The Muskogee - Okmulgee Oklahoma Eagle (Muskogee and Okmulgee, Okla.), Vol. 9, No. 43, Ed. 1 Thursday, January 12, 1984 Page: 1 of 4
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THURSDAY, JANUARY 12, 1984
USPS 52W94
PRICE 21c
VOLUME 9 NUMBER 43
MUSKOGEE-OKMULGEE OKLAHOMA EAGLE
FOLK PAGES
Black mayors honored
I
■
Rosa Parks: Legend in her own time
Black policeman promoted
or
Rosa Parks
Ray Nelson
demonstrations,
were
a
Sit-ins
Roosevelt Milton
. -
Association,
segregated
Martin Luther King, Jr. was bom
in Atlanta, Georgia January 15,
1929.
still small when her family moved
to a little farm at the edge of
Montgomery. She attended Mon-
tgomery Industrial School for Girls,
and later took high school courses
at Alabama State College.
A little after her 20th birthday,
she met and married Raymond
Parks, a barber. She grew up with
the pains that discrimination in-
flicted and the fear of a sudden
visit from the KKK. The fear was
so great she would lie awake many
nights anticipating the horror of a
Klan attack.
DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. was only 39 yean old when he was
assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. During his lifetime, he became a
world-famous leader in the civil rights movement for Black Americans.
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The Black Voice of Northeast Oklahoma
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Governor George Nigh
appoints Roosevelt Milton
student at Oklahoma University and
Rochelle at John Marshall High
School in Oklahoma City.
to sergeant on Tulsa PD
By B. J. McCrary
"We intend to make this luncheon
a permanent part of the Martin
Luther King Holiday Celebration,”
stated Rev. Belcher. “Our children
need to see role models who give
evidence to the fact that it is
possible for a child to be bom
black and still become a mayor,
senator, governor, or even
president. This is why it is im-
portant for us to come out and
honor these men and women who
have shown outstanding services to
their perspective communities," he
concluded.
The luncheon will be held in the
cafeteria of Mellin High School
and it will begir at 11 a.m. Tickets
may be purchased at the door.
The Tulsa Police Department has
* added a new sergeant to its line
up this year.
Officer Ray Nelson, promoted the
first of this year, became the only
black sergeant in the police
department.
Thirty-three-year-old Nelson, is a
ten year veteran of the department.
Rosa Parks didn't just get mad
that Thursday evening, December
1, 1955 when she refused to give up
her seat on the Montgomery city
bus. She had pinned up inside her
a lifetime of bitterness over the
way black people were treated in
Alabama.
Rosa was bom February 4, 1903
in Tuskegee, Alabama to Mr. and
Mrs. James McCauley. She was
1 j
in the first row o. seats tor blacks
(behind the white section). A white
man got on and there were no
empty seats. The bus driver came
over and told Rosa to get up. She
refused The driver called the
police and they carried her to jail.
Rosa was booked and released
some three hours later, when the
NAACP president posted her bail.
The black community, upon
hearing about this incident, became
angry and called a meeting that
night. She met with a group of
ministers and other black leaders
of the city. Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr. was one of the ministers.
“If the bus company won't treat us
courteously," one leader said, "we
won't spend our money with them.”
A one-day boycott was called for
the following Monday. Rosa Parks
was also convicted in court on
Monday and another community
meeting was held that night. Rosa
Parks told her story When it was
Dr. King's turn to speak, he said
“We are tired." "Yes Lord.” the
crowd answered. “We are tired of
being kicked around." he said.
“Yes Lord," they answered "We
are not going to be kicked around
any more," Dr. King said. “We've
walked one day, now we are going
to have a real protest. We are
going to keep on walking until the
bus company gives us fair treat-
ment."
The Oklahoma Conference ot
Black Mayors will be honored in
Tulsa on January 14 in celebration
of the Martin Luther King Holiday
events. The day long appreciation
will begin at 11 a.m. with an
"Appreciation Day laincheon” to be
held at McLain Senior High School,
4929 North Peoria. Rev. Wade
Watts, State President of NAACP
will be the guest speaker. The
McLain Senior High School band,
and the Booker T. Washington
Afro-American Gospel Choir will
provide the musical tribute to the
Black Mayors of Oklahoma, ac-
companied by the "Little Angels
Drill Team."
The Black Mayors luncheon is
being co-sponsored by I^angston
University’s Urban Center, The
Methodist Ministers Fellowship, The
Tulsa Tribune, American State
The national headquarters
housed in Atlanta, and
“The significance of King is
measured not so much by the
nature of his accomplishments or
the realization of his dreams as by
the power of the paradox he
created by being who he was and
doing what he did." - “Martin
Luther King, Jr.," C. Eric Lincoln,
1970.
