Condoleeza Rice Links ’63 Bombing With Today’s Terrorism
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, who was growing up in Birmingham, Ala., during the 1963 church bombing that killed four black girls, told African American columnists this week that she sees a connection between that “home-grown terrorism” and the kind fought today by the Bush administration.
In a White House session Wednesday with the William Monroe Trotter Group, Ron Thomas of the San Francisco Examiner asked Rice whether “your experience with race-based terrorism in Birmingham when you were a child has…in any way increased your fuel or resolve to combat terrorism in your position now.”
“It’s a very good question,” Rice replied. “And for a long time, several months after September 11th, I didn’t think much about it. “. . . What you recognize, if you’ve been through home-grown terrorism, which is really what that was in Birmingham, is that you recognize there isn’t any cause that can be served by it; no cause, good, bad, indifferent can be served by terrorism. Because what it’s meant to do is to end the conversation. It’s meant to end the search for a solution. It’s meant to terrorize and frighten people and bludgeon them into submission — that’s what terrorism is meant to do. And you can’t have a political solution if one side is trying to bludgeon the other into submission.”
Rice also responded to a question from Dave Person of the Huntsville (Ala.) Times on the effect the 16th Street bombing had on her. She was 8 years old then:
“We had all grown up in a . . . very protected little community,” she said. “You know, our parents made sure that we had all the benefits that they could possibly bring to us, and yet you know that there was this other world out there, but it — the white world of Birmingham — but it didn’t cross with you that much,” she said.
“And then, all of a sudden, in ’63, Birmingham turned violent and there were bombings in neighborhoods. And friends like Arthur Shore‘s house were bombed. And there were duds that went off in our community, and there were White night riders. And it all culminated then on that Sunday when the bomb went off at 16th Street Baptist Church. And I think for somebody my age, it was just a very hard shot as to how hateful people could be. How hateful could you be to plant a bomb in the basement of a church near a Sunday school class? And how could people hate you that much?
“And I think for all of — I can’t imagine what it was like to be a parent, to try to soothe that and to say it isn’t a reflection on you, and you really will be safe and all of those things. But I think it was a face of hatred that has to have a kind of searing impact on children.
“I knew Denise McNair well, and her father was the photographer in the community, so he took everybody’s birthday pictures and wedding pictures and all of that. And so I knew Denise. Cynthia Wesley was also from the community; she was older and I didn’t know her as well. And, in fact, Addie Mae Collins was in my uncle’s home room in school. And I remember the adults just crying about it, and just not being able quite to understand it either.
“But, you know, in some ways, history takes funny turns, and you have a sense that it shocked good people, if you will, who were perhaps silent, into a recognition that this was intolerable in the long run.
“And I’ve been back to the Birmingham Civil Rights Museum on a couple of occasions and seen the stained glass window that’s been put into the church. And Birmingham has healed in a lot of ways. I think it probably started its healing when people began to realize that this just — you couldn’t tolerate this level of hate.”
Rice also discussed her thoughts on putting race into perspective, at the end of today’s posting.
Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., spoke earlier at the Trotter Group retreat, downplaying the election’s impact. Derrick Jackson of the Boston Globe commented.
“Latino USA” Broadcasts 500th Episode
University of Texas-based “Latino USA,” a nationally syndicated radio journal, overcame early obstacles to win numerous awards for its coverage of news and culture from a Latino perspective, reports the Austin American-Statesman.
“What started roughly 10 years ago as a project by UT’s Center for Mexican American Studies is now heard on 239 stations by more than 350,000 people each week,” on National Public Radio.
“The Latino voice was missing from the national media, especially on public radio,” says senior producer Alex Avila. “And 10 years ago, the smart people who listened to things like NPR were very ignorant of the Latin American reality.”
Denny McAuliffe Aims to Inspire Native Journalists
When Denny McAuliffe looked at reservations and tribal colleges, he saw too few with their own newspapers. When he looked at American newspapers, he saw too few with any American Indians, the Associated Press reports.
McAuliffe, the University of Montana’s Indian journalist in residence, drew a connection between the problems and offered a common solution: reznet, an online Indian newspaper he founded at the university’s journalism school in Missoula.
McAuliffe hopes reznet, which brings Indian news to tribal colleges, also inspires young Indians to consider careers in journalism.
Many students from Indian country “don’t think of journalism as a career,” because newspapers have little presence on so many reservations, said McAuliffe, a former night foreign desk editor for the Washington Post. “Newspapers may play no role in their lives.”
Joe Williams Named Boston Globe’s “Living” Editor
Joseph P. Williams Jr., the Globe’s city editor, will join the Living/Arts department as Living editor, starting Nov. 25, the Globe reports.
Williams, who has worked at the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch and Miami Herald, came to the Globe in 1997 after a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University. At the Globe he first directed the police and courts reporting team; a year later he was appointed deputy city editor. He has been city editor since February 1999, supervising daily operations of the Metro newsroom.
