FANNIE LOU HAMER: Is this the land of the free and the home of the brave?

 Mr. Chairman, and to the Credentials Committee, my name is Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer, and I live at 626 East Lafayette Street, Ruleville, Mississippi, Sunflower County, the home of Senator James O. Eastland, and Senator Stennis.

It was the 31st of August in 1962 that eighteen of us traveled twenty-six miles to the county courthouse in Indianola to try to register to become first-class citizens.

We was met in Indianola by policemen, Highway Patrolmen, and they only allowed two of us in to take the literacy test at the time. After we had taken this test and started back to Ruleville, we was held up by the City Police and the State Highway Patrolmen and carried back to Indianola where the bus driver was charged that day with driving a bus the wrong color.

After we paid the fine among us, we continued on to Ruleville, and Reverend Jeff Sunny carried me four miles in the rural area where I had worked as a timekeeper and sharecropper for eighteen years. I was met there by my children, who told me that the plantation owner was angry because I had gone down to try to register.

After they told me, my husband came, and said the plantation owner was raising Cain because I had tried to register. Before he quit talking the plantation owner came and said, "Fannie Lou, do you know - did Pap tell you what I said?"

And I said, "Yes, sir."

He said, "Well I mean that." He said, "If you don't go down and withdraw your registration, you will have to leave." Said, "Then if you go down and withdraw," said, "you still might have to go because we are not ready for that in Mississippi."

And I addressed him and told him and said, "I didn't try to register for you. I tried to register for myself."

I had to leave that same night.

On the 10th of September 1962, sixteen bullets was fired into the home of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Tucker for me. That same night two girls were shot in Ruleville, Mississippi. Also Mr. Joe McDonald's house was shot in.

And June the 9th, 1963, I had attended a voter registration workshop; was returning back to Mississippi. Ten of us was traveling by the Continental Trailway bus. When we got to Winona, Mississippi, which is Montgomery County, four of the people got off to use the washroom, and two of the people - to use the restaurant - two of the people wanted to use the washroom.

The four people that had gone in to use the restaurant was ordered out. During this time I was on the bus. But when I looked through the window and saw they had rushed out I got off of the bus to see what had happened. And one of the ladies said, "It was a State Highway Patrolman and a Chief of Police ordered us out."

I got back on the bus and one of the persons had used the washroom got back on the bus, too.

As soon as I was seated on the bus, I saw when they began to get the five people in a highway patrolman's car. I stepped off of the bus to see what was happening and somebody screamed from the car that the five workers was in and said, "Get that one there." When I went to get in the car, when the man told me I was under arrest, he kicked me.

I was carried to the county jail and put in the booking room. They left some of the people in the booking room and began to place us in cells. I was placed in a cell with a young woman called Miss Ivesta Simpson. After I was placed in the cell I began to hear sounds of licks and screams, I could hear the sounds of licks and horrible screams. And I could hear somebody say, "Can you say, 'yes, sir,' nigger? Can you say 'yes, sir'?"

And they would say other horrible names.

She would say, "Yes, I can say 'yes, sir.'"

"So, well, say it."

She said, "I don't know you well enough."

They beat her, I don't know how long. And after a while she began to pray, and asked God to have mercy on those people.

And it wasn't too long before three white men came to my cell. One of these men was a State Highway Patrolman and he asked me where I was from. I told him Ruleville and he said, "We are going to check this."

They left my cell and it wasn't too long before they came back. He said, "You are from Ruleville all right," and he used a curse word. And he said, "We are going to make you wish you was dead."

I was carried out of that cell into another cell where they had two Negro prisoners. The State Highway Patrolmen ordered the first Negro to take the blackjack.

The first Negro prisoner ordered me, by orders from the State Highway Patrolman, for me to lay down on a bunk bed on my face.

I laid on my face and the first Negro began to beat. I was beat by the first Negro until he was exhausted. I was holding my hands behind me at that time on my left side, because I suffered from polio when I was six years old.

After the first Negro had beat until he was exhausted, the State Highway Patrolman ordered the second Negro to take the blackjack.

The second Negro began to beat and I began to work my feet, and the State Highway Patrolman ordered the first Negro who had beat me to sit on my feet - to keep me from working my feet. I began to scream and one white man got up and began to beat me in my head and tell me to hush.

One white man - my dress had worked up high - he walked over and pulled my dress - I pulled my dress down and he pulled my dress back up.

I was in jail when Medgar Evers was murdered.

All of this is on account of we want to register, to become first-class citizens. And if the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?

Thank you.

Speech from http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features

PART III - THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS : ABORTED JUSTICE

PART III: INNOCENT OR GUILTY?

(FIND PART II HERE)

On hearing the motion by, Mr. Leibowitz for the Scottsboro boys for a retrial, Judge James Edwin Horton retired to consider the motion and write the judgment.

Now, something happened during the consideration of this Motion. The Judge Horton met Dr. Marvin Lynch, who had been excused from testifying. The meeting had happened in the Court house, gents’ washroom as the Dr. Lynch did not want to be seen having a conversation with the Judge. Dr. Lynch told the judge that as per his personal examination the two women were not raped. That he had informed the prosecution that the alleged rape was a fabrication but they were adamant to press the charges against the Scottsboro boys. And it was because of this he had been excluded as a witness by the Prosecutor.

Judge Hurton became even more concern when considering the application and wondered: why is it that when the Scottsboro boys where engaging in a fight with the white boys there was no evidence to show they were armed with knives or pistol and neither of the white boys thrown out of the train had knife injuries? Where was the head wound inflicted by the pistol as alleged by Victoria Price? Victoria priced was forced to lay down on jagged rocks on the gondola car train and each boy lay on top of her to forcefully penetrate her vagina. Where was the evidence to show a lacerated vagina or bleeding back? Why was the semen in their pubic hair dry and starchy yet it was examined about one hour thirty minutes after the incidence? Why was there no evidence to show that her cloths were spattered with semen and blood? There was no evidence to show blood flowing from her vagina? Why were the white girls when presented to the doctors for examination were neither hysteria or nervous or depressed in spirit after being raped by nine men? Why were the spermatozoa non-motile or dead? Why is the evidence of Victoria Price not being corroborated by any witness given that the rape happen on top of an open train on a sunny day on a slow moving train.

