Our Time PressThe Local Paper with the Global View

How seven percent of a section within a nation ruled five million white people and owned four million black people and sought to make agriculture equal to industry through the rule of property without yielding political power or education to labor.

Seven percent of the total population of the South in 1860 owned nearly 3 million of the 3,953,696 slaves. There was nearly as great a concentration of ownership in the best agricultural land. This meant that in a country predominantly agricultural, the ownership of labor, land and capital was extraordinarily concentrated. …
Of the five million whites who owned no slaves some were united in interest with the slave owners. These were overseers, drivers and dealers in slaves. Others were hirers of white and black labor, and still others were merchants and professional men, forming a petty bourgeois class, and climbing up to the planter class or falling down from it. The mass of the poor whites, as we have shown, were economic outcasts.
Into the hands of the slaveholders, the political power of the South was concentrated by their social prestige, by property ownership and also by their extraordinary rule of the counting of all or at least three-fifths of the Negroes as part of the basis of representation in the legislature. It is singular how this Athree-fifths@ compromise was used, not only to degrade Negroes in theory, but in practice to disfranchise the white South. Nearly all of the Southern states began with recognizing the white population as a basis of representation; they afterward favored the black belt by direct legislation or by counting three-fifths of the slave population, and then finally by counting the whole black population; or they established, as in Virginia and South Carolina, a Amixed@ basis of representation based on white population and on property; that is, on land and slaves.
In all cases, the slaveholder practically voted both for himself and his slaves and it was not until 1850, and particularly after the war, that there were signs of self-assertion on the part of the poor whites to break this monopoly of power. Alabama, for instance, in 1850, based representation in the general assembly upon the white inhabitants, after thirty years of counting the whole white and black population. Thus ,the Southern planters had in their hands from 1820 to the Civil War political power equivalent to one or two million freemen in the North.
They fought bitterly during the early stages of Reconstruction to retain this power for the whites, while at the same time granting no political power to the blacks.
Finally and up to this day, by making good their efforts to disfranchise the blacks, the political heirs of the planters still retain for themselves this added political representations as a legacy from slavery, and a  slavery and a power to frustrate all third party movements.
Thus, the planter who owned from fifty to one thousand slaves and from one thousand to ten thousand acres of land came to fill the whole picture in the South, and literature and the propaganda which is usually called history have since exaggerated that picture.  The planter certainly dominated politics and social lifeB he boasted of his education, but on the whole, these Southern leaders were singularly ignorant of modern conditions and trends and of their historical background.  All their ideas of gentility and education went back to the days of European privilege and caste.  They cultivated a surface acquaintance with literature and they threw Latin quotations even into Congress.  Some had a cultural education at Princeton and at Yale, and to this day Princeton refuses to receive Negro students, and Yale has admitted a few with reluctance, as a curious legacy from slavery.
The leaders of the South had leisure for good breeding and high living, and before them Northern society abased itself and flattered and fawned over them. Perhaps this, more than ethical reasons, or even economic advantage, made the way of the abolitionist hard. In New York, Saratoga, Philadelphia and Cincinnati, a slave baron, with his fine raiment, gorgeous and doll-like women and black flunkies, quite turned the heads of Northern society. Their habits of extravagance impressed the nation for a long period.
Much of the waste charged against Reconstruction arose from the attempt of the post-war population, white and black, to imitate the manners of a slave-nurtured gentility, and this brought furious protest from former planters; because while planters spent money filched from the labor of black slaves, the poor white and black leaders of Reconstruction spent taxes drawn from recently impoverished planters.
From an economic point of view, this planter class had interest in consumption rather than production. They exploited labor in order that they themselves should live more grandly and not mainly for increasing production. Their taste went to elaborate households, well-furnished and hospitable; they had much to eat and drink; they consumed large quantities of liquor; they gambled and caroused and kept up the habit of dueling well down into the nineteenth century. Sexually, they were lawless, protecting elaborately and flattering the virginity of a small class of women of their social clan, and keeping at command millions of poor women of the two laboring groups of the South.

