By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on January 25, 2023 An Editorial Opinion Angela Davis is a human rights activist and civil rights icon. She is also a Birmingham, Alabama native, a political activist, a philosopher, and an academician. Ms. Davis is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of more than ten books on class gender, race, and the U.S. prison system. I hold Angela Davis in high esteem. Davis was Charged with a Crime She did not Commit. On August 14, 1970, Davis was charged with aggravated kidnapping and first degree murder in connection with the death of California state Judge Harold Haley, who was killed during a shootout at the Marin County Courthouse in California seven days earlier. There was evidence that Davis had purchased several of the firearms that were used in the shootout. She had also corresponded with one of the shooters. Within hours after a California state judge issued an arrest warrant for Ms. Davis, law enforcement agencies began a massive manhunt to find and arrest her. On August 15, 1970, a federal warrant was issued that charged Ms. Davis with unlawful interstate flight to avoid prosecution for murder and kidnapping. On August 18, 1970, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover listed Angela Davis on the FBI's Most Wanted Fugitive List and personally signed the Most Wanted poster. Ms. Davis was the third woman and the 309th person to be so listed. Ms. Davis fled California and went into hiding. On October 13, 1970, FBI agents found Davis at a Howard Johnson Motor Lodge in New York City. President Richard M. Nixon praised the FBI on its "capture of the dangerous terrorist Angela Davis." Davis was Tried and Acquitted of All Criminal Charges In 1972, after 16-month pre-trial detention, included a long period of solitary confinement, Ms. Davis was released on pretrial bond from county jail. A few month later, she stood trial in Santa Clara County. On June 4, 1972, after only 13 hours of deliberations, an all-white jury returned a verdict of “Not Guilty.” Angela Davis was, once again, a free woman. After her acquittal, Ms. Davis went on to become an accomplished and celebrated activist for human and civil rights for oppressed peoples around the world and a prison reform advocate in the United States. Under Pressure from Local Whites, Birmingham Officials Snubbed Angela Davis In September 2018, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (BCRI) announced that Angela Davis would receive its prestigious Fred L. Shuttlesworth Human Rights Award, an award that is named for the late minister who once prominently led civil rights demonstrations in Birmingham. The announcement prompted a strong white backlash in Birmingham against Mayor Randall Woodfin and BCRI. On January 7, 2019, Woodfin and BCRI bowed to the white backlash and rescinded Ms. Davis' Fred Shuttlesworth Human Rights Award. BCRI justified its action in a new announcement that said Davis "does not meet all of the criteria.” Parroting white criticism of Ms. Davis, Woodfin cited Ms. Davis' vocal support for Palestinian rights and the movement to boycott Israel as the reason for rescinding the award. This was a "bullshit" justification for his cowardice. Ms. Davis said her loss of the award was "not primarily an attack against me but rather against the very spirit of the indivisibility of justice." The rescission of Davis’ award sparked outrage within Birmingham’s black community. It stunned human rights activists throughout America and around the world. On January 25, 2019, an embarrassed and humiliated Woodfin and BCRI reversed themselves again and issued a public apology to Ms. Davis. Unfortunately, their insincere actions and half-hearted apology were too little, too late. The damage had already been done. Woodfin's and BCRI's mistreatment of Angela Davis revealed to the world their true weakness and cowardice as representatives of the black experience in America. Epilogue As I understand it, Woodfin and BCRI still viewed Angela Davis as the “terrorist” that Richard Nixon called her. We must remember that Nixon resigned the presidency in disgrace after betraying his oath of office and committing a litany of federal criminal offenses in conjunction with his Attorney General, a secret group called the “White House Plumbers,” and his West Wing staff. Woodfin and BCRI still embraced J. Edgar Hoover’s characterization of Angela Davis as a “dangerous”"Negro," even though she was cleared of all criminal charges against her. After his death, it was revealed that Hoover ran the most racist law enforcement program in FBI history from 1956 to 1972. This notorious program was called COINTELPRO. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, and Angela Davis are three of COINTELPRO's most prominent black victims. A classy Angela Davis refused to comment further on the indignity served up to her by Woodfin and BCRI. She never came back Birmingham to accept the award that had been denied to her by those who buckled under the pressure of a white backlash.

By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on January 24, 2023 An Editorial Opinion From 1981 to 2006, not a single one of Alabama’s 30 historically white public colleges and universities (HWCUs) advocated for awarding equitable state funding to historically black Alabama State University (ASU) and Alabama A&M University (AAMU) in the higher education desegregation case of Knight v. Alabama. In fact, all 30 of the state's public HWCUs fought equitable state funding to compensate ASU and AAMU for decades of past racial discrimination in their annual state appropriations. They also fought doctoral programs and new undergraduate academic programs for ASU and AAMU. During the 25-year court fight in Knight v. Alabama, Birmingham Southern College (BSC) stood quietly on the sidelines and never lifted a finger to help ASU and AAMU win the battle for equitable state funding and new academic programs. BSC’s only noticeable response to the long battle to desegregate Alabama's educational institutions after the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed racial segregation in schools and colleges in the 1954 case of Brown v. Board of Education was to literally wall itself off from the surrounding predominantly black Bush Hills neighborhood some 22 years later. Over the course of time, the college turned itself into a white island in a sea of black residents. In 1976, BSC installed a majestic wrought iron fence around its 127-acre campus after the tragic abduction, rape, and murder of Quenette Shehane, a 21-year-old BSC student. The planning for this fence actually began in 1972 after BSC's attempt to flee the Bush Hills neighborhood by selling its campus to ASU fell through. The Knight v. James Plaintiffs Won Their Case After 25 years of intense litigation and massive resistance to the desegregation of Alabama’s public colleges and universities, the plaintiffs in Knight v. Alabama won their case. As a result of their courageous efforts, the plaintiffs desegregated Alabama’s 32 four-year public colleges and universities. The Knight plaintiffs also won court-ordered doctoral programs and new undergraduate academic programs for ASU and AAMU. Additionally, the Knight plaintiffs won nearly $600 million in new state funding (beyond the regular state appropriations) for these two HBCUs, which included $90 million in endowment money for each university. The funding won in the Knight case is a major reason why ASU and AAMU are on sound financial footings in 2023. BSC is Financially Broke and Collapsing Today, BSC is financially broke and struggling. The college is on the verge of collapsing. It desperately needs an immediate injection of $37.5 million in taxpayer "bailout" money in order to keep its doors open. BSC seeks $30 million from the state of Alabama, $5 million from the city of Birmingham, and $2.5 million from Jefferson County to stay afloat. BSC President Daniel Coleman has tapped state Rep. Juandalynn Givan, state Senator Roger Smitherman, and Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin, all of whom are Birmingham-area black elected officials, to lead the charge in securing this taxpayer "bailout" money for BSC. These public officials are BSC's ordained "saviors." What is more, these "saviors" feel compelled to deliver for President Coleman and BSC, at all cost. None of these "saviors" can tell you how many BSC board members, senior management executive, and faculty members live within the city limits of Birmingham. None of them can tell you how much money BSC has spent with black vendors since Birmingham got it first black mayor in 1979. None of them has ever tried to deliver $37.5 million to Miles College in a single, special purpose, funding campaign. None of these "saviors" seems to remember that Daniel Payne College, an HBCU that was named after the first black president of a college in the United States, was forced to close in 1979 due to inadequate funding. When this sad event occurred, BSC did not lift a finger to help Daniel Payne survive. The New "Bailout" Plan is a Money-Laundering Scheme President Coleman has also reached out to the presidents of ASU and AAMU for help in securing the $37.5 million in “bailout” money. Someone in the mix has devised a plan for ASU and AAMU to get involved in this messy situation. Just so you know, no BSC president reached out to help ASU and AAMU during their 25-year federal court fight for equitable state funding. As I understand it, the new plan for saving BSC is essentially a money-laundering scheme. Under the plan, BSC's "saviors" will work within the Alabama Legislature to get a $30 million supplemental appropriation sent to ASU and AAMU, to be divided between them. Both universities will then forward the net amount of this money to BSC after taking their agreed upon "administrative fees" for facilitating the transaction. The city and county will chip in their share of the"bailout"package on the basis that ASU and AAMU are committed to helping BSC survive, or so they say. This thinly-veiled money-laundering scheme is a desperate and ill-conceived one. It cries out for a federal criminal investigation by local U.S. Attorney Prim Escalona. Furthermore, BSC is not worth saving, at least not by this group of wayward elected officials. The college's national alumni members obviously believe the school "lacks educational value." Otherwise, they would be adequately supporting BSC financially. In 2023, only one of BSC's 32 board of trustees members is black. No black is listed on BSC’s website as a member of BSC's “senior team" of top executives. Last fall, only 147 black students were enrolled at BSC. They comprised 15.1% of BSC’s dwindling student population. In the spirit of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, BSC does not offer a distinct, degree-granting, African-American studies program, even though it is a liberal arts college located in a city with a 70% black population. The Bottom-Line BSC is pimping a handful of black elected officials to help the college secure $37.5 million in taxpayer "bailout" funding that should be legitimately channeled to HBCUs in Alabama to compensate them for the gross underfunding that these institutions have experienced for over a hundred years. As expected, BSC’s chosen "saviors" have never led the charge for taxpayer funding for HBCUs in the metro-Birmingham area. Furthermore, they have an established track-record of gladly playing a “sugar-daddy” role with taxpayer’s money for white special interest groups. It’s time to put an end to BSC’s misery. In the words of former First Lady Nancy Reagan, our elected officials should “just say no” to President Coleman and BSC. The black elected officials who are prostrating themselves for BSC should be more focused on helping Miles College, or ASU, or AAMU acquire the BSC campus out of bankruptcy for pennies on a dollar. I am amazed at how so many of our black elected officials always want to dance with everybody in the dance hall, except the men/women who brought them to the dance.