Bank, Northside State Bank,
Mcl>ain Senior High School and
Handy Andy Janitorial Services.
The civil rights movement took a
new twist during the period 1955 to
1968, when Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr. spearheaded the idea of non-
violent resistance to racial
segregation.
Under Dr. King's influence, the
younger generation shifted the
emphasis from the slow process of
court suits to direct action.
The United States Congress
passed significant laws on unfair
public accommodation, voting and
employment practices and school
desegregation.
Nonviolent resistance
The first step toward nonviolent
resistance for human rights, were
taken by a black seamstress, Mrs.
Rosa Parks in 1955,
Her action and subsequent arrest
resulted in a 381-day boycott, led
by Dr. King, of Montgomery public
transportation system by blacks.
The protest of blacks in Mon-
x tgomery against inhuman treatment
was echoed by blacks throughout
the country.
In her own way she tried to
avoid the humiliation of Alabama's
segregation laws, by walking up
the steps in the department stores
rather than to ride the elevators
marked “colored." She refused to
drink from public fountains with
"for colored only" signs, and
wouldn’t ride the city bus unless
she was really tired
Rosa was an active member of
the Montgomery NAACP long
before her refusal to give up her
seat on the bus. She worked with
the NAACP teenagers and tried to
keep them abreast of the problems
in the city. She served as secretary
to Edgar D. Nixon, president of the
Montgomery Branch. She was also
active in the Montgomery Voters
League, spending countless hours
visiting homes teaching people how
On that Thursday evening in
December 1955, Rosa Parks, after
a long day on her sewing machine
in a department store was tired,
her shoulders ached from bending
over the sewing machine and
decided to ride the bus home that
evening. She found a seat
to pass the voting test. She
resented Alabama laws that made
bus drivers "king" of the buses
and the way drivers treated black
people. When blacks rode the city
bus, they had to go to the front
door and buy their ticket; get off
the bus; and go to the back door
and board. Many tunes the drivers
would go crf and leave blacks
standing in the streets before they
could reach the back door. If you
did get on the bus, you could only
sit on the back of the bus.
One spring day before Rosa's
ordeal, she saw a 15-year-old black
girl refuse to stand up and give
her seat to a white man. The bus
driver called the police and three
policemen came and handcuffed the
girl and hand-earned her off the
bus. Not long after that another
driver got so angry with a young
black man that he beat him in the
face with a piece of metal. Rosa
went to court to watch the driver’s
trial, who was found guilty and
charged $25 and permitted to keep
his busdriving job.
44 We make America better
when we aid our people.”
EL. Goodwin, Srn Publisher
(1902-1978)
Improvement
boycott of
in
"It's a step in the right direction
to getting other minorities going up
the ladder in the Tulsa police
organization." Nelson says.
Nelson is a member of Uniform
Division West of the department
and supervises the David Squad.
"The David Squad consist of six
men on six different beats. Our
area is 36 Street North from Yale
to the city limits west,” he ex-
plains.
His duties as a sergeant, he says,
will include making sure his of-
ficers answer their calls.
“I make sure things are handled
properly at major crime scenes,
such as shootings, cuttings,
injury accidents," he continues.
also investigate complaints
citizens against officers,
which are not investigated by the
Internal Affairs Division.”
He says he is “considered a
buffer between the administration
and the officers in the field."
Nelson's background
Nelson, originally from Muskogee,
graduated from the Tulsa Police
Academy in 1973.
See NELSON, Page 4
The Voting Rights Act of 1960
was designed to stop interracial
violence without usurping the power
and authority of local and state
officials
Under this law, federal courts
had the power to appoint referees
to register blacks in areas where
racial discrimination against voters
had been proven.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964
prohibited discrimination in public
accommodations and in em-
ployment.
In 1965 a new voting rights bill
was passed by Congress It con-
tained an ant! poll tax amendment
to prevent ata. -s from using tax to
deny the right to vote.
The Fair Housing Act of 1961
prohibiting racial di crimination in
the sale and rental of most housing
units in the country
< wgwnhe' w established
M»ny
established as
comptemporary
movement.
The Southern Christian Leader-
ship Conference was organized at
New Orleans in 1957.
King redirects civil rights movement
By B.J. McCrary
The modem day civil rights
movement was fully launched in
1960, when four students from
North Carolina A. and T. College in
Greensboro, North Carolina decided
to sit-in at a segregated lunch
counter.
