May '70: 12. The Forgotten Dead Of Augusta [Updated]

There were six of them, gunned down by the armed force of the state.

I could be talking about the four students murdered at Kent State just seven days before plus the two who would would die later in the week at Jackson State.

But I’m not. I’m talking about six Black men killed in Augusta, Georgia, 41 years ago this week. Each was shot in the back by police shotguns, and their deaths were woven into the fabric of struggle and repression that was growing day by day in May, 1970.

Like many an urban rebellion in the ‘60s, it started with the cops. On May 9, Charles Oatman died in the Augusta city jail. He was 16 and mentally disabled. The police announced that he had died in a fall from his bunk. At the funeral home, his body was discovered to have fresh cigarette burns and bruises all over it. Open wounds from a whipping marred the corpse’s back. His skull was caved in. Changing their tune, the cops moved to charge his cellmates with murder.

On May 11, community activists who had been dealing with police brutality issues for a long time met with officials and left the meeting to find 500 furious community residents outside demanding action. A march was called on the spot and soon erupted into rock throwing and looting which went on into the evening.

The governor of Georgia, a foam-flecked racist named Lester Maddox, swung into action. He ordered out the state police to deal with the citizens he called “communists” and Black Panthers. He gave the cops orders to shoot to kill and even to raze “any building they’re in to its very foundation if necessary to get them out.” Maddox followed up by mobilizing 1,200 troops of the Georgia National Guard, who reached Augusta about 1:00 in the morning on the 12th.

By dawn on the 12th, the “Augusta riot” was over and over 80 people were wounded. Six Black men were dead. Most were young. None had been armed. All were hit in the back by shotgun blasts consistent with police riot guns.

Why do these ugly police murders belong in a series of articles about the campus uprising of 1970? To us at the time, it was obvious. These kids were murdered just like the kids at Kent State. Augusta was, in fact, one of the last of the great urban rebellions against racism that shook the US to its foundations in the ‘60s. Those rebellions had helped form our understanding that of the oppression of African Americans was far broader and deeper than a question of Jim Crow segregation in the south. Around the country, leaflets and posters about the Augusta murders started to appear within hours.

Sure, the riot wasn’t on campus, but the folks in Augusta’s segregated inner city knew that colleges around the country were erupting in protests and had in one case been met with bullets. And how was the Guard able to mobilize so quickly, if they were not already on alert to deal with campus unrest?

But even our steps in solidarity with the Augusta rebellion wound up butting up against the ugly realities of life in a society built on, and shot through with, white supremacy and white privilege. If you went through the month of May in 1970, you will probably always have a visceral response to the names of Sandy Scheuer, Bill Schroeder, Alison Krause and Jeffrey Miller. You may even recall that Philip Gibbs and James Earl Green were the two slaughtered at Jackson State. I hope this piece has jogged your memory about Augusta.

When this was first written in 2010, I was unable to find the names of the six whose lives were snatched from them by the cops forty years before. Now, thanks to filmmaker Banks Pappas, who is working on a documentary on the Augusta Six (video trailer here), I offer for your respect and remembrance:

Mack Wilson, Jr.
John (Johnnie) Stokes
William Wright, Jr.
Charlie Mack Murphy
Sammie Larry McCullough
John Bennings

They deserve to be recalled with the others as young people whose lives were taken in May ‘70 at one of the historic peaks of the long struggle to bring into being a better world...



Click here to read this series from the beginning.

Click here to read the next installment.

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Newark supports ACLU NJ petition for Justice Department intervention

When Deborah Jacobs, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, published the Op-Ed piece Newark Police Department needs an intervention; the ACLU-NJ turns to the federal government this past September, it was in many respects the result of ACLU NJ's close work in recent years with community-based organizations like the People's Organization for Progress and others. So when the ACLU NJ filed their 96 page petition enumerating 407 cases of police misconduct (see US Intervention Sought for Newark Police Abuse, and ACLU accuses Newark police of false arrests, excessive force, for more information), nearly 100 members of the People's Organization for Progress, the New Black Panther Party,  families of police abuse victims, and concerned community residents responded by marching on Newark Police Headquarters on Green Street to begin the campaign demanding that the Justice Department begin an investigation.