Sexual chaos was always the possibility of slavery, not always realized but always possible: polygamy through the concubinage of black women to white men; polyandry between black women and selected men on plantations in order to improve the human stock of strong and able workers. The census of 1860 counted 588,352 persons obviously of mixed blood-a figure admittedly below the truth.
AEvery man who resides on his plantation may have his harem, and has every inducement of custom, and of pecuniary gain. [The law declares that the children of slaves are to follow the fortunes of the mother. Hence the practice of planters selling and bequeathing their own children.], to tempt him to the common practice. Those who, notwithstanding, keep their homes undefiled may be considered as of incorruptible purity.@
And finally, one cannot forget that bitter word attributed to a sister of a President of the United States: AWe Southern ladies are complimented with names of wives, but we are only mistresses of seraglios.@
What the planters wanted was income large enough to maintain the level of living which was their ideal. Naturally, only a few of them had enough for this, and the rest, striving toward it, were perpetually in debt and querulously seeking a reason for this indebtedness outside themselves. Since it was beneath the dignity of a Agentleman@ to encumber himself with the details of his finances, this lordly excuse enabled the planter to place between himself and the black slave a series of intermediaries through whom bitter pressure and exploitation could be exercised and large crops raised. For the very reason that the planters did not give attention to details, there was wide tendency to commercialize their growing business of supplying raw materials for an expanding modern industry. They were the last to comprehend the revolution through which that industry was passing and their efforts to increase income succeeded only at the cost of raping the land and degrading the laborers.
The South, with free rich land and cheap labor, had the monopoly of cotton, a material in universal demand. If the leaders of the South, while keeping the consumer in mind, had turned more thoughtfully to the problem of the American producer, and had guided the production of cotton and food so as to take every advantage of new machinery and modern methods in agriculture, they might have moved forward with manufacture and been able to secure an approximately large amount of profit. But this would have involved yielding to the demands of modern labor: opportunity for education, legal protection of women and children, regulation of the hours of work, steadily increasing wages and the right to some voice in the administration of the state if not in the conduct of industry.
Beneath this educational and social propaganda lay the undoubted evidence of the planter=s own expenses. He saw ignorant and sullen labor deliberately reducing his profits. In fact, he always faced the negative attitude of the general strike. Open revolt of slavesBrefusal to work–could be met by beating and selling to the harsher methods of the deep South and Southwest as punishment. Running away could be curbed by law and police. But nothing could stop the dogged slave from doing just as little and as poor work as possible. All observers spoke of the fact that the slaves were slow and churlish; that they wasted material and malingered at their work. Of course they did. This was not racial but economic. It was the answer of any group of laborers forced down to the last ditch.
If the European or Northern laborer did not do his work properly and fast enough, he would lose the job. The black slave could not lose his job. If the Northern laborer got sick or injured, he was discharged, usually without compensation; the black slave could not be discharged and had to be given some care in sicknesses, particularly if he represented a valuable investment. The Northern and English employer could select workers in the prime of life and did not have to pay children too young to work or adults too old. The slave owner had to take care of children and old folk, and while this did not cost much on a farm or entail any great care, it did seriously cut down the proportion of his effective laborers, which could only be balanced by the systematic labor of women and children. The children ran loose with only the most general control, getting their food with the other slaves. The old folk foraged for themselves. Now and then they were found dead of neglect, but usually there was no trouble in their getting at least enough food to live and some rude shelter.
The economic difficulties that thus faced the planter in exploiting the black slave were curious. Contrary to the trend of his age, he could not use higher wages to induce better work or a larger supply of labor. He could not allow his labor to become intelligent, although intelligent labor would greatly increase the production of wealth. He could not depend on voluntary immigration unless the immigrants be slaves, and he must bear the burden of the old and sick and could only balance this by child labor and the labor of women.
The use of slave women as day workers naturally broke up or made impossible the normal Negro home and this and the slave code led to a development of which the South was really ashamed and which it often denied, and yet perfectly evident: the raising of slaves in the border slave states for systematic sale on the commercialized cotton plantations.
The ability of the slaveholder and landlord to sequester a large share of the profits of slave labor depended upon his exploitation of that labor, rather than upon high prices for his product in the market.

But there was another motive which more and more strongly as time went on compelled the planter to cling to slavery. His political power was based on slavery. With four million slaves he could balance the votes of 2,400,000 Northern voters, while in the inconceivable event of their becoming free, their votes would outnumber those of his Northern opponents, which was precisely what happened in 1868.
As the economic power of the planter waned, his political power became more and more indispensable to the maintenance of his income and profits. Holding his industrial system secure by this political domination, the planter turned to the more systematic exploitation of his black labor. One method called for more land and the other for more slaves. Both meant not only increased crops but increased political power. It was a temptation that swept greed, religion, military pride and dreams of empire to its defense.
In no respect are the peculiar psychological difficulties of the planters better illustrated than with regard to the interstate slave trade. The theory was clear and lofty; slaves were a part of the family- Amy people,@ George Washington called them.
This was the theory, but as a matter of fact, the cotton planters were supplied with laborers by the Border States. A laboring stock was deliberately bred for legal sale. A large number of persons followed the profession of promoting this sale of slaves. There were markets and quotations, and the stream of black labor, moving continuously into the South, reached yearly into the thousands.
Notwithstanding these perfectly clear and authenticated facts, the planter persistently denied them. He denied that there was any considerable interstate sale of slaves; he denied that families were broken up; he insisted that slave auctions were due to death or mischance, and particularly did he insist that the slave traders were the least of human beings and most despised.
This deliberate contradiction of plain facts constitutes itself a major charge against slavery and shows how the system often so affronted the moral sense of the planters themselves that they tried to hide from it. They could not face the fact of Negro women as brood mares and of black children as puppies.
Indeed, while we speak of the planters as one essentially unvarying group, there is evidence that the necessities of their economic organization were continually changing and deteriorating their morale and pushing forward ruder, noisier, less cultivated elements than characterized the Southern gentleman of earlier days. Certainly, the cursing, brawling, whoring gamblers who largely represented the South in the late fifties, evidenced the inevitable deterioration that overtakes men when their desire for income and extravagance overwhelms their respect for human beings. Thus the interstate slave trade grew and flourished and the demand for the African slave trade was rapidly becoming irresistible in the late fifties.
From fifty to eighty thousand slaves went from the Border States to the lower South in the last decade of slavery. One planter frankly said that he Acalculated that the moment a colored baby was born, it was worth to him $300.@ So far as possible, the planters in selling off their slaves avoided the breaking up of families. But they were facing flat economic facts. The persons who were buying slaves in the cotton belt were not buying families, they were buying workers, and thus by economic demand families were continually and regularly broken up; the father was sold away; the mother and the half-grown children separated, and sometimes smaller children were sold. One of the subsequent tragedies of the system was the frantic efforts, before and after emancipation, of Negroes hunting for their relatives throughout the United States.
A Southerner wrote to Olmsted: AIn the states of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee and Missouri, as much attention is paid to the breeding and growth of Negroes as to that of horses and mules. Further south, we raise them both for use and for market. Planters command their girls and women (married or unmarried) to have children; and I have known a great many Negro girls to be sold off because they did not have children. A breeding woman is worth from one-sixth to one-fourth more than one that does not breed.@
Sexual chaos arose from economic motives. The deliberate breeding of a strong, big field-hand stock could be carried out by selecting proper males, and giving them the run of the likeliest females. This in many Border States became a regular policy and fed the slave trade. Child bearing was a profitable occupation, which received every possible encouragement, and there was not only no bar to illegitimacy, but an actual premium put upon it. Indeed, the word was impossible of meaning under the slave system.
Moncure D. Conway, whose father was a slaveholder near Fredericksburg, Virginia, wrote: AAs a general thing, the chief pecuniary resource in the Border States is the breeding of slaves, and I grieve to say that there is too much ground for the charges that general licentiousness among the slaves, for the purpose of a large increase, is compelled by some masters and encouraged by many. The period of maternity is hastened, the average youth of Negro mothers being nearly three years earlier than that of any free race, and an old maid is utterly unknown among the women.@

