Binayak Sen

Binayak Sen is an Indian physician and human rights activist. After prolonged incarceration and legal proceedings, an Indian court has sentenced Sen to life imprisonment for sedition. The court made its decision under special security laws. Sen's lawyers plan to appeal the decision. You can read a brief report here in The New York Times; there is an older interview with Sen from Democracy Now! here. We rightly hear lots of outrage when this or that authoritarian regime seeks to silence dissent. It will be interesting to gauge the response to this decision in 'the world's largest democracy.'

Ernest Withers, Say It Ain't So!

Apparently there was more than met the eye with photographer Ernest Withers who was famous for his images of the U.S. civil rights movement. Now, it is always important to ask how the state 'recruits' people into the sort of roll described here. This report, if true, is a disappointment nonetheless.

Prominent Civil Rights-Era Photographer Was FBI Informant

And newly disclosed records show that one of the most prominent photographers of the civil rights era, Ernest Withers, was also a paid informant for the FBI. According to the Commercial Appeal of Memphis, Withers worked closely with the FBI to monitor civil rights activists during the 1960s. Withers is said to have provided photographs, background information and scheduling details to two agents in FBI’s Memphis spying office. Withers photographed Dr. Martin Luther King at several marches and was the only photographer to cover the entire trial of those accused in the murder of the black teenager Emmett Till. In January 2007, months before his death, Amy Goodman interviewed Ernest Withers at his studio in Memphis, Tennessee. He talked about one of his most famous pictures: a mass of striking sanitation workers holding signs reading "I am a man" at what would turn out to be the last march led by Dr. King.

Ernest Withers: "The last march of his, of Martin King, they were lined up there at [inaudible] and Hernando outside of Cleveland Temple Church, and they were there with all those ’I’m a Man’ signs. And I thought it was dramatic and historic in what it was, but I didn’t know it was ending up to be as popular. But it was the last march of Martin King."

Withers’s alleged involvement was revealed because the FBI forgot to redact his name in declassified records discussing his collaboration.

This from Democracy Now! via the inimitable Stan Banos.
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P.S.: Here is the report from The New York Times.

Unearthing History ~ Black American Slave Children

According to this story from AP these documents recently were discovered at an estate sale in Charlotte, North Carolina. At top is a bill of sale, dated January 1854, for a slave ("a certain negro") named "John." At bottom is a picture, thought to have been made by Matthew Brady, of two young boys and thought to be of that same John and another slave boy. A collector from NYC paid $50K for the pair of artifacts.

Sports & Politics ~ Los Suns

Steve Nash on Cinco de Mayo
(Photograph © Barry Gossage/Getty Images).

I have to say that this is a creative response to the nutters in the Arizona state government . . . screw the boycotts, talk back, demonstrate citizenship and solidarity rather than embracing your status as consumer. It is impressive that not only all the players on Los Suns supported the statement, but that their owner did too. (I will also note that their opponents in the playoff series ~ Los Spurs ~ did too.*) I would like to think that they'd have gone ahead even without league approval.
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* And for an inveterate loather of the The Lakers, it is telling that their coach opposed the statement. Figures!

Passings ~ Dorothy Height (1912-2010)

Dorothy Height on the platform at the Lincoln Memorial
at the March on Washington in 1963 (Photo: AP).

Dorothy Height, a key, if unheralded leader in the American movement for Civil Rights has died. You can find an obituary here in The New York Times.

The key observation from The Times report reads: "If Ms. Height was less well known than her contemporaries in either the civil rights or women’s movement, it was perhaps because she was doubly marginalized, pushed offstage by women’s groups because of her race and by black groups because of her sex. Throughout her career, she responded quietly but firmly, working with a characteristic mix of limitless energy and steely gentility to ally the two movements in the fight for social justice."

Height was hardly the only female civil rights activist to resist this dual exclusion - think of Ella Baker, for instance - and while the movement for civil rights was a crucial one, it is useful to recall its flaws even as we celebrate its accomplishments and keep an eye on its still unattained goals. The same, of course, is true of the women's movement.