Supreme Court decisions add challenges for so many (July 2023)

By Guy Trammell Jr.

In 1885, George W. Carver applied by mail to Highland Presbyterian College in Kansas. He was accepted. However, upon arrival he was rejected – for being Black. He later graduated from Simpson College, earned a master’s degree, and changed the world. If you use soy milk or almond milk, thank Carver, who pioneered the science of synthetics.

Affirmative action made predominantly white colleges accessible to minorities for decades. However, it was recently struck down by the Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision, notably excluding military academies. There, race-conscious admissions policies have been protected for 20 years because the military, whose members are about 20% Black, needs a diverse officer corps in order to have a stronger overall force.

Edward Blum, a conservative legal strategist, gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013 with Shelby v Holder, but that same year failed to stop affirmative action with Fisher v University of Texas. He then formed Students for Fair Admissions, with Abigail Fisher and her father as leaders, claiming Harvard University’s affirmative action discriminated against her for being white. Most Asian Americans support affirmative action, but Blum included them in the case and recruited some as “members.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in her dissent on the ruling, pointed out that “deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life.”

The ruling supports soldiers, not scholars or CEOs. This is white supremacy at its finest!

In Allen v Milligan, the Supreme Court decided 5-4 that intent does not negate effect. Therefore, the Alabama redistricting map is illegal because it prevents two Black majority voting districts. A new map must be completed this month.

A 6-3 ruling in Moore v Harper stopped a move to inject the “independent state legislature theory” into American life. This “theory” would give state legislatures ultimate authority over the governor, state constitutions and courts. Elections could be decided by the legislature, not by popular vote, based on Article 1 of the Constitution: “The times, places and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives shall be prescribed in each State by the legislature thereof.”

In his ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote: Legislatures, the Framers recognized, “are the mere creatures of State Constitutions, and cannot be greater than their creators.”

In 1812 the term “gerrymandering” was first used in reference to the law redrawing Massachusetts’ senate districts under Gov. Elbridge Gerry. In 1957, Alabama state Sen. Sam Engelhardt authored a bill to reduce Tuskegee’s city limits by about 50%, eliminating all but a handful of Black registered voters. The Legislature unanimously supported it. When Black voters resisted and the Supreme Court ruled against it, Engelhardt had the state legislature approve a statewide vote to dissolve Macon County, where Tuskegee is located.

This demonstrates what happens when a legislature acts with no checks or balances.

By Amy Miller

The Supreme Court this summer made a boatload of decisions with wide-ranging ramifications.

I am not an historian of the Supreme Court nor a legal scholar with the wherewithal to analyze the legal nuances of the decisions. But what I can understand clearly is the effect these laws have on people, in many cases people I know. And what I see is that the individuals affected by each decision were those who already have uphill battles, battles that not all Americans face.

Black people trying to better themselves. Gay people wanting to celebrate love. Students buried under crushing loans. What strikes me, then, is not the legal questions, but the lack of human empathy.

Legal experts can debate the legal validity of these decisions, but it is inevitable that the interpretations of the arguments they hear will follow a justice’s predispositions. So what, we can ask, gives these judges a predisposition to want to make life harder for so many people. Perhaps as interesting as the judicial justifications for their opinions is their lack of empathy for those who will suffer even more because of these decisions.

Since its start, our nation has shone brightest when it sought to make life just and good for the most people. Yes, it has faced some profound failures since the start, and at times it has reached temporarily backwards while still pursuing that long arc of moral history that bends towards justice, as the Rev. King said.

So what we have is a court that sided with a Colorado web designer who wanted clearance in advance to deny wedding services to same-sex couples. It matters little to the law, but much to those who can be turned away by a business, that the web designer did not in fact have a same-sex client, but a strong interest in establishing her rights.

The court also struck down using race as a factor for elite university admissions. It  apparently matters little to the law that preferences continue for children of alumni and children of big donors, but much to the students of color who still face well-documented barriers to achievements each step of the way.

And finally, the court ruled that President Biden overreached his authority when he offered loan forgiveness to students. As with affirmative action, the public sentiment is fairly even on this question.

So while we are debating the legal intricacies that Supreme Court justices proffer to validate their point of view, maybe we could stop and think about those people whose days just got worse, if not upended, because the Supreme Court of the our country said they didn’t deserve the nation’s support.

