Beryl Dickinson-Dash

In 1949 Beryl Dickinson-Dash was a third year arts major attending McGill University in Montreal. At the time, only 150 of 8,500 McGill students were black. Most blacks were international students, Beryl Dickinson-Dash belonged to a handful of Canadian born black students, notedly a black Canadian woman who knew of no other black female Canadian students.

Beryl with her mother Maisy

Winter Carnival was a big deal at McGill, a mid-winter festival presided over by Carnival queen and four princesses. Keen beauties required 25 signatures from male students to secure nomination. Without her knowledge, the roommate of Beryl’s boyfriend (whom she later married) submitted a photo she’d given her boyfriend on his birthday along with 25 signatures from black male students. Beryl was shocked to find herself one of 26 official candidates.

Next came the ceremonial tea, an afternoon of polite white glove decorum and radio interviews. 26 were cut to 15, 15 became 5 finalists after a second round of interviews and struts. Beryl made the final cut. Each candidate was assigned a campaign manager.

Campaigns reached fever pitch, Beryl’s boyfriend, his brother, roommate and black students rallied behind her. Telegrams were sent to McGill posing as endorsement from prominent companies and organizations. Posters of Beryl appeared in every classroom. Voting booths with scrutineers proved seriousness of a fair vote. Results were leaked several days before official crowning. Beryl won by a landside, so much so final numbers wouldn’t be released as doing so might “injure the other girls”. Just past midnight, March 5, 1949 on her 21st birthday, Beryl Dickinson-Dash was crowned McGill Carnival Queen at the Montreal Forum in front of 8,000 spectators.

A newspaper clipping from March 5, 1949, announcing the pageant victory. (Submitted by Bradley Rapier)

Beryl doesn’t know why a predominantly white student body elected her Carnival queen. “Perhaps they were tired of how things were” she said. Regardless, she became a media sensation, front page news in papers and magazines. South of the border, Color magazine sponsored Dickinson-Dash (now Beryl Rapier) for a two week trip to West Virginia – her first negro college. A painting of Beryl standing in front of West Virginia state capital building by artist William Edouard Scott titled Spirit of Democracy was presented to McGill as a token of appreciation from people of America. I remind you – it was 1949!

Color magazine sponsored a two-week trip to West Virginia for Rapier. A press clipping from that trip features photographs of her at West Virginia State College. (Submitted by Bradley Rapier)

Sadly, few people in Canada know the story of Beryl Dickinson-Dash. But for stumbling upon her story last week courtesy CBC Radio Doc Project, I’d remain oblivious to a remarkable moment in Canadian history. More photos and history at the link below –

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/docproject/how-montrealer-beryl-dickinson-dash-made-history-as-mcgill-s-first-black-queen-of-carnival-1.5605944

What Would Obama Say?

July 2016, responding to police involved killings of Philando Castile in Minnesota, Alton Sterling in Louisiana, President Obama said –

“All of us as Americans should be troubled. These are not isolated incidents. They are systematic of a broader set of disparities that exist in our criminal justice system. When incidents like this occur, there’s a big chunk of our fellow citizenry that feels like because of the color of their skin, they are not being treated the same and that hurts. That should trouble all of us. This is not a black issue. This is not a Hispanic issue. It’s an American issue.”

This link illuminates Obama sentiment, acknowledges racial inequality, asserts imperative for law enforcement reform and collective social responsibility for racism in America –  https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/barack-obama-police-brutality_n_577ed1ede4b0c590f7e8af19?ri18n=true

Ponder Trump response to George Floyd’s “I can’t breathe” death in Minnesota. As a 4th day of protest intensifies across America, I find myself asking – What would Obama say? How would he diffuse tension? Would Obama blame “radical left Mayor Jacob Frey”? Tweet “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”, a direct quote from Alabama segregationist George Wallace, infamous four term Alabama Governor whose 1963 inauguration speech declared “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”? Would Obama quote Wallace, a man MLK called the most dangerous racist in America? Absolutely not!

Tonight I evoke fresh consideration of America’s plight – what would Obama say?

Donald J. Trump

✔ @realDonaldTrump

 · May 28, 2020

I can’t stand back & watch this happen to a great American City, Minneapolis. A total lack of leadership. Either the very weak Radical Left Mayor, Jacob Frey, get his act together and bring the City under control, or I will send in the National Guard & get the job done right…..