J. E. Cairnes, the English economist, in his passage with Mr. McHenry on this subject, computed from reliable data that Virginia had bred and exported to the cotton states between the years of 1840 and 1850 no less than 100,000 slaves, which at $500 per head would have yielded her $50,000,000.
The South elected to make its fight through the political power which it possessed because of slavery and the disfranchisement of poor whites.  It had in American history chosen eleven out of sixteen presidents, seventeen out of twenty-eight Judges of the Supreme Court, fourteen out of nineteen attorneys general, twenty-one out of thirty-three Speakers of the House, eighty out of one hundred thirty-four foreign ministers. It demanded a fugitive slave law as strong as words could make it and it was offered constitutional guarantees which would have made it impossible for the North to meddle with the organization of the slave empire.
The abolition of American slavery started the transportation of capital from white to black countries where slavery prevailed, with the same tremendous and awful consequences upon the laboring classes of the world which we see about us today. When raw material could not be raised in a country like the United States, it could be raised in the tropics and semi tropics under a dictatorship of industry, commerce and manufacture and with no free farming class.
The competition of a slave-directed agriculture in the West Indies and South America, in Africa and Asia, eventually ruined the economic efficiency of agriculture in the United States and in Europe and precipitated the modern economic degradation of the white farmer, while it put into the hands of the owners of the machine such a monopoly of raw material that their domination of white labor was more and more complete.
What irritated the planter and made him charge the North and liberal Europe with hypocrisy was the ethical implications of slav-ery. He was kept explaining a system of work which he insisted was no different in essence from that in vogue in Europe and the North. They and he were all exploiting labor. He did it by individual right; they by state law. They called their labor free, but after all, the laborer was only free to starve, if he did not work on their terms. They called his laborer a slave when his master was responsible for him from birth to death.
What the planter and his Northern apologist did not readily admit was that this exploitation of labor reduced it to a wage so low and a standard of living so pitiable that no modern industry in agriculture or trade or manufacture could build upon it; that it made ignorance compulsory and had to do so in self-defense; and that it automatically was keeping the South from entering the great stream of modern industry where growing intelligence among workers, a rising standard of living among the masses, increased personal freedom and political power, were recognized as absolutely necessary.
The ethical problem here presented was less important than the political and far less than the economic. The Southerners were as little conscious of the hurt they were inflicting on human beings as the Northerners were of their treatment of the insane. It is easy for men to discount and misunderstand the suffering or harm done others. Once accustomed to poverty, to the sight of toil and degradation, it easily seems normal and natural; once it is hidden beneath a different color of skin, a different stature or a different habit of action and speech, and all consciousness of inflicting ill disappears.
The Southern planter suffered, not simply for his economic mistakesBthe psychological effect of slavery upon him was fatal. The mere fact that a man could be, under the law, the actual master of the mind and body of human beings had to have disastrous effects. It tended to inflate the ego of most planters beyond all reason; they became arrogant, strutting, quarrelsome kinglets; they issued commands; they made laws; they shouted their orders; they expected deference and self-abasement; they were choleric and easily insulted. Their Ahonor@ became a vast and awful thing, requiring wide and insistent deference. Such of them as were inherently weak and in efficient were all the more easily angered, jealous and resentful; while the few who were superior physically or mentally, conceived no bounds to their power and personal prestige. As the world had long learned, nothing is so calculated to ruin human nature as absolute power over human beings.
On the other hand, the possession of such power did not and could not lead to its continued tyrannical exercise. The tyrant could be kind and congenial. He could care for his chattels like a father; he could grant indulgence and largess; he could play with power and find tremendous satisfaction in its benevolent use.
Thus, economically and morally, the situation of the planter became intolerable. What was needed was the force of great public opinion to make him see his economic mistakes and the moral debauchery that threatened him. But here again in the planter class, no room was made for the reformer, the recalcitrant. The men who dared such thought and act were driven out or suppressed with a virulent tyranny reminiscent of the Inquisition and the Reformation.