Among the concerned community residents, a contingent from Irvington reported on the rally against street violence they'd participated in this past Wednesday. This event was a candlelight prayer vigil to mourn the murder of Saleemah Baines, the pregnant mother of three who was killed along with her companion. This vigil, which many Irvington elected officials had endorsed and espoused their support of was set upon by Irvington cops in what can only be described as a police wilding incident!

Witnesses and victims of the police wilding in Irvington report

Lawrence Hamm, chairman of POP, thanked ACLU NJ for their work interviewing victims of police abuse and ACLU's efforts writing, submitting and popularizing the federal petition for Justice Department intervention. NBPP National Minister of Culture Zayid Muhammad also thanked ACLU NJ and called for a National United Front Against Police Abuse.


To see additional photos from today's rally click here.

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Justice for Fritz Louissaint — Police violence in Rahway, NJ

This week our brother James Carey, Chairman of the Elizabeth branch of the People's Organization for Progress, contacted Fire on the Mountain to inform us that the People's Organization for Progress, will host a rally/march for Fritz Louissaint the mentally disturbed Haitian man who was shot 5 times at close range by Rahway Police Officers Sgt. Anthony DeCarlo and Edward O'Donnell.

Miraculously, Fritz survived the attempt on his life however, he's languishing in the Union County Jail for a crime he didn't commit. Police assert they were justified in using excessive force because Fritz Louissaint attacked them with a harpoon knife, an account that eyewitnesses strongly refute because he was holding a fishing pole handle.

 

Rahway's Mayor James Kennedy fabricated the story when he said quote: "I saw the videotape of the whole incident that was captured on the police cruisers video cam showing Mr. Louissaint with his hand over his head like in the movie Psycho, then he attacked the police." According to eyewitnesses, the police encountered Fritz in the courtyard of the motel, demanded that he put the fishing handle down and he complied.

 

Once Fritz began raising his arms in the air, they began shooting... it would be scientifically impossible for the incident to be captured on video cam because the police vehicles were facing North and Fritz was shot in the rear of the vehicles which would be (South.)

James note that if there's a videotape available it would totally exonerate Fritz Louissaint. Mayor Kennedy prejudiced himself and influenced the potential grand jury that would've been sequestered when he made that statement, therefore in the mines of everyone Fritz Louissaint is presumed guilty. Despite request from the ACLU of NJ, the Rahway Police have yet to relinquish the tape.

We encourage everyone to join us as we rally/march to demand justice for Fritz Louissaint. 

 

  Date: Saturday, November 6, 2010

Time: 12:00pm (Noon)

Place: Rahway Police Department, 1 City Hall Plaza, Rahway, NJ

 

For additional information, 

call NJ State POP Chairman Larry Hamm 

(973) 801-0001

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First anniversary of Basire Farrell's murder shows "Hollywood" Booker is on the way out!

One year ago Saturday, May 15, when Newark police beat Basire Farrell to death while in handcuffs, Mayor Cory Booker was riding high on the Oprah Effect (see Black NJ: People's Organization for Progress Transforms Victims into Fighters, and Hollywood Mayor Looks to Move Up — And Out of Newark for previous FotM coverage of this case). This "Hollywood Bubble" seemed to grant our pretty young mayor license to commit heinous acts that no Newark leader has gotten away with since Hugh Addonizio "literally delivering the city into the hands of organized crime," according to the former U.S. District Judge who tried the case. And if you ask Newark residents of the period, turning over city government to the mob was less significant than the violent police attacks on the Black community.