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Amy and Guy can be reached at colorusconnected@gmail.com

Blueberries are common ground (July 2023)

By Guy Trammell Jr.

Breakfast stops on summer family road trips were a childhood treat for me. I realize now that we only stopped north of the Mason Dixon Line. I was allowed to order what I wanted, and it was always blueberry pancakes with hot chocolate or orange juice. The colorful berries were pushing to emerge from the golden stack as I spread the melting butter, and I recall the first time a restaurant offered blueberry syrup to enhance this delightful experience.

I later learned to make my own blueberry hot cakes, and even go further and bake blueberry muffins.

In college, I worked briefly at Tuskegee’s George Washington Carver Agriculture Experiment Station, one of the oldest U.S. stations with continuous operation. There, I had the distinct honor and privilege to work directly under one of Dr. Carver’s proteges, Dr. Booker T. Whatley. He was a gruff, no nonsense personality whose command of the sciences was legendary. He could lecture in elaborate detail on the genetic properties, processes and resulting products of his research, and also, in simple terms, explain to a novice how to implement his research creations and improve an agricultural business or project.

Dr. Whatley’s research was vast. He created new ways to use science, including combining sweet potato varieties of both white and orange flesh to create cattle feed for desert herds. His prized creation was a 25-acre farm that produced over $100,000 in profit during its first year of operation. He set up a working model, and loved showing it off at the annual Professional Agriculture Workers Conference. This was a pick-your-own farm, with plums, muscadines, peaches and blueberries. Whatley created a blueberry grove that to this day produces fruit from June through August, two blueberry growing seasons.

One of his farm prototypes was purchased by Tuskegee’s Josie Gbadamosi. Josie has transformed it into the Shady Grove Blueberry Farm, a pick-your-own business. The luscious berries are big and juicy. Josie’s brother, Cookie Jones, was a dessert gourmet who made the very best blueberry cobbler. Unfortunately he transitioned recently, but Josie produces blueberry tea, and blueberry tisane, a delicious and nutritious beverage. I am looking forward to enjoying some at this summer’s Rhythm and Blueberry Fest on the farm.

And yes, blueberries are a very healthy food, with antioxidants, vitamins and minerals. However, I simply enjoy them in a meal or as a snack.

By Amy Miller

Maine is filled with blueberries – pies, and fields and stories.

It may be that Cherryfield once had cherry trees lining the Narraguagus River flowing through its center, thus giving the Maine town its name. It also may be that the fields of blueberries plentiful in this Downeast town turn red in the fall, thus giving this historic town its name.

But however you look at it, 2023 Cherryfield is is known as the wild blueberry capital of the world. Yes, the world.

And Maine, it turns out, produces more wild blueberries – also known as low-bush berries – than anywhere else in the world. Yes, the world, according to the PBS show America’s Heartland and many other google-able sources. This brand of berry, native to Maine, thrives in its glacier-churned soil and challenging seasons.

A bunch of us Mainers a few years ago went down to Alabama to visit Tuskegee, our sister city, secure in the knowledge that if nothing else, Maine rules when it comes to blueberries, only to learn that Alabama too takes pride in its blueberries.

Let’s be clear, though: Maine’s state fruit is wild blueberries, not just any blueberries. Tuskegee and other southeastern states are renowned for rabbit eye blueberries, better suited to the heat and drought they face in that corner of our country.

While I cannot vouch for claims made by Mainers that our wild blueberry is juicier and more flavorful than the high bush berries, I can definitely assure you they are much smaller. And yet, the animal on the top of our Maine food chain – the black bear – is famous for enjoying berries. Even the moose, which has no predators in Maine, is known to munch on these tiny treats.

Each year, sometime in July, I bring a few large yogurt containers up to the super-secret, but not-so-secret  blueberry patch near my house. And each year I am surprised to learn again that hours of picking these delicious but minuscule bits does not come close to filling my buckets. So you really have to love these little guys to stay in the game long enough to get a supply of them worth freezing. Or you have to believe those who say they’re packed with natural antioxidants and be attached to the idea of antioxidants.

Most of Maine’s wild blueberries now are mechanically harvested by commercial operations, but some farms let us pick blueberries by hand, as Indigenous people have done for thousands of years.

The wild plants were first established as the glacier receded 10,000 years ago and were used by native Americans, but the commercial industry began in the 1800s, according to the University of Maine Extension Service. Wild blueberries were first picked fresh by hand, then raked and canned and now are mostly mechanically harvested,

Although it’s the wild berries that put our state on the blueberry map, we also have high-bush berries, available even just a few miles down the road.