This whole system and plan of development failed and failed of its own weakness. Unending effort has gone into painting the claims of the Old South, its idyllic beauty and social charm. But the truth is inexorable. With all its fine men and sacrificing women, its hospitable homes and graceful manners, the South turned the most beautiful section of the nation into a center of poverty and suffering, of drinking, gambling and brawling; an abode of ignorance among black and white more abysmal than in any modern land; and a system of industry so humanly unjust and economically inefficient that if it had not committed suicide in civil war, it would have disintegrated of its own weight.
With the Civil War, the planters died as a class. We still talk as though the dominant social class in the South persisted after the war. But it did not. It disappeared. Just how quickly and in what manner the transformation was made, we do not know. No scientific study of the submergence of the remainder of the planter class into the ranks of the poor whites, and the corresponding rise of a portion of the poor whites into the dominant portion of landholders and capitalists, has been made.
Of the names of prominent Southern families in Congress in 1860, only two appear in 1870, five in 1880. Of 90 prominent names in 1870, only four survived in 1880. Men talk today as though the upper class in the white South is descended from the slaveholders, yet we know by plain mathematics that the ancestors of most of the present Southerners never owned a slave nor had any real economic part in slavery. The disaster of war decimated the planters; the bitter disappointment and frustration led to a tremendous mortality after the war, and from 1870 on the planter class merged their blood so completely with the rising poor whites that they disappeared as a separate aristocracy. It is this that explains so many characteristics of the postwar South: its lynching and mob law, its murders and cruelty, its insensibility to the finer things of civilization.

What becomes a legend most?  The famous line seen in advertising ads for a major fur company referred to the unnamed but hardly anonymous befurred subjects B corporate, entertainment, political stars of glitterati America.

In the Black community stars shoot out from the earth, like coal to diamonds, and a legend could be your next door neighbor whose glowing good deeds remain unpublished and unpublicized. 

When I think of phenomenal woman I think of women like Sheila Miller.  Sheila who?  Sheila Miller.  Sheila is a legend in the Bedford-Stuyvesant community amongst the wizened@ old-school.@  She manages Sugar Hill Restaurant, and for _____ ran Sheila=s at the corner of DeKalb and Adelphi, BEFORE the strip became The Strip. She=s  perhaps the most unheralded role model in the world.  Not just because of her entrepreneurial spirit; she once put an entire apartment building to work and she singlehandedly spearheaded to international success a small craft hobby.

We are fascinated by the daily number of hero stories and deeds that come out of our community.  We know about them, but not through Black Enterprise, Network Journal, The New York Times and even Our Time Press. So caught up in doing their work, these particular Astars@ do not have time to seek publicity.  Same for Sheila.  We would have missed her story, too, had it not been for casual conversation with bartender _____ of Sugar Hill Restaurant and the restaurant-cocktail lunge=s owner, Eddie Freeman.  ADid you know that Sheila gave one of her kidney=s to a friend=s husband?@   Here=s Sheila=s story.

Notes: Arranges schedule to be available, didn=t have a set sked as far as work, and work as needed, available to help themY.   Take four of them to school everydayY on two have to be in 815 the other 8 25YTwo different schools, then have 18 month old grandson have all days, wherever I go he goes, have since he was four moths, old, mom when back to work started to workY deal with five of them everyday. One of 11,  second,     born in Hertford, North Carolina, near   from Catfish Hunter >s hometown,   the old deejay, Enoch GregoryY  work for many years, long time,  played old schools, blues and r& b,  in the nightY    Y. Know his family he has younger sisters and brothers, we dealY Y pop. 9,000 Y small two stoplights only two stoplights in town, corner of Edington Rod and market, Church &: Grove.

Raised there.  Went to school, graduated from Perquimans County High School.   Y.  Two whites marched with King in 64Y. He came to our hometown, and him Golden Franks,   with Golden   Met First Baptist Church on Academy Street, they told us we were going to march to get some black employees in the establishments.  We marched, sang, and dealt with state troopers with tear gas and dogs, fire trucks meeting us at the bridge  Persuqimons BridgeY. The dogsY.     RacismY. It was bad, we could not have hairpins in our hair, they feared any thing could be considered a weapon, I remember going into the restaurants, and they would spit in our food, we gained what we wanted, got two black women in employed in supermarket, and young girl and her brother came to our school Helen Gordon B white girl   they white  finally form Detroit, marched with us, a and came to live with  there, and became a student at the school and graduated with usY we  in DetroitY  preparing 2004 reunion,,  35 reunion, in June  September of 2004Y   Special Roe. On planning committee, meeting back  here in new York , next Saturday to put to gather plan for the rest of the class,   69 people in classY nine have diedY   usually we get 45 to 50.. to comeY  Last reunion meets in Hertford. End up in Hertford, and all get together and have breakfast and go to churchY we usually go to someone=s house, one of classmates house, the Bryant=s houseY Y.