With Mayor "Hollywood" Booker, once again the cops have an Addonizio-esque freedom to harrass our youth. Booker's self-proclaimed success heading into the recent election was that he'd reduce crime, a complete fabrication based on funny-math and manipulated statistics. And while some commentators may point to the fact that Booker retained the mayoralty by a 59% margin, the most telling indicator is how well Cliff Minor did with minimal funding. Minor defeated Booker the South Ward 5,028 to 4,025, notwithstanding the more than 20-to-1 campaign-finance difference. Likewise, Cory's staunchest ally, South Ward Councilman Oscar James, lost by a landslide to Ras Baraka.

Councilman Ras Baraka addresses rally at the site of Basire Farrell's murder

What does this have to do with the police murder of Basire Farrell? It was probably best explained by District Leader Lynda Lloyd, herself a victim of police brutality, who thanked and congratulated Ras Baraka for attending the rally. "Oscar James would never have attended this rally," Ms. Lloyd said, referring to the previous councilman.

South Ward/Clinton Hills District Leader Lynda Lloyd

Basire's aunt, Sharonda Smalls, echoed these sentiments through barely controlled tears as she called for accountability from elected officials for ALL police violence in Newark and Essex County. Sharonda, a true people's leader in both POP and the South Ward, applauded Councilman Baraka for his commitment to the community. Ms. Smalls spoke from personal experience about Baraka's role as a teacher and school principal. "We know, love, and respect this young man," she said, "who has served as a mentor to so many of us and our children."

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Black NJ: People's Organization for Progress Transforms Victims into Fighters

Updated: Sunday afternoon, February 14

The People's Organization for Progress has a proud history of battling oppression in Northern NJ, for well over a quarter-of-a-century. We've organized around the needs of the people: education, jobs, healthcare, racism, war, reparations, imperialism, and more for over 26 years. But POP "made its bones", has made some of it's greatest contributions, in the struggle against police violence in the African-American community.

The conviction and imprisonment of five Orange, NJ police officers for the death of Earl Faison, the settlement in the police murder of Stanton Crew, the financial fine imposed on East Orange, NJ for the police attack on senior-citizen Esmé Parchment in her own house, these are proud moments in POP's history of struggle.

But perhaps the most exciting achievement we get to experience as POP members is when a victim, through their pain, trauma and experiences, is transformed into not just a fighter, but a leader in the people's battles. Our recently elected Vice-Chair for Internal Affairs, Mary Weaver is one such leader. After losing her son to a police bullet, Mary joined POP to get justice. Over time however Mary became Recording-Secretary and then Secretary General as she helped build and transform POP as one of our leading members.

This past Saturday, February 13, Sharonda Smalls, aunt of Basire Farrell (who was beaten to death by Newark police on May 15 of last year), called for a demonstration at the site of her nephew's murder. But Sharonda, in the spirit of Mary Weaver and other victims whose experiences have transformed them into soldiers in the people's struggle, called for a demonstration for all victims. As she herself formulated the demand "to Protest the Vicious and Senseless Beating Death of Basire Farrell & All Victims of Police Brutality by Newark Police Officers."

Sharonda explains this transformation, "we are all family. At last Thursday's POP meeting, when I met the family of Darnell (murdered by a so-called law enforcement officer) I realized I'd gone to school with his mother." Local Democratic Party District Leader Lynda Lloyd became a member of Sharonda's POP family as well. Lloyd attended the rally to find out more about police brutality in the Clinton Hills neighborhood, because she herself had been beaten and arrested on January 27 by Booker's lawless storm troopers.

And even in the frigid cold weather, victim's families answered Sharonda's call. The families and friends of Jahqui Graham, Darnell McNeil, Basire Farrell, Amar McClean, and many many others came to Tillinghast St. at the corner of Clinton Place and Homestead Park in Newark in the spirit of linking these struggles. The family of one recent victim, Darnell McNeil, a slight young college tutor shot to death by an Essex County Sheriff's Deputy moonlighting as "muscle" at a club, announced that his funeral on Monday, February 15, would follow the South African model with a march afterward. Younger community residents also called for building a People's Organization for Progress youth-wing.

