Wichita, for all its racial struggles, can take pride not only in having elected the first African-American to the Kansas Senate in 1964 but in continuing to send African-Americans to the chamber. The passing last week of that first pioneer, Curtis McClinton Sr., at age 99, highlighted the grocer’s service to his community and state, first as a member of the Kansas House and then, after spending $34 on his campaign, during four years in the Senate. State Sen. David Haley, D-Kansas City, went to the Senate floor in 2008 to hail what had started with McClinton, noting that “since 1964, with the exception of two years fulfilling an unexpired term, a senator of color has represented part of Sedgwick County.” McClinton once said of his time in the Legislature: “While Martin Luther King was marching in the South, we already secured civil rights legislation here.” In 2008, Sedgwick County also elected the first African-American woman to the Senate, Oletha Faust-Goudeau; she is up for re-election this year.
Norton Bonaparte Jr., the Sanford, Fla., city manager caught in the harsh spotlight of the Trayvon Martin shooting, looks familiar to many Kansans. From 2006 until last July, Bonaparte was the city manager of Topeka, exiting after a challenging tenure marked by power struggles with elected officials and controversies over a police helicopter, the city zoo and more. In 2008, Bonaparte was one of five finalists for the job as Wichita’s city manager, which went to Robert Layton. In taking the job in Sanford last September, noted a Topeka Capital-Journal editorial, Bonaparte unknowingly went from the frying pan to the fire. On Friday, the day after the Sanford police chief stepped aside temporarily, Bonaparte acknowledged: “The issues that have been brought to my attention regarding the black community and the Sanford police department go back 10 years. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done there.”
Some national observers have used the offensive “Mrs. YoMama” e-mail that Kansas House Speaker Mike O’Neal forwarded as an opportunity to highlight how the partisan ire for President Obama has spilled onto his wife in nasty, juvenile and sometimes racially tinged comments about her weight, spending and vacations. “Could you see former first ladies Jackie Kennedy or Barbara Bush receiving this kind of disrespect without national outrage?” asked Washington Post blogger Barbara A. Reynolds, writing about O’Neal’s “toxic hateful speech” in an item headlined “GOP: red, white and racist?” In a BET website commentary, Jonathan P. Hicks noted that “the election of America’s first black president reveals how much the country has changed. On the other hand, so much of the unsavory discourse on the president and his wife reveals how much changing there is yet to achieve.” And another thing, said the Root’s Mary C. Curtis: “When people who aren’t black use slang that purports to be ‘black,’ it just makes them look incredibly foolish.”
The Kansas African American Museum, 601 N. Water, is hosting a memorial service at 6 p.m. today for Wichita native Ron Walters, who died Sept. 10 at age 72. Walters was a nationally known political scholar and strategist, news commentator, author and activist. As a Wichita University freshman in 1958, he made history by organizing the first student-led sit-in at a segregated lunch counter at the Dockum Drugs store in Wichita. That successful sit-in later became a model for other groups throughout the country. “Wichitans all should be very proud of Ron Walters and the change he brought to this city,” said Gretchen Cassel Eick, a history professor at Friends University and author of the book “Dissent in Wichita: The Civil Rights Movement in the Midwest, 1954-72.” “His death from cancer took from us a brilliant man with a big heart who marched to a drumbeat that calls us all to finish the job.”
UPDATE: The memorial service was postponed so that members of the Walters family could attend.
The Obama administration and conservative media overreacted to — and didn’t properly investigate — a video clip of an Agriculture Department official saying how she didn’t give a white farmer as much help as she could have 24 years ago. Shirley Sherrod (in photo), who is African-American, was forced out of her job as director of rural development in Georgia as the clip was played repeatedly on Fox News. But the full video shows how Sherrod mentioned the episode as an example of learning from mistakes and racial reconciliation; she went on to explain how she realized she was wrong and helped the farmer save his farm. The farmer’s wife has corroborated Sherrod’s version of what happened, saying there was no discrimination and that Sherrod has always been her friend. To his credit, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Wednesday he would reconsider the ouster of Sherrod. But not surprisingly, Sherrod said she wasn’t sure she still wanted to work for the department after how she was treated. She also accused Fox News of unprofessionalism and using her as a pawn in a larger political game.
Kentucky GOP Senate nominee Rand Paul’s stated ambivalence about the part of the Civil Rights Act pertaining to private business was the talk of the Sunday news talk shows. On ABC’s “This Week,” columnist George Will had a tart response: “The simple fact is that in 1964, we as a nation repealed one widely exercised right, the right of private property owners to serve in public accommodations whom they want, and replaced it with another right, that is, the right of the entire American public to use public accommodations. We were correct to do so. And in the process, we refuted an old notion, that you cannot — and this offends some libertarians — the notion was you cannot legislate morality. Yes, you can. We did. We not only got African-Americans into public accommodations, we changed the thinking of the white portion of the country as well.”
Wichita, for all its racial struggles, can take pride not only in having elected the first African-American to the Kansas Senate in 1964 but in continuing to send African-Americans to the chamber. The passing last week of that first pioneer, Curtis McClinton Sr., at age 99, highlighted the grocer’s service to his community and state, first as a member of the Kansas House and then, after spending $34 on his campaign, during four years in the Senate. State Sen. David Haley, D-Kansas City, went to the Senate floor in 2008 to hail what had started with McClinton, noting that “since 1964, with the exception of two years fulfilling an unexpired term, a senator of color has represented part of Sedgwick County.” McClinton once said of his time in the Legislature: “While Martin Luther King was marching in the South, we already secured civil rights legislation here.” In 2008, Sedgwick County also elected the first African-American woman to the Senate, Oletha Faust-Goudeau; she is up for re-election this year.