Maybe because of Enoch GregoryY he was on the air h=in New York, don=t know how it came aboutY  Pastor LondonYHertford near, 60 miles from Norfolk, Virginia, near, Elizabeth in North CarolinaYSon and brother graduated form State Teachers College in Elizabeth city, now Elizabeth State University YDid notY.
Very happy, he went through a thing where withdrawn from school, not learning, anything… her in New York. Ok don=t want to go, get a job, went out in job market five, is x months came too me while I was at work, mom I want to go to collegeY I called the registrar, if I get down there by Tuesday, he took GED on ownY if you get down by Tuesday, I can get you in July or augustY All I had to do was get him on the plane and get him down thereYHe did very well, Red/White YKappa Alpha Psi YDid well, now he works with DeBride College Admissions here in New York…(went to Bkly Tech, PS 3 on Franklin, 258 )

(Pastor of Berean, Pastor Griffith is from Elizabeth City, N.C.) running into a lot of people let lately who Director of the Soup Kitchen, 125 a day, dog gone if I didn=t meet people form Elizabeth city, 887 St. Marks, near Greater Mt. Pleasant…   one year and a half, pastor,   Pastor Randy WareY.  Mondays and Tuesdays (12 B 2) Live in Brooklyn in BushwickY sectionYSugar Hill — oversee everything,  Ms. Walker is the general manager/ kitchen, all the major events, the staff, anything that needs to be done,   run it like a small businesses

Small business: accessory company B designed and manufactured accessories for specialty chain stores B Macy=s, Casual Corner, Lerner=s, mesh tops, scarves, beltsY.Working with a company prior to that designing Y went out on my own, Came to NY in =69, Worked in Sandy Alexander Printing Company, 44th and 12th (billing clerk)
After got pregnant, left there and worked at United Merchants and Manufacturers (home furnishing industry, started din customer service then became secretary imports person) Lending Trimming (rings for scarves and beach umbrellas  …)
Went to Y Three guys who wanted to start own accessory, I knew one of themYin antahhtn, started manufacturing… did designing  of all products ( they new I was good with hands, I would sit and make belts an wear themY these guys got together, one already in accessory with jewelry, John approached Sheila why don=t you consider coming over hereY Y  I was there for five yearsY) B those items appeared I MacysY 1000 dozenY.. 32 people working under me manufacturing all stuff.

Used to live on Classon and Efforts Place, I would take work, and all the people in building would work. Meet me in the lobbyY put all theses people to work, everybody worked. Made YFour yearsYYpiece workY.
I did a lot of belts with the various strings, one of the weaving. Companies, I would wrap it on cardboard with various strings to create a pattern and they would weave it, we they would cut it and sew it, using

Safety-pin t-shirts at Macy=s ( 79-80),  found a place to dye safety pins different color,  mesh scarves wore then on head and then hip,  traveled from state to state showing the stores how to display them and use themY Y we would be walking around with yourY original designs.  Three states  showing how to display workY in Ohio, Indiana, KentuckyY going to the chain storeY had to show the buyers how to display the headpieces:  mesh scarves, beaded them, folded them,, so they could wrap around the hair, show them the various ways it could be wrapped to  so can display on mannequins,, they didn=t know anything about hairpiecesY
Did hand-beaded bags for Botteliclello, they paid 75 a bag and sold for 500Y they wanted dozens of themY.. They were Y.  Beaded, painstaking work… 79-80Y. Got a decent salaries, bonus, and and five to 10 thousand dollars, we doing good want a percentage of the businessesY.  John loaned me 50,000 went over on 36th Street got me a place, and started own businessY Crazy ladyY  36th and 6th venue,  It was a loft that was broken up, two of us on that floor, had three rooms to work inY had my family, friends, I employed them ,,t hey would come and work with me, and after hours bringing it home and had people in building to help me  to meet deadlines..

Saleme stores worked with meY. 83- 86. Father, James ASnooks@ Everett, he had a little club, his livelihood, out the back door by house, always liked the ambience atmosphere off music and dance and foodY I=m going to have me a supper clubYSame friend John   — the accessory industry started to change up, and the small guys getting workY

We started looking can came to Brooklyn,   Went to c21, right across the street, he told us about it… looked at Adel phi and LafayetteY the one I ended up with.. I knew that was itY big arms went around me YAll I had to get was tableclothsY just waiting for meY

Opening night July 5, 1986 Y I did a Sheila=s reunion looking some only the not Y. Brenda Ghoul, Bobby Johnson, Helen Logan, Gene Pilgrim, Sam Goodwin, Huey the bartender, Paul Walden, Then Sheila= 86.Sheila: 86-93
Dakota Staton, Noel Pointer, Hamilton, CateredFather got to see it: his chest was swole up so bigY93 B Had first rights to buy building. After lease expired, he wanted 475,000 for the building. Didn=t make sense…

Too high…Son: 36, 33, 30The restaurant sent then to school.  I kept a lot of children there, a lot of parents in area didn=t have babysitting, so would you feed them, help with homework, put them in  a corner of restaurants, Y  Kept on he lived with me, while mom went to rehabY I knew here, she was beauticianY TawanaY churchY son is in collegeY got the best hands in the world in hairY located o Marcy and Pulaski… OldY.

