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Last week at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, the eminent Rev. Herbert Daughtry had a book signing of his latest publication “The Passing of Giants,” and also recalled many legends, including three more notables who joined the ancestors: the Rev. James Lawson, Dr. Nathan Hare, and Dr. Wilson J. Moses. There’s a good chance that all three may be profiled in Rev. Daughtry’s next volume, though Dr. Moses may be missed since to date there has been no widely circulated published obituary.
If not for a notice from Dr. Errol Henderson, who for many years taught with Professor Moses at Penn State, we may not have known of his passing. That brings to mind many of the rather obscure personalities Dr. Moses discussed in one of his books, “Afrotopia: the Roots of African American Popular History” (1998). William Henry Ferris is among the numerous social and political activists and leaders Moses gives considerable attention to, with a particular interest on his ideological underpinnings.
Ferris’s political seeds were planted in New Haven, CT, where he was born on July 20, 1874 to David Henry Ferris, who fought for the Union in the Civil War, and Sarah Anne Jefferson Ferris. Upon finishing high school, he attended Yale University and fell under the influence and guidance of Professor William G. Sumner, a social darwinist who extended no good graces to the lower, marginalized members of society.
Ferris graduated in 1895 and began working as a freelance writer before entering the Harvard Divinity School in 1899. A year later, he received a master of arts degree in journalism and began teaching at two Florida schools,Tallahassee State College and Florida Baptist College. From 1903 to 1905, he taught at Henderson Normal School and Kittrell College in North Carolina. While still in North Carolina, he was the pastor of the Congressional Church in Wilmington and by 1910 he was an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. He later began missionary work in Salem, Massachusetts.
Ferris was highly critical of Booker T. Washington’s accommodationist ideas and expressed his opposition in articles published in the Boston Guardian newspaper, under the editorial direction of William Monroe Trotter. Such an outlook aligned him with W.E.B. Du Bois and the Niagara Movement as well as with the American Negro Academy. As a member of the so-called “Talented Tenth,” helmed by Du Bois, Ferris was not a dyed-in-the wool proponent of such thinking, which often put him at odds with other African American thinkers and activists, especially Du Bois and Monroe Trotter.
Professor Moses captured some of Ferris’s ambiguity, noting that he was “typical of twentieth century Black nationalists in his commitment to the mythologies of progress and change, and his enthusiasm for confusing the two ideas.” His most acclaimed book “The African Abroad, or His Evolution in Western Civilization” did little to distill or mollify the disturbance among his colleagues. In fact, if anything, it only muddled his standing, particularly with his introduction of the term “Negro Saxon,” as a substitute for Negro. What clearly became unacceptable for the Black intelligentsia around Du Bois was welcomed by the Garveyites, and soon he was a member of the UNIA (Universal Negro Improvement Association) and an editor at the Negro World, where his adoration for the great leader bordered on the excessive.
In Tony Martin’s book “Literary Garveyism,” Ferris is quoted extensively, most poignantly on Black arts and the middle class. “One of the stumbling blocks in the pathway to Negro progress,” Ferris wrote in the Negro World, “is the Negro’s false conception of art. Art to him, be it music, poetry, drama, sculpture, painting [or] literature…is a thing that appeals exclusively to cultural-minded, the bourgeoisie, to the lords and ladies who try, and fail miserably, to develop a genuine Bohemianism….” He concluded that great art did not have to lose touch with the masses.
Ferris elaborated on these concepts and conclusions in “The African Abroad,” which Moses opined “was a most impressive blending of Afrocentric and cosmopolitan ideas.” Moses also offered an encomium for Ferris, citing that he died on August 23, 1941, penniless and obscure in his room on 10 W. 123rd Street in Harlem. “His obituary in ‘The Journal of Negro History’ described him as ‘a man whose career is difficult to estimate…His body was saved from Potter’s Field through the action of the treasurer of Yale, a member of Ferris’s class of 1895.’” Ferris was a complex man of intriguing thoughts and actions.
“Those who created the System created it to persist.” Without question, these words which are a paraphrase of a spoken advisory given to me in the spring of 2021 as I began serving as Chair of New York City’s Racial Justice Commission, are sage counsel and stern warning for anyone committed to justice work. Said to me as the work of our commission was getting underway by former counsel for South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission following the dismantling of Apartheid in South Africa, these words served as an ever-present reminder throughout our deliberations that the work of overcoming systemic racism and inequity must be enduring and relentless if the fruits of our labor are to prevail.
