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Permalink Reply by George Boston Rhynes on October 28, 2009 at 6:54pm

Dr. Patrick George, Open Letter Responds to Valdosta Daily Times Editorial-----against the SCLC, NAACP, Brothers United, ICU, and others.....

October 14, 2009

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE VALDOSTA DAILY TIMES

Dear Valdosta Daily Times Editorial Staff,

I am writing in response to your recent editorial about the Lowndes/Valdosta SCLC and whether its actions are encouraging racial segregation in Valdosta and Lowndes County. Your editorial is included at the bottom of this letter.

Although I have appreciated the recent work of the VDT, I am sad to say that your comments are misguided and inaccurate, both in terms of Dr. King’s work in the SCLC and our collective racial history. They also deny the fact that this community does not have to “return to segregation.” It is already highly segregated. That reality is evident in terms of where people live in Valdosta/Lowndes County, where they worship, where their kids go to school, what classes kids attend when they do go to school together, who controls area schools, who will graduate, and finally, who will go to college and who will go to jail. It is also true in terms of the income levels of different racial groups in the area and who has wealth here. It is true in terms of who runs any significant institution or organization that exercises power in this community, including the Valdosta Daily Times. If you would like current demographic data on this reality I will be glad to provide it to you. So we don’t need to return to anything. We are already there, Although changes have certainly occurred, we remain a highly racially segregated community. I encourage us all to stop pretending that we are not.

Turning to your other comments, first, let’s be clear, integration and desegregation are two very different things and your editorial fails to make that distinction. It is also a mistake many white people make. “Integration” was not the goal of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. because he knew it meant Black Americans would no longer control how their children were “educated” and who would be in charge of educating them. Again, integration was not the goal of Dr. King or the justice movements of the 50’s and 60’s. What people sought was “desegregation.” Desegregation efforts were about equal access, equal resources, equal power, and equal control. What instead happened, and it happened here, was “integration.” Consequently, Black, segregated schools were closed and Black children were shipped to schools that did not want them and who had no real ties to their segregated communities. Furthermore, skilled and successful Black administrators and educators from those schools were not hired in mass by these white systems. Put simply, after years of struggle whites conceded, they “gave in” to integration not equitable desegregation. As a result Black folks gave up significant control over how their children would be taught and who would teach them. They also relinquished control over whether or not their educational experience would instill in Black children a sense of worth, pride, value, and place in this nation. As a result, integration and educational “success” became a matter of “passing” in a white dominated and controlled system. That educational model remains in place today.

What’s more, and contrary to your romanticized account of our racial history, we need to be clear that Black and White people did not lovingly sit down together in the 50’s and 60’s to earnestly create school systems that would serve all children equally. White people did not want that or allow that to happen. What whites instead conceded to was again “integration,” which is simply another word for “assimilation.” In other words, white America said, “O.k., you’ve complained long enough, we’ll let ‘you’ come to school with ‘our’ children. We don’t really want to but we will. Now be like ‘us.’ Learn ‘our’ history, do it our way, and we will ‘tolerate’ you, ……as long as we remain in charge.” With this historical process in mind, is it any wonder our school systems are failing all across this nation?

Let’s also be clear that “integration” in Valdosta/Lowndes County was not embraced and it involved a multi-year struggle. It also was certainly not enthusiastically “heralded” as a way to “level the playing field of education” by white people here. The opposite actually occurred. It was resisted locally and had to be federally imposed here in1968-1970, a full 14-16 years after Brown versus Board of Education declared segregated schools unconstitutional. I encourage you to revisit the archived pages of the Valdosta Daily Times if you doubt what I say. In fact, not only did Valdosta and Lowndes schools drag their feet when it came to complying with federal law, many white citizens here joined forces and created the Valwood School in protest. Lowndes County schools were not only sued by the federal Department of Health Education and Welfare, they had to lose $350,000 in federal funds (Fall of 1968) before they fully complied with federal desegregation law. With that history in mind, it’s a bit ironic that today we have students attending schools and watching football games in stadiums named after people (e.g. J.L. Newbern and Sonny Martin) who weren’t real excited about Black children attending school with white children. I don’t know about you but it may be time to change the name of that stadium and a few schools?

As for whether the local chapter of the SCLC has “distorted” Dr. King’s dream and objectives, I encourage you to do more study on Dr. King’s life, philosophy, and movement strategies. If you do, you will find that he knew there could be no real racial reconciliation and racial harmony without equal control and power. He knew that no real relationship could ever occur when there is a gross imbalance of power between individuals or groups. He knew there could be no true “beloved community” if one group felt the need to control another. He knew we could not “get along” with one another without real justice and equity.