Now Judge Hurton was faced with this concerning questions on one hand.  

On the other hand, Judgeship was an elective position. Judge Hurton had been elected unopposed in the previous election as judge. The election being around the corner, if he set the sentence aside he may lose the election since the masses and his voters will be annoyed and in fact an emissary had been sent to him informing him that if he set the sentence aside it will destroy him politically and he should be sure he shall lose the election. He wondered should he sell his birthright position as a defender and administrator of justice for an elective position.

On 22^nd June, 1933, the judge called the court into order. He held four sheets of paper, on it lay the fate of the Scottsboro boys and   the fate of his career as a judge.

On his opening statements he said, “Social order is based on law, and its perpetuity on its fair and impartial administration. Deliberate injustice is more fatal to the one who impose than to the one whom it is imposed. The victim may die quickly and his suffering cease, but teachings of Christianity and the uniform lessons of all history illustrate without exception that its perpetrators not only pay the penalty themselves, but their children through endless generations… the court must be faithful in the exercise of the power which it believes it possesses as it must be careful to abstain from the assumption of those not within its proper sphere” he went on to demonstrate the lack of corroboration in the evidence against the Scottsboro boys.

In conclusion Judge Hurton said, “History, sacred and profane, and the common experience of mankind teach us that women of the character shown in this case are prone for selfish reasons to make false accusations both of rape and of insult upon the slightest provocation for ulterior purposes…. It is therefore ordered and adjudged by the Court that the motion be granted; that the verdict of the jury in this case and the judgment of the Court sentencing this defendant to death be set aside and that a new trial be and the same is hereby ordered.”

Judge Hurton firmly believed that the truth will always set you free and that justice had to be done though the heavens fall. When the Judgeship election were held, he was defeated but the truth he stood for kept marching on. In 2017 A statue of Judge Horton, made of bronze, was erected outside a courthouse in Limestone County to immortalize his words during the trial when he said, “So far as the law is concerned it knows neither native nor alien, Jew nor Gentile, neither black nor white. This case is no different from any other. We have only to do our duty without fear or favor.”

The trial was done before another judge before an all-white jury but this time they were found guilty and sentenced to the electric chair. The case was appealed all the way to the Supreme Court for the second time. The ground of appeal to the Supreme Court was that “the jury selection had systematically excluded black members due to racial prejudice.”

In a land mark decision in the case of Norris V. Alabama the Supreme Court held that “the systematic and purposeful exclusion of African-Americans from service on the grand and trial juries denied African-American defendants in the state courts the equal protection of law guaranteed under the due process clause in the constitution”. The conviction was reversed and retrial ordered saving the boys from the Electric Chair.

The Supreme Court judgment in Norris V. Alabama played a great role in having the African-American people on the jury and helped in the civil right movement cases that started a few years later. This judgment acted as a seed of change and sparked civil rights movements.

THE AFTERMATH

The Scottsboro Boys case dragged on for years. It ended tragically with young productive lives of boys who were out to look for brighter days being wrecked and wasted. Some of them were released, others pardon and others run out of prison.

In 2013 the boys were granted posthumous pardons. The Governor of Albama stated, “While we could not take back what happened to the Scottsboro Boys 80 years ago, we found a way to make it right moving forward. The pardons granted to the Scottsboro Boys today are long overdue. The legislation that led to today's pardons was the result of a bipartisan, cooperative effort. I appreciate the Pardons and Parole Board for continuing our progress today and officially granting these pardons. Today, the Scottsboro Boys have finally received justice.”

This shameful case of injustice is not limited to the United States of America; Never underestimate the power of history, it repeats itself anywhere anytime. It repeats itself daily in different forms. For instance in our court rooms; when judges are compromised by corruption, politics, sex, racism, tribalism, economic and cultural factors and justice is aborted and innocent lives suffer. The society is denied the birth of affirmed human rights; this becomes the tragedy of justice.

In life we may find ourselves in any shoe of the Scottsboro story. Maybe as the White Girls, in our effort to save ourselves we accuse others falsely, as Doctors who need to testify the truth, as prosecutors who need to objective and not giving in to mob justice, as Lawyers like Samuel Leibowitz, to be determined to protect the rights and freedoms and fight for what we believe in, and maybe as Scottsboro Boy, in our daily life trying to make a brighter lives for ourselves we find ourselves as victims of circumstances in an unjust and corrupted  system; where you are guilty until proven innocent ; but I hope we or at least our judiciary shall be like Judge James E. Horton that we shall do justice though the heavens fall and even if they fall they shall fall on a just land.

In the words of Howard Zinn I conclude by saying, “Perhaps the most important thing I learned was about democracy, that democracy is not our government, our constitution, our legal structure. Too often they are enemies of democracy. Certainly this was the experience of African-Americans in this country for two hundred years. With the government failing to enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, black men, women, and children decided to do that on their own. They organized, demonstrated, protested, challenged the law, were beaten, went to prison, some killed—and thereby reached the conscience of the nation and the world. And things changed. That’s when democracy comes alive.” That’s the price we pay for democracy, for justice.

PART II - THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS : ABORTED JUSTICE

 PART II: THE RETRIAL

(FIND PART I HERE)

Judge James Edwin Horton

The retrial took place before Judge James Edwin Horton.  He was a white Judge and already prejudiced. To a given certainty it was obvious he would assist deliver a guilty verdict.  He was entrusted with the duty to perform a “legal” lynching that the public had yearned for.

 But this time the trial dynamics would be different. The Scottsboro boys would be represented by Mr. Samuel Leibowitz, a renowned criminal lawyer. Mr. Lebowitz come with the entire legal arsenal to set the nine Negro boys free and would represent them on a probono basis.

Further on this retrial, one of the white girls who had alleged being raped by the Scottsboro Boys, Ruby Bates had retracted her statement and admitted that the alleged rape was a fabricated story.

An all-white people jury were selected and the trial begun.

The prosecution opened the case. The chief witnesses were the Complaint, Victoria Price and the two doctors, Dr. R. R. Bridges and Dr. Marvin Lynch who had examined the girls after the rape allegation.