This first sit-in lead to a wave of
sit-ins at segregated lunch counters
across the South. Although they
were met by violence and massive
jailings, most restaurants even-
tually desgregated voluntarily,
under court order, or by legislation.
Because of the success ot the sit-
ins in the South, other blacks
across the country hegan using the
non-violent action technique to fight
racial discrimination.
Laws passed
The United States Congress
passed the Voting Rights Act in
1967. This was the first major law
on dvil rights since 1875
The act, which granted protection
f r blacks trying to obtain the
suffrage, established a Civil Rights
Commission empowered to gather
evidence on voting violations.
The second federal civil rights
law was passed in 1960.
result of these riots,
Johnson appointed a
National Advisory Commission an
Civil Disorders to investigate and
make recommendations.
King was a leader of the first
historic March on Washington in
1963. He was selected Time
magazine’s "Man of the Year" of
the same year. It was in 1964 that
King, at age 35, was awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize - the youngest
in history to recieve the award.
In the decade following, King was
world-famous for his civil rights
struggles. He was arrested and
jailed many times. His home was
bombed, his life threatened.
While planning for a “Poor
People's March on Washington,”
King made the second of two trips
to Memphis to rally support for
striking garbage collectors there.
He was murdered while in Mem-
phis by an assassin's bullet, as he
stood on the balcony of his hotel
room talking with friends and staff
members. It was April 4, 1968, and
King was 39 years old.
Governor George Nigh appointed
Rnusev?lt Milton, an employee of
the State’s Department of Human
Services as a member of the first
State’s Foster Care Review
Advisory Board
The board will become a
clearinghouse for reports con-
cerning foster care and will make
recommendations to the courts and
to the state legislature. It will also
work with private agencies and the
pibiic to provide information cbout
the foster care program.
Milton has been a member of the
United Way Facility Review and
Allocation Committee and was
selected as an outstanding young
man of America in i960
He is the program administrative
assistant of Oklahoma County
branch of the Department of
Human Services.
Milton is married to the former
Patricia Scott They are the
parents of two daughters, Rosita, a
King’s father, Martin Luther
King, Sr. was a Baptist minister.
His mother, Alberta Williams King,
a schoolteacher.
Kirg was the graduate of
Morehouse college in Atlanta, an
historically all black college, at the
age of 19. Three years later, he
graduated at the head of his class
at Crozer Theological Seminary in
Pennsylvania. He earned his Ph.D.
degree in systematic theology in
1955, at the Graduate School of
was
Atlanta, and the
charismatic leader Dr. King was
elected president
In 1960, the Student Non-violent
Coordinating Committee was
founded in North Carolina. Thia
group became the nationwide
connection for student sit-in ac-
tivities.
Civil rights
protests, and boycotts occurred in
almost every major city in the
country in 1963.
The largest single protest
demonstration took place at the
Lincoln Monument In Washington,
where Tjo onn Mark’ and whites
gathered to lobby passage of
civil rights measures by Congreas
It was at this demonstration that
Dr King gave hi’ memorabla "I
have a dream" speech
In 1987. extensive racial dlstur
bances took place across the
country.
As a
ITesident
organizations
result of the
civil rights
In 1957, King organized the
Southern Christian leadership
Conference (SCLC), with offices in
Atlanta. He became co-pastor with
his father of Ebenezer Baptist
Church in Atlanta.
Life and time of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr
Theology at Boston University.
It was while at Boston University
that King met Coretta Scott, from
Marion, Alabama. Scott was then
studying at the New England
Conservatory of Music. King and
Scott were married in 1953, and
became the parents of four
children: Yolanda, Martin Luther
Ill, Dexter, and Bernice.
The Kings moved to Montgomery,
Alabama, where Dr. King was
pastor of the Dexter Avenue
Baptist Church from 1954-60. The
church is diagionally across from
the Montgomery State Capital,
where Jefferson Davis had taken
his oath as president of the Con-
federated States of America during
the Civil War.
While pastor of Dexter Avenue,
King was elected president of the
Montgomery
whose
transportation
Montgomery put Dr. King into
prominence in the civil rights
movem nt for Black Americans.
Shortly he became world-famous
for his philosphy of non-violence in
seeking social change.
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The Muskogee - Okmulgee Oklahoma Eagle (Muskogee and Okmulgee, Okla.), Vol. 9, No. 43, Ed. 1 Thursday, January 12, 1984, newspaper, January 12, 1984; Tulsa, Oklahoma. (https://gateway.okhistory.org/ark:/67531/metadc1810335/m1/1/: accessed June 4, 2024), The Gateway to Oklahoma History, https://gateway.okhistory.org; crediting Oklahoma Historical Society.