But anyone who has spent any time off the paved byways of Maine, the most forested state in the nation, knows you can find the wild ones galore and for free.

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Amy and Guy can be reached at ColorUsConnected@gmail.com

The future is with AI – like it or not. Mostly not (June 2023)

By Amy Miller

This may be the most depressing column I write. I’m giving readers fair warning.

A month or so ago a friend suggested that an artificial intelligence app could write a press release just about as well as I could, which, by the way, is something I do in my day job. We entered some scanty information into the app, giving it a topic and directing it to write the release in the style of a governmental agency. Then poof, in seconds we had a well-crafted press release that looked like anything you might read in your weekly newspaper.

For days I worried not just about press releases, but also about computer-generated fact sheets, forged student essays and AI novels. Soon, my concerns expanded to the political implications of machines getting smarter – false articles on candidates, politicians and reality that could change the course of history.

But all of that became kid’s stuff after I began reading about what computers could do to our planet, to humanity.

The simplest definition I found for artificial intelligence is “the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems.”

The problem is that this kind of intelligence can surpass humans in many ways, and in fact already has. A brilliant computer, directed by a crazy, evil or profoundly angry tyrant, could propel the end of humanity if it “wanted” to. One technology leader I read suggested that AI is an existential threat on the level of only two other threats – nuclear war and a deadly pandemic.

So what are the options for controlling these machines as they learn? It is widely believed that the intelligence of computers is growing exponentially, doubling or more each year. Some believe it is growing even faster than that. In other words, it is a runaway train.

Regulation seems like a paltry proposition given that the problem is global and many actors, even within our borders, ignore the rules. In general, government interference in the human desire for progress seems like a losing battle.

I asked for some thoughts from a younger, techier acquaintance, a guy who works for Meta, which owns Facebook. He didn’t disagree with much of what I said but was more sanguine than I. Think of all the good AI can do, he said. Think of the medical advances; think of how replacing workers means giving us precious time to socialize, exercise, garden or just think, not to mention sleep.

I suggested to my Meta friend that the only solution I’ve heard that made me think computers will not destroy the world was the notion that we must create a computer that has been taught to neutralize the “evil” computer.

That, he said, only adds to the problem we are trying to minimize, giving more power to machines rather than less.

We ended by agreeing on the main points, but with different levels of alarm.

By Guy Trammell Jr.

In the 1980s, Tuskegee veterinary professor Dr. Tsegaye Habtemariam created a digital horse’s heart for experimentation instead of using live animals.

At a recent Congressional subcommittee hearing, the chairman’s greeting sounded exactly like him, but the voice and content were created by ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence program that researched him and created the talk. AI simply collects information and uses it to perform tasks.

This spring, Tuskegee University held a meeting in Greenwood to discuss AI’s benefits. Its development has recently exploded with new capabilities not in existence a year ago. It can potentially save lives by modeling and forecasting global climate and weather. I use my cell phone AI to correct texts. Be My Eyes uses AI for the sight challenged. We recognize that with benefits come risks. I remember being told our cell numbers would be private, but I get unrequested business solicitations. It’s not what I expected.

The Center for AI Safety has warned: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.” Extinction is a tall order to tackle. However, Dan Hendrycks, the center’s research director, talks about “the risk of sacrificing safety for development.” Profit should not outshine safety!

Some AI weaponizing risks include creating counterfeit people that conduct internet scams; creating false information to gain profits or influence elections; producing genetically modified diseases; and generating predictions about a person’s behavior, causing their arrest by police.

AI needs safeguards including: a) testing by independent scientists, b) global safety score cards and monitoring, c) restrictions on areas of citizen privacy, d) developer liability for harm done, e) transparency on type of content used in software development, f) override-proof refusal by AI of detrimental requests, g) alerts that people are interacting with AI instead of a real person, h) labeling similar to nutrition labels (highest risk use) and description of what product does, i) a new form of global policing of AI with enforceable laws, j) mandatory consent and compensation when intellectual property is used, k) safety for research funding, l) barriers to AI self-initiation, m) limit to AI’s power, n) AI should understand harm, and o) AI apps in more languages than English.