By: Donald V. Watkins © Copyrighted and Published on January 15, 2023 As we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday in ceremonies today and tomorrow, I take this occasion to report on the sad status of black America in 2023. Dr. King was jailed 29 times and assassinated in 1968 because of his non-violent, non-stop quest to secure equal rights for people of color in America. Fifty-five years after Dr. King's death, here is where we stand as African-Americans: To begin with, a disproportionate number of black men today are leading effeminate lifestyles. I described the mainstream media's glorification of effeminate black men in a 2019 article titled, the "Changing Masculinity of Black Men.” When Black men summon up the courage to fight for something, it is usually a fight against each other or our women. Today, we are killing each other at an alarming rate. In "A Tale of Two Revolutions in the Atlantic world," I described this country's glorification of the American revolution. The only successful slave-led revolution in the Western Hemisphere -- by indigenous Haitian people from 1791 to 1804 -- was suppressed in literary history so that it would not inspire a similar revolt by black slaves in America in the 1800s. African-Americans have never celebrated the only population of indigenous black slaves who liberated themselves and their nation. Today, most African-Americans do not know what America owes Haiti, and why. We simply join white Americans in looking down upon Haitians with a misplaced scorn born out of willful ignorance. We Continue to Suffer from Systemic Racism In an article titled, "Why America Can't Rid Itself of Its Racial Problem," I described how many of today's right-wing conservative judges in state and federal judicial systems have eagerly assumed the role of opposing the socio-economic progress for black Americans that was once played by the Ku Klux Klan. The open hostility against blacks that was once practiced by the men and women in white robes has been replaced by a more subtle, polished, and fashionable form of racial hostility against African-Americans by the men and women who wear black robes and act in an official judicial capacity. This is particularly true in Alabama, which has an all-white, nineteen member, appellate court system today. In an article titled, "Greenwood: The Black Wall Street," I described the most financially successful black community ever developed in America. Located in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Greenwood was black America's Wall Street before it was destroyed in May 1921 by an angry white mob of 1,500 people that killed an estimated 3,000 blacks and burned down the entire business and residential community over a two-day period. Nobody was ever prosecuted for the deaths and destruction of commercial and residential properties in Greenwood. In an article titled, "The Greatest Wealth Transfer Program in U.S. History for Whites," I described a 124-year-long land giveaway program for white settlers and European immigrants that began in 1862. This program, which was authorized in the Homestead Act of 1862, resulted in the award of 270 million acres of free land by the U.S. government to nearly three million white recipients. The land in the giveaway program was part of the 1.5 billion acres that was taken by force from Native American tribes west of the Mississippi River. The Homestead Act program formally ended in 1986. Today, white Americans own more than 98 percent of U.S. land amounting to 856 million acres with a total worth of over $1 trillion. Twenty percent of the richest whites in America are lineal descendants of the beneficiaries of the Homestead Act's land giveaway program. Today, white household wealth is 20 times greater than black household wealth, according to data compiled by the Federal Reserve. The psychological damage from hundreds of years of subjugation, rigidly enforced repression, violent oppression, and the deprivation of civil rights to which slaves of African descent and their descendants were subjected has left most black Americans psychologically castrated and neutered to this day. Unfortunately, nearly all black elected officials and institutional leaders suffer the present-day effects from this subjugation in the form of inferiority complexes when dealing with their white counterparts. Many of them are too afraid and compromised to effectively represent the political interests of their black constituents. Black America is Impotent in Domestic and Geopolitical Affairs For the first time ever, we have entered an era where black America is impotent in domestic and geopolitical affairs. We have plenty of black celebrities who get mobbed by autograph seekers when they stroll through a mall or social event. However, these individuals have no power and influence with world leaders, at home and abroad. Our celebrities and professional athletes, who are great people and very accomplished in their craft, do not own or run any Fortune 500/New York Stock Exchange companies. They are not major defense contractors. They do not own Wall Street banks or accredited financial institutions. They do not own Silicon Valley-based international technology companies. They do not own international multimedia empires like Rupert Murdock and John Malone. They do not manufacture airplanes, trains, trucks, buses, cars, cargo ships, or luxury yachts. They do not own or run any major international oil and gas companies. They do not own or run global telecommunications companies. They do not own major retailers like Amazon, Walmart, Target, H&M, the Gap, and DSW. They do not own Cisco, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, PayPal, Cash App, and other Internet-based infrastructure and social media companies. They do not own or run any major airlines, or space exploration companies. They do not own or run international solar, wind, and hydrogen powered clean energy companies. They do not set monetary policies or the price of gold each day. They do not own skyscrapers in any of the world's major cities. They do not serve on the board of directors for the SWIFT organization that oversees international transfers of money between banks. Except for one black (Michael Jordan, owner of the Charlotte Hornets basketball team), they do not own major league football, baseball, basketball, hockey, soccer, rugby, NASCAR racing, or yachting teams. They do not own any venue where major professional sports are played. We do not manufacture or produce any volume of products that is statistically significant in the gross domestic product (GDP) calculation -- the total production and consumption of goods and services in the country. In contrast, we are one of the largest consumer spending groups in America. Because the dollar turns over only one time in today's black community -- as opposed to 19 times in the former Greenwood -- we essentially enrich white vendors, merchants, banks, insurance agencies, media companies, and professional services providers on a loyal and consistent basis. The overwhelming majority of the recipients of African-American spending dollars never reinvest in the black community. Today's Leadership Void Today, there is no Frederick Douglass, who was outspoken, universally recognized, and respected by European, Caribbean, African, and American leaders in his day as a powerful voice for people of color in the United States. There is no Adam Clayton Powell in the U.S. Congress. Rep. Powell did not bite his tongue when forcefully advocating for the civil rights of black Americans in an all-white Congress. Yet, Powell passed more legislation than any member of Congress today, whether black or white, and was respected by world leaders. There is no Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who is the only non-U.S. president and black American with a memorial on the National Mall in Washington and a national holiday named after him. Dr. King, who was disliked by 75% of white Americans at the time of his 1968 assassination, was the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize winner. The Signs of Irrelevancy and Cultural Disintegration For the first time in our 400-year history in America, African-Americans have been totally and completely decimated as a force for positive change in America. What is worse, African-Americans have fallen into a permanent state of irrelevance when it comes to national political policy, economic empowerment, international affairs, and global commerce. Too many blacks do not value a quality education. Public school systems in many of our urban areas are failing our students. Our cities are dying. We are creating a permanent underclass of young people who are incapable of competing for jobs and contracts. We have an entire population of 41.1 million African-Americans striving to become one of the 5,000 or so professional athletes, reality TV stars, rappers, and singing and dancing entertainers in America who makes $250,000 or more per year. This narrow focus on "successful" career choices flows from the glorification of blacks as modern-day minstrels and court-jesters who have celebrity status but no real economic power. We increasingly elevate form over substance. We tend to value clothing, red-bottom shoes, and fancy cars over real estate holdings and business ownership. In white America, this is called "flash wealth" and it has little to no economic value on bank financial statements. Unlike every immigrant group in America, we resist networking with each other. Our validation as a person too often comes when someone white pats us on the head and tells us how "different" we are from other African-Americans. This pat on the head sends too many of us into an exhilarating psychological state of being. For the most part, the politicians we elect do not represent our political interests. They have no meaningful political agenda to uplift the black