As People's Organization for Progress Chairman, Lawrence Hamm pointed out, "Grieving is necessary, we all need to mourn after tragedy. But the spirit of activists like our own Vice-Chair Mary Weaver and new POP member as well as developing new neighborhood leader Sharonda Smalls teaches us that our salvation is tied-up to the safety, health and vigor of the community. In fact, only by linking the battles to include ALL injustice can we achieve any real victories at alll!"

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Black NJ demands accountability, from both the cops & Newark's celebrity mayor: "Justice for Basire Farrell"

This past May, Fire on the Mountain reported on the beating death by Newark police officers of popular Clinton Hills neighborhood resident Basire Farrell within blocks of Mayor Cory Booker's residence (see The People's Organization for Progress Demands Justice for Basire Farrell for the May posting). By August, in the heat of the summer of 2009, this year's spate of police-sanctioned murders has only increased…

The community response to this outrage became a flood of discontent as more than 100 residents, New Black Panther Party supporters, and People's Organization for Progress members shut down Newark's central business intersection at Broad & Market Streets this past Wednesday evening (see this video).

This weekend, after pointing out that we were picking the Newark Police Headquarters at 31 Green Street on a Saturday for the convenience of family members and working people, POP NJ State chairman Lawrence Hamm upped the ante, stating that next time, we would be around the corner from the Police Headquarters, "at City Hall on a week day, to confront Mayor Booker and the Police Commissioner, and demand a response."

As the leaflet from People's Organization for Progress stated:

We ask, are lives in Black skins less important than lives in white skins? We ask why is Basire Farrell's life in Black skin less important than a life in a white skin?
We ask, why Basire Farrell couldn't survice an arrest by Seven Newark Police Officers?
We ask, why was Basire Farrell added to the list of Blacks murdered by the Newark Police?

We also ask:

Why did it take seven police officers to arrest one man?
Why did the police need to chase Basire Farrell, and then hit him with a police car to stop him?
How was "public safety" served by beating and kicking a man who was already on the ground and in handcuffs?
Why was Basire Farrell repeated tasered (tortured with an illegal "non-lethal" weapon that the City of Newark does not even provide to officers), while in cuffs?

The death of Basire Farrell is simply a single example of an every-increasing number of homicides that police officers in Essex County are either directly responsible for or complicit in. These include Randy Weaver, Jahqui Graham, and many, many others.

Justice for all victims of Police Brutality!

(See a YouTube video of Chairman Hamm's speech this past Saturday at 31 Green Street in Newark)

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The People's Organization for Progress Demands Justice for Basire Farrell

"What is this? Mississippi, 1955? Black people can't even get to the precinct?"

Lawrence Hamm, state chairman of the New Jersey-based People's Organization for Progress, was  angered nearly to tears in front of Newark's 5th Precinct. Well-liked neighborhood resident Basire Farrell had been stopped by police near at the intersection of Clinton Place and Tillinghast Street. According to eyewitnesses, the police had Farrell in handcuffs, yet continued to hit and kick him, apparently beating the 30 year-old young man to death (see the Newark Star Ledger report here).

This was not POP's first march to this particular Precinct House, the home base of at least two similar cases in the past year. As POP chairman Larry Hamm noted, "I don't care whether people do it in white sheets or a blue uniform, it sounds like a lynching to me."

This question about Mississippi-style white "justice" in Newark becomes especially significant with Newark's young "post-racial" mayor Cory Booker in office. The instances and incidences of police violence against the citizenry has increased since Mayor Booker took office. 

In fact, it is not that long ago that Mayor Booker proudly proclaimed to  TV-networks and print media alike that the kind of police "over-reaction" that led the street rebellion that he describes as the "1967 Riot" are behind us. Attacks like the murder of Basire Farrell, not more than a few blocks from the mayor's residence, put the lie to that claim.