Donald J. Trump

✔ @realDonaldTrump

….These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you.

Archie Williams

In 1982 Archie Williams was charged and convicted of a crime he didn’t commit – rape/stabbing of a white woman. Despite three witnesses testifying he was home, no crime scene fingerprint match, he was sentenced to life without chance of parole. Case closed, white justice, black man in jail. Archie was sent to Louisiana’s Angola State Prison, arguably America’s most brutal institution. Archie wallowed in Angola for 37 years. But for the Innocence Project reopening his case, using modern DNA technology and fingerprint data bases proving the crime was committed by a serial rapist – Archie Williams would have toiled in Angola chain gangs to his dying breath.

Last night Archie Williams told his story on America’s Got Talent. Everyone needs to watch this clip, ask themselves how many more Archie Williams fill U.S. prisons for no reason other than they’re black men.

Watch The Dinosaurs Die Out

A ponder from Peter at https://ppazucha.wordpress.com/2020/01/24/its-not-quite-this-easy/  –

Racial Dots

Researchers at the University of Virginia used the 2016 census to create a racial dot map of the United States. Every dot represents a citizen colour coded by ethnicity. Blue dots for white people, green for black, orange for Hispanic, red for Asian, brown for Native Americans and other ethnic groups. Racial segregation is immediately apparent.

This is Chicago, below is Los Angeles, followed by Washington DC

Libby Anne at https://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2018/12/the-most-sobering-thing-about-the-racial-dot-map.html?fbclid=IwAR2jRC4rVJV4I7gbP79GJcneLnzaf3etHjfi0O-sRGSyzlOp2fChoteLBPc&utm_source=quora&utm_medium=referral started looking at the bigger picture, focusing on predominantly white rural areas. She noticed peculiar patterns of clustered green dots representing black citizens in rural white America.

She took to Google Maps which explained green dot anomaly as the Clinton Correctional Facility in Clinton County, New York. A maximum security prison housing almost 3,000 adult males.

Here’s another one –

The Houtzdale Corrections Facility in Pennsylvania, opened in 1996 to house 1,597 inmates, now stuffed with 2,800 predominantly black green dot prisoners.

Libby Anne didn’t start with a list of correctional facilities. She looked at anomalies in the racial dot map and used Google Maps to understand what she was seeing. The pattern repeated itself over and over again all across America. In the words of Libby Anne –

“When activists talk about the criminalization of the African American male and the need for prison reform, this is what they’re talking about – an imprisoned population so racially unbalanced that you can find the locations of correctional facilities on a map that shows only demography and nothing else”

America – Why Don’t You Get It?

America – take a three minute break from tedious blithering you call freedom and democracy to watch this video. Understand – congratulating yourselves because Negroes no longer sit at the back of the bus makes my skin crawl. America is a nation divided by race, in many ways an uglier nation than existed at the dawn of your civil rights movement. Calling yourselves a great nation, professing to be a world leader, last bastion of promise in a world of misguided subordinates – makes me cringe.

It’s business as usual until the Negroes get uppity. Nobody likes uppity Negroes. Least of all trigger happy police officers. Watch this clip, then ask yourselves why African Americans cry “black lives matter”.

This Is What Courage Looks Like

The courage of Tommie Smith and John Carlos exemplifies the civil rights movement. I’m not going to explain why – take 5 minutes out of your life to watch a snapshot in time, a moment in history when  Olympics’ sacred line was crossed, when damn the consequences ruled over “tow the line”. Smith and Carlos managed to define injustice without uttering a word.

I often write of protest; specifically my dismay at society’s screwed up priorities – our spoon fed cult of celebrity, gun toting, fundamentalist, reality television, someone else’s problem world. For those too young to understand the optimism, hope and determination of people who believed they could make a difference, I wish I could roll back time. When coffee shops and campuses burst under the weight of collective purpose rather than suffocating taps of MacBook keyboards in an otherwise silent Starbucks.