community. Likewise, they have no concrete plan of action for making our public schools and universities competitive forces in an ever-changing world. As we will witness today and tomorrow, civil rights activism has been reduced from direct action in the streets to an endless stream of "feel good" commemorative celebrations that require no confrontation or courage. Our churches have morphed into personality-based ministries that glorify preachers rather than God. These churches tend to suck money from black communities without any commitment to rebuild them. Many of our universities are living off of fading memories of the past rather than the glowing promise of the future. The traditional "guilt money" from liberal white donors is drying up. Our institutions of higher education are closing their doors in record numbers. The number of committed black leaders with promise and courage like Montgomery, Alabama mayor Steven Reed and longtime Equal Justice Initiative CEO Bryan Stevenson has dwindled down to near-extinction level. Uncle Tomism is on the rise and is expected to climb dramatically throughout the 21st century. Alone and Unprotected in America For the first time ever in our history as African-Americans, we are alone, unprotected, and under an unrelenting ideological attack that is led by the very institutions of government that used to protect us from the worst instincts in white men and women. What is worse, these ideological attacks are aided and abetted by a new-wave of "Negroes" who relish the Uncle Tom role portrayed by actor Samuel Jackson in the movie "Django." As a people, African-Americans are lost in the proverbial "Promised Land." We have come to accept a permanent state of second-class citizenship. Today, most of us have surrendered our manhood and womanhood, without a fight, to the forces that have always opposed our growth. We simply go along with these forces to get along. As for me, I will continue to fight for our dignity, respect, and rightful place in American society for as long as I can. I owe this to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Ms. Rosa Parks, Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, and the millions of unsung heroes who fought and bled for my freedom as a black man. I will never forget them and what they did for us. This is my report on the sad state of black America in 2023.

By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on January 21, 2023 Last week, the nation celebrated Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday. The annual celebration always includes countless clips of Dr. King’s August 28, 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech. Political conservatives love to quote the “content of their character, not the color of their skin” part of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech to support their stance against any kind of affirmative action that includes African-Americans in the economic progress of this nation. In 1967, Dr. King spoke frankly about poverty, structural racism and its impact. His statements are as profound today as they were then. In explaining the reasons for his planned Poor People’s Campaign, Dr. King honed-in on the government’s failure to give freed slaves any land, while using legally sanctioned affirmative action in the Homestead Act of 1862 to award nearly three million poor white European immigrants with ownership of 270 million acres of land that was forcefully taken from Native-Americans. This affirmative action program for whites ran from 1862 to 1986. Conservatives like Florida governor Ron DeSantis never discuss legally sanctioned affirmative action programs for whites. In fact, they passed so-call “memory" laws in states like Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Texas, Georgia, South Carolina, Kentucky, Arkansas, and a dozen or so other states to suppress of the true nature and history of these programs. Dr. King Addressed Structural Racism Here is what Dr. King said about poverty, structure racism, and their impact on American society: “I must confess that the dream I had that day has at many points turned into a nightmare…….I think the biggest problem is that we got our gains over the last 12 years at bargain rates so to speak…… It didn’t cost the nation anything. In fact, it helped the economic side of the nation to integrate lunch counters and public accommodations. It didn’t cost the nation anything to get the right to vote established. Now we are confronting issues that cannot be solved without costing the nation billions of dollars…” Then, Dr. King explained the wealth gap between blacks and whites existing in 1967 this way: “At the very same time that the [federal] government refused to give the Negro any land, through an act of Congress [the Homestead Act of 1862] our Government was giving away millions of acres of land in the west and the Midwest, which meant it was willing to undergird its white peasants from Europe with an economic floor. But not only did they give the land, they built land grant colleges with government money to teach them how to farm; not only that, they provided county agents to further their expertise in farming; not only that, they provided low interest rates in order that they could mechanize their farms; not only that today, many of these people are receiving millions of dollars in federal subsidies not to farm and they are the very people telling the Black man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps. And this is what we are faced with, and this is the reality. Now, when we come to Washington in this [Poor Peoples] campaign, we are coming to get our check.” DeSantis and other political conservatives never discuss, quote, or show this video when talking about Dr. King. Dr. King’s history lesson on the wealth disparity between blacks and whites is one of the chapters of African-American history that Gov. DeSantis has banned in Florida’s public schools last week because it supposedly “lacks educational value” and is contrary to the state’s “memory" law. Four History Lessons DeSantis Wants Banned Here are four history lessons on wealth disparity that Ron DeSantis wants banned from public schools. 1. In 1915, black social justice activist Callie House sued the U.S. Treasury Department for $68,073,388.99 in compensation for ex-slaves. The white political establishment in Washington claimed that House's fight for economic security for ex-slaves was "setting Negroes wild" and that she was meddling in "white folks things." They labeled House as "defiant" because she would not back down from seeking pensions, life insurance, health insurance, land grants, agricultural assistance, educational assistance, reparations for slavery, and burial assistance for ex-slaves and their families. In 1896, House co-founded the Rutherford County, Tennessee-based National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association (MRB&PA) with Isaiah Dickerson and turned this organization into the first national grassroots movement to help ex-slaves achieve economic security and a chance for financial independence. House, who was a widow and mother of five children, worked as a washerwoman and seamstress. Yet, she hired lawyers to lobby Congress for proposed legislation that furthered the goals of MRB&PA. In 1916, at the urging of Southerners in President Woodrow Wilson's cabinet, Callie House and several MRB&PA officers were indicted on bogus mail fraud charges, tried in an all-white, all-male federal courtroom in Nashville, and convicted. House was sentenced to one year in prison. White House and Department of Justice records from the era showed that House was prosecuted for the sole purpose of destroying MRB&PA's national grassroots movement for land grants, pensions, and compensation for ex-slaves. In addition to seeking pensions like the ones paid to Union soldiers and reparations like the ones paid to white slaveowners in Washington, D.C. whose slaves were emancipated by an Act of Congress in 1863, Callie House and MRB&PA also sought land grants for ex-slaves. House, who was born into slavery in 1861, was mindful that Union Army General William T. Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15 on January 16, 1865, which set aside 400,000 acres of free land for newly freed slaves. Each slave family was entitled to 40 acres. In the Fall of 1865, President Andrew Johnson rescinded Special Field Order No. 15, leaving freed slaves with nothing but their freedom. Callie House modeled her land grant request on the U.S. government's award of 160 aces of free land (including mineral rights, oil and gas rights, and timber rights) to nearly three million white peasant who were openly recruited from Europe to America under the Homestead Act of 1862. In addition to giving program recipients free land, the federal government set up land-grant colleges to develop “labor saving” equipment and chemicals to give white farmers free help in farming the land. The government also gave white farmers low-interest loans to take advantage of the new agricultural technologies, while denying black farmers the right to participate in the loan programs for the same purpose. This land giveaway program for whites ran for 124 years and finally ended in 1986. In total, 270 million acres of land (or 10% of the land mass of the United States) from the Mississippi River to the California and Alaskan coastlines were given away to whites for free. This land was originally part of the 1.5 billion acres the U.S. Army took by force from Native American tribes between 1830 and 1907. Today, some 20% of white Americans are descendants of the beneficiaries of this 1862 Congressional wealth transfer program. 