Allow me to offer one more comment on our history and people’s contemporary references to Dr. King. I find it curious when people now evoke and use the name of Dr. King, or reference his “dream,” to criticize current day social change efforts like the Lowndes/Valdosta SCLC. This tactic suggests that Dr. King was appreciated and listened to by white people when he was alive. It suggests that he was not a pain in their side. This was not the case. Though some courageous white folk did walk along side Dr. King, most despised him, many called him a “communist” (sound familiar?), and many even celebrated the day his life was ended. So let’s not forget that when he and others were working to advance the cause of racial justice in this nation they were hated, criticized, judged, and dismissed as “trouble makers” and “outside agitators.” It is only now, now that he is physically gone that people love him and romanticize his memory. It is only now that people inaccurately reference him as the model all should use for social change.

In closing, as for the shame you think some of us should feel for wanting a change in our failing school system, please know I don’t feel any. However, I am sad that drastic measures sometimes have to occur before anything gets the attention it needs.

At the same time I do feel shame and embarrassment. I feel ashamed that in 2009 we still have so far to go. I feel ashamed that the leadership of the only newspaper here clearly doesn’t know their civil rights history or their local racial history yet they think they should speak to both? I feel shame that for decades the Valdosta Daily Times effectively censored and/or failed to report on the ongoing racial inequalities that plague this community, particularly as they related to our local schools, residential patterns, jails, and businesses. In fact, many of your advertisers have been the driving force behind the racial segregation we see today? I feel shame that for decades many of the people I love in this community have sat aside and been silent as injustice has unfolded. I feel ashamed that we are a community that consistently finds unlimited time and resources for athletics and but our committed educators go without the resources and supplies necessary to educate our children. I feel ashamed that we can somehow fire a football coach because they lose a few games but we have educational leaders with extensive failing records, over multiple years, and it’s unreasonable to ask for their resignation? I feel shame that when people and groups work to bring about Dr. King’s Dream of real racial reconciliation and real racial justice they are criticized for “going about the wrong way” by people and organizations that typically ignore these same problems. Such criticism, without honesty, action or alternatives, simply serves to maintain the status quo. Or as Dr. King put it, “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.” Finally, I am ashamed that over the course of the next 16 years best estimates show that 10,000 Black students will not graduate from Valdosta City Schools and many of us don’t seem to care.

So please know, I do feel shame, not for the reasons you think I should, but I do. With my shame in mind, I invite you, the editorial staff of the Valdosta Daily Times, to do more to make others aware of our local history and the current, ongoing challenges our community faces. Please know that you have my full support and assistance in that effort. It is time we as a community dialog, make others aware of what is unfolding here, and collectively work for a better, more just future.

My thoughts and prayers are with you all.
Mark Patrick George PhD


P.S. In the spirit of love and with all due respect, I offer a few words from Dr. King.
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people. Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals. The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be... The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.

I submit that an individual who breaks the law that conscience tells him is unjust and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the very highest respect for law.

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

I want to be the white man's brother, not his brother-in-law.
and finally……

If physical death is the price that I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive.




October 12, 2009

TO: Editors, Internet, and beyond

The Valdosta Daily Times published an excellent article covering the Valdosta City School of Board Meeting on October 12, 2009, and included the following quote from my address: “George Rhynes said that before the meeting Cason agreed to have the meeting aired live on a local radio station and asked the audience to thank him. The applause was brief.”

This was not the case. There was a long applause from the audience, and it was exceptionally respectful as the entire event. However, below is my actual prepared address for all to see and review. G.B.R.

My Address Before
The Valdosta City School Board of Education:

I am George Boston Rhynes, a Retired Military Veteran of twenty-years. I too am asking for the resignation of Superintendent Bill Cason and this is a serious matter. To the Valdosta City School Board, and NOT to Superintendent Cason. There have been forty-three (43) White Male Presidents that preceded President Barack Obama. There have been eight (8) Valdosta City School Superintendents and to my knowledge NOT one of them denied the other forty-three (43) White Male Presidents to address the students in our school system. No, not one of them.

Moreover it is strange that several local radio stations use the word racists and refers to our president as a clown. Even more sickening is that our Superintendent Bill Cason, Mayor John Fretti, and other elected officials see nothing wrong with making this their favorite place to address citizens on talk radio. This offends me as a retired military veteran, and I was almost killed in an airplane in Guam. This hurts!