Victoria price gave here chilling, thrilling, moving and gory account of how she was hit on the head by the butt end of a gun by one of the Scottsboro boys, how she was forcefully undressed and laid on the gravel or jagged rocks on the half-filled gondola car train; how one of the Scottsboro boys place a knife on her neck and threatened to kill her if she dared not co-operate, how each of the Scottsboro boys penetrated her and discharged semen in her and her cloths, how her vagina bleed and her cloths were filled with blood.

Samuel Leibowitz cross examined her.  He asked her what she did for a living; which car of the freight train had the alleged incident occurred; if she had had sex the previous night before the train ride but she evasively answered these questions and refused to give any direct answer.

Dr. Bridges testifying

The Prosecution called their next witness Dr. R. R. Bridges to the witness stand; the doctor said he examined the white girls about one hour thirty minutes after the rape allegation.  That indeed the girls had engaged in sex; that there was presence of semen in her pubic hair, there was spermatozoa in her vagina;

On cross-examining the doctor, he affirmed that the girls came to the hospital for examination one hour thirty minutes after the alleged rape; that they were not hysterical, nervous or depressing of spirit; that she did not observe blood on the hair or stich any wound on the white girl’s head; that the clothing of the girls were intact and there was no sign of forceful undressing or signs of rough handling; that there was no semen or blood stain on their cloths; that her cloths were not damp or wet due to the discharge of semen and bleeding from the vagina; That the discharge of semen around their vagina area was dusty and starchy a sign of no recent sexual intercourse; the vagina had no lacerations, tears or signs of rough handling;  that the semen quantity in their vagina was so minimal to have been discharged by  nine  boys; that the spermatozoa in their vagina was dead or non-motile;

After the cross examination and reexamination, the prosecution was to call the Second doctor, Dr. Lynch to testify but the prosecution made an application that Dr. Lynch, be excused from testifying as his evidence would be redundant and repetitive to the first doctor. His application was granted. Dr. Lynch was excused from testifying. 

The prosecution closed its case

The defense opened its case.

The accused called his witnesses. Each of the Scottsboro boys testified and denied having seen, met, interacted or raped the white women while on the freight train. It emerged one of the boys had fully blown venereal disease and could not walk as a result and therefore, could not in any way have had sexual intercourse; and if indeed he had intercourse with Victoria Price then the complainant should have been infected, and there was no evidence to indicate she was; Further one of the boys was nearly blind and had sat on the last gondola car away from where the alleged rape incident had happened, when the train was stopped and a search done the boy  was found on the last train car, how possible was it that he was able to walk over and on top of the train cars to where the complaint was, rape her and go back with such poor eye sight?

The other white girl, now defendant witness, Ruby Bates, testified that they had agreed to forge the story to avoid arrest; that no rape has occurred and that the Scottsboro boys were as innocent as a dove.

From Ruby Bates testimony, it came out clearly when the train was stopped at Paint Town the two white girls had given a “foul, contemptible and outrageous” lied to the police. They had told the police the fabricated rape story to divert the police attention from being suspected for being prostitutes and engaging in immorality so that they do not risk being arrested and prosecuted for violating the Mann Act that made those actions a felony.

On summing up the defense case Mr. Leibowitz asked the jury, “Can this poor scrap of colored humanity receive a fair trial?”

The case was closed.

With all this contradiction in evidence there was hope for the Scottsboro boys to be free.

The jury was given time to confer on the conviction and sentence. They came back after a short while.

They returned a verdict of Guilty and a sentence of death by electric chair again.

The questions lingered, what had happened to the evidence of the doctor, the complainant, the inconsistency and contradiction of evidence, was the case really proven beyond reasonable doubt?

Scottsboro Boys with their Lawyer, Mr.Leibowitz

This was a classic example of racism in the justice system. A system that was to judiciously and dutifully do justice was at the center of traversing justice. Here were children trapped in an unjust system not knowing or understanding what is going on around them. They lie miserably in their death cells awaiting their execution. The Jury mind had been clouded with prejudice. The justice system was not an avenue to get to the truth even in the midst of all this contradicting evidence. The judicial system had been turned to a place to perform a legal ritual and bring about results already decided regardless of any testimony or evidence. It was clear that the boys were being killed merely for being Negro.

Due to this prejudices, uncertainties and questions in regards of the trial, Mr. Leibowitz applied for a motion for the Judge to overturn the verdict and order a retrial; on the grounds that the jury had not considered the law and evidence in giving a determination in this case.

(Read on the outcome of the Motion on the next blog)

THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS: ABORTED JUSTICE

The law is designed to protect all persons regardless of their race, social status, religion or sex. But the same law can be used as a tool to perpetuate inhuman and degrading actions. To ensure the law is fair and just, all working democracies have a meticulous Judiciary that is tasked with the duty to interpret the law to reflect the values and principles the society stands for. Through interpretation, the values and principles of a society are sieved, gauged and asserted by courts to inform the future and to invest in the democracy the respect for the intrinsic worth of all human beings. By so doing justice is enforced in the society.

All Courts of justice have the jurisdiction to do justice. However, the judges or people in the justice system are human and are fallible and injustice may be perpetuated. They may cooperate with injustice.  And when the judiciary fails to do justice with the required impartiality to the law and evidence presented to it we experience a justice tragedy.

Such a tragedy happened back in the year 1931.

It was during the verge of the Great depression when the disastrous arm of economic depression and consequently poverty was mercilessly ravishing, causing havoc, derailing, recking lives of people in every corner of America. In an effort to avoid being spectators in their own lives, nine Negro boys aged between 13 to 19 years took initiative and hitched a freight train to travel to Alabama in order to look for work and earn a living and at least alleviate their lives out of poverty.

On the freight train the Negro boys settled in a gondola car (a train car without a top). While in the gondola car a fight broke out between the Negro boys and some white boys who were also in the train. The Negro boys prevailed and threw the white boys out of the train except of one namely, Orville Gilley. The white boys thrown out of the train reported the incident to a nearby police station. The police station telephoned the next train station at Paint Town and informed them of the incidence.