2. In May of 1921, a white mob burned down "Black Wall Street" in the Greenwood Community of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Hundreds of black residents were murdered and the entire commercial district was burned down. No rioter was arrested or prosecuted. To this day, the federal government has not spent one dollar to build “Black Wall Street” back. 3. White Southern Democrats demanded that President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal programs be crafted to exclude blacks from most of the programs' benefits. Roosevelt caved-in to their demands. Without equal housing opportunities, the wealth gap between black and white Americans that began with slavery, grew dramatically with the Homestead Act's 124-year land giveaway for whites, widened with the destruction of "Black Wall Street," increased substantially with the explosion of white home ownership under the FHA-backed mortgage program, and became a permanent fact of life that is backstopped by nine federal tax deductions (i.e., home mortgage interest deduction, state and local taxes deduction, charitable deductions, tax-exempt bonds deduction, life insurance exclusion, pension exclusion, capital gains exclusion, home sales exclusion, and estate set-up exclusion) that overwhelmingly favor white taxpayers. As a result of this amalgamation of federal wealth policies, the median wealth today for white families is $188,200, compared with $24,100 for black families. 4. The systematic "redlining" of black neighborhoods by banks in both the North and South meant that 98% of Federal Housing Administration-backed mortgages went to white households from 1934 to 1962. After I founded Alamerica Bank in Birmingham in 1999, I personally observed systematic redlining that was routinely practiced by publicly-traded and white privately-owned banks in Alabama's banking market. I voiced my concerns to state and federal banking regulators about this unchecked redlining conduct. In response to my concerns, the Alabama State Banking Department, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in Atlanta, and Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta formed a protective ring around the "redlining" banks based in Alabama, while manufacturing pretextual reasons to: (a) force me out of the banking business and (b) subject me to the Callie House treatment. Epilogue If African-Americans do not tell our history, who will? Nobody! Now, you understand why Ron DeSantis and other political conservatives want African-American history banned from public schools. They do not want young, impressionable white students to know how blacks have been mistreated by their white ancestors. Furthermore, the DeSantis crowd does not want black students focused on anything other than sports, entertainment, and celebrityhood (without economic prowess and power). They call this state of being for black students "blissful ignorance." Erasing the history of America's mistreatment of black Americans has become an art form for political conservatives that is backed by the force of law.

By Donald V. Watkins ©Copyrighted and Published on May 31, 2019 Remember Kyle Whitmire? He is a Birmingham, Alabama-based reporter with the Alabama Media Group, which owns The Birmingham News and the website AL.com. Whitmire covered my criminal trial on wire fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy charges in February and March of 2019. Whitmire’s coverage of the trial fed a steady stream of slanted news articles to Google and local TV news outlets. While I was on trial, I did not write or publish any articles about the developments in the courtroom. This journalistic void allowed Whitmire to do his thing unchallenged on behalf of a media competitor and real-world nemesis. In the months leading up to my trial, AL.com and The Birmingham News columnists and reporters did everything within their power to poison the well of public opinion against me. For example, columnist John Archibald and Reckon at AL.com Managing Editor John Hammontree fabricated a racist quotation and attributed it to me in two AL.com articles that were published after my November 29, 2018 indictment. This fake racist quotation was retracted January 13, 2019, but only after I launched a six-week, unrelenting media campaign against AL.com and The Birmingham News to correct this blatant abuse of journalistic power. Kyle Whitmire took over where John Archibald and John Hammontree left off. In covering my criminal trial, Whitmire functioned much like a propaganda minister for a third world government. He went out of his way to highlight the government’s evidence while minimizing mine. Whitmire’s reporting during the trial was a classic example of COINTELPRO-era journalism by a reporter from a newspaper that actively participated in the FBI’s infamous counterintelligence program to target and discredit civil rights activists like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Rev. Ralph D. Abernathy, and hundreds of other advocates for social justice, economic empowerment, educational parity, and the fair administration of justice. I learned earlier this month that Kyle Whitmire is planning to write an unauthorized biography of me. Whitmire does not know me; he only knows the false narrative he wants to paint about me. This time, Whitmire plans to profit directly from his work. The last time, Whitmire’s media organizations profiteered from the bump in the slanted “clickbait” articles he wrote about my trial. Obviously, I will not be cooperating with Kyle Whitmire on this book project. I prefer to tell my own truth. My intimate knowledge of the role of journalists like Kyle Whitmire played in the COINTELPRO program is why I have my own news website and public Facebook page. As an African-American who grew up in the Deep South during the height of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, I learned that we should never leave our history for people like Kyle Whitmire to tell. We must record our own history, for it will be the closest we will ever get to the truth. Kyle Whitmire is hopelessly trapped in a web of negative racial stereotypes. What makes Whitmire dangerous is his ability and willingness to poison the well of knowledge with biased reporting on matters of significant public interest. Whitmire’s History of Untrustworthiness On July 27, 2012, Weld for Birmingham Publisher Mark Kelly issued a telling press statement on the newspaper’s website about reporter Kyle Whitmire’s decision to leave Weld to accept a job at the Alabama Media Group. Kelly stated: “Over the past several weeks, substantial differences arose between our management team and Kyle. Those differences were related to our plans for the immediate and future direction and priorities of Weld for Birmingham and its online and print publications. They also involved issues related to Kyle’s current and past job performance and fulfillment of his duties as a shareholder in our company. It seems clear that all of that factored into his decision to accept the position he has been offered with our competitor. Regarding the issues that contributed to Kyle’s decision, I will not provide specifics, as they involve proprietary information about our company’s operations. We have been aware for a few weeks that Kyle was in discussions with Alabama Media Group, though he did not see fit to share that information with us until yesterday, when he told us that he had received and intended to accept a job offer. On a personal note, I do find it ironic that their recruitment of Kyle comes at a time when the Birmingham News has fired a substantial number of talented and seasoned reporters. Clearly, it is a competitive move in response to the inroads Weld has made in the past 11 months toward our goal of becoming the primary source of news and information for the Birmingham area. That certainly is their prerogative, as it is Kyle’s to accept what I assume is a substantially higher salary than we as a startup company can afford. Of course, it’s ironic anyway, given some of the reporting and editorializing Kyle has done about the company for which he apparently now will be working. These things happen in business….”. In his own words, Kelly, who is a highly respected media professional, publicly told the Birmingham community that Weld had issues with Kyle Whitmire’s job performance and his unwillingness or inability to fulfill his duties as a shareholder in Weld. I interpreted Kelly’s statement as a subtle pronouncement that Weld found Whitmire sorely lacking in productivity as a journalist and failing as a financially capable and reliable business partner. Additionally, Whitmire deserted his business partners at Weld without letting them know he was bailing out on them until the last minute. The way in which Whitmire deserted Weld speaks volumes about his loyalty and commitment to the people with whom he shared a fiduciary relationship in business. Furthermore, Whitmire joined a media competitor he privately and publicly disparaged while working at Weld. In essence, Whitmire abandoned business partners who trusted him to get in bed with Weld’s media “enemy" at the time. This “enemy” -- The Birmingham News -- has a sordid past. In 2004, the Alabama Supreme Court described how The Birmingham News defrauded six of its longtime former newspaper distributors in the case of The Birmingham News v. Sherry Horn. The News has never publicly acknowledged defrauding these victims and has never apologized for the serial acts of fraud it perpetrated against them. Kyle Whitmire found a journalistic home that fits him well. The Birmingham News has solid credentials in defrauding business partners. It regularly departs from the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics when writing and publishing articles. It has a documented history of fabricating fake racist quotations and attributing them to adversaries. And, it has a long and distinguished record as a ready, willing, and able COINTELPRO participant. This is the person wants to tell my story? I don’t think so. PHOTO: Kyle Whitmire, a man mired in undisclosed conflicts of interest.

