March 4, 1963.
That was the day Frank Zappa, age 22, appeared on the Steve Allen Show and played the bicycle.
We cannot say we didn't see what was coming.
Alison Parker and Adam Ward |
Three residents are expected to address the Terrebonne Parish School Board on Tuesday about a member's racially charged Facebook posts.IN OTHER NEWS . . . despite making the news -- unfavorably -- for one damn thing after another, the state of Louisiana still wonders whether the rest of America is laughing with it or at it.
Dorothy Murray, the Rev. Vernell Johnson and Ronald Williams are on the agenda to address the Confederate flag and an unspecified board member's Facebook posts.
The School Board is scheduled to meet at 6 p.m. in its office, 201 Stadium Drive, Houma.
The action comes after School Board member Vicki Bonvillain's posts about the flag last month sparked concerns from the Terrebonne Parish NAACP.
On July 14, Bonvillain shared a picture on her Facebook page that said if the Confederate flag represents racism in America then so do other symbols, including the NAACP's logo, Black History Month, the Democratic Party, the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, the United Negro College Fund, Hispanic Heritage celebrations and the Black Panther Party.
"Our 'elected officials' want to accommodate our HISTORY to PLEASE some. WELL shouldn't ALL 'MLK' BLVDs be removed nationwide?" Bonvillain asked in a post July 9.
The posts have since been removed.
“My experience is that streets that are named MLK has been crime-ridden, drug-infested and unfortunately, it’s known to be black populated."
A proposal to rename a street is sparking strong emotions in St. Bernard Parish. On Tuesday night, the parish council claimed the state had jurisdiction over the roadway and tabled the issue.THAT WOMAN must be related to this one who, at the planning board meeting, said this: “I mean, if the street’s name has to change, which is ridiculous, then name it after someone who’s done something for this parish."
"It's a nice boulevard to be living on," said Violet resident Terry Grant.
For a decade and a half, Grant has lived on Colonial Boulevard. He's raised kids and watched his grandchildren at his Violet home. The street sign has remained the same until now.
"With our young kids that don't understand or know about are black leaders, they lived and died for their voting rights. I don't see a problem with them changing the name into Mr. King," said Grant.
An ordinance is being proposed to rename Colonial Boulevard to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.
Rev. Kevin Gabriel with the St. Bernard Parish NAACP says 28 signatures from a total of 34 houses on the Boulevard were collected in favor of the name change.
"We really mean what we say. We want this street named Dr. Martin Luther King for the people of Colonial, not because it's black, not because it's white, but for the people. He was for all people," said Rev. Gabriel.
At Tuesday night's parish council meeting, opponents of the ordinance held up "say no" signs while the public got the chance to weigh-in.
"I grew up off of Colonial and 6th Street, from a little girl all the way through graduation until we lost the house because of Katrina. Colonial has a lot of good memories," said a woman attending the council meeting.
"Dr. Martin Luther King talked about peace, he brought people together. If we were naming one of these streets after someone who doesn't look like us in this community, it would not be a problem," said Violet resident Andrew Rhodes.
One group even claimed they'd collected more than 1,000 signatures parish-wide against replacing the Colonial Boulevard signage with the late civil rights' leader's name.
"Please do not let outsiders influence, break us down, divide us, nor force change in our community," said one woman attending the meeting.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Perez gained attention as a nationally prominent opponent of desegregation, taking a leadership role in the southern Massive Resistance to change, particularly following the 1954 US Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which ruled that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional. Other nationally recognized figures who became known on this topic were Strom Thurmond, George Wallace (future governor of Alabama), and Ross Barnett of Mississippi. Perez was a member of the White Citizens Council and an organizer of the white supremacist Citizens Council of Greater New Orleans. Perez researched and wrote much of the legislation sponsored by Louisiana's Joint Legislative Committee on Segregation.IN THE 1990s, the St. Bernard Parish Council rededicated Judge Perez Drive for Judge Melvin Perez, a state judge who served St. Bernard Parish, thereby distancing itself from the long-dead white supremacist, Leander. Then again, how many people do you reckon think of Melvin when you say "Judge Perez Drive"?
Perez tried to control the activities of civil rights workers by prohibiting outsiders from entering Plaquemines Parish via the bayou ferries, which were the chief way to cross rivers and enter the jurisdiction.
In 1960, while opposing desegregation of New Orleans public schools, Perez spoke provocatively at a rally in the city. His speech is credited with catalyzing a mob assault on the school administration building by some 2,000 white men, who were fought off by police using fire hoses. The mob ran through the city and attacked African Americans on the streets. When the schools were reopened, Perez organized a boycott by white residents. His group made threats to whites who allowed their children to attend desegregated schools. Perez arranged for poor whites to attend a segregated private school without charge , and he helped to establish a new whites-only private school in New Orleans. The Roman Catholic Church supported desegregation, and integrated its parochial schools. The bishop of New Orleans excommunicated Perez for his overt opposition to the church's teachings.