Closed in 93:  went to Sugar hill. — I laying in bed, something said call Eddie, what you doing, trying to get mess straigetnout, you can come down and help cause the chef walked outY got dressed and worked in kitchen,, never sat down, and interviewed,YI know what it is to not have someone at your back, in that industry… good relationship…
  He gave you my friee had o do what Y20 hours a dayYStill doY they call me,

Laid out one De went to Sugar Hill in February of 94.At this point, live life to fullest, planning is important but not the most important thing, we are happy within our selves, we can wake up eve day, and say thinks to god, biggest treasure we have, everything else is secondary.. don= like long time planning, every day is what is important to me, getting through that day, is important and doing the best that I can in that dayY can=t  Don=t want to absorb anymore of the  Y  take on some so much stuff till weighted, want to deal with what=s in front of meY. Don=t= want to deal with the weight, deal with what=s in front of me…

State of the world: so much uncertainty as to what=s going to happen sure it has played a big part, returning more to trying more to strengthen my spiritual life, and with that alone, and that has give me the freedom to deal with one day at a time, no matter what I do aor what I say, he ti path is lad outY

Free time: go to movies, walk down by the Brooklyn promenade,  I love to walk, I walk form here to sugar hill, live on CorneleaY do stff like that, I sewY Very proud of myself because my girlfriends kidneyY gave him a kidney, he had been firhgbitng of a year to find a… got to pint doing dialysis, 3x a dayY his brother was going to give him a kidney, but the brother wanted him to pay up all the bills, and put x amount for r in bank, so family could sustain. Myself beautician and another beautician (carol,)… we will go to see if we can give a kidneyY

I=m going goY what do I have to give you, I don=t want anything from youY this is what I=m supposed to be doing…
Went to Westchester medical, they tested, and they tested me that I was a better match, than his brotherY
I went in Y they she tried to talk me out of it because I was not a family member. If my kidney is going to keep him a liveY all if wanted to know is how long I=m going to be out work, she said 2 weeks.  I knew it wasn=t going to be 2 weeks for me. So I went in April 26,m 1994Y s  Edward Ferebee Jr. presented you with a plaque, seventh anniversaryY gave it to , for my brother, October 2, . Y.  How long had known Jean, met her in h.s., but met her in 9th grade, she lived in outskirts of town and had to come in, she went to another elementary school, different form mind.  Didn=t meet her till we were in the 9th grade.   We grew up together form age 3Y.  Attended same schools he marched din 64Y

I was the maid of honor at their wedding, I introduced themY they have one daughter, I am her god mother, and they are my children=s godparentsYI was doing what I needed to d it… I saw what my girlfriend going through, the fear of she had w… he was dwindling away, he it was a big big strai. Okay I got twoY I=m going to be alrightY/

From a week after that surgery, I have not had not had a pain. Got a went in on Tuesday, they let me come home Sunday morning. And jean picked me up and brought me home; got in bed, called a cabY garland was having an event CoreY Eddie was only one who knew what as going onY put on a big bandY put it on… stayed in bed for a weekY went back to workY and that was in April, in November I went to Jamaica, got in mineral springs. 

I got a 10 inch cut; they took one of my ribs out to get to the kidneyYY. They were trying to come to speak, to other donors; schedule didn=t work for meYWestchester County Medical CenterY

Eddie: you dong what,   grandson: nana, you only got one kidney, what happened if that one get bad, that one get hurt,  I have to wait, and get one like uncle,     he said: no , I m going to give you one.. a role model in a lo of respect, I have a lot to offer a lot of people, not a talker, I can show them, or pull themY  subtle ways to do itY new  venture now is to work with mentally ill, Tuesday go for BRC Fulton house, mental disabled residentsY will have case load of five to six residents that will counselYBklyn Residents Center Lot of different programs,   

Chinese have found that there are various herbs that heal the ares that renew defective cells in the brainY foundY (SchizophreniaY yahooYCourses;    they send you to school take class, Mental illnessYCuCH Center for Urban Community ServicesY Wall Street classes on mental classes, history of it, went through various stages of schizophreniaYMy friend is the Director of Warren WrightY Security Coordinator… makes sure they don=t go outY got to interactingY got to talk to them, and seeing the differences between. One to otherY Sheila can you come in a cook. I got even more contact, when it wentY Never saw people who appreciated food so well. They all came to kitchen, got together and wrote a letter to warren to fire cook and bring me in , and for there, started to warm up to them, and they do me,,, they know there medicines, what it does, what happens when they don=t= get itY

 Whenever he dnneded, just, started in March of 2002Y going fulltime, at the end of the end of Mental Health TechnicianY.How many people are there 45Y.Role Models: grand mom, Rosetta Jenkins, mother=s mother:  raise me, helped steered me to keep mind straightY to do something with self, strong ladyY she passed in 89
My grandmother, prettiest knees in the world, skin like butter and sil at the same time, she was something. I think I got a lot of… she could crochet, do stuff with hands, made umbrella to match her dress match her dress.   Her rolls would stand five inches tall. cooked anythingY.

