Atlanta Daily World

When some of us saw the first video of Charles Ramsey, the colorful Black dishwasher in Cleveland who is being celebrated as a hero for rescuing three White women captives from horrid conditions in a Cleveland house, we had a flashback to Antoine Dodson, who became a flamboyant Internet sensation after saving his sister from a would-be rapist in their Huntsville, Ala., housing apartment, and Sweet Brown, who barely escaped a fire in her Oklahoma City complex.

But more than any other famous “hilarious Black neighbor” Internet sensation, the coverage of Ramsey – and his criminal past – raises serious questions about how we treat a hero with a troubled past and, yes, how Blacks and Whites look at the same event through different prisms of race.

First, as they say in TV news, let’s go to the videotape.

“I’ve been here a year,” Ramsey said in an interview with WEWS, a local television station. Referring to Ariel Castro, the suspect arrested for holding the women against their will, Ramsey said, “You see where I’m coming from? I barbeque with this dude. We eat ribs and whatnot and listen to salsa music…

“He just comes out in his backyard, plays with the dogs, tinkers with his cars and motorcycles, goes back in the house. So he’s somebody you look, then look away. He’s not doing anything but the average stuff. You see what I’m saying? There’s nothing exciting about him. Well, until today.”

Ramsey explained that Castro “got some big testicles to pull this off, bro.”

He added, “I knew something was wrong when a little, pretty White girl ran into a Black man’s arms. Something wrong here. Dead giveaway.”

There was plenty wrong, as Ramsey learned when he put down his McDonald’s Big Mac and answered a call for help from Amanda Berry, who had been last seen in 2002 on the eve of her 17^th birthday. The two other women were Georgina “Gina” DeJesus, who had been missing since 2004 at the age of 14, and Michelle Knight, who disappeared in 2002 at the age of 21.

While being hailed as a hero, Ramsey was the object of both racism and ridicule.

Though we’re reluctant to publicly admit it, some African-Americans cringed at the sight of Ramsey. His hair, curled in the back like Al Sharpton’s do and as slick as Chuck Berry’s, is interspersed with what we once called post office hair – each nap has its own route. This is one of the few cases where a person’s mug shot looks better than his real life photo.

To put this in context, think back to when Black civil rights protesters dressed up in their Sunday’s best, knowing they were going to get physically assaulted by police and White supremacists. Then, as now, image matters. Especially when one of us appears on TV. Still, there are plenty of people in our community who look like Ramsey and their speech and appearance make them no less valuable than the best dressed and most articulate among us.

Some have suggested than many Whites take delight in seeing Blacks caricatured in the image of Charles Ramsey and Antoine Dodson.

“Perhaps it’s time for the world’s meme artists to stop assuming that any black dude getting interviewed on local news about a crime he helped to foil can be reduced to some catch-phrase or in-joke,” Miles Klee wrote on Blackbookmag.com. “It’s just baffling that we’re trying to find a way to laugh about what is, in itself, a harrowing turn of events.”

Most of us knew, or at least suspected deep down, that something about Ramsey’s past would surface, causing further embarrassment.

The Smoking Gun website disclosed on May 8 that Ramsey “is a convicted felon whose rap sheet includes three separate domestic violence convictions that resulted in prison terms.”

Blacks instantly asked: Why is something that happened a decade ago – and had nothing to do with Ramsey’s heroism – relevant today?  Cleveland’s WEWS-TV, facing a backlash from viewers, apologized for reporting on Ramsey’s criminal past.

“While the story was factually sound, the timing of it and publication of such information was not in good taste, and we regret it,” the station said on its Facebook page.

Normally, I would agree that Ramsey’s criminal  past, certainly in this situation, should be irrelevant. But there’s nothing normal about this case. Unfortunately, Ramsey invited the scrutiny when he said he suspected domestic violence because he “was raised to help women in distress.”

In view of that assertion, Ramsey’s domestic violence convictions – hardly a record of helping women in distress – became fair game and should have been reported by the news media. But the reporting should not end there. Ramsey’s ex-wife, since remarried, said Ramsey eventually apologized for battering her and they now interact on “an okay basis.”

In addition, she posted two earlier photos of Ramsey on her Facebook page. She told the Smoking Gun, “For my daughter’s sake I show he didn’t always look hood.”