Sadly, it didn’t take long for counsel’s caution to be realized. In the days, weeks and months following the killing of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, promises to advance and uphold racial equity in every pillar of our society were made by just about every sector and every segment of the population. It is estimated that nearly $50 billion in programming, grantmaking and loans was collectively committed by America’s 50 largest public companies and their foundations alone. Yet here we are just four years later with the visual of the horrific and brutal killing of George Floyd still fresh in our minds and the “System” persists. It has been reported that since 2020 only $4.5 billion has been contributed by these big businesses to nonprofit, community-based efforts aimed at advancing equity .
They aren’t the only institutions that have come up short. In fact, other institutions—the judicial and legislative branches of government chief among them— have moved further from the goalpost of fair and equal access and opportunity, taking a sledgehammer to the levers of equity that were stood up across the United States better than a half century ago.
The Supreme Court’s decisions ending affirmative action in higher education and providing pathways leading to the further erosion of voter protections for African Americans; lawsuits seeking to block grantmaking investments earmarked for Black, female-led businesses that often struggle to access capital, and to enjoin reparations for Black Americans harmed by institutional racism in housing segregation making their way through the courts; laws passed in 27 states since the 2020 election restricting voting rights; legislation in several states making it illegal to teach Black history; and mounting attacks on DEI in corporate America and higher education with both schools and companies ending decades’ long commitments to ensuring people harmed by racism have seats in both the classroom and at the table all provide evidence beyond any standard of guilt or liability that those who created the System created it to persist.
Fortunately, here in New York City in 2022 the electorate demonstrated foresight and wisdom in taking actions that have the greatest chance of withstanding direct and veil threats that would undermine the pursuit of equity at the municipal level of government. By voting in 2022 for racial justice measures put forth by the NYC Racial Justice Commission to change the City Charter to mandate the dismantling of structural racism in government functioning, New Yorkers called for a reset and made equity foundational law.
A substantial majority voted to include in the Charter a preamble that acknowledges the “grave injustices and atrocities” first experienced by indigenous people and enslaved persons and subsequently by marginalized people and communities, and that commits the City to remedying these harms and reconstructing government to promote justice and equity for all. In so doing New Yorkers made the pursuit of fairness and opportunity for all the law.
By declaring New York City a multi-racial democracy where all residents should have the opportunity to live fully and with dignity and requiring that the City be held accountable in perpetuity for governing to that end, with their votes New Yorkers evidenced their sincere commitment to this vision.
Lastly, by voting overwhelmingly to mandate that the City calculate what it truly costs for individuals and families to live here and adequately meet their daily needs, plan for their futures and save for rainy days, they signaled that no New Yorker, particularly those who disproportionately have lower incomes and less assets due to structural racism, should have to struggle all their lives because of structural economic deprivation that inhibits their ability to build wealth and achieve economic security.
By changing the Charter, New Yorkers changed the structure that has long upheld the systems that enable racism to persist. Now, our city government is perennially tasked with implementing the people’s mandate, and we, the people, must ensure they do. New York City can be a beacon in the darkness of these times, but only if we live up to and fulfill the promises contained in the Charter revisions.
Jennifer Jones Austin, Esq., is Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director at FPWA. Her guest column is sponsored by the Community Service Society of New York (CSS), the leading voice on behalf of low-income New Yorkers for more than 175 years. The views expressed in this column are solely those of the writer. The Urban Agenda is available on CSS’s website: www.cssny.org.
He lived on West 155th Street and the Harlem River Drive in Harlem after Willie Mays moved from where he was born in Westfield, Alabama. The baseball legend who began his career with the San Francisco Giants at the nearby Polo Grounds. The SF Giants called the baseball great just a few days after his…
Desperate to improve his status with Black voters, Trump dropped into the 180 Church in Detroit on Saturday, a day after his 78th birthday, with the hope of convincing the congregation—and perhaps 180 is representative of the size of the congregation—that he’s the candidate they should choose in November. According to several reports, it was another mission in mendacity with him claiming to be the best president Black folks have had since Abraham Lincoln.