Al Roker’s Weight Loss Generates Ratings, Cover
Al Roker‘s battle with his weight has pulled in hefty ratings for NBC’s “Dateline,” the New York Daily News reports, in addition to a People magazine cover.
The NBC newsmagazine, which devoted an hour to the “Today” weatherman’s stomach-reduction surgery and resulting weight loss, was seen by an estimated 14.8 million viewers, said Nielsen Media Research.
It was the most-watched Tuesday “Dateline” in more than a year and the most-watched program in the 10 p.m. slot.
Tortured Zimbabwe Journalist Dies
Mark Chavunduka, 37, a journalist who was tortured by Zimbabwe’s army for writing about an alleged coup plot, has died in Harare, the BBC reports. The cause of death was not made public but it was not thought to have been caused by the torture.
When Journal-isms asked CNN Africa correspondent Charlayne Hunter-Gault earlier this year for candidates for an international “Freedom of the Press award,” Chavunduka topped the list. He had been a 2000-2001 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.
Chavunduka and his colleague, Ray Choto, were both held captive by the army for several days in 1999 despite court orders for their release.
Chavunduka was editor of the Zimbabwe Standard newspaper, which published a story written by Choto, that sections of the army had plotted to oust President Robert Mugabe.
After his release, he received treatment for post traumatic stress disorder in both Britain and the United States.
He often complained of nightmares following the beatings and electric shocks he received during his detention by the military.
What Did Barry Bonds Really Say?
Decades from now, when baseball star Barry Bonds goes to his final reward, his obituary will probably include what is becoming one of his most famous quotes: “Back up or I’ll snap,” writes Don Wycliff, reader representative at the Chicago Tribune.
“Indeed, I suspect some wag will suggest carving it into Bonds’ tombstone, arguing that it perfectly captures the brittle, off-putting character of this stupendously gifted athlete.
“But does it?
“There is no question that Bonds uttered that warning to reporters who converged on his locker after the seventh game of the World Series, a game and a series which, by the way, his San Francisco Giants lost.
“The question is: What else did he utter at the time and does it make a difference in evaluating Bonds and his attitude and character?”
Georgia Paper Caters to Growing Hispanic Population
In southeast Georgia, where the Hispanic population is quickly growing, many immigrants can speak English put can’t read it, the Associated Press reports.
So a stereo shop owner decided to start a Spanish-language newspaper that has quickly grown in its first three months.
La Voz Hispana, which means “The Hispanic Voice,” brings news from Mexico and South America to migrant farm workers in several cities.
Now in its 13th week, circulation has grown from 1,000 readers to 3,000, said Alex Shokoh-Alai, who started the paper and sells advertising for it. The paper has only a few local stories.
Condoleezza Rice on Putting Race in Perspective
At the Trotter Group meeting with national security adviser Condoleeaza Rice, Boston Globe columnist Derrick Jackson asked: “In one profile you said, ‘I decided I’d rather be ignored than patronized.’ Given that, is the Democratic Party today patronizing women, minorities and the poor?”
She replied, to laughter: “Well, let me describe instead why I like where I am, all right? The fact of the matter is, race matters in America. It has, it always has. Maybe there will be a day when it doesn’t, but I suspect that it will for a long time to come. It matters in different ways today than it did in 1963 in Birmingham. But it still matters. That having been said, the real key is how does America now provide opportunity for all people, regardless of what race, recognizing that it matters, to be what they would like to be, and to fulfill themselves and to, therefore, contribute to this larger experiment called America.
“And it is not that I mind being associated with the group. I am African American and proud of it. I wouldn’t have it any other way. And it has shaped who I am and it will continue to shape who I am. I do not believe that it has limited who I am or what I can become. And that’s because I had parents who, while telling me that what it meant to be African American and exposing me to that, also allowed me to develop as an individual to be who I wanted to be.
“So they didn’t say to me, you know, it’s really weird for a black girl from Birmingham, Ala., to want to be a Soviet specialist. They didn’t say, all right, I understand that you love Motown — which I did and still do — or, I understand that you love ‘Gatemouth‘ Brown [and his band, Gate’s] Express or that you love Kool and the Gang, you also play Brahms. That’s fine. It was that expression of the individual and a willingness to put the educational opportunities before me that led to who I am.
“And sometimes when we say to our kids, you are a minority, we don’t say it in a way that says it is part of who you are, and race matters, and all these things — we talk about it as if it’s an impediment that cannot be overcome by hard work and access to education and all of those things. And I just think the messages are wrong when there is only focus on what group you happen to belong to, rather than the group is part of who you are, but also, who you are is who you are as an individual.”
“And I do think — we don’t talk about it very much, but, yes, do I think that it is a very good thing for the rest of the world that when Colin Powell and I walk in with the president of the United States, we are there as Secretary of State and national security adviser, because I think it says to people that there aren’t boundaries in which black Americans are not supposed to play. I think that’s an extremely important message to the rest of the world. I think it’s an extremely important message to our kids. And that’s why I talk so much about the individual. It’s not to deny the group, but I really think it’s important that we appeal to each individual’s worth and capability.”