George E. Curry, former editor-in-chief of Emerge magazine, is editor-in-chief of the National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service (NNPA.) He is a keynote speaker, moderator, and media coach. Curry can be reached through his Web site, www.georgecurry.com. You can also follow him at www.twitter.com/currygeorge.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa – When Nelson Mandela and his African National Congress comrades were plotting to overthrow the White minority-rule apartheid regime in South Africa, Lilies Farm in Rivonia, just north of Johannesburg, served as their secret hideout.

Today, 19 years after South Africa made a bloodless transition to a democracy with the election of Mandela as its first Black president, the picturesque land, now called Liliesleaf, is South Africa’s best kept secret.

Arthur Goldreich and Harold Wolpe bought the farm in 1961 to serve as headquarters for the underground Communist Party and as a safe house for political refugees, including Mandela and Govan Mbeki, the father of Thabo Mbeki, who succeeded Mandela as president.

Goldreich and his wife, Hazel, served as the public face of the sprawling residence. To the outside world, they were living a life of affluence with plenty of Black handy men around to make their life easier. But the carefully crafted public perception masked plans to end minority rule by violence. The farm gave birth to MK (Umkhonto we Sizwe – the Spear of the Nation), the military wing of the African National Congress.

“From its headquarters the National High Command had planned its campaign of guerrilla warfare, sabotage and violence, Joel Joffe wrote in The State vs. Nelson Mandela: The Trial that Changed South Africa. “It has installed a radio transmitter, known as Radio Liberation, and had made a study of armaments and explosives and produced plans for large-scale production of grenades, time-bombs and other explosives”

On the carefully manicured land was a large manor house for the owners, with several outbuildings that housed revolutionaries posing as workers.

“I moved in under the pretext that I was the houseboy or caretaker who would look after the place until my master took possession,” Mandela, an attorney, wrote in his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom. “I had taken the alias David Motsamayi, the name of one of my former clients. At the farm, I wore the simple blue overalls that were the uniform of the black male servant.”

The groundwork for converting the farm into a museum began in 2002. The restoration project preserved the farm’s original character; approximately 60 percent of the infrastructure uses the original bricks.

A tour of the museum includes a stop in a room with a 3-D presentation that incorporates video, and photographic images of the ANC leaders and their surroundings. Using two aluminum “navigators,” visitors can look back at various aspects of apartheid. In an adjoining room, an old radio plays the 1960 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech by ANC President Albert Luthuli, who was honored for leading a non-violent struggle against apartheid.

Across the lawn, in a row of living units, is Mandela’s old apartment. Inscribed on a rectangular window outside are the words: “Room 12 Nelson Mandela’s Room.”

Before stepping inside, I took a deep breath, realizing I was about to walk into history – literally. After pausing, I slowly followed the tour guide inside, where I was suddenly face-to-face with a large photo of a young, dapper, smiling Nelson Mandela. His hair is neatly parted in the middle. The impeccably dressed Mandela is outfitted in a double-breast suit stylishly finished off with a pocket square.

The only furniture in the room is a desk used by Mandela. The writing on the desk stated, “On 20 April 1964, Nelson Mandela delivered his Statement from the Dock at the opening of the Defence case at the Ravonia Trial. He chose to not make a statement to avoid being cross examined. He spoke for five hours, clearly presenting his role in the underground movement and his conviction that the Liberation Movement had no choice but to resort to armed struggle against a white government that refused to listen to the grievances of its non-white people…”

The trial was preceded by a July 11, 1963 police raid on the farm that captured 19 revolutionaries. They were charged with sabotage, conspiring to launch a violent revolution against the state, and advancing the cause of Communism. Eight ANC members, including Nelson Mandela who was already in custody at the time of the raid, were sentenced to life in prison. Mandela served 27 years; Walter Sisulu, 26 years and Govan Mbeki, 24 years.

In the epilogue to Joel Joffe’s book, Edelgard Nkobi-Goldberg noted that documents recovered after the trial showed “…The American CIA and the British M15 kept Liliesleaf under observation. Both secret services had long been actively engaged in these activities at least from the time  of Nelson Mandela’s international travels in 1962. They had informed the South African security service about everything that happened during his journey and followed his movements after his return to South Africa. And that might have led to his arrest.”

Regardless of what prompted the arrests, there is no doubt that the Ravonia Trial put South African apartheid on the world’s agenda. Although the museum is advertised as a tourist spot, it remains one of South Africa’s best kept secrets.