When the train arrived at Paint Town train station, a large crowd had gathered of police and the public. The crowd was hostile and explosive. They had heard what the Negro boys had done to the white boys. A posse was formed and the train was searched. Everyone on it was rounded up, among them the nine Negro boys and a white boy.

Everyone on being removed from the train was asked who they were and what they were doing on a freight train. In the process, two white girls also emerged from the train.  It was odd, what are two white girls doing on a freight train? It was common for boys but girls, more so white girls! The two white girls were Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, on being questioned of what they were doing on the train and if the Negro boys had bothered them, they alleged they had been gang raped by the nine Negro boys.

All hell broke loose. Firestorm ensued. Hot brimstone was ready to be poured on the nine Negro boys. The Negro boys were almost lynched.

At the time, due to racism, the perception was that black Negro man had an insatiable sexual appetite for white women. Just an allegation of a Negro man spoke to a white woman was enough to effect death by torture.

The police intervened and the nine Negro boys were taken to jail and the two white girls were rushed to hospital where they were examined by two doctors, Dr. R. R. Bridges and Dr. Marvin Lynch.

The next day the news headline read: “The case has no parallel in crime history of black beating and raping white.

Six days Later, the nine Negro having been accused of rape, were taken to Court in Scottsboro, and hence the name Scottsboro Boys. At the court they were charged with rape.

They could not afford a lawyer; so a real estate lawyer not familiar with criminal proceedings represented them and spent less than 20 minutes with them and spent them asking them to plead guilty but they pleaded not guilty.  

When the prosecution witnesses were testifying in court the Scottsboro boys lawyer did not bother to cross examine the witnesses or the doctor who had examined the girls and did not give the closing remarks summing up the case. The Scottsboro Boys had no witnesses apart from themselves.

They were convicted and sentenced to death on the electric chair.

They appealed the conviction to the Alabama Supreme Court of the state; the sentence was affirmed; they appealed the case to the Supreme Court of USA, on the ground that they were denied sufficient and adequate Legal counsel during trial. The Supreme Court through a precedent making judgment of Powell v. Alabama passed a judgment to their favor and ordered a retrial stating that “if charged with a crime… a person requires the guiding hand of counsel at every step in the proceedings against him.”

A retrial was ordered.

(Read what happened at the retrial on the next blog)

FILTER BUBBLE: THE DEATH OF FREE WILL?

 Free will is a very important aspect of a free society. It is what you exercise when you are in the Polling Booth alone, choosing which candidate you shall vote for. It is what you exercise in determining where to live, work or who to marry. It is what you exercise in deciding which religion, political party or group you shall join. It is what you exercise in deciding to take one choice over the other without any impediment.

Can you still claim to have free will when your available options of choice have been pre-determined for you without your knowledge? When your choices of friends on social media have been pre-selected for you? When the political ideology you hold has been pre-enforced for you? When the product or services you will purchase has been pre-preference for you? Welcome to the age of the Filter Bubble.

A filter bubble as Eli Pariser would put it “is the creation of an authority around oneself that the information you receive should confirm or be compatible with your own opinion, belief, or wants. Any information that is contrary to you is locked out.”

In this age of technology, a filter bubble is a form of Artificial intelligence that selectively guesses what information an internet user would like to see. A Filer bubble is built by website coders, who by relying on our personal information on various internet platforms such as social media to get information on our age, location, previous searches, sex, political ideology, past choices and preferences, news we read, event we follow etc. to create a logarithm that filter which information we should receive and what should be locked out. This logarithm becomes the “authority”. The authority pre-decides for you (without your knowledge) what information you should access based on your personal information they have collected.  Therefore, when using the internet you end up only having access to information that confirms or is similar to your own personal opinion and contrary opinion is locked out.

The challenge is; it is not you who decides how this “authority” exercises this authority on choosing what to lock out and what to accept in. This is dangerous because first you essentially lose your freewill; you surrender your power to decide which information you get when using the internet to this authority. Secondly, you end up being locked in your own opinion and beliefs without getting another perspective of the issues. Your perspective is left unchallenged since contrary opinion is locked out by this “authority”. This leads to biases or a form of intellectual isolation. Further, you are denied the opportunity to know what information was locked out by this “authority”.

 Consider it this way, Choices and action stem from thoughts. Thoughts are dependent on the information a person is supplied with. Thus, if a person is supplied with given information, their thoughts, and subsequently their choices are influenced. No one is immune from the information received from social media, news and what we read, this factors distorts our understanding and hampers our ability to balance decisions, therefore influencing our choices.

For instance, a logarithm on social media determines which friend suggestions you receive based on your contact list, schools you went, political party you are in, age, locality etc. Therefore you end up being surrounded by people who think or hold the same opinion or belief like you and locks out anyone with a contrary opinion. You therefore live in an illusion that your perspective is correct since everyone holds the same opinion and your internet search confirms the same to be true. Yet, in reality you are in a bubble that only allows information compatible with your perspective to get in.

A Filter bubble is important in this age of information where “censorship works by flooding people with irrelevant information and therefore we are unable to know what to pay attention to and what to ignore and we end up spending most of our time investigating and debating on the authenticity of the information rather than the content of the information. In ancient times power was to have access to data but in current age power is to know what to ignore.” And due to this need to know what to ignore, filter bubble comes to play this noble role.

In this age of technology our personal information on our activities and choices are out there somewhere being processed and shall be used to influence us to buy or use a given product or service or vote for a particular candidate.

 In as much as the filter bubble comes to play this crucial role of limiting the flooding of information to people, we pay it with the high cost of our own free will. Initially internet and social media provided an avenue to get diverse view points, perspective, ideas and opinions leading to a diverse pool of information in decision making but with the creation of the filter bubble logarithms in search engines, social media and other areas; internet is now an area to reinforce our biases.

As Bill Gates would put it, that technology  “lets you go off with like-minded people, so you’re not mixing and sharing and understanding other points of view … It’s super important. It’s turned out to be more of a problem than I, or many others, would have expected.”

