pan Africanist Congress, and its leaders such as Nelson Mandela, were jailed, exiled, or killed. He was highly influential in the grassroots campaigns and youth uprisings which were pivotal for turning the public/international support away from the apartheid government.

Biko was only 30 years old when he died. He was arrested at a police roadblock when he broke a ban restricting him to speak publicly or travel. He was severely beaten and died in a cell alone on 12 September 1977 after what has been reported to be a horrifying 25 days in police custody. More than 20,000 people from around the world attended his funeral.

The South African activist has been commemorated by many institutions, world leaders, including Nelson Mandela, and in song, movies – most prominently the 1987 film Cry Freedom -,  and by businesses such as Google. His work continues through the Steve Biko Foundation spearheaded by his family.

Many of today’s acclaimed cultural movement, including the #WokeMovement, AfricaRising, etc, on Black consciousness, Black pride, and Black awareness and activism, owe a great deal to this man.

The Albany Police Department has announced plans to fire an officer on its force after he was recorded calling Black people “the worst f__ing race” during a conversation with a county sheriff’s deputy.

According to the Times Union, Officer David W. Haupt, who has been on the city’s police force since 2016, was handed a 30-day suspension on November 11 pending investigation after the recording was uncovered by the sheriff’s department during a routine department review of body camera footage. The footage in question was recorded by the body camera of the sheriff’s deputy he was having the conversation with. The footage was handed over to the Albany County district attorney’s office, and they subsequently gave it to the city’s police department to investigate on November 12.

Responding to the recording, the city’s Black police chief, Eric Hawkins, said Haupt’s comments was one of the most “shocking and appalling” things he had heard in his 30-year career as a law enforcement officer.

“It’s inappropriate; it does not reflect the values of the men and women in this department,” Hawkins said.

The city’s mayor, Kathy Sheehan, also referred to Haupt’s comments as “blatantly racist”, adding that she expects him to be fired after investigations are concluded.

“As mayor, I wanted to ensure that this individual was not on the job until we have an understanding of what occurred here,” she said. “And that statement in and of itself can be construed no other way that being a racist statement that does not reflect the values of the Albany Police Department.”

Hawkins further revealed Haupt had completed training courses on racial diversity and workplace violence organized by the department just last month, the Houston Chronicle reported.

Though Hawkins declined releasing the November 1 footage of the incident, citing the ongoing investigations, the Times Union was able to obtain a transcript. The conversation between Haupt and the deputy took place when they were filling gas into the officer’s patrol car. The news outlet reports the body camera of the deputy may have been accidentally turned on while the two were talking.

“Literally it does get old,” the deputy said in the recording. “Because literally every day, it’s not like it’s an overwhelming 50-percent-to-50-percent shot where you get a call and they’re like, ‘Yeah, a white male — ,’ or, you know what I mean.”

Haupt responded and said: “My buddies listen to the scanner and they send me texts all the time, and they go, ‘Is the suspect ever a white male?’ and I go ‘No.’ I know it sounds terrible to say, but I don’t give a f__ what anybody says, I sincerely don’t. Because bro, they are the worst f__ing race and I don’t — you can’t deny, like, over the last X amount of months, they are — you know because we work together — they are getting worse and worse, and people are defending that. Are you f__ing kidding me?”

The unnamed deputy responded to Haupt by saying “Uh-huh” but did not say anything else afterwards. Albany County Sheriff, Craig Apple, said he’ll talk to the deputy in question though he feels the deputy’s comments in the recording does not implicate him and wouldn’t warrant any disciplinary action. He, however, said the department will undergo another sensitivity training.

Following the discovery of the video, a spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office, Cecilia Walsh, said they’ll be reviewing all previous cases Haupt has been involved in and would reach out to defense attorneys.

Though the department has signaled its intention to terminate Haupt, he could still be on payroll if he decides to contest his dismissal due to terms of the police union contract, the Houston Chronicle reported. The arbitration process for that could also take months.