George E. Curry, former editor-in-chief of Emerge magazine, is editor-in-chief of the National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service (NNPA.) He is a keynote speaker, moderator, and media coach. Curry can be reached through his Web site, www.georgecurry.com. You can also follow him at www.twitter.com/currygeorge.

A trip to South Africa provides painful reminders of the protracted struggle to establish democracy, how the United States propped up the White minority-rule government and the courage Black South Africans demonstrated to win their freedom.

A key aspect of the struggle is vividly captured in the Hector Pieterson Memorial Museum in the heart of Soweto, not far from the homes of Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu. The name of the museum itself is steeped in unforgettable history. The most compelling image of the Soweto student protest of 1976 is a photo taken by Sam Nzima.

In the foreground of a crowd of Black student protesters is a tearful Mbuyisa Makhuba, a high school student, running with the small, limp body of 13-year-old Hector Pieterson and his screaming sister, Antoinette, running beside them.

The teenager’s story is told inside the museum under the heading, “An individual life can change society.” It begins: “Hector Pieterson lost his life under police fire on June 16, 1976 during a student march protesting Afrikaans as the language of instruction in African schools. He was thirteen years old. News of his death and the violence that subsequently erupted in most African townships in South Africa spread rapidly across the world. In his death Hector Pieterson became a symbol of the plight of the black South African youth under the yoke of Apartheid.”

It continued, “His public funeral commemorated, as does this museum, all those who died as a result of the tragic events of June 16, 1976 – a turning point in the struggle towards a true South African democracy.”

Hector Pieterson became one of many martyrs of the fight against apartheid, a rigid system of racial segregation designed to keep the White minority in control of the country’s political, economic and social system.

In fact, Pieterson’s last protest march was prompted by the ruling National Party’s decision to force Black schools to use Afrikaans – which Bishop Desmond Tutu called “the language of oppression” – and English in equal measure.

On April 20, 1976, students at Orlando West Junior High School went on strike, refusing to go to school. The protest quickly spread to other schools in Soweto. On the morning of June 16, an estimated 20,000 students started walking from the junior high school to Orlando Stadium, where they had planned to hold a mass rally before continuing to the regional office of the Department of Bantu Education.

Instead of allowing the students to walk peacefully, police barricaded the march route and unleashed dogs on the crowd. According to some news accounts, students stoned the dogs and police soon began opening fire on the students, killing 13-year-old Pieterson and 22 others that day, all but two of whom were Black. At the end of a series of protests, called the Soweto uprising, estimates of those killed ranged from 176 to more than 600.

The violent attack on the children thrust the African National Congress (ANC) to the forefront of Black political protest and ignited international protests. But that did not curb the all-White police force’s appetite for violence.

A quote from Steve Lebelo, a student at Madibane High School, describes the violence that was inflicted on the community in the immediate aftermath of Pieterson’s death. The quote, which also hangs in the museum, recalls:

“It was on the 17^th and 18^th, when police went out and systematically were killing people. I do know that suddenly there was the infamous green car. It was a 3800 Chev, it was a green car, and at the time they were used mostly by the police. We suspected that they had a sniper in there who picked up people at random and shot and killed them. I do know a friend of mine who was killed on the 19^th of June, under the same circumstances. He had gone to the shop, and as he came back from the shop carrying a litre of milk, he was shot by a sniper and killed.”

Above the quote is a photo of a green Chevrolet, loaded with White men, with rifles sticking out of the windows.

There are other reminders throughout the museum. There is a picture of a small, naked child being drenched in a bottle of water to soothe her pain in tears. Another photograph contains student protesters, with one holding up a sign reading, “To hell with Afrikaans.”

Erected in 2002, the museum honors the memory of the students who died in the uprising. A brick bearing each name is built into the ground just steps from the entrance of the museum, which is only two blocks away from where Pieterson was killed.

The inscription about Hector Pieterson in the museum ends by noting, “When National Youth Day is celebrated each year on June 16 at the Hector Pieterson Memorial Museum, it becomes a national site of commemoration, also reflecting current changes in the articulation of the South African democracy.”

George E. Curry, former editor-in-chief of Emerge magazine, is editor-in-chief of the National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service (NNPA.) He is a keynote speaker, moderator, and media coach. Curry can be reached through his Web site, www.georgecurry.com. You can also follow him at www.twitter.com/currygeorge.