Ather s siter, Margaret Newbern, and Aunt Barbara Hamilton, strong womenY. They were survivors they came up in hard times, Margaret father=s sister, they mother died when she was 8 or 9Y You father at age 7 sent out and got a job to support themY.learned about all of that at his fun deal.. they were not afraid to go out and work and make money, by any means necessary, aunt on Rockaway and Livonia Y she used to sell liquor, Y she could hold a fifth of liquor right in her chestY put it in her chest, and the cups in one pocket, and the money in oneY put it collect money,,, an..

Opened a cab stand on hegemen and Rockaway, J&M Car ServiceY Aunt Barb did domestic work, she know… they knew  how to work, weren=t a friad to work. My dad too, he had his club, he did everything, and he could do everythingY those are my role modelsYI=m the matron in my family, I=m itY It=s meY

and Water Status at April 3rd Meeting
There are more than eight hundred properties from the Bedford-Stuyvesant area listed on the 60-Day Notice of Tax Lien Sale which was published on March 11th in the Daily News.  This year, in addition to citing  those who may owe eight quarters or more in unpaid property taxes, the list also includes people who are behind three years or more in paying  water and/or sewer charges. Community groups and elected officials have banded together under the banner of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Economic and Physical Development Task Force to alert the community to this growing crisis.
On Wednesday, April 3rd, from 5:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., property owners are urged to attend the  Tax Lien Assistance Session at Boys and Girls High School that is designed to help resolve payment issues.  Representatives from the Department of Finance and the Environmental Protection Agency will be on hand with computer access to all properties.  They will be able to give the latest status of the property, discuss special programs for seniors and others,  and make arrangements for installment payments. According to Councilman Albert Vann, who is sponsoring the session, AThis is a great opportunity for homeowners to handle their affairs right here in the community.  It is sometimes difficult to get to downtown offices, and we hope that this meeting will accommodate many neighborhood residents who may be in danger of losing their homes.@   
For the past three years, the Brownstoners of Bedford-Stuyvesant have sponsored the Tax Lien Neighbor-to-Neighbor Outreach Project.  Members of this twenty-five-year-old civic group have been visiting each home on the tax lien list and leaving a packet of informational materials.   AThis year, we were amazed to see the large number of homes and businesses on the list,@ said Brenda Fryson, president of the Brownstoners.  AWe cannot afford to lose our homes and businesses. They are the legacy that our fore-parents worked hard to achieve.   When our members go door-to-door, we will be urging our neighbors to attend the April 3rd session, or to make arrangements for payment beforehand.   These tax lien  assistance meetings have been invaluable in past years, with more than two hundred homes saved from the tax lien process.  Just come!@

The New York City Department of Finance makes it clear that the sale of the tax lien does not mean that the property has been sold.  If payment, or acceptable payment arrangements, are not made by May 12th, the tax lien will be sold by the City to a third party lien holder.  The taxpayer must then pay the entire amount to this private company, including a high interest rate and additional fees.  According to Joseph  Chambers of the Concord Development Corporation, AThis is the point where people fall into the hands of predatory lenders who use unscrupulous tactics that trap homeowners into ultimately losing their property.  Some of these companies  have already begun to make telephone calls, and even home visits, and we are urging all taxpayers to beware.@
For customer assistance from the Department of Finance, property owners can call the Ombudsperson=s Office at 1(718) 694-0424.  Seniors can call 1(718) 694-8260.  Concerns about unpaid water and sewer charges can be directed to the Department of Environmental Protection at 1 (718) 595-7000.  Staff in the office of Councilman Albert Vann is also available to handle questions.  Call 1 (718) 919-0740.