In democratic society, democracy works because citizens are able to get views beyond their narrow self-interest and there is a healthy exchange of information but with coming of the filter bubble citizens only receive political information that is similar to theirs and denying them the opinion to hear the contrary opinion of other members in the society.

So as Filter Bubble logarithm continue to take grip of our flow of information, maybe freewill will just be an illusion, and our choices will be predetermined by other parties other than ourselves. This will call upon each person to take initiative to seek contrary opinion of others. It will require legal reform to ensure website coders are ethical in creating these logarithms or else Free will is dead. We need to continuously ask: What obligations does every technology innovation and company have in exchange to the power they have due to the personal information they hold? With every technological advancement, this question needs to be answered.

Are you an intellectual?

 "[I] ask you a simple question: are you an intellectual?

When I say intellectual, I am not referring to someone who knows a wealth of information. How much you know has no bearing on how much you are in intellectual.

I define—and many others define an intellectual as someone with a tremendous desire to know. Intellectuals are open-minded. Intellectuals have a tremendous capacity to change their mind on matters, to self-reflect, to self-critique. Intellectuals are governed by only one special interest that is rarely self-serving—the special interest of finding and revealing the truth.

...how many of you have a tremendous desire to know? How many of your minds are wide open to new ideas? How many of you are searching for ideas that challenge how you see the world? How many of you are willing to look at the world differently with the blink of new evidence? How many of you are critiquing your own ideas as intensely as you critique the ideas of others?

The task of intellectuals is to transcend political labels. The task of intellectuals is to transcend political ideology and economic interests and cultural traditions. The task of intellectuals is to fashion a clear and unadulterated mirror of humanity, so we can see ourselves for what we really are. The task of intellectuals is to investigate the problems of our world. The task of intellectuals is to solve the problems of our world.

Are you up for these tasks?" Dr. Ibram X. Kendi

IGNAZ SEMMELWEIS: THE UNSANITARY AND MURDEROUS DOCTORS WHO REFUSED CHANGE

Photo of Ignaz Semmelweis by Brittanica

It is 1846, A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of a disease. All the powers and knowledge of medicine have entered into a rescue alliance to exorcise this spectre: doctors & patients, hospitals and churches, academics & mythical.

But no form of exorcising seems to drive out this disease.  The disease is causing havoc; ravaging and wrecking the lives of women in Europe.  Shortly after giving birth, women would exhibit symptoms consisting of fever, Lower abdominal pain and bad smelling vaginal discharge and within 24 hours this disease would thrush them straight to their graves. Child Birth was a death warrant.

The diseases came to be known as Child-bed fever (Puerperal fever). In medical school students would be told “the causes of this disease is so complex that a human could not understand it, the disease is due to forces of nature too powerful for a human to do anything about it.” Humans were rendered helpless.

Ignaz Semmelweis a doctor at Vienna General Hospital is determined to stop this merciless murderer.

Vienna General Hospital had two sections of maternity – Clinic one operated by Doctors & Clinic Two operated by midwifes. Semmelweis noted that the Doctors Clinic, with competent and qualified professionals had a mortality rate of about 16% and that of the midwife a mortality rate of 2%. This was a big margin of clinics in same locality.

The situation was so bad that pregnant women would beg on their knees to be admitted to the Midwife clinic to avoid being taken to the Doctors clinic. In some cases, pregnant women preferred to give birth in the streets than be admitted in the Doctors clinic.

The doctors blamed the high morality to miasma (bad air). But Semmelweis could not accept this explanation because both clinics were located at the same place and the air was the same.

He decided to investigate the reason for the big margin. He decided to question every theory put forward. Why did the doctors section have more death than the Midwife section?

He observed there was speculation that the ventilation system in both clinics caused the difference in air. On investigation the ventilation was in fact the same.

He observed that the birthing position of women in the midwife section was different from that of the doctors. He introduced the same birthing position to the doctors section. No change.

He observed in the Midwife section there was prayers with a priest every day. He introduced the same in the Doctors section. No change.

He note that every morning a bell would be rung in the midwife section. He introduced the same in the Doctors section. No change.

He observed there was a difference in schedule in both sections. The midwife would operate their sections the whole day while the doctors would carry out autopsies in the morning on dead bodies and in the afternoon they would come to the maternity ward to assist pregnant women in delivery of children.

During this period one doctor pricked his finger with a scalpel while carrying out an autopsy on a cadaver of a woman who had died of child bed fever. The doctor then died a few days later.

When an autopsy was done on the dead doctor body the same observation that was made on women who had died of child bed fever were observed on this dead doctor cadaver.

Graph by Brent Dykes

Semmelweis concluded that there must be a relationship between the death of the doctor, the pricked finger and the infected autopsy. He reasoned that the disease must have been transmitted into his body through the pricked finger. The disease was somehow transmitted by human to human contact. Therefore, to prevent transmission and stop death on women, he instructed doctors to wash their hands after carrying out the autopsy with chlorinated lime before they go to help women in the maternity wards.

When he informed doctors of his findings he was laughed at, dismissed and ignored but he persisted.

His hand washing instruction was finally reluctantly implemented and the mortality rate in the hospital plunged down. In the doctors hospital it went to as low as 1.0% and in the midwife section to almost 0%.

The disease problem solved? Sadly no.

Doctors could not believe how a simple solution, as hand washing could solve a big problem that kills thousands and thousands of women.

More so, by telling doctors to wash their hands, it was implied that he was suggesting that the doctors were murdering their own patients all along; they themselves were the problem, they were the “irresponsible murderous” of their own patients.

In opposition to Semmelweis suggestion of hand washing Doctor Charles Meigs wrote a furious defense to ridicule Semmelweis stating, “Doctors are gentlemen… and a gentleman’s hands are clean.” In short, Dr. Charles would rather see women die, than see men put their pride and ego down.

John Cline, an old doctor, and strong believer in old medicine teaching criticized Semmelweis and considered him to be challenging the established order and said to him, “Keep yourself to what is old, for that is good. If our ancestors have proved it to be good, why should we not do as they did? Mistrust new ideas. I have no need of learned men; I need faithful and obedient subjects. He who would serve me must do what I command.”