This ponder isn’t about “world peace”, I’m talking about back yards and dark alleys. Poverty, education, injustice taking place in front of our eyes – corporate greed, “stand your ground” nonsense, environmental atrocities, civil rights violations – reduced to a Tweet or cooked into poppycock by Fox News wingnuts.

This Olympic moment reminds me of a time when purpose out weighed lucrative endorsements, a time when we believed change was a matter of determination, a time when seizing  Olympic glory for peaceful exclamation of injustice was not only thinkable, it was possible.

MLK Day

Today, January 18, 2016 is Martin Luther King Day in America. A federal holiday falling on the Monday closest to January 15, the day MLK was born in 1929. MLK was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968. Establishing MLK Day wasn’t easy – a 1979 vote by the House of Representatives –  defeated by 5 votes. In 1980/81, six million signatures supporting MLK Day were collected on a petition to Congress – deemed “the largest petition in favor of an issue in U.S. history”. Republican Senators Jesse Helms and John Porter East from North Carolina led the opposition. Helms orchestrated a filibuster against the bill in 1983, producing a 300 page document alleging King associated with communists. New York Senator Patrick Moynihan threw it on the Senate floor, declaring it a “packet of filth” as he stomped on it. On November 2, 1983 president Ronald Reagan set aside initial opposition, signing a bill which passed in the House of Representatives by a vote of 338 to 90. The first official MLK Day was January 20, 1986. Not all States jumped on board, see link below.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr._Day

As a little girl I remember chanting “eeny meeny miney mo, catch a n****r by the toe”, it was the early sixties, I was 3 or 4 and hadn’t the slightest concept of what it meant. Somewhere along the way the “N” word became “Tiger” – I can’t recall an explanation, all I knew was we had to decide whose turn it was to go first, so tiger it was. There wasn’t a hateful bone in my body; my family – decent hard working people who never spoke ill of anyone. It wasn’t the deep south, this was rural Canada  in 1963 – parents passing along rhymes  they learned as children – nary a thought to meaning.

I believe that “Tiger” was Martin Luther King Jr. August 28, 1963, close to a quarter million people marched on Washington, D.C. Gathered at the Washington Monument, Martin Luther King delivered his iconic I Have a Dream speech. Powerful, articulate, compelling, pivotal – I can’t think of words that do justice to this moment in history.

MLK was a proud American; a man who asked only that people uphold the American constitution, the promise of emancipation, the pursuit of life, liberty and freedom for all citizens. He calls for tolerance, understanding, and peace. He asks that the black community forgive white America and proceed in a spirit of understanding. If you do nothing else today – take a few minutes –  click below, listen to the words of Martin Luther King Jr.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

Listen, then ask yourself what you’re afraid of. Ask yourself what good it does to sabotage every move the Obama administration makes. Ask yourself if a “tiger” is just as capable of settling things. Ask yourself why you’re filled with contempt, ask yourself to snap out of the past, think for yourselves. Stop being afraid. Ask yourself if America is worth fighting for.

Mindset

News of the Louisiana theatre shooting ignited a ponder. What makes the U.S. and Canada so different? I came across this excerpt from Michael Moore’s Bowling For Columbine – Moore speculates the biggest difference is fear. The clip is a little long at 10 minutes – try to spare as much time as you can, it’s worth pondering.

What Should People Do?

Pondering tonight’s Grand Jury decision in Ferguson Missouri presents a quandary of suffocating despair. What should people do?

The decision wasn’t surprising, nobody actually expected another outcome. For days leading up to the “official” statement by St. Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch, media speculated on reaction, documented preparations, and reported on school closures tomorrow. Everyone knew what was coming.

Clicking back and forth between CNN, MSNBC and Fox News served as a lesson in perspective. My decision to briefly tune into Fox caused jaw dropping rage of epic proportions. President Obama hadn’t spoken, still in developing moments of coverage -Fox focused reporting on “a carnival atmosphere”, “crowds of smiling and grinning people who cared nothing for the decision”. Fox reported “the crime situation in urban America made confrontation inevitable”. Wow, I’m speechless.

I’m not advocating looting or violence. I have no doubt opportunistic looting erupted. With that I have to ask why the decision was read at night – what possible purpose was served by waiting until darkness? Would the cover of darkness make for better news coverage? Would “urban” unrest validate white America?

I can’t define my dismay. What should people do?