By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on January 18, 2023 An Editorial Opinion In 2011, John Archibald, a Birmingham News reporter (and now an AL.com columnist), declared personal bankruptcy. The bankruptcy petition required Archibald’s personal signature in several places. An anonymous commenter on one of Archibald’s articles bashing Jefferson County, Alabama’s bankruptcy filing disclosed Archibald on his personal bankruptcy in his/her comment. Archibald was discombobulated by this unexpected public disclosure of his bankrupt personal financial condition. He initially lied about his bankruptcy and later blamed his wife for filing the bankruptcy petition without consulting with him. After Archibald realized that filing a husband-wife bankruptcy petition under these circumstances would subject his wife to culpability for criminal bankruptcy fraud, Archibald came clean and admitted his human failings. On April 2, 2011, Archibald explained the situation this way: “Let me deal with my own issues, first. Because I have been an idiot. I've been intentionally detached from my family's finances for a long time. I left that chore to others and am guilty, frankly, of not wanting to know. There's no excuse for that.” Archibald further stated: “These anonymous people, these people who want me fired, dug deep into my past and set up a website to post their findings. They've gone door to door in mostly black Birmingham neighborhoods, leaving fliers that portray me as a liar and racist.” Although he did not know it at the time, the “anonymous people” Archibald was referring to were Alabama Power Company, Joe Perkins, Matrix, LLC, and their “dirty tricks” operatives. The background investigation, establishment of a website for disparaging content, and the distribution of derogatory fliers are standard Matrix "dirty tricks" tactics. In 2017, these Alabama Power/Matrix tactics were used against me. They were revealed in Joe Perkins' handwritten notes. I stood with John Archibald during his bankruptcy scandal because his positive contributions to Alabama society far outweighed this personal blunder and I also considered Archibald a friend who was under attack for his journalism. Drive-By Character Assassination In December of 2016, Archibald published a “Drive-By Character Assassination” article that revived and recycled decades-old allegations that I engaged in public corruption activities while serving as Birmingham Mayor Richard Arrington’s special counsel in the early 1990s. Birmingham contractor Chris Woods reportedly made these allegations while running against Arrington for Mayor in 1995. Woods recanted and retracted these allegations, orally and in writing, on multiple occasions. Yet, Archibald resurrected them again in his 2016 article. After I published a rebuttal article that chronicled my long and well-documented record of anti-public corruption initiatives, Archibald came on my Facebook page and wrote: “I did not intend to imply that you did wrong, Mr. Watkins. What was relevant was Mr. Woods' history of making similar allegations. I should have pointed out that nothing came of those claims. I took it for a given, and for that I apologize.” Archibald did not issue this apology on his AL.com media platform so that his “click bait” readers could see that he made a mistake and apologized for it. Yet, I forgave Archibald and moved on. Next, I watched John Archibald take my exclusive series of investigative reports about the secret love affair between Governor Robert Bentley and Rebekah Mason titled “Forbidden Love” and “Executive Betrayal” (which were published in September and October of 2015) and win a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2018 with this copyrighted material. Archibald became aware of Bentley's sex scandal when I did in 2015. Yet, he refused to write about it until it was safe to do so six months later. Archibald simply repackaged my articles and took credit for them on national TV. In a phone call secretly recorded by state Rep. Allen Farley, Bentley gave me full credit for outing his relationship with Rebekah. Using his powers as “Chief Magistrate of Alabama,” Bentley later asked various state and federal law enforcement and regulatory agencies to investigate me. They obliged him. A Friendship Permanently Lost I lost John Archibald as a friend on November 29, 2018 when he made up a fake racist quotation about “kicking white people’s ass” and attributed this quote to me in order to help prosecutors in a bogus federal wire and bank fraud case sway whites in the jury pool against me. When I contacted Archibald about this matter, he refused to retract his fake racist quote. Archibald’s fake “kick white people’s ass” quotation was repeated in a December 25, 2018 article written by Reckon Managing Editor John Hammontree titled, “25 people to watch in 2019.” I never made the racist statement Archibald attributed to me, whether on or off the record. I threatened to sue AL.com, Archibald, and Hammontree for defamation. On January 13, 2019, AL.com retracted Archibald’s fake racist quotation and apologized for publishing it on two occasions. Here is the retraction: “In an opinion column published on Nov. 29, 2018, columnist John Archibald wrote about the upcoming trial of Donald Watkins. In that piece, Archibald quoted Watkins as saying in 1991 that his job was to 'kick white people’s ass.' Archibald based the quotation on his memory from interviewing Watkins for a story he wrote in 1991. That quotation was republished in a Dec. 25 Reckon article about 25 people to watch in 2019. Watkins contacted AL.com after the column and article were published and said he did not make the statement that was attributed to him. We have reviewed Archibald’s 1991 story and it does not contain this quote from Watkins. We regret our publication attributing this quotation to Watkins and retract it.” Co-Opted by Alabama Power In 2018, a former federal prosecutor confirmed to me that the U.S. Attorney’s office in Birmingham routinely used AL.com, John Archibald, and Kyle Whitmire in a modern-day COINTELPRO role to smear the targets of their criminal investigations and prosecutions. Archibald and Whitmire, working in collaboration with federal agents in Birmingham, have smeared many black public officials throughout their careers as “journalists,” without conducting any kind of independent review of the matters set forth in their smearing campaigns. Incidentally, federal prosecutors never filed criminal charges against John Archibald's wife for allegedly signing his name to the bankruptcy petition without Archibald's personal knowledge and/or express consent. Earlier this month, I learned that several national media organizations are developing articles for publication that detail Alabama Power Company’s racketeering scheme under the leadership of former CEO Mark Crosswhite, Joe Perkins, and Matrix, and how this scheme co-opted the independence and journalistic integrity of AL.com, its reporters, and columnists, as well as federal law enforcement establishment in Birmingham. To this day, AL.com has never disclosed its role in Alabama Power’s scheme to silence and destroy its critics. Likewise, AL.com has never disclosed its receipt of laundered professional service fees for serving as an undeclared public relations agent for Alabama Power and its political puppets.