Graph by Brent Dykes

Semmelweis ideas of hand washing were totally disregarded even after the evidence of low mortality rate. The doctors returned to their old practices and abandoned hand washing; mortality rates shot up, thousands of women continued to die in the hands of the “clean gentlemen’s hands.”

Semmelweis,  faced with great opposition from fellow doctors maintained his push with the  idea of hand washing and vigorously advocated for hospitals to observe hand washing and educated mothers not to accept to be assisted during delivery by a doctor who had not washed his hands.

Other doctors considered him a threat to the profession, his reputation was soiled, he lost his job and ultimately committed to a mental asylum where it is suspected he was beaten by guards, suffered a wound that would be infected leading to his death.

His funeral was unattended and fellow doctors refused to give him the commemorative service given to all doctors as was the norm at the time.

Years later, long after his death, in the late 1850s Louis Pasteur came up with the Scientific Germ Theory, which proofed the existence of germs with capacity to cause infections and in fact Ignaz Semmelweis was right all along and in deed hands could be sanitized by hand washing. Finally Semmelweis ideas were accepted and the people realized the horrible mistake they had made by rejecting Semmelweis ideas and how more lived would have been saved if they had adopted these ideas earlier on.

Semmelweis was a man ahead of his time. It is impressive of how he could deduce this hand washing idea at a time when infection by germs was unknown and Germ Theory had not been invented. He would be nicknamed as the savior of women and father of infection control.

Ignaz Semmelewis experience is a case study to all who want to establish a new order. Change is never easy.

The people who benefit from the maintenance of status quo will oppose any one who wants to challenge this status. The corrupt will not accept the accountability agenda. The warlords will not accept peace. The unjust will not accept an effective judiciary. The oppressor will not easily let go the oppressed.  But we can always speak the truth, for truth is truth even if only one individual states it and in the fullness of time it shall defend its self like a loose lion.

Truth will always be offensive to the social order.

Ignaz Semmelweis led to the phrase “Semmelweis reflex” to refer to the tendency to reject new ideas and new knowledge because it contradicts established ideas, norms and belief. All truth begins as blasphemies and human nature has always got in the way to resist new ideas and thoughts.

As pioneer of change we should continuously and consciously be aware of this Semmelweis reflex. Questioning the social order and its integrity is not an easy task. People are often indoctrinated with existing and established dominant doctrines and norms.  When exposed to new information and norms, it will often be interpreted based on these established norms which will lead to biased, predetermined and prejudiced conclusions rejecting the new information and ideas.

New wine cannot be placed in old wine skin. Our task is to be mentally ready not only to accept all new wine, but to also question it without bias or fear and use it for the good of all.

And as Barack Obama would put it, “change requires more than just speaking out -- it requires listening, as well.  In particular, it requires listening to those with whom you disagree, and being prepared to compromise… And democracy requires compromise, even when you are 100 percent right.  This is hard to explain sometimes.  You can be completely right, and you still are going to have to engage folks who disagree with you.  If you think that the only way forward is to be as uncompromising as possible, you will feel good about yourself, you will enjoy a certain moral purity, but you’re not going to get what you want.  And if you don’t get what you want long enough, you will eventually think the whole system is rigged.  And that will lead to more cynicism, and less participation, and a downward spiral of more injustice and more anger and more despair.  And that's never been the source of our progress.  That's how we cheat ourselves of progress.”

DAY OF AFFIRMATION

Robert F. Kennedy
University of Capetown
Capetown, South Africa
June 6, 1966

Mr. Chancellor, Mr. Vice Chancellor, Professor Robertson, Mr. Diamond, Mr. Daniel, Ladies and Gentlemen:

I come here this evening because of my deep interest and affection for a land settled by the Dutch in the mid-seventeenth century, then taken over by the British, and at last independent; a land in which the native inhabitants were at first subdued, but relations with whom remain a problem to this day; a land which defined itself on a hostile frontier; a land which has tamed rich natural resources through the energetic application of modern technology; a land which was once the importer of slaves, and now must struggle to wipe out the last traces of that former bondage. I refer, of course, to the United States of America.

But I am glad to come here, and my wife and I and all of our party are glad to come here to South Africa, and we are glad to come here to Capetown. I am already greatly enjoying my visit here. I am making an effort to meet and exchange views with people of all walks of life, and all segments of South African opinion – including those who represent the views of the government. Today I am glad to meet with the National Union of South African Students. For a decade, NUSAS has stood and worked for the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – principles which embody the collective hopes of men of good will around the globe.

Your work, at home and in international student affairs, has brought great credit to yourselves and your country. I know the National Student Association in the United States feels a particularly close relationship with this organization. And I wish to thank especially Mr. Ian Robertson, who first extended this invitation on behalf of NUSAS, I wish to thank him for his kindness to me in inviting me. I am very sorry that he can not be with us here this evening. I was happy to have had the opportunity to meet and speak with him earlier this evening, and I presented him with a copy of Profiles in Courage, which was a book written by President John Kennedy and was signed to him by President Kennedy's widow, Mrs. John Kennedy.

This is a Day of Affirmation – a celebration of liberty. We stand here in the name of freedom.

At the heart of that western freedom and democracy is the belief that the individual man, the child of God, is the touchstone of value, and all society, all groups, and states, exist for that person's benefit. Therefore the enlargement of liberty for individual human beings must be the supreme goal and the abiding practice of any western society.

The first element of this individual liberty is the freedom of speech; the right to express and communicate ideas, to set oneself apart from the dumb beasts of field and forest; the right to recall governments to their duties and obligations; above all, the right to affirm one's membership and allegiance to the body politic – to society – to the men with whom we share our land, our heritage and our children's future.

Hand in hand with freedom of speech goes the power to be heard – to share in the decisions of government which shape men's lives. Everything that makes man's lives worthwhile – family, work, education, a place to rear one's children and a place to rest one's head – all this depends on the decisions of government; all can be swept away by a government which does not heed the demands of its people, and I mean all of its people. Therefore, the essential humanity of man can be protected and preserved only where the government must answer – not just to the wealthy; not just to those of a particular religion, not just to those of a particular race; but to all of the people.

