PEP, April 2007: Reflections on Black History

By DIANE S. WILLIAMS

February was a time of continuing reflection at DC 37 as the Black History Month Committee presented educational and entertaining programs and closed its 26th annual celebration Feb. 28 with a grand Finale Night. The month’s events honored the rich heritage of a stolen people who went from pyramids to plantation enslavement and — in the 21st century — growing prosperity.

“We have contributed to every society in the world that has embraced us,” said AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer Bill Lucy, guest speaker at the finale. “Whether the boat landed in the Caribbean, America, or Brazil, no weak slaves got off those boats — only the strongest survived.”

“Those slaves brought their knowledge of science, art and music. They took this desolate land, built the South and dug the Panama Canal,” Lucy said. “They were not visitors, they were chattel and free labor. They had to fight for the right to fight in war! So never forget, this is our land because we have made our contributions through our labor.”

Lucy said history makers like Lillian Roberts,Veronica Montgomery-Costa, Charlie Hughes, and the late James Butler, “led a fight for a level playing field and for dignity. They brought us to where we are today and we can celebrate our success.”

“We are here to nurture and inspire, to protect and represent,” said Veronica Montgomery-Costa, president of DC 37 and of Local 372. “We have progressed, but we still have a long way to go.”

African Americans were freed in 1863 only to face the rise of Jim Crow apartheid which the civil rights movement dismantled a century later. DC 37 celebrated that legacy with music, dance, film and guest speakers who informed, entertained and inspired.

Local 1407 kicked off the second half of the month by presenting city Comptroller William Thompson as guest speaker and showing “At the River I Stand,” the film about Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination while he was in Memphis in 1968 aiding the AFSCME sanitation workers’ strike.

The committee’s “Bullets, Justice and Reform” seminar Feb. 14 examined police relations with minority communities with attorneys Esmeralda Simmons and Norman Siegel, City Council member John Liu, author Jill Nelson, filmmaker Tami Gold and DC 37 members.

Singer Alice Tan Ridley was a hit at Local 2627’s celebration Feb. 15, where DC 37 Associate Director Oliver Gray talked poignantly about his journey to Mississippi during “Freedom Summer” in 1964.

Armed state troopers lined the airport in Jackson. Gray said, “The ‘man’ warned me I’d better ‘stay in my place.’ They told me I was entering the mouth of the devil where the Klan sometimes burns people’s places.”

Gospel and an inspirational message from keynoter Dr. Suzan Johnson-Cook, the only female NYPD chaplain, reminded Local 372, “There is no progress without struggle. Things worth fighting for take time and test our faith.”

Local 957’s presentation of CeCe’s Supper Club brought a theatrical blend of music and the past to the union hall Feb. 20. Dr. Edward R. Culvert told of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and state Sen. Eric Adams reflected on the black family at Local 1549’s event. “We needto take our children and our community back to the simple past. What we had then was love,”Adams said. “We must steal the luxury of excuses from our children and demand excellence from them.”

Historian Dr. Sam Anderson told DC 37 retirees 2007 marks the 400th anniversary of Jamestown, Va., the birthplace of slavery in North America, and the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. For the most part the United States remains in a state of denial about its legacy of racism, said Anderson. While the Virginia House of Delegates voted unanimously March 2 to express their “profound regret for slavery,” Republican Delegate Frank Hargrove Sr. objected to the resolution, saying, “Black citizens should get over it.”

Committee Chair Kevin Smith, who is president of Local 1655, reminded the 500 DC 37 members at Finale Night that ordinary people doing extraordinary things brings about change. “We ought to be living our history everyday,” Smith said. “We need to think about what our response would be if we stood before the ancestors, Dr. King, or Harriet Tubman, and they asked, ‘What have you done with your freedom?’ ”