By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on January 16, 2022 An Editorial Opinion I have been a declared political Independent since 2001. I have never taken campaign cash or accepted "get-out-the-vote"(GOTV) money from any candidate running for political office. Over the last five decades, I have supported Democrats, Republicans, and Independents who ran for various federal, state, and local offices. I am a social moderate, fiscal conservative, and fierce advocate of a strong national defense (against domestic and foreign enemies). I focus primarily on "pocketbook" issues. Economic empowerment if my thing. Between 2001 and 2010, I raised and contributed more than $1 million in campaign donations to support these political candidates. My support for a candidate cannot be bought. It must be earned. On March 11, 2020, I published an article titled, "The Joy of Being a Political Independent." The article describes why I cannot live and work on any political party's plantation. Both of the country's major political parties are deeply flawed in many respects. As such, I tend to look at the individual candidates themselves to see if they embody the qualities I seek in an elected official. I try to avoid political ass-kissers and mindless partisan hacks. These machine politicians, who comprise about 99% of all political candidates in America today, are often lazy, self-centered, limited in their thinking abilities, lacking in their cognitive abilities, and dangerous in their unguided thoughts. I am looking for the "One-Percenters" of national politics -- those who have demonstrated the knowledge, skills, abilities, courage, vision, and intellectual capacity to lead the nation in solving the growing list of complex problems facing ordinary Americans. Whenever I find them, I will support them in very meaningful ways. Democrats Need a New Presidential Nominee in 2024 On March 29, 2020, I published an article titled, "Democrats Must Draft a New Presidential Nominee." In the article, I warned Democrats that they needed a presidential nominee other than Joe Biden. The Party ignored my advice and allowed the Bill/Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama loyalists to pick Joe Biden as the Party's 2020 nominee. In turn, Biden picked California freshman U.S. Senator Kamala Harris as his Vice Presidential running mate. Biden won the 2020 election primarily because former president Donald Trump demonstrated his colossal incompetence during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Americans were also tired of Trump's non-stop daily drama, buffoonery in office, braggadocios conduct, constant chess-pounding, narcissism, and megalomania. Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden. The election was not stolen. There was no massive fraud in the nationwide voting, as alleged by Trump and his minions in over 60 court cases that he lost. In many of these cases, Trump-appointed federal judges ruled against him. The qualities that made Joe Biden an unattractive presidential candidate in 2020 are worse today. Biden does not embody the presidential leadership qualities Americans need today. Additionally, Biden is too old, slow, and weak to lead America in today's fast-paced, rapidly changing world. It is also apparent to me and other objective observers that Biden is suffering from senility, which worsens with the passage of time. Biden's approval rating is underwater in 40 states. Here are some of the reasons why: Inflation is out of control. The nation is on the verge of a recession. Gas, food, and housing costs are still sky high. Biden’s absent mindedness caused him to leave classified national security documents at three separate locations. There is no excuse for this kind of reckless and dangerous conduct, whether it was perpetrated by Donald Trump or Joe Biden. The Biden administration has offered no practical, workable, non-racist solution to the migration crisis at America's southern border. Biden's hasty troop withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 was an unmitigated disaster. Additionally, Biden's initial response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was too little, too late. Biden’s voting rights protection legislation sank like the Titanic in 2022. Long-established constitutional rights of women are being ripped from them without a real presidential fight to protect them. Biden's Attorney General is doing nothing to stop the wholesale dismantlement of constitutional protections for women. Biden still has "burrowed-in" Donald Trump political appointees running the U.S. Department of Justice in Southern states, with no plan to replace them. The list of Biden’s presidential leadership failures goes on and on. Kamala Harris is NOT the Answer in 2024 Vice President Kamala Harris is NOT the answer for Democrats in 2024. Harris has failed to deliver on every major initiative Biden entrusted to her. She failed to deliver the votes necessary to pass Biden's voting rights legislation. She has shown no ability to lead the Biden administration's efforts to solve the crisis at our southern border. The same holds true for Biden's clean energy initiatives. Harris simply does not understand the world of clean energy or electric vehicles beyond what she reads from the teleprompter during White House press conferences. If Kamala Harris has an area of problem-solving expertise, I have not seen it. Today, Harris functions more like a glorified Biden cheerleader. The Republican Party Remains Under the Spell of Trumpism It is clear that today’s Republican Party will offer more Trumpism in 2024, whether Donald Trump becomes the GOP nominee, or not. Just to be clear, Trump can hold GOP nominee status even after he is indicted by Special Counsel Jack Smith. Only a criminal conviction would bar Trump from holding public office. The Republican Party is minting political candidates who: (a) have no respect for the constitutional rights of women, (b) do not care one iota about the health, safety, and lives of school children beyond their immediate family members, (c) will fight to protect fetuses in the womb, while refusing to combat rising infant mortality among new born babies and young infants by providing them adequate medical care, (d) zealously guard the financial interests of the Wall Street "One Percenters," while ignoring the diminishing financial security for "Main Street," (e) are willing to overthrow a duly elected government in order to install "white minority rule," and (f) will lie about any and everything, including the true nature and scope of a January 6, 2021 Insurrection at the National Capitol that was captured on hours of videotape. House members Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), George Santos (R-New York), Margorie Taylor Green (R-Georgia), and Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) have risen from political obscurity to become the new vanguard of the National Republican Party. None of these GOP leaders embodies my political or personal values. Epilogue My West Coast friends and I are forming a Super-PAC for Independent voters in time for the 2024 presidential elections. We have financial commitments to fund the PAC up to the $100 million level between now and the 2024 elections. We will not accept campaign donations from political candidates or PACs that are money laundering fronts for political parties. The PAC will finance nationwide voter registration drives and "get-out-the-vote" (GOTV) campaigns that target the growing pool of Independent voters in swing states. We will also advertise our political agenda for Independent voters on nationwide TV during the run-up to the 2024 presidential election. We are targeting Americans of color, women who value their constitutional rights, young Americans between 18 and 35 years of age, and potential Independent voters across America as the recipients of our voter education messaging, voter registration activities, and GOTV initiatives. We prefer a presidential candidate in his/her 40s or 50s. It would be great if the candidate of choice for Independent voters is a woman, but this is not a requirement. We have little appetite for supporting and electing another old, tired, cranky, longtime beneficiary of "white male privilege" as the next president of the United States.

By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on January 14, 2023 An Editorial Opinion Today, former president Donald Trump used his Truth Social media platform to issue this personal attack on Special Counsel Jack Smith: “How come the Biden ‘Prosecutor’ is a nice guy, very friendly with Democrats and RINOS alike, close to Christopher Wray, & pretty much liked & known by everybody, while my ‘Prosecutor’ is a Radical Left Trump HATING Lunatic, whose wife & family get a perfect ‘10’ for spewing Trump HATE, & whose ‘friends’ are the most evil, angry, & disgusting Marxists & Communists in & around Government? They are GRILLING innocent people in Grand Juries for hours, all to ‘get Trump.’ These are Sick Thugs!” Trump's posted comment is the absolutely wrong move to make in his case. There are legitimate and sound legal challenges Trump can make about Jack Smith’s unfitness to serve as Special Counsel, but his rant on Truth Social presents none of them. By now, Trump has likely been formally advised that he is the “target” of the federal grand jury probe led by Jack Smith. For reasons that make no sense to me, Trump has refused to publicly release his grand jury “target” letter. As a “target” of the grand jury investigation, Trump has the ability to place Jack Smith’s unfitness to serve as Special Counsel squarely in front of the grand jury, but his lawyers apparently have not done so. Instead, they are allowing Trump to make senseless personal attacks on Smith, his wife, and family members in mindless public rants. These personal attacks are placing Trump in further legal jeopardy and they are doing nothing to advance legitimate defenses in his criminal proceedings. The Right Way to Raise a Pre-Indictment Challenge to Jack Smith’s Unfitness to Serve as Special Counsel Title 9-11.000 of the Justice Manual affords Trump an appropriate avenue to raise the issue of Jack Smith’s unfitness to serve as Special Counsel directly with the grand jury. Title 9-11.233 states: “It is the policy of the Department of Justice ….. that when a prosecutor conducting a grand jury inquiry is personally aware of substantial evidence that directly negates the guilt of a subject of the investigation, the prosecutor must present or otherwise disclose such evidence to the grand jury before seeking an indictment against such a person. While a failure to follow the Department's policy should not result in dismissal of an indictment, appellate courts may refer violations of the policy to the Office of Professional Responsibility for review.” Title 9-11.152 affords Trump the opportunity to present the issue of Jack Smith’s disqualification to serve as Special Counsel directly to the grand jurors sitting in his case. This issue, alone, is exculpatory in nature. A formal letter from Trump’s attorneys to Jack Smith is enough to place Smith on actual notice of his duty to step aside in Trump’s case. The letter must not present the “bullshit” reasons asserted in Trump’s rant. Instead, it should present the legitimate reasons articulated in my November 25, 2022 article. Then, Trump should invoke and utilize the legal option to present the issue of Jack Smith’s unfitness to serve as Special Counsel directly with the grand jury. This avenue is a much wiser course of action, but only if Trump is capable of telling the truth under oath in a grand jury room. Who is in Charge of the Grand Jury? While prosecutors typically conduct the grand jury proceedings, they are NOT in charge of the proceedings. The foreperson of the grand jury, who is elected by fellow grand jurors, is the person in charge. Prosecutors are “guests” in the grand jury proceedings just like witnesses and other authorized persons. A strong foreperson will run his/her grand jury. With the concurrence of his/her fellow grand jurors, he/she sets the tone and agenda for how the probe proceeds. Weak forepersons allow prosecutors to run the proceedings on an unfettered basis. They never challenge anything prosecutors say or do. Once he is in the grand jury room, Trump should request the foreperson to remove all prosecutors from the grand jury room while he is testifying. Then, Trump can make his showing on Jack Smith’s unfitness without any fear of, or intimidation from, federal prosecutors. The grand jury has the power to remove any person from its midst, at any time, for any reason it deems appropriate. The grand jury has the power to subpoena witnesses to corroborate or dispute Trump’s claims. It may even compel testimony from Jack Smith and others on the disqualification claims raised by Trump. If the grand jury believes that Jack Smith is unfit to serve as a Special Counsel in its Trump probe, it may disregard some or all of the evidence presented to it to date and request Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a replacement Special Counsel. Baffled by Trump’s Actions Why Trump’s lawyers are not pursuing this course of action with the grand jury for presenting Jack Smith’s unfitness to serve as the Special Counsel completely baffles me. It looks like a case of professionally blind criminal attorneys leading a nervous and blind client. Unless there is a prompt and serious correction in how Trump’s attorneys are defending him, he is guaranteed an unfavorable outcome in this criminal case and a very unpleasant experience in the federal prison system.