And even government by the consent of the governed, as in our own Constitution, must be limited in its power to act against its people: so that there may be no interference with the right to worship, but also no interference with the security of the home; no arbitrary imposition of pains or penalties on an ordinary citizen by officials high or low; no restriction on the freedom of men to seek education or to seek work or opportunity of any kind, so that each man may become all that he is capable of becoming.

These are the sacred rights of western society. These were the essential differences between us and Nazi Germany as they were between Athens and Persia.

They are the essences of our differences with communism today. I am unalterably opposed to communism because it exalts the state over the individual and over the family, and because its system contains a lack of freedom of speech, of protest, of religion, and of the press, which is characteristic of a totalitarian regime. The way of opposition to communism, however, is not to imitate its dictatorship, but to enlarge individual human freedom. There are those in every land who would label as "communist" every threat to their privilege. But may I say to you , as I have seen on my travels in all sections of the world, reform is not communism. And the denial of freedom, in whatever name, only strengthens the very communism it claims to oppose.

Many nations have set forth their own definitions and declarations of these principles. And there have often been wide and tragic gaps between promise and performance, ideal and reality. Yet the great ideals have constantly recalled us to our own duties. And – with painful slowness – we in the United States have extended and enlarged the meaning and the practice of freedom to all of our people.

For two centuries, my own country has struggled to overcome the self-imposed handicap of prejudice and discrimination based on nationality, on social class or race – discrimination profoundly repugnant to the theory and to the command of our Constitution. Even as my father grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, signs told him that "No Irish Need Apply". Two generations later, President Kennedy became the first Irish Catholic, and the first Catholic, to head the nation; but how many men of ability had, before 1961, been denied the opportunity to contribute to the nation's progress because they were Catholic, or because they were of Irish extraction? How many sons of Italian or Jewish or Polish parents slumbered in the slums – untaught, unlearned, their potential lost forever to our nation and to the human race? Even today, what price will we pay before we have assured full opportunity to millions of Negro Americans?

In the last five years we have done more to assure equality to our Negro citizens and to help the deprived, both white and black, than in the hundred years before that time. But much, much more remains to be done.

For there are millions of Negroes untrained for the simplest of jobs, and thousands every day denied their full and equal rights under the law; and the violence of the disinherited, the insulted and the injured, looms over the streets of Harlem and of Watts and Southside Chicago.

But a Negro American trains as an astronaut, one of mankind's first explorers into outer space; another is the chief barrister of the United States government, and dozens sit on the benches of our court; and another, Dr. Martin Luther King, is the second man of African descent to win the Nobel Peace Prize for his non-violent efforts for social justice between all of the races.

We have passed laws prohibiting discrimination in education, in employment, in housing; but these laws alone cannot overcome the heritage of centuries – of broken families and stunted children, and poverty and degradation and pain.

So the road toward equality of freedom is not easy, and great cost and danger march alongside all of us. We are committed to peaceful and non-violent change and that is important for all to understand – though change is unsettling. Still, even in the turbulence of protest and struggle is greater hope for the future, as men learn to claim and achieve for themselves the rights formerly petitioned from others.

And most important of all, all the panoply of government power has been committed to the goal of equality before the law – as we are now committing ourselves to achievement of equal opportunity in fact.

We must recognize the full human equality of all of our people – before God, before the law, and in the councils of government. We must do this, not because it is economically advantageous – although it is; not because the laws of God command it – although they do; not because people in other lands wish it so. We must do it for the single and fundamental reason that it is the right thing to do.

We recognize that there are problems and obstacles before the fulfillment of these ideals in the United States as we recognize that other nations, in Latin America and in Asia and in Africa have their own political, economic, and social problems, their unique barriers to the elimination of injustices.

In some, there is concern that change will submerge the rights of a minority, particularly where that minority is of a different race than that of the majority. We in the United States believe in the protection of minorities; we recognize the contributions that they can make and the leadership they can provide; and we do not believe that any people – whether majority or minority, or individual human beings – are "expendable" in the cause of theory or policy. We recognize also that justice between men and nations is imperfect, and that humanity sometimes progresses very slowly indeed.

All do not develop in the same manner and at the same pace. Nations, like men, often march to the beat of different drummers, and the precise solutions of the United States can neither be dictated nor transplanted to others, and that is not our intention. What is important however is that all nations must march toward increasing freedom; toward justice for all; toward a society strong and flexible enough to meet the demands of all of its people, whatever their race, and the demands of a world of immense and dizzying change that face us all.

In a few hours, the plane that brought me to this country crossed over oceans and countries which have been a crucible of human history. In minutes we traced migrations of men over thousands of years; seconds, the briefest glimpse, and we passed battlefields on which millions of men once struggled and died. We could see no national boundaries, no vast gulfs or high walls dividing people from people; only nature and the works of man - homes and factories and farms – everywhere reflecting man's common effort to enrich his life. Everywhere new technology and communications bring men and nations closer together, the concerns of one inevitably become the concerns of all. And our new closeness is stripping away the false masks, the illusion of differences which is at the root of injustice and hate and war. Only earthbound man still clings to the dark and poisoning superstition that his world is bounded by the nearest hill, his universe ends at river's shore, his common humanity is enclosed in the tight circle of those who share his town or his views and the color of his skin.

It is your job, the task of the young people in this world to strip the last remnants of that ancient, cruel belief from the civilization of man.

Each nation has different obstacles and different goals, shaped by the vagaries of history and of experience. Yet as I talk to young people around the world I am impressed not by the diversity but by the closeness of their goals, their desires, and their concerns and their hope for the future. There is discrimination in New York, the racial inequality of apartheid in South Africa, and serfdom in the mountains of Peru. People starve to death in the streets of India; a former Prime Minister is summarily executed in the Congo; intellectuals go to jail in Russia; and thousands are slaughtered in Indonesia; wealth is lavished on armaments everywhere in the world. These are different evils; but they are the common works of man. They reflect the imperfections of human justice, the inadequacy of human compassion, the defectiveness of our sensibility toward the sufferings of our fellows; they mark the limit of our ability to use knowledge for the well-being of our fellow human beings throughout the world. And therefore they call upon common qualities of conscience and indignation, a shared determination to wipe away the unnecessary sufferings of our fellow human beings at home and around the world.