Booker T. Washington taught us to acquire knowledge for our Head, skills for our Hand, and character for our Heart. As these developments progress, our character must be guided by moral and ethical responsibility so that we will Do No Harm!

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Amy and Guy can be reached at colorusconnected@gmail.com

A crusader can beat the odds, or change a heart (June 2023)

By Guy Trammell Jr.

(This is not an endorsement for the scouting program.)

In 1908, Stanley Austin Harris learned of the British Boy Scout program and organized the first U.S. troop. During one of his speeches to the scouts, he learned of his wife’s death. Black Boy Scouts in attendance brought him a wreath, and this moved him to advocate for Black, Hispanic and Native American scouts. Later, he led the Scouting Interracial Service, which provoked the Ku Klux Klan to regularly disrupt Scouting activities.

In 1910, newspaper and magazine publisher William D. Boyce was assisted by a Boy Scout in London. As a result, he organized the Boy Scouts of America. His $1,000 monthly support was contingent on scouting being open for all races and creeds.

In the all Black Village of Greenwood, I was a Cub Scout under Den Mother Mrs. Dowdy, with her fun activities and treats, on Bibb Street. Later I joined Greenwood Baptist’s Boy Scout Troop 270 under Scout Masters Mr. Ross, then Mr. Lampkin.

Our Carver District, the South’s oldest all Black Scouting association, included Scouting legends Liston Burns, Dr. Ellis Hall, and “Mr. Scouting” himself, Dr. James Henderson. Henderson was a perfect scouting visual, from his colorful scout uniform to his vintage Ford, filled with scouts, that he drove in parades. He promoted swimming and water safety, which is why Lake Tuskegee now has publicly available life preservers.

Our uniforms, literature and equipment came from the Scouting section of the Village of Greenwood’s Black owned and operated Reid’s Cleaners and Haberdashery. We attended spring camporees and summer camps at Camp Atkins, the oldest Black scout camp in the U.S. With over 200 acres of Tuskegee Institute’s land, it had a mess hall, barracks, hiking trails, a 6-acre lake, and programs for girls and boys, whether scouts or not. As early as 1923, Tuskegee Institute held annual staff cookouts at Camp Atkins.

In 1915, Boyce left the Boy Scouts, forming Lone Scouts of America, with “Lone Scout” magazine. In 1920, he began accepting white boys only, changing the magazine header, from “A Real Boys Magazine” to “The White Boys Magazine.”

On May 18, 1942, Stanley Austin Harris became the first white person awarded an honorary degree from Tuskegee Institute (Doctor of Humanities). He worked diligently and intentionally, getting 50 Blacks selected as Boy Scout executives.

Which one would you choose for an honorary degree???

By Amy Miller

We agreed this week to write about “a little-known crusader who fought against the odds.” It was to be someone we knew or who had crusaded in our own community.

There are many such champions in our community, and in my life, starting with my brother who was active in his teacher’s union and my sister who works as a nurse in substance abuse. There are my neighbors who actively work to make our town a better place and my friends who heal wounds, make music and art, or fight legal battles they believe in.

But when I think of who is fighting the odds, I get confused. What odds? How great do the odds have to be to count?

My friend Lucia grew up in Haiti, came to the United States at 18 and made her way here well enough that all of her five children attended college. Now she has built a school in Haiti on the property where she grew up. It has grown to educate 500 children a year and soon will include a guesthouse that will bring income to the school.

Then there is the woman who cared with love and wisdom and sympathy for my mother in her last years. Caroline came from Jamaica with her brother and sisters, children of a father who farmed and didn’t read but was profoundly wise, in Caroline’s telling. The sisters promised each other they would give whatever it took so that the next generation had different, better lives. Trust me, they succeeded.

But where Caroline really beat the odds was in gaining the trust and friendship of my mother. In her later years, my loving, intelligent and kind mother distrusted everyone and closed in on herself. But she let Caroline in.

During Covid they talked for hours, sharing stories and fears, hopes and ice cream. When my mother didn’t trust even her children, she trusted Caroline, the only aide she never fired. It no longer mattered how different their backgrounds, or ages, or life experiences. It no longer mattered that their relationship began as an employer/employee arrangement. Caroline’s honesty and wisdom, and what she wanted out of life and was willing to give, meant my mother’s last years included love and friendship that no one could have predicted.

So in my book, Caroline beat the odds, the odds that were my mother. Was she a crusader? A crusader doesn’t have to change the world. A crusader can change someone’s heart, and Caroline did that.