By Donald V. Watkins ©Copyrighted and Published on January 10, 2023 Brigadier General Royal Hatch was a retired Air Force officer. A native of Wellesley, Mass., General Hatch had a long and very distinguished Air Force career. In 1994, General Hatch served as Mayor Richard Arrington, Jr.’s liaison to the business community. This is where I first met him. At the time, I was serving as Mayor Arrington’s special counsel. One day General Hatch asked me to accompany him to a private meeting with Mr. Henry C. Goodrich, a Birmingham business icon. Goodrich, a native of Fayetteville, Tennessee, was chairman and chief executive officer of Inland Container Corporation headquartered in Indianapolis, Ind., where he worked from 1968-1979. He also was chairman and chief executive officer of Sonat, Inc., headquartered in Birmingham, where he worked from 1979-1985. During his career, Henry Goodrich was a director of 35 different companies, including nine New York Stock Exchange listed companies – Time, Inc., Ball Corporation, Stokely-Van Camp, Inland Steel, Cousins Properties, Protective Life Corporation, Indiana Bell and Indiana National Bank, as well as the companies of which he was an executive. It was well known in Alabama that Henry Goodrich, William Houston Blount (former CEO of Vulcan Materials), and Elton B. Stephens (founder of EBSCO Industries) were the titans of business in Birmingham during the 1980s and early 1990s. They were rich and powerful men. As a bridge-builder myself, I was excited to meet Henry Goodrich. I thought it was a wonderful opportunity to learn from a living legend in business and to establish an open dialogue about my legal work for the city. General Hatch picked me up from my office and we headed to Goodrich’s private suite of offices on Highland Avenue in a building that is literally next door to my office today. When General Hatch and I entered Goodrich’s office, I extended my hand to shake his. Goodrich did not shake my hand. At that moment, I knew this was not going to be the kind of meeting that I was expecting. Henry Goodrich’s refusal to shake my hand stunned and embarrassed General Hatch, but he did not say a word about it. Goodrich, of course, shook Hatch’s hand. Once we sat down, Goodrich started talking to me without looking at me. He informed me that “they” had chosen him to talk to me, without defining who was included in the term “they.” In a 30-minute uninterrupted and demeaning scolding, Henry Goodrich told me in brutally frank language that: (a) I was a troublemaker in Birmingham who was disturbing the business community’s “good relations with the colored community”, (b) I was responsible for Birmingham City Council hearings on discriminatory lending practices, or “redlining,” by area banks, (c) I was the force behind the City’s efforts to increase the volume of city contracts awarded to women and minorities for the procurement of goods and services, (d) I was leading Mayor Arrington astray with my legal work on achieving greater equality in employment opportunities within City Hall, (e) I was making unnecessary waves by suggesting that the City leverage its hundreds of millions of dollars in banking deposits as a tool for encouraging corporate reinvestment in the city’s underserved neighborhoods and communities, and (f) I needed to leave town, immediately. For the entire time Henry Goodrich was scolding me, I had to force myself to remain calm and respectful. I was unsure about the nature and scope of Mayor Arrington’s relationship with Goodrich, so I took the non-stop barrage of insults from him because I did not want to damage Arrington’s relationship with Goodrich. After Goodrich was finished scolding me, I responded to each one of his talking points in a civil and respectful tone. Naturally, I disagreed with his assessment of my work as Mayor Arrington’s special counsel. I thought my nine years of services (as of 1994) had (a) brought accountability and transparency to city government, (b) promoted equal employment opportunities within the executive ranks of city government, (c) made it possible for blacks and women to participate equitably in city contracts for goods and services, (d) sensitized local banks to the unfairness of “redlining” practices, and (e) helped Arrington to move Birmingham forward. I viewed myself as a partner-in-progress with the City and its business community. I even bragged about my solid personal and professional relationship with Emory Folmar, Montgomery’s ultra-conservative, white Republican mayor. None of this moved Henry Goodrich, who still would not look at me. He ended the meeting by telling me, “I see that talking to you has been a waste of my time. You are Arrington’s “Rasputin.” For students of history, Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin was a Russian mystic and self-proclaimed holy man who befriended the family of Tsar Nicholas II, the last monarch of Russia, and gained considerable influence in late imperial Russia. With this final insult, General Hatch and I left the meeting. On the drive back to my office, I was too angry and filled with hurt to engage General Hatch in any kind of conversation. I had never let anyone talk to me in that way. Mayor Arrington was out of the country when my meeting with Goodrich occurred. I told him about it upon his return to Birmingham. Arrington was not surprised by the substance or nasty tone of the scolding. In fact, Arrington showed me a handwritten letter from another prominent white business leader calling upon him to fire me. This person acted friendly to my face, but talked about me in very derogatory terms behind my back. After I read the letter, Arrington balled it up, throw the letter in his trash basket, and told me to focus on my work. Arrington and I made a pact that day. Going forward, I would be the gladiator who fought in the arena. He would serve in the role of a statesman and “peacemaker.” I did not have the intestinal fortitude to sit through another meeting like the one I had with Henry C. Goodrich, who I never saw again. Every time I look out my office window at the building next door, I think about Henry Goodrich and that awful meeting. Goodrich died on December 11, 2011 at the age of 91. General Hatch died on August 6, 2006. As for me, I am still speaking up for those who have no voice and fighting for those who cannot fight for themselves. Everything has changed, but nothing has changed. The names of the individuals who oppose economic and social progress for all Americans are different today, but the fight is the same. [Author's Note: This article was first published on January 29, 2019. In light of the City of Birmingham, Alabama's fast-pace regression on black economic empowerment during the last five years, I have republished it.]

