For the Week of August 27-September 2

August 27

1963—African-American activist and intellectual giant W.E.B. DuBois dies in Accra, Ghana, at the age of 95. Born in Great Barrington, Mass., DuBois was one of the most dominant figures in the African-American struggle against racial oppression for nearly 40 years. He helped found the Niagara Movement (precursor to the NAACP) in 1906 and helped organize the first Pan African Conference in London.

W.E.B. DUBOIS

An educational product of Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn., he also taught at Atlanta University in Atlanta, Ga., and edited the NAACP’s Crisis magazine. DuBois was a major opponent of Booker T. Washington’s grand “compromise” with Whites and he argued frequently with Marcus Garvey’s Black separatist ideology. However, the “attacker of injustice and defender of freedom” would eventually become frustrated with the slow, legalistic tactics of the NAACP and the tenacity of American racism. He turned to socialism and late in life went into self-imposed exile in the West African nation of Ghana. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would write of him: “History cannot ignore W.E.B. Dubois because history has to reflect the truth and Dr. DuBois was a tireless explorer of the truth.”

(NNPA)—Authorities in Ohio are investigating the appearance of racist flyers left around a neighborhood in the wake of a murder-suicide of a local interracial teen couple.
According to reports, the flyers left in Deerfield Township, Ohio, were addressed to White parents, their headline reading “Don’t Let Your Daughters Date Blacks, It Might Be a Matter of Life and Death.”

“Some bigot came in the middle of the night, skulking in the middle of the night, putting this on people’s cars,” resident Greg Stanforth told Cincinnati NBC affiliate WLWT.

AMANDA BORSOS and TROY PENN

(NNPA)—Mayor Michael Nutter of Philadelphia may be the first Black politician to address “flash mob” attacks that involve majority Black teens rummaging stores and attacking other races.

“You have damaged your own race,” Nutter said to a group of Black teens, the Washington Times reported. “Take those God-darn hoodies down, especially in the summer. Pull your pants up and buy a belt ‘cause no one wants to see your underwear or the crack of your butt.”

FLASH MOB INCIDENT—In this March 20, 2010 file photo, young people run down South Street in Philadelphia during a flash mob incident that involved thousands and closed the street to traffic from Front Street to Broad. Thanks to websites like Twitter and Facebook, more and more so-called flash mobs are materializing across the globe, leaving police scrambling to keep tabs on the spontaneous assemblies. (AP Photo/The Philadelphia Inquirer, Laurence Kesterson)

The series of flash mob attacks in Philadelphia involve a group of teens who spontaneously assault random people in the tourist locations.

Nutter then continued: “If you walk into somebody’s office with your hair uncombed and a pick in the back, and your shoes untied, and your pants half down, tattoos up and down your arms and on your neck, and you wonder why somebody won’t hire you? They don’t hire you ‘cause you look like you’re crazy.”

(NNPA)—During her last round of picks for the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (“Debt Supercommittee”), intended to help solve the nation’s debt crisis, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi appointed Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., and Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif., adding diversity to the important panel. The Demo­crats are also represented by the only woman on the committee, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.

The 12 member bipartisan panel will have until November to decide how the country should save $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years, Bloomberg Businessweek reported.