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Amy and Guy can be reached at colorusconnected@gmail.com

Voting – mail in? absentee? What is allowed where? (May 2023)

By Guy Trammell Jr.

The car sped down Alabama’s dusty county roads, flying past single room shanty homes, with people rushing to peek out at the scene. Inside the car, Black teenagers and two in their 20s had eyes glued on the pursuing deputy’s car. The driver jerked off and on the road, turning down side roads, avoiding bullets, and finally crossing the county line to safety.

A law had been broken, and law and order must be served! Was it robbery? Murder? No! The stacks of fliers in the trunk, with easy-to-understand lessons on how to vote, were the issue. These members of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, which included my older brother, had crossed state and county lines to “cause a riot.” How? By educating people about voting. That was the crime.

SNCC came to Alabama in 1960, and these young people risked their lives – for $11 a week – simply to help Black people register and vote.

The 1965 Voting Rights Act was drafted by Dr. Martin L. King Jr. and other civil rights leaders at the kitchen table of Tuskegee’s Amelia P. Boynton in Selma. The bill mandated that any state election law must be scrutinized by the federal government for non-discrimination before being enacted, keeping Southern voter suppression to a minimum.

However, on June 25, 2013, the United States Supreme Court removed the Voting Rights Act pre-clearance mandate, freeing Southern states to resume voter suppression.

Ten years later, a car pulls up to a home, the driver walks to the porch and hands the person in a wheelchair a blank form, and is arrested. Absurd, you say? Guess again!

Under Alabama’s pending House Bill 209, except for family members, legal guardians and election officials, it will be a crime to deliver an absentee ballot to or for a person. This restricts social workers, close friends, ministers and friendly neighbors from doing so.

A person cannot receive payment for assisting with an absentee ballot, which excludes social service agencies helping those without transportation. Public transportation in the Black Belt counties of Alabama is scarce, to say the least.

Besides the people being criminalized, what about the elderly who can’t get out, the disabled friends, and the veterans wounded defending our freedoms? Are we not allowed to help them? They are ending justice, with injustice!

Don’t these legislators have disabled friends and family who depend on friends to assist? Don’t they even care?

By Amy Miller

Amid the chaotic controversy around recent elections, a quieter controversy has been brewing related to extending absentee voting, which in some states is known as voting by mail.

In Maine, as in 27 other states, you don’t have to have an excuse to get an absentee ballot. In Maine, you can vote by mail just because you feel like it. And you can choose how you return your ballot – in person, through the mail or even online.

Fifteen other states, however, say that if you aren’t in the military or living overseas, you need some other excuse before getting permission to mail in your ballot. Acceptable excuses can be your advanced age, being sick, caring for someone who can’t leave home or having a job that precludes getting to the polls. It depends on your state.

In Alabama, absentee voters must submit a copy of a valid photo, unless they are a member of the military, an overseas citizen, a senior citizen or a disabled person. Alabama voters, though, can get  absentee ballots only if they have an excuse, which besides being overseas, includes a specific list of other acceptable excuses, like being sick, in jail or having to work.

Now, state legislators in Alabama are considering a law to make it a felony to help a voter fill out an absentee ballot. This crime could land someone in jail for between five and 20 years, depending on the particulars.

On the other end of the spectrum are seven states that send ballots to all voters automatically and allow them, even encourage them, to mail ballots back or drop them in ballot boxes.

Arguments for and against making mail-in voting more widespread generally go something like this: supporters say it will help more people engage in the democratic process; opponents warn it will lead to corruption of the election system.

The arguments for and against the new Alabama law follow a similar path. Alabama has a long history of trying to suppress votes. Its history of disenfranchising African American voters in fact led to the Voting Rights Act.

Similarly, claims that mail-in voting will add to corruption have not been borne out in the states that have greatly expanded voting by mail.

A study by two Stanford professors found that turnout increased among all demographic groups when all residents were mailed ballots and could return them by mail. Results showed “all age, income, race, occupational, and education groups benefiting from” the introduction of voting by mail. And turnout approved regardless of political affiliation.

Many states introduced expansive vote by mail programs during Covid, they noted, and suggested that “out of a concern for core principles of democracy, states should hold onto mail voting long after this particular crisis ends.”

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Amy and Guy can be reached at colorusconnected@gmail.com