AJAZZ AND COFFEE, PLEASE!@
Bernice Elizabeth Green
Lillithe Meyers and Tiecha Merritt should add jazz messenger to their respective, impressive resumes.
 Ms. Meyers and Ms. Merritt are the co-owners of AJazz@, a spot located on the far north end of Bedford-Stuyvesant, at 375 Kosciusko St. and  Marcus Garvey Blvd.   The mother-daughter business partners are seen as pioneers for their success in bringing the small, intimate club experience and accoutrements B including the mellow music, brick walls, lowlights, and café ambienceB to the reviving area. 
Lillithe is an expert in training teachers and social workers in child welfare issues, and a consultant in Defensible Space planning.  She is employed by SUNY-Buffalo.  Her daughter, Tiecha, who grew up amongst the Agifted child@ ranks, co-owns with Baba Aziz, the African clothing boutique and drum repair shop at 150 Tompkins Avenue near Hart Street.  Tiecha once ran an intergenerational drama workshop and currently directs the after school and night center in Fort Greene=s Ingersol houses.
AMother used to have all different types of records,@ says Tiecha, who originated the idea for bringing jazz to Marcus Garvey. AI grew up on 45=s, Billie Holiday and the Mickey Mouse Club theme.@
De=Nal Maineculf-Brown and some 30 others dropped by last month during the Jazz Spot=s ALady Got Chops@ festival to hear singer-keyboardist Della Griffin rock on such classics as ANight & Day,@ AYesterdays,@ AHow Deep is the Ocean,@ and AThis Bitter Earth.@ Ms. Griffin was accompanied by young bassist Brianna Ford.  It was a perfect set and a pleasant surprise, considering the two musicians had never played together before.
Some other world-class artists who will perform at Jazz Spot  in April include: Doc Russell Trio, opening on April 4; William Spaulding, Kim Clarke,  Bertha Hope, Satchmo Mannan, Antoinette Perry, Rob Sheps, and many more. 
  The Jazz Spot is part of the 2003 Central Brooklyn Jazz Consortium & 24/7 Jazz Festivals which is celebrating April National Jazz Month and is dedicated to jazz great Torrie McCartney.  Jitu Weusi of the consortium said, AThese two generations of women, Lillithe and Tiecha, have come together to make good, beautiful music for this community. With the great sounds coming out of this cozy place, Jazz Spot soon will be the >spot= heard =round the boroughs and beyond.@  Lillithe and Tiecha=s hot and tasty alcohol-free menu includes the tasty Billie Holiday coffee special, veggie patties, quiche, seafood patties and other light, healthy fare. AJazz and Coffee, please@ is out motto, says Lillithe.  The Jazz Spot hours: Thursdays at 8p, Fri/Sat 9p-1a, and Sun. 3p-7.  For ticket/entrance fee info, schedules and Monday night jam lineups, call: 718-453-7825.

On CCTV-9 (China Central Television), China=s major English news channel, the spin on what they call AThe War on Iraq@ is quite different. Indeed, if you believe Chinese news on this, the same fourth day of the same campaign, the Ainvaders@ may have bitten off more than they can chew. Juxtaposed with images of Iraqi soldiers picking through pieces of downed American jets, interviews with Chinese military  strategists are giving their own spin on why Iraq will be a far tougher nut to crack than Western viewers might think.
Zhang Tianping, a top Chinese military analyst, was somewhat dismissive of the American AShock and Awe@ strategy. AThe American ground warfare  is still being fought like the Second World War.@ He said ABut Iraq, having lost all of its advanced weaponry after the first Gulf War, has become quite adept at guerrilla tactics. This will allow Iraq to harass and stall U.S. troops while worldwide antiwar sentiment grows.@ The Chinese have a high regard for the use of guerrilla tactics against a better-equipped force – after all, without such victories the People=s  Republic of China might have been snuffed in the cradle.
Another military analyst, Zhang Zhaoxhong, was probably a bit too forthcoming to make American prime time about what he believes are the true objectives of Athe belligerent states.@ ATheir driving force is to control the oil of Iraq.@ When questioned about the American president=s personal motives in light of his varied perceived flip-flops on the matter, Mr. Zhang said that AOnly Mr. Bush himself knows what his objectives in this war are.@
While maintaining a certain professional neutrality, some Chinese broadcasters have let slip their own opinions on the war. One correspondent, in what might have been a telling slip, invented a new word to introduce what western journalists are calling simply a military action.
AThe US-led attacktion is entering it=s fourth day,@ she said. And unlike American broadcasts, reported from Aembedded@ journalists, Chinese broadcasts are anything but sanitized. While viewers in America  may have missed the video showing a three year old boy swaddled in dirty bandages crying in an Iraqi hospital after being caught in an American missile attack, tens of millions of CCTV International News viewers didn=t. It was replayed several times over an hour broadcast, along with the cries of the boy=s father screaming AAmerica, where is your humanity?@
As I write this, CCTV-1 (China=s main channel, broadcasting in Mandarin) is showing live feed from the outskirts of Baghdad of the Iraqi hunt for the downed U.S. pilots. If the American media is trying to get the world to buy into the image of Iraq as a helpless, near-decapitated nation, the Chinese media is going in the opposite direction, broadcasting press conference being given by Iraqi officials. A clearly relaxed Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf proved that rumors of the regime=s demise had been exaggerated by cheerfully stating in English for assembled media that AIt is the aggressors who are shocked and awed B to use their own language, which I would rather not.@
Chinese television is also giving major coverage to worldwide anti-war protests, including this tidbit not seen on CNN.com about AA demonstration outside of CNN headquarters in Atlanta, protesting the cable networks pro-war bias in their coverage of the war.@ The effects of these demonstrations on troop morale are likewise being discussed.
Tao Wenzhao, an International Affairs Expert, had this to say about what caused an American soldier to hurl three grenades into an officers tent in Kuwait. AClearly, with all of the protests going on around his own country, he must have begun doubting his role in the war, and his nerve must have cracked.@
And it isn=t just a government-approved spin on the story being consumed throughout China. Viewers and readers in China are enjoying access to the once-forbidden fruit of Western media. CNN broadcasts are being translated on state channels, and recently blocked Web sites like CNN.com and www.nytimes.com are now open for anyone with an Internet connection.
 For now, the government seems to be keeping all the pipes open, as if the powers that be know instinctively that any way its spun, pictures of American bombs falling and American soldiers marching in foreign lands drive home the image of America as an imperialistic aggressor in ways that Chairman Mao could only have dreamed of.
Find this article and more at: www.Antiwar.com.
China News