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Dear Progressive Reader,
February is celebrated as Black History Month. On February 7, 1926, Dr. Carter G. Woodson initiated the recognition of a week designated as Negro History Week. The week was scheduled to encompass the birthdays of both Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, but Woodson himself (only the second African American to receive a PhD from Harvard – after W.E.B. DuBois) believed ([link removed]) that “history was made by the people, not simply or primarily by great men.” Speaking about the importance of the week for both Black and white students, he wrote
([link removed]) in his book The Mis-Education of the Negro, “This crusade is much more important than the anti-lynching movement, because there would be no lynching if it did not start in the schoolroom.”
Also honored during this month is Rosa Parks, who was born 108 years ago on February 4. Parks was a lifelong activist for justice. In the 1930s, she worked for the defense of nine young men accused in the Scottsboro case ([link removed]) . At the time she wrote ([link removed]) about her “determination never to accept it [segregation], even if it must be endured.” Her December 1, 1955 arrest for civil disobedience by refusing to move from her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama public bus sparked a movement ([link removed]) and led to a Supreme Court decision ([link removed]) . But this individual action was rooted in, and supported by collective action. Parks was secretary of the local branch of the NAACP and had recently attended
([link removed]) a two-week organizing workshop in August 1955 at the Highlander Center ([link removed]) in Tennessee. In 1984, Parks was arrested ([link removed]) at the South African Embassy in Washington, DC, opposing apartheid and calling for the release of Nelson Mandela. She died ([link removed]) on October 24, 2005 and became the first woman to lie in honor ([link removed]) in the Capitol rotunda. Today she is honored with a statue in the Capitol, and a bust in the Oval Office ([link removed]) of President Biden.
This past week we learned of the passing of several activists and cultural leaders. Actor Hal Holbrook died on January 23 at the age of ninety-five, but his death did not become public until February 2. Holbrook, a political independent ([link removed]) , was an ardent critic of Republican extremists and particularly of Donald Trump, saying ([link removed]) Trump was “upending and destroying a great many of our American values...he's trying to distort the American dream, which he's doing every hour of the day.” Holbrook was perhaps best know for his portrayal ([link removed]) of author Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) which began in the early 1950s and lasted into Holbrook’s nineties, but most journalists also remember his role as “Deep Throat” (the whistleblower whose identity was later
revealed ([link removed]) to be FBI agent Mark Felt) in the film version of All the President’s Men about The Washington Post’s revelations of the 1972 Watergate burglary.
Also on February 2, Rennie Davis died at the age of eighty. He was a member of the famed Chicago Eight conspiracy defendants (later Chicago Seven ([link removed]) after Black Panther Bobby Seale was removed from the trial) who were tried following the 1968 Democratic Convention ([link removed]) in Chicago. In May 1970, William Chapman wrote for The Progressive about the meaning of that trial. “If the comments of Justice Department officials can be taken at face value, it [the anti-riot statute invoked] will be the most powerful weapon in their war on radical and not-so-radical dissent,” he said ([link removed]) . In the same issue, James Wechsler wrote ([link removed]) , “Davis is a serious, appealing youth who worked closely with Michael Harrington in the formation of
Students for a Democratic Society . . . and whose ‘radicalization’ was finally completed under the guns of August 1968, in Mayor Daley's Chicago ‘police riot.’ ” Writing on Facebook of his passing, his wife Kirsten Liegmann noted ([link removed]) , “He has touched lives in ways that no one can truly comprehend, from his 60s leadership in the antiwar movement to today's trail-blazing of a new humanity.”
Finally, on February 3, legendary folksinger and labor activist Anne Feeney died ([link removed]) of COVID-19 pneumonia at the age of sixty-nine. Feeney was a skilled singer and organizer in the musical tradition of Joe Hill and Pete Seeger, and the labor movement tradition of Eugene Debs, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, and Mother Jones. Feeney’s songs like “Have You Been to Jail for Justice ([link removed]) ” inspired activists and fueled protests. Feeney was on the frontlines of countless struggles, always there when she was needed. I remember seeing her in 1999 jump up on the back of a flatbed truck in Seattle during the anti-WTO protests and sing to AFL-CIO president John Sweeney (who also died ([link removed]) this week on February 1 at
the age of eighty-six - photo above of the two of them by Dexter Arnold). Feeney was also an advocate of independent media and especially community radio. Her song “Look to the Left ([link removed]) ” talks about those stations on the left end of the FM radio dial that “count on you, not Arbitron,” and her anthem “War On the Workers ([link removed]) ” chronicles the years-long attack by multinational capitalism on everyday working people. She performed in the centennial celebrations ([link removed]) of labor singer Joe Hill in 2015, and joined Madison’s Solidarity Sing-along in protesting ([link removed]) Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s 2011 attack on workers’ rights. Her voice and her optimism in the possibility of a better world will be sorely missed.
The new issue of The Progressive is out, and several articles are now available on our website ([link removed]) . I especially encourage you to check out the wonderful photos ([link removed]) by labor activist and photographer David Bacon of farmworkers in California during the pandemic.
Keep reading, and we will keep bringing you important articles on these and other issues of our time.
Sincerely,
Norman Stockwell
Publisher
P.S. – Our new February/March issue is off the presses and heading out in the mail. If you don’t already subscribe to The Progressive in print or digital form, please consider doing so today ([link removed]) . Also, if you have a friend or relative that you feel should hear from the many voices for progressive change with our pages, please consider giving a gift subscription ([link removed]) .
P.P.S. –We need you now more than ever. Please take a moment to support hard-hitting, independent reporting on issues that matter to you. Your donation today will keep us on solid ground and will help us continue to grow in the coming years. You can use the wallet envelope in the current issue of the magazine, or click on the “Donate” button below to join your fellow progressives in sustaining The Progressive as a voice for peace, social justice, and the common good.
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