By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on January 9, 2022 An Editorial Opinion I have a premonition that former president Donald Trump will be indicted soon, perhaps as early as this month. My premonition squares with the profile and modus operindi of Special Counsel Jack Smith. Smith is a prosecutorial “hitman.” His job is to execute a Blitzkrieg “takedown” of Donald Trump, by any and all means necessary. Smith will act in a way that breaks the fighting spirit of Trump’s lawyers in the opening phase of the criminal process. Smith knows that Trump’s lawyers have no significant trial experience in defending “outcast” members of American society. Trump is now viewed by the members of Smith’s prosecutorial team as an "outcast." In fact, prosecutors consider Trump as a racketeering “kingpin.” Trump’s lawyers are mostly “white shoe” criminal defense attorneys who are accustomed to representing the fallen pillars of white society solely for the money. They have no loyalty to, or belief in, their clients. This is why none of Trump's lawyers will certify that he has no more classified documents within his possession and control. Furthermore, Trump's legal team is NOT adequately prepared to do battle with Jack Smith and his team of handpicked federal prosecutors. Trump’s lack of confidence in his defense attorneys (assuming that he ever had any) will sour faster than his lack of confidence in Jeff Sessions did. Venue in Washington, D.C. Trump will likely be indicted in Washington, D.C. This is the most favorable trial venue for prosecutors in Trump’s case. Most of the federal judges in the Washington, D.C. are moderate to liberal. A Trump-appointed judge WILL NOT get his case. Jack Smith knows how to engage in judge-shopping within the system to prevent a Trump judge from being assigned to Trump’s case. There will be no repeat of the judge-shopping fiasco with Judge Aileen Cannon that was initiated by the Trump defense team last year. The grand and trial juries in D.C. federal court proceedings have a heavy black presence. It’s a known fact that African- Americans have NO affinity for Donald Trump. Trump will be arrested on a Friday at his New York residence or his Mar-a-Largo country club in what law enforcement officials call a “perp walk” that will be televised around the world. Trump will be cuffed, shackled, and placed in a FBI vehicle under heavy armed guard. He will be transported by U.S. Marshals to Washington for booking, processing, detention, and arraignment. Trump will spend at least three weekend nights in the D.C. detention center, where he will be placed in solitary detention for his own protection. Trump will be arraigned in front of a U.S. Magistrate on the following Monday morning. At his arraignment, Jack Smith's prosecutors will argue that Trump is a flight risk. They will point out that Trump owns a private Boeing jumbo jet with a flight range that can reach a number of hostile foreign countries and safe-havens for Trump. Prosecutors will demonstrate Trump’s close personal friendships with the dictatorial heads of state in Russia, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and China. They will focus on Trump's close personal relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Prosecutors will remind the magistrate judge that fugitive defense contractor employee Edward Snowden, who publicly disclosed a treasure trove of U.S. National security secrets, made a successful escape to Russia in 2013, and the U.S. has never been able to get him back from Putin. Prosecutors will also harp on the highly questionable business relationships Trump and his family and friends have with the oligarchs in Russia, Saudi Arabia, China, Scotland Azerbaijan, Qatar, and Panama that have infused Trump-affiliated companies with billions of dollars. Finally, prosecutors will make an issue out of Trump’s propensity to lie about everything, with impunity. This means that the court, prosecutors, and federal probation services cannot rely on anything Trump says orally or in writing. It would not surprise me if the magistrate judge conducting Trump's arraignment denies him bail. If Trump is granted bail, it will be a sky-high bail. He would also be tethered with an electronic monitor. Will Trump Family Members Be Indicted? I predict that Jack Smith will indict one or more of Donald Trump’s three oldest adult children. This move is designed to place maximum pressure on Trump to plead guilty to one of the criminal charges. The indicted Trump child or children will be dragged through the same federal criminal process that I described for the former president. There will be no secret service agents protecting Trump or his children in their respective detention cells. Solitary confinement is the only protection they would have. Crushing Violent Trump Supporters Jack Smith and his team of FBI agents and prosecutors will crush any and all Trump political supporters and cult worshippers who resort to violence or the threat of violence in their support of the former president during the criminal proceedings. They will unleash "hell" on violent Trump supporters, as they should. Will My Premonition Come True? Based upon my personal knowledge of Jack Smith and his approach to law enforcement, I have no doubt that my premonition will come true. The trial of Donald Trump and his co-defendants is going to be the biggest spectacle since the trial of Jesus Christ more 2,000 years ago.

By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on January 8, 2022 Over a period of 1,000 years, Native American tribes established defined tribal territories from coast to coast in North America, including the country we call “America.” Over a 400 year-period, the United States government, aided and abetted by various state militias, implemented an official policy of genocide against Native Americans in order to seize Indian lands from tribes who stood their ground. Eventually, the U.S. government seized 1.5 billion acres of Native American tribal land and gave 270 million acres of this land to white immigrants from Europe -- for free -- under a 124-year wealth transfer program called the Homestead Act of 1865. This centuries-long, extremely violent, campaign of atrocities, genocide, and land seizures against Native Americans is well-documented in U.S. Senate Records and Reports in Washington, D.C. Today, there are 574 federally-recognized tribes that survived this horrific experience. They are protected and serviced by the U.S. Interior Department's Bureau of Indian Affairs. Approximately 56.2 million acres are held in trust by the United States for various Indian tribes and individuals. There are approximately 326 Indian land areas in the U.S. administered as federal Indian reservations (i.e., reservations, pueblos, rancherias, missions, villages, communities, etc.). Life in the Desert The largest Indian Reservation in America is the 16 million-acre Navajo Nation Reservation located in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Much of it is barren desert land. Life is tough in the desert. Most members of the Apache Nation live on five reservations: three in Arizona (the Fort Apache, the San Carlos Apache, and the Tonto Apache Reservations); and two in New Mexico (the Mescalero and the Jicarilla Apache). The White Mountain Apache live on the Fort Apache Reservation. Combined, these Apache reservations comprise millions of acres, including a whole lot of desert land. According to Desert USA, many cultural and linguistic Native American groups made (and still make) the deserts of the American Southwest their home. Each tribal group in each of the four deserts -- Mojave, Sonoran, Great Basin and Chihuahuan -- adapted differently, depending on local conditions and limitations. Most of these Native Americans were farmers, in addition to hunting and gathering. Some groups relied on dry farming, while others utilized irrigation techniques, perhaps inherited from ancient cultures that preceded them. Desert tribes learned to utilize the precious resources available in the desert to maintain a way of life that was both practical and religious. As with all desert life, water was of primary concern, and communities tended to form near sources of free water, which were vital habitats for desert animals and plants as well. Thanks to scientific advances in agri-business today, Native American desert tribes can convert millions of acres of barren land into a fertile agricultural oasis. Once again, desert tribes can be self-suffice and prosperous. Who Are the Desert Tribes in America? According to Desert USA contributor Steve Crouthame, Native Americans of the Desert Southwest, as grouped on a linguistic basis, include: PUEBLO Western Hopi Acoma Laguna Zuni Eastern Keresan Tanoan PIMANS Akimel O'odham (Pima-River People) Tohono O'odham (Papago-Desert People) YUMANS River Cocopah (Cocopa) Quechan (Yuma) Mojave (Ahamakav) Maricopa (Pee-Posh) Pai Yavapai Hualapai (Walapai) Havasupai Kumeyaay (Diegueno) Southern California DINE Navajo Apache Jicarilla Mescalero Western Chiricahua SHOSHONEAN Paiute (Northern Owens Valley) Ute Shoshoni S. California Cahuilla Chemehuevi Serrano Cupeno Luiseno Cahitan - Mexico Yaqui Opata Tarahumara Huichol Seri Dake Rechsand Offers the Navajo Nation, Apache Nation, and Other Desert Tribes Valuable Agri-Business Empowerment Opportunities Dake Rechsand is the global leader in the science of desert farming in the modern era. Desert farming is now an economical option for Native American desert tribes. Desert farming also bolsters food security at affordable prices and restores degraded lands. Dake Rechsand’s desert farming technology, products, and projects are converting barren desert lands in other nations into large agricultural farms, rice plantations, greenhouse planting zones, and beautiful lakes. Here are some of Dake Rechsand's green desert projects: Every day, Dake Rechsand is changing lives in a way that empowers deserving peoples around the world. It is now time for Native America desert tribes to join in this paradigm-shifting empowerment experience.

By: Donald V. Watkins Copyrighted and Published on January 4, 2023 Today, I filed a criminal complaint online with the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington against the City of Valley, Alabama and its police department. The complaint grows out of the November 27, 2022 unlawful arrest of 82-year-old Ms. Martha Louis Menefield for not paying her $77 trash bill. Ms. Menefield’s arrest stunned the nation. [Click here to read the criminal complaint.] Ms. Menefield’s arrest was captured on police body cam video and has sparked a nationwide call for action. Unbelievably, the Valley police officer laughed at Menefield during her arrest. The City used two police officers to effectuate Ms. Menefield's arrest. In addition to arresting Ms. Menefield, the City posted an announcement about her arrest on its Facebook page. This posting amounted to “victim shaming” and public humiliation. I will use all of my knowledge, skills, abilities, and resources to make sure those who perpetrated this ongoing extortion and racketeering scheme in Valley, Alabama are brought to justice. “Cash-register” justice in Alabama has no place in a modern society and must end, now! Sadly, no local, state, or federal official in Alabama has stepped forward to condemn what happened to Ms. Menefield. This is why I filed the complaint with the Department of Justice in Washington. Stay tuned!