skip to main |
skip to sidebar
A surveillance video shot almost a year ago apparently shows Houston police officers relentlessly beating, kicking and stomping on a teen burglary suspect was just released to the public
The footage was released by Quanell X, a Houston activist, on Wednesday. It was shown on ABC's Houston station, KTRK-TV. The video shows Chad Holley, who was 15 years old at the time, running along a metal fence away from police officers when a police car speeds towards him and cuts him off. The car slams into Holley. Holley's body goes flying across the car onto the ground. His body rolls and he ends up on his stomach. He clamps his hands over his head. Policemen run up to him and begin attacking him.
The boy remains limp on the grass while police officers kick him from all sides. Only his feet move, apparently in reaction to the officers' kicks. One police officer then begins stomping on Holley's feet, and some officers kneel down on the ground beside him and start punching him. After being beaten for about two minutes by several police officers, Holley is handcuffed, and then picked up and thrown against the back of the police car.
Holley was a sophomore at Elsick High School in Houston at the time.
And that is our quick black history lesson. Nothing much has changed.
-AL
Ernest Withers, a revered civil rights photographer who captured iconic images of Martin Luther King Jr. on the night King was shot in Memphis, actually played a different role the day before: FBI informant.
The Commercial Appeal, a newspaper in Memphis, just completed a two-year investigation that reveals how Withers provided the FBI with details about where King was staying and information on his meeting with black militants on April 3, 1968 — the day before the assassination.
Withers' spying, however, extends far beyond the slain civil rights leader.
The Commercial Appeal found FBI reports indicating that Withers collaborated for years with FBI agents monitoring the civil rights movement. Those FBI reports, the paper's Marc Perrusquia writes, "reveal a covert, previously unknown side of the beloved photographer. Click here for the rest of the article.
-AL
The only man to admit shooting Malcolm X has been freed on parole, 45 years after he helped assassinate the civil rights leader in New York City. State Department of Correctional Services spokeswoman Linda Foglia says Thomas Hagan was freed Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Wow I wonder what the world would be like if Malcolm was still here?
-AL
Dorothy Height, a leading civil rights pioneer of the 1960s, died Tuesday at age 98, Howard University Hospital confirmed.
Height died at 3:41 a.m., said hospital spokesman Ron Harris. No cause of death was given.
Height, who had been chair and president emerita of the National Council of Negro Women, worked in the 1960s alongside civil rights pioneers, including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., future U.S. Rep. John Lewis and A. Philip Randolph. She was on the platform when King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech at the 1963 March on Washington.
President Obama called her a hero, saying she "served as the only woman at the highest level of the civil rights movement -- witnessing every march and milestone along the way.
I can say I didn't know much about her but I will open my history books to find out.
-AL
Three Los Angeles elementary school teachers accused of giving children portraits of O.J. Simpson, Dennis Rodman and RuPaul to carry in a Black History Month parade have been removed from their classrooms, a school district spokeswoman said Wednesday.
Children from other classes at the school displayed photos of more appropriate black role models, such as Nelson Mandela, Harriet Tubman and President Barack Obama, Los Angeles Unified School District spokeswoman Gayle Pollard-Terry said.
The incident occurred Friday at Wadsworth Avenue Elementary School in South Los Angeles, where the student body is more than 90 percent Latino.
District Superintendent Ramon Cortines placed the teachers — all white men who teach first, second and fourth grades — on administrative leave on Tuesday while an investigation is conducted, Pollard-Terry said.
If your gonna make a mockery of Black history month you sure did pick the right people.
via: abcnews
-AL