Justice for Basire Farrell, and all victims of police brutality!

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From The Frontlines In Oakland: "Don't Shoot!"

[Fire on the Mountain is pleased to offer this report by a long-time Oakland resident about the community's ongoing response to the police murder of Oscar Grant.]



New Year's Day

On the early morning of January 1, I happened to be in the Emergency Room of Oakland General. Word came in that there had been a disturbance on a Bay Area Rapid Transit train at Fruitvale Station and patients were expected. The first ambulance brought in a guy who had leapt from the platform when BART police stopped a crowded train and started pulling young male “troublemakers” off. His legs were fucked up.

Then the paramedics brought in Oscar Grant. He was still alive and talking. Techs were telling him "Hang in there, hang in there," as they tried to reinflate the lungs collapsed by a police bullet and to re-transfuse the blood he was losing--fast. His heart rate collapsed and CPR brought him back so he could be wheeled into the Operating Room, but the internal bleeding couldn't be stanched in the OR, and Oscar Grant died.

There's one thing I want to highlight here. When Oscar Grant was brought in, he had a deep hole in his back, the entry wound, but on the other side you could actually see the bullet pressing out against the skin of his chest from the inside like a big pimple. It was removed on the spot. (ER personnel don't often go around fishing out bullets, unless it's life-threatening--that's TV stuff--but this one took only a quick incision to remove.) The slug was flattened, completing the picture of someone who had been shot in the back while pressed right up against a very hard, flat surface.

Anger Builds

I've been asked how come it took almost a week for the first massive protests to erupt in Oakland. I'm not sure of all the factors, but one thing is that it took a while for the videos taken by other BART passengers on the stopped train, using their cell phones, to circulate on the news and YouTube. It was in the news that the police had tried to confiscate them, but there were too many. In one of the videos, the scene of Oscar Grant's murder is framed by other cell-phone cameras being held up.




As the story became clearer, people recalled earlier BART police outrages and got madder and madder. The cops' defense, which tried to suggest that Officer Johannes Mehserle hadn't intended to kill Oscar Grant and may have accidentally drawn his handgun instead of a Taser, went nowhere. The videos were powerful testimony. One woman I know, who deals with cops professionally every day and tends to be way too sympathetic to them, tried to tell us that the videos showed the cop in “a Taser stance" and wound up leaving the room amid mocking comments.

When a protest demanding justice was called by the family at the Fruitvale Station on January 7, things began to pop. I wasn't able to attend, but friends and co-workers did. This is where the main slogan of the protests, Oscar Grant's plea on the BART platform, “Don't Shoot!” was adopted by the community.

That rally, numbering in the thousands, become a night of rebellion, as folks finally felt they had a chance to light up the cops. Several hundred young folks, white anarcho types in bandana masks and Black youths in roughly equal numbers, took the lead. There's video of the night, including a burning police car and Mayor Ron Dellums getting, let's say, a mixed response from angry Oakland residents as he tries to calm down a bunch of folks who aren't feeling at all calm.

The Struggle Continues

Yesterday, after another week had passed, my son and I attended the latest rally, called by the community-based Committee Against Police Executions (CAPE). It started at City Hall at 4 PM. Even though the news had reported that Johannes Mehserle had been arrested in Nevada on a fugitive warrant on murder charges, around 2000 people showed up. The talk from the platform did emphasize the need for “peace” but it echoed also the mood in the mood in the crowd, which was very angry. A letter from the mother of NYC police victim Sean Bell was read, and a list of names of victims of police murder called out, each answered by a crowd roar of “Don't Shoot.”

This time, Mayor Dellums had his rap down, though. He declared, and I think he's right, that the Mehserle arrest was a victory for the people's struggle. Previous killer cops in the BART system had walked away, but Oakland's anger had produced an arrest. Further, it would have to continue to insure a trial and justice, and to pursue other goals, like civilian review of the BART police force.










