Muncie Times, Muncie, Delaware County, 2 October 2003 — Page 10

Page 10 • The Muncie Times • October 2, 2003

NEWS BRIEFS

continued from page 9. Muhammad said, "I apologize and accept full responsibility." He explained, "I failed in my responsibility to look deeply into the allegations presented in this article, and it has caused distress to the families of Dr. King, Rev. Jackson, Rev. Kyles, Min. Farrakhan and untold others." Although he did not mention it in print, Muhammad resigned from the paper. Eric Ture Muhammad, a former Washington-based staff writer for the Final Call, now assigned to Atlanta, also resigned. Officials say that even though Donna Muhammad shared a byline, she did not help write the story.

BUFFNY founder fired Very few Harlem entities have been as intimately and productively bound as Kermit Eady and the Black United Fund of New York (BUFNY). But if the charitable group's board has its way, Eady will have to step down as president of the organization he founded in 1979. Recently, Eady got a call from the board's attorney advising him of his termination. When Eady arrived at his offices on Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, he discovered all the locks had been changed and he was told he could not enter the premises. "The board has requested my resignation," Eady told the Amsterdam News in an exclusive interview Wednesday afternoon. "Since I have retained legal counsel and we are working on resolving the situation,

I'm not at liberty to say anymore." Ongoing negotiations with the board, said Eady's lawyer, Larry Rosenbluth, would not permit them to disclose the specific chaiges. However, Eady did note that he had been serving under a board appointed by the state's attorney general during the spring. He also said that the attorney general's office had been in the process of conducting an investigation of the organization's financial affairs. Larry Barton, Eady's longtime associate and vice president and general manager of BUFNY, was also asked to resign. He had no comment but said he was seeking legal counsel. There were no return calls from the board's attorney and only one board member was available to speak to the press. But she directed all inquiries to the board's attorney. According to a press release from Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's office back in May, an interim board was established at BUFNY following "an out-of-court agreement," which one source close to the story said was no more than a coup. "Our goal here is to help BUFNY flourish. The interim board - comprising talented individuals with proven records of servicewill breathe new life into BUFNY and help shepherd its finances and programs," Spitzer said at that time.

Civil rights dream remains illusory Of the major organizers of the 1963 March on Washington for

Jobs and Freedom, in 2003 Bayard Rustin is, posthumously, the principal beneficiary of this massive demonstration. On the eve of the march, the late Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.)publicly described Rustin as a "sexual pervert" with a prison record. This year, the U.S.Supreme Court outlawed state sodomy statutes. Thurmond died in June. Within five years after the march, Congress had passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Open Housing Law of 1968. In examining the legal foundations for each of these statutes, it would be erroneous, however, to describe them as milestones in civil rights. None of them has any connection with the protective benefits of citizenship commonly referred to as civil rights. The Supreme Court in 1882 invalidated the Civil Rights Act of 1875. Its protective provisions were far more sweeping than the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and, unlike the latter statute, the congressional authority for its enactment was based on citizenship. Congress lacked the authority under the 13th and 14th Amendments to require whites to serve people of African ancestry. Justice Joseph P. Bradley also used his majority opinion to declare that blacks should no longer be treated as "the special favorite of the law." Bradley had previously been the tiebreaking vote in the selection of Rutherford B. Hayes, over Samuel Tilden, in the presidential election of 1876. The suppression of the black vote in Florida in 1876, which led to the

stalemate, was of no constitutional import to Bradley. In response to the protest demonstrations in Birmingham and the 1963 march. Congress carved out a public accommodations law giving great deference to the majority opinion of Bradley. In short. Congress voted that it shall make no law which accords civil rights to descendants of enslaved Africans. Accordingly, the Public Accommodations Law of 1964 bottoms on the Commerce Clause rather than the 14th Amendment, which governs citizenship. Interestingly, President George W. Bush, while in Africa, described enslaved Africans as "articles of commerce." No civil rights statute is necessary to accord to whites the right of public accommodations and public transportation. This right existed in English common law and it was incorporated into the U.S. Constitution. Under the common law, public transportation and public accommodations are common callings. This means that their services must be offered, without discrimination, to the general public. The common law of England formed the basis for this country's legal system and it is still in currency, but it obviously only protects whites. Common law gives rise to judicial customs. If the rights and duties of the common law had been extended to persons of African ancestry, there would have never been a need for a Homer Adolph Plessy to challenge intrastate travel, an Irene Morgan to challenge interstate travel and a Rosa

Parks to challenge intra-city travel. Similarly, the sit-in demonstration at a Woolworth store in Greensboro, N.C., in 1960 by four freshmen from North Carolina A&T would have been an exercise in futility if the common law had been extended to blacks. Even after the Supreme Court invalidated segregated interstate travel, there was still a need for freedom rides through the South. While blacks had to march and die for an opportunity to exercise the franchise, it is still not a constitutional right, and white males who were not citizens voted, while black males, for more than eight decades, were either barred from voting or had to satisfy stringent property qualifications. This was the situation in New York before the ratification of the 15th Amendment, which does not give rise to a constitutional right but allow!' for enabling legislation like the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which will expire in 2007. If blacks enjoyed a constitutional right to vote, enabling legislation would be unnecessary. Title VIII of the 1968 Civil Rights Act prohibits most housing discrimination. The authority of Congress to enact legislation outlawing most private and public acts of discrimination in housing rests on the 1866 Civil Rights Act, which predates the ratification of the 14th Amendment, in 1868. Open housing, therefore, is also a statutory right rather than a civil right. continue on page 11.