SOPHIA JEFFRIES
Sophia Jeffries, who recently passed, was all the good things people said about her and more. She often reminded me that she was attending Howard University when I was there in the 60s. But, for some reason, I only vaguely remembered her from those days if at all. I didn’t really get to know her until 1980 when I returned to Springfield from Chicago with a law degree from DePaul University with plans to redirect my career after a tumultuous time in a city that gave me and my family as much as it took from us…maybe more.
It wasn’t long after I arrived in Springfield that I received a call from NAACP President Ida Flynn, whom I didn’t really know. Sophie, as we called her, was an NAACP officer. She must have suggested that Ida call me. They were meeting that night over a legal issue and wanted my advice, which I readily offered at the meeting and many times thereafter and we all became friends. A few years later, while I was working as a criminal defense attorney with the Massachusetts Defenders, Sophie, who was very active in the successful Michael Dukakis campaign for governor, called and stunned me by asking me if I would consider being the Commissioner of the Massachusetts Commission against Discrimination (MCAD). I accepted and was appointed by Governor Dukakis to represent the Western part of the state and served for nine years in a job that, surprisingly, gave me a valuable education in discrimination law and the real rough and tumble of politics. Sophie will be missed.

CHARLES STOKES
I like Reverend Charles Stokes. He is fearless and unafraid to confront and speak truth to power. In some ways he reminds me of H. Rap Brown, the subject of my front page article. Some people, like Domenic Sarno, fear him and scorn him because he is aggressive in the pursuit of what is right, while many