The mayor was followed by hiphop legend Too Short, a proud Oakland loyalist, who repeated Dellums' pitch that the crowd break up peacefully. There was a huge police mobilization to underline the call to disperse. Still, folks were not ready to go home quietly. As dark fell, many of the demonstrators, including a big contingent from the grassroots Black bike repair and customizing subculture called “scrapers,” headed out for the county building to keep the protest going.


Over the years, I've been to a lot of demonstrations, and often it feels like a duty. We are there because it is the right thing to do. This felt different, I want to say exhilarating,, although that doesn't quite catch the determination in the feeling. But as I left, I said to myself, “Where this goes, we will see. But this is the start of something, I can tell.”

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Sleeping While Black (in Queens)

As a blogging newbie, I had every intention of exercising self-discipline and not going post-crazy, especially in light of the fact that nobody even knows Fire on the Mountain exists yet. But the NYPD has turned my good intentions to dust. A friend forwarded me an article from the Friday NY Daily News with this title and the laconic introduction, "Things have really gotten out of control..."

Most people reading this blog, wherever you might be from, have likely heard about the 50 police bullets fired into the car of Sean Bell, a 23 year old Black man celebrating in the early hours of the day sct for his wedding to Nicole Paultre. Bell was killed outright and two companions wounded. None of them were armed. New Yorkers are very much on edge at this blunt reminder of the deadly peril Black males face any time they come in contact with the pig.

Mayor Bloomberg knows how tense things are. Instead of automatically defending the cops a la Giuliani, he has questioned their judgement and made damn sure to be photographed with Reverends Al Sharpton and Herbert Daughtry, longtime camaigners against police brutality. But today's paper describes a reign of terror being perpetated as the cops careen through the community seeking a "fourth passenger" who somehow fled the deadly fusillade and had a gun. Read this excerpt from the column by the estimable Juan Gonzales:

Around 6 a.m. Wednesday, LaToya Smith, 26, was playing in her bed in southeastern Queens with her 7-month-old son Jalyn.

Just then, she heard a strange noise in her family's darkened house. Her locked bedroom door suddenly burst open, and several uniformed cops burst into the room with flashlights and guns drawn.

According to Smith, the cops ordered her to lie facedown on the floor.

"My baby, my baby. Where's my baby?" she recalls pleading to them as they hustled her into the living room. There, they gathered her brothers Timothy Smith, 19, and Stanley Smith, 23; her mother, Laura; the baby and Christopher Keys, 18, a friend who was staying in the apartment. Meanwhile, a dozen officers searched the entire place.

Police officials said they found a loaded 9-mm. pistol in the apartment and a small bag of marijuana, whereupon they hauled the young woman and the three men to the 103rd Precinct stationhouse. They charged the men with gun possession, but released LaToya Smith.

Police also are saying the apartment was a known drug-dealing location.

But the real purpose of the raid was not to find guns or pot.

All the cops' questions at the stationhouse were about last weekend's police shooting of Sean Bell, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield outside the Kalua Cabaret, Smith said.

They kept asking if she knew the whereabouts of certain friends of the three men shooting victims.

"If you don't tell us what we want to hear, you know, you can get five years," she says one cop told her.

New York may not blow over this, but an old wound has been torn open and it will not heal any time soon. (Modern Pitung, at the blog All Out for the Fight, has pointed out one bright spot--the solid response by the John Brown caucus of the newly-formed NYC SDS/MDS chapter.)


UPDATE

Anybody thinks that I'm throwing too much drama with a formulation like "New York may not blow over this" ought to give a listen to "50 Shots," the cut by rapper Papoose just posted at the online music mag Prefix. You're not listening to fabulous flow or lyric brilliance, you are listening to raw anger. (h/t to Steve Gilliard)

UPDATE 2
12/4

These pictures are to accompany the new comment on this thread by Bondi on media coverage of this week's demo in Newark, NJ around Sean Bell organized by the People's Organization for Progress.

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