It is these qualities which make of our youth today the only true international community. More than this I think that we could agree on what kind of a world we want to build. It would be a world of independent nations, moving toward international community, each of which protected and respected the basic human freedoms. It would be a world which demanded of each government that it accept its responsibility to insure social justice. It would be a world of constantly accelerating economic progress – not material welfare as an end in of itself, but as a means to liberate the capacity of every human being to pursue his talents and to pursue his hopes. It would, in short, be a world that we would all be proud to have built.

Just to the North of here are lands of challenge and of opportunity – rich in natural resources, land and minerals and people. Yet they are also lands confronted by the greatest odds – overwhelming ignorance, internal tensions and strife, and great obstacles of climate and geography. Many of these nations, as colonies, were oppressed and were exploited. Yet they have not estranged themselves from the broad traditions of the West; they are hoping and they are gambling their progress and their stability on the chance that we will meet our responsibilities to them, to help them overcome their poverty.

In the world we would like to build, South Africa could play an outstanding role, and a role of leadership in that effort. This country is without question a preeminent repository of the wealth and the knowledge and the skill of the continent. Here are the greater part of Africa's research scientists and steel production, most of its reservoirs of coal and of electric power. Many South Africans have made major contributions to African technical development and world science; the names of some are known wherever men seek to eliminate the ravages of tropical disease and of pestilence. In your faculties and councils, here in this very audience, are hundreds and thousands of men and women who could transform the lives of millions for all time to come.

But the help and leadership of South Africa or of the United States cannot be accepted if we – within our own countries or in our relationships with others – deny individual integrity, human dignity, and the common humanity of man. If we would lead outside our own borders; if we would help those who need our assistance; if we would meet our responsibilities to mankind; we must first, all of us, demolish the borders which history has erected between men within our own nations – barriers of race and religion, social class and ignorance.

Our answer is the world's hope; it is to rely on youth. The cruelties and the obstacles of this swiftly changing planet will not yield to obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. It cannot be moved by those who cling to a present which is already dying, who prefer the illusion of security to the excitement and danger which comes with even the most peaceful progress. This world demands the qualities of youth: not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the life of ease – a man like the Chancellor of this University. It is a revolutionary world that we all live in; and thus, as I have said in Latin America and Asia and in Europe and in my own country, the United States, it is the young people who must take the lead. Thus you, and your young compatriots everywhere have had thrust upon you a greater burden of responsibility than any generation that has ever lived.

"There is," said an Italian philosopher, "nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things." Yet this is the measure of the task of your generation and the road is strewn with many dangers.

First is the danger of futility; the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills – against misery, against ignorance, or injustice and violence. Yet many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation, a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth, and a young woman reclaimed the territory of France. It was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and 32 year old Thomas Jefferson who proclaimed that all men are created equal. "Give me a place to stand," said Archimedes, "and I will move the world." These men moved the world, and so can we all. Few will have the greatness to bend history; but each of us can work to change a small portion of the events, and in the total of all these acts will be written the history of this generation. Thousands of Peace Corps volunteers are making a difference in the isolated villages and the city slums of dozens of countries. Thousands of unknown men and women in Europe resisted the occupation of the Nazis and many died, but all added to the ultimate strength and freedom of their countries. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage such as these that the belief that human history is thus shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

"If Athens shall appear great to you," said Pericles, "consider then that her glories were purchased by valiant men, and by men who learned their duty." That is the source of all greatness in all societies, and it is the key to progress in our own time.

The second danger is that of expediency; of those who say that hopes and beliefs must bend before immediate necessities. Of course if we must act effectively we must deal with the world as it is. We must get things done. But if there was one thing that President Kennedy stood for that touched the most profound feeling of young people across the world, it was the belief that idealism, high aspiration and deep convictions are not incompatible with the most practical and efficient of programs – that there is no basic inconsistency between ideals and realistic possibilities – no separation between the deepest desires of heart and of mind and the rational application of human effort to human problems. It is not realistic or hard-headed to solve problems and take action unguided by ultimate moral aims and values, although we all know some who claim that it is so. In my judgement, it is thoughtless folly. For it ignores the realities of human faith and of passion and of belief; forces ultimately more powerful than all the calculations of our economists or of our generals. Of course to adhere to standards, to idealism, to vision in the face of immediate dangers takes great courage and takes self-confidence. But we also know that only those who dare to fail greatly, can ever achieve greatly.

It is this new idealism which is also, I believe, the common heritage of a generation which has learned that while efficiency can lead to the camps at Auschwitz, or the streets of Budapest, only the ideals of humanity and love can climb the hills of the Acropolis.

A third danger is timidity. Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change the world which yields most painfully to change. Aristotle tells us "At the Olympic games it is not the finest or the strongest men who are crowned, but those who enter the lists. . .so too in the life of the honorable and the good it is they who act rightly who win the prize." I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the world.

For the fortunate amongst us, the fourth danger is comfort; the temptation to follow the easy and familiar path of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before those who have the privilege of an education. But that is not the road history has marked out for us. There is a Chinese curse which says "May he live in interesting times." Like it or not, we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty; but they are also the most creative of any time in the history of mankind. And everyone here will ultimately be judged - will ultimately judge himself – on the effort he has contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which his ideals and goals have shaped that effort.

So we part, I to my country and you to remain. We are – if a man of forty can claim the privilege – fellow members of the world's largest younger generation. Each of us have our own work to do. I know at times you must feel very alone with your problems and with your difficulties. But I want to say how impressed I am with what you stand for and for the effort you are making; and I say this not just for myself, but men and women all over the world. And I hope you will often take heart from the knowledge that you are joined with your fellow young people in every land, they struggling with their problems and you with yours, but all joined in a common purpose; that, like the young people of my own country and of every country that I have visited, you are all in many ways more closely united to the brothers of your time than to the older generation in any of these nations; you are determined to build a better future. President Kennedy was speaking to the young people of America, but beyond them to young people everywhere, when he said "The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it – and the glow from that fire can truly light the world."

And, he added, "With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth and lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own."

I thank you.