In 1919, Judge Perez launched a reign of bought elections and strictly enforced segregation. Laws were enacted on Perez's fiat and were rubber-stamped by the parish governing councils. Elections under Perez's reign were sometimes blatantly falsified, with voting records appearing in alphabetical order and names of national celebrities such as Babe Ruth, Charlie Chaplin, and Herbert Hoover appearing on the rolls. Perez-endorsed candidates often won with 90% or more of the ballots. Those who appeared to vote were intimidated by Perez's enforcers. He sent large tough men into the voting booths to "help" people vote. Many voters were bribed. Perez testified that he bribed voters $2, $5, and $10 to vote his way depending on who they are.LOUISIANA: Home of both the "carefully taught" and the carefully bought. Next parish council meeting should be another humdinger.
Perez took action to suppress African Americans from voting within his domain, but most were already disenfranchised due to the state constitution passed at the turn of the century, which added requirements for payment of poll taxes and passing literacy tests in order to register to vote. Subjective and discriminatory treatment by white registrars prevented most blacks from registering.
Gov. Pete Ricketts has doubled his monetary backing of the petition drive to restore the death penalty in Nebraska.
A report filed Friday shows the governor gave $100,000 to Nebraskans for the Death Penalty in early July, which comes on top of the $100,000 he gave to the campaign in June.
His donations account for nearly one-third of the funds raised by the group, which has less than a month left to gather signatures on a petition seeking to put the fate of capital punishment on next year’s ballot.
The referendum petition would ask voters whether they want to undo legislation repealing the state’s death penalty.
Ricketts’ role in financing the petition drive appears to be a first, at least in recent decades. Past governors have signed petitions or thrown their political support behind them but have not been top contributors to the drives.
2266 The efforts of the state to curb the spread of behavior harmful to people's rights and to the basic rules of civil society correspond to the requirement of safeguarding the common good. Legitimate public authority has the right and duty to inflict punishment proportionate to the gravity of the offense. Punishment has the primary aim of redressing the disorder introduced by the offense. When it is willingly accepted by the guilty party, it assumes the value of expiation. Punishment then, in addition to defending public order and protecting people's safety, has a medicinal purpose: as far as possible, it must contribute to the correction of the guilty party.AUSTIN POWERS, call your office. Nebraska needs your help.
2267 Assuming that the guilty party's identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.
If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people's safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.
Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm - without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself - the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity "are very rare, if not practically nonexistent."
Country singer Lynn Anderson, best known for her classic recording “(I Never Promised You a) Rose Garden,” died Thursday night of a heart attack at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
She had been hospitalized for pneumonia following a trip to Italy. She was 67 years old.
Lynn Rene Anderson was born Sept. 26, 1947 in Grand Forks, N.D., and raised in California. She came from a musical family: Her parents Casey and Liz Anderson were both songwriters; the latter penned the Merle Haggard hits “(My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers” and “I’m a Lonesome Fugitive.”
Ms. Anderson’s debut single, a duet with Jerry Lane called “For Better or for Worse,” was released in 1966, when she was just 19 years old. It failed to chart. However, later that year her single “Ride, Ride, Ride,” cracked the country charts, and its successor, “If I Kiss You (Will You Go Away)” was a Top 5 hit.
For two years during the late 1960s, Ms. Anderson was a regular on the popular “Lawrence Welk Show,” an outlet which exposed her to a nationwide audience. "It was appointment viewing," said WSM DJ and Grand Ole Opry announcer Eddie Stubbs. "Lynn Anderson really helped expand the boundaries of country music because there wasn't a lot of (it) on network television at that time."
Ms. Anderson wed producer/songwriter Glenn Sutton in 1968. He produced several of her hit songs—and wrote some too, including “You’re My Man” and “Keep Me in Mind”—but the couple would divorce in 1977.
In 1970, Ms. Anderson moved from California to Nashville, and signed with Columbia Records. In October of that year, she released what would become her signature song, and one of country music’s classics. The lilting “(I Never Promised You a) Rose Garden,” penned by Joe South, became a worldwide hit with its immediately recognizable intro and catchy lyrics. In the U.S., it spent five weeks atop the country music charts and crossed over to the pop charts as well. The recording also netted Ms. Anderson a Best Female Country Vocal Performance Grammy Award, and in 1971, the Country Music Association named her Female Vocalist of the Year. Over the last four decades, “Rose Garden” has been covered numerous times by a wide variety of artists including k.d. lang, Martina McBride, Suicide Machines and Southern Culture on the Skids.