The church, on Detroit’s west side, offers no denomination on its website, other than “The Church is God’s solution to complex problems of Urban America.” To Trump’s way of thinking, it was a perfect place to hold a roundtable over the weekend and to dispense his manna, dripping with interposition and nullification, to recall Dr. King;s famous dictum. As usual, Trump inflated the numbers, never noting that half those in attendance were white, nor suspending his claim that Biden’s victory four years ago was a stolen election.
His session at the church was the first of two events in the city, and the second one in downtown Detroit was more reflective of his white following and overflowing with MAGA-dorned worshipers. Even so, there was no difference in the lies he fulminated: He launched into his rhetoric of misinformation about Black people losing their jobs to an “invasion” of immigrants. He repeatedly bashed the Biden administration and its “left-wing ideology.”
Curiously, Trump’s new voter coalition includes Kwame Kilpatrick, Detroit’s former mayor, free from prison after serving time for fraud and racketeering convictions, giving them a common experience. Sharing the rostrum with Trump was Lorenzo Sewell, the church’s pastor, and Byron Donalds, a Trump vice-president hopeful. The Rev. Wendell Anthony, leader of the NAACP’s chapter, said that Trump “did not articulate any policy. He articulated the fact that he wanted to come and get some Black votes.”
In response to Trump’s visit, the Biden campaign released a statement from Rev. James Perkins of Detroit, blasting Trump for having “the nerve to waltz into our city and act like he wants to understand the struggles Black Detroiters face, but the reality is he doesn’t care. Every time Trump opens his mouth to talk to Black folks, he demonizes us, insults us, and makes empty promises he’ll never keep.”
One reality that is clear to Trump: Biden won Detroit by nearly 95 percent in 2020, and no number of lies can dispel this fact.
“Those who created the System created it to persist.” Without question, these words which are a paraphrase of a spoken advisory given to me in the spring of 2021 as I began serving as Chair of New York City’s Racial Justice Commission, are sage counsel and stern warning for anyone committed to justice work. Said to me as the work of our commission was getting underway by former counsel for South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission following the dismantling of Apartheid in South Africa, these words served as an ever-present reminder throughout our deliberations that the work of overcoming systemic racism and inequity must be enduring and relentless if the fruits of our labor are to prevail.
Sadly, it didn’t take long for counsel’s caution to be realized. In the days, weeks and months following the killing of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, promises to advance and uphold racial equity in every pillar of our society were made by just about every sector and every segment of the population. It is estimated that nearly $50 billion in programming, grantmaking and loans was collectively committed by America’s 50 largest public companies and their foundations alone. Yet here we are just four years later with the visual of the horrific and brutal killing of George Floyd still fresh in our minds and the “System” persists. It has been reported that since 2020 only $4.5 billion has been contributed by these big businesses to nonprofit, community-based efforts aimed at advancing equity .
They aren’t the only institutions that have come up short. In fact, other institutions—the judicial and legislative branches of government chief among them— have moved further from the goalpost of fair and equal access and opportunity, taking a sledgehammer to the levers of equity that were stood up across the United States better than a half century ago.
The Supreme Court’s decisions ending affirmative action in higher education and providing pathways leading to the further erosion of voter protections for African Americans; lawsuits seeking to block grantmaking investments earmarked for Black, female-led businesses that often struggle to access capital, and to enjoin reparations for Black Americans harmed by institutional racism in housing segregation making their way through the courts; laws passed in 27 states since the 2020 election restricting voting rights; legislation in several states making it illegal to teach Black history; and mounting attacks on DEI in corporate America and higher education with both schools and companies ending decades’ long commitments to ensuring people harmed by racism have seats in both the classroom and at the table all provide evidence beyond any standard of guilt or liability that those who created the System created it to persist.
Fortunately, here in New York City in 2022 the electorate demonstrated foresight and wisdom in taking actions that have the greatest chance of withstanding direct and veil threats that would undermine the pursuit of equity at the municipal level of government. By voting in 2022 for racial justice measures put forth by the NYC Racial Justice Commission to change the City Charter to mandate the dismantling of structural racism in government functioning, New Yorkers called for a reset and made equity foundational law.
