Ellington

I read with interest the article on Chokwe Lumumba, "From Militancy to the Mainstream." Webster's definition of militancy is from the word militant: "engaged in warfare or combat; fighting; aggressively active; combative. In the strictest terms, the New Africans People's Organization; the Black Panthers, Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, CORE, NAACP, and various organizations under the banner of the Black Power movement, were all "fighting aggressively and active" for what? What was it that these groups were so "militant" about? Why are its leaders, even today called militant?

At the time these organizations were at their height, hundreds of black men, women and children had been lynched, burned, decapitated, castrated, had their property stolen and their freedom stolen. The book, "Worse Than Slavery, Parchman Prison and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice," by Oshinsky, outlines a life of horror in Mississippi that people, identified as "militants" were "fighting" to bring an end to and the perpetrators to justice.

Men and women like Councilman Lumumba, Fannie Lou Hammer, Medgar Evers, Stok Carmichael, Malcolm X, and many, many named and unnamed, had the courage to stand up and proclaim, without apology, the humanness of Black people in this state and to insist on justice. If it had not been for these courageous men and women of principle, with a commitment to human rights, consider what your condition might be today, your access to housing, jobs, education, health care. ... Councilman Lumumba is the person who you wonder, 40 years later, as you stand next to your home on the north side of Jackson; at your office in City Hall, seated at any restaurant or using a restroom downtown, in your classroom with "principal" on your door, or in line for a bank loan, is "too militant" to be mayor of Jackson, Mississippi?

As for the irrational fear of whites in this city that Councilman Lumumba is too militant, it is much more understandable. They are the perpetrators, the children, grandchildren and great grandchildren of the perpetrators of some of history's most horrific acts. ... The ones who stood silent in the face of the atrocities. They are the children who reaped and continue to reap the benefits of that horrific and enduring history of slave labor and death. They are the beneficiaries.

I would submit that they are not afraid of Chokwe Lumumba, the man. What they are afraid of really seeing, is the clarity of the image in the mirror.

A better title for the article might be "An Enduring Fighter for Human Rights--Chokwe Lumumba."

—MINA, via jfp.ms