President Obama is the Executive Commander-In-Chief of our armed forces, and many of these members are now facing death on a daily basis in Iraq, Afghanistan and on other foreign battlefields the world over. Some have died for this country. But their children here in the Valdosta City School System could not hear the president that sent their parents into harms way. How Sad?

This is the home of Moody Air Force Base and these same parents place their life on the line. These are their children----attending our school system. Hello somebody! But they were denied the right to listen to their president and you cannot tell me. That this does not hurt those children who are old enough to understand the danger that their mothers and fathers have been placed in by our Executive Commander-In-Chief. I mean this is unbelievable in 2009. It is totally unbelievable.

In closing. The reasons given in the Times by the superintendent for not allowing the president speech to be heard mystified me. That the speech interfered with or did not comply with Georgia Performance Standards or something along those lines. But like a previous speaker said, teachers are afraid to speak out about the concerns of our children. So they get behind a desk and say. “Brother Rhynes, Rev. Rose, Mark Georgia here is what goes on in our school. We don’t know. We are not in the school system. Even White teachers come and tell me, and I am a Black man, as black as they come.

The teachers informed me that last year. They “sat for two hours watching a play put together by Valdosta State University Drama Department. They did fundraiser drives, band concerts, boy scouts recruitment, book fair, pep rallies, student duck walk, school pictures, steep testing and it goes on and on….” So how could the president speech waste time, but not this other junk they complained?

Now in conclusion, please listen, please listen.

Not even during America’s brutal days of the Black experience of slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, the lynching crusades, denying Black African American Citizens the right to vote, use a restroom on the highways, eat in a restaurant, called 3/5 of a human being and worse

Yet! {I then pointed to an extremely large 2009 Presidential Calendar (“39 X 27) with all (44) American President Pictures displayed with Barack Obama in the Center}. History records that Black African Americans NEVER disrespected the other forty-three White Male Presidents as is NOW being done to our 44th President of the United States. Then there was an extremely loud applause from the audience.

No! Blacks never criticized these other 43 White Male Presidents! We never did it. Yet our ancestors were brought to these shores as slaves, considered beasts of the field---but we respected the Office of The President of the United States of America. {Loud applause}.

So, how do you think, we feel Mr. Superintendent. How do you think, we feel when you denied these children, attending our inter city school system? “The Superintendent should have been gone!“



GEORGE BOSTON RHYNES
Retired United States Armed Forces Veteran
A concerned citizen and brother of humanity.
Leigh Touchton Response to Valdosta Daily Times Opinion Column! (They got it wrong again)
October 15, 2009

TO: Valdosta Daily Times Publisher and Editorial Board!

I take issue with the Wednesday editorial from The Valdosta Daily Times. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and NAACP have always been multiracial organizations. Never have either organization insisted that Black children can only be taught by black teachers. Both organizations have consistently maintained that our society is pluralistic and diverse and that all races have equal rights and should have equal access to employment, housing, and education.

Never have SCLC or NAACP demanded an all Black school system, instead we have demanded that our teachers and administrators reflect the diversity that is representative of our society. It is obvious to us that Dr. King's dream has been denied insofar as employment and education int he Valdosta City School system.

In a school system with over 80 percent Black children, approximately 5 percent of their teachers and administrators are Black. Virtually all of the Valdosta aCity School teachers and administrators are White. The superintendent is White. The only two Black administrators have no authority over other people. The do not een merit a secretary while their White counterparts have secretaries.

White administrators have been hired whose qualifications are inferior to those of Black candidates. A White principal was hired whose application package did not meet the standards set in place by the VBOE while Black candidates were held to those same standards. The VBOE consists of five White members and four Black members, with districts drawn in such a way to ensure a White majority even when the city population is predominantly Black.

The longest serving board member is Black but has been repeatedly passed over for consideration as chairman. In a school system that is approximately 80 percent Black, nearly 95 percent of the students sent to ISS/OSS/alternative school are Black. The VBOE under the leadership of Dr. Bill Cason has obviously been practicing racial discrimination in employment and education.

The editorial Board at The Valdosta Daily Times looked at these numbers and concluded that the SCLC and NAACP were being racist for complaining about obvious racial discrimination. Such an opinion should never have passed editorial review at your newspaper.


LEIGH TOUCHTON
Valdosta Secretary
Valdosta-Lowndes County Branch NAACP

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