A substantial majority voted to include in the Charter a preamble that acknowledges the “grave injustices and atrocities” first experienced by indigenous people and enslaved persons and subsequently by marginalized people and communities, and that commits the City to remedying these harms and reconstructing government to promote justice and equity for all. In so doing New Yorkers made the pursuit of fairness and opportunity for all the law.
By declaring New York City a multi-racial democracy where all residents should have the opportunity to live fully and with dignity and requiring that the City be held accountable in perpetuity for governing to that end, with their votes New Yorkers evidenced their sincere commitment to this vision.
Lastly, by voting overwhelmingly to mandate that the City calculate what it truly costs for individuals and families to live here and adequately meet their daily needs, plan for their futures and save for rainy days, they signaled that no New Yorker, particularly those who disproportionately have lower incomes and less assets due to structural racism, should have to struggle all their lives because of structural economic deprivation that inhibits their ability to build wealth and achieve economic security.
By changing the Charter, New Yorkers changed the structure that has long upheld the systems that enable racism to persist. Now, our city government is perennially tasked with implementing the people’s mandate, and we, the people, must ensure they do. New York City can be a beacon in the darkness of these times, but only if we live up to and fulfill the promises contained in the Charter revisions.
Jennifer Jones Austin, Esq., is Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director at FPWA. Her guest column is sponsored by the Community Service Society of New York (CSS), the leading voice on behalf of low-income New Yorkers for more than 175 years. The views expressed in this column are solely those of the writer. The Urban Agenda is available on CSS’s website: www.cssny.org.
Staff from the Legal Aid Society rallied in front of Brooklyn’s 111 Livingston Street on Wednesday, June 12, during what they called their “nonwork time” in a coordinated effort to picket in front of each of the city’s Legal Aid Society offices––at 260 East 161 Street in the Bronx; 120-46 Queens Boulevard in Kew Gardens, Queens; Manhattan’s 49 Thomas Street; and Staten Island’s 60 Bay Street––and show that they are still fighting for a new labor contract.
Workers included clerical, paralegal, and social work staff. Members of 1199SEIU said they have continued doing their jobs even though their last labor contract expired on June 30, 2022.
In a press release, the union said negotiations with management have only led to a proposal of a “1% raise for fiscal year 2025 for all members with some step increases and a wage reopener.”
The current labor contract is two years old, but Legal Aid management pointed out to the AmNews that 1199SEIU members have been able to get salary increases during this time period. “We have and will continue to advocate for additional resources so we can pay our staff the wages they deserve for their invaluable work,” The Legal Aid Society said in a statement. “We remain in bargaining and will continue to discuss these topics together around the bargaining table.”
The workers picketing in front of Brooklyn’s Legal Aid Society claim the contract that management is pushing is not what the majority of 1199SEIU members want. The current salary system proposal would leave them thousands of dollars behind what other legal service providers earn.
1199SEIU members showed up to picket. They demonstrated and chanted “The workers––united––will never be defeated!” and “I’ll tell you what democracy looks like: This is what democracy looks like!” while circling the front entrance to 111 Livingston Street. “We’re not on strike,” one of the staff members explained. “We first have to determine if we’re on a strike or not, and we didn’t get there yet.”
One speaker at the rally said, “While we fight tirelessly for our clients every day, management is showing us they are not on our side…At the end of the day, we know that they cannot run Legal Aid without us.”
Veronica Leventhal, a social worker with the Legal Aid Society, said one of the items 1199SEIU members want is the opportunity to continue telecommuting for some part of their jobs. Staffers had been providing some legal services to clients remotely for the last three years. Now, office management wants all workers back in the office five days a week. Leventhal said staffers are asking for the ability to work remotely at least two days a week. “We just want a little bit of flexibility, and they’re only offering us maybe one day.
“Management has come to the table, and they’ve been negotiating with us in good faith, but they’ve been very firm with both us and the lawyer’s union that they will not support telecommuting for the most part. They’ll give us maybe one day a week––if management decides that our job is eligible for that one day. But speaking for myself as a social worker, I am in court almost five days a week: I do not have time to come to this office. When I’m not in court, I need to write…I think that’s the point of a hybrid schedule: It’s whatever works for you so that you can get your job done; that’s what we’re asking. And if people are not doing their job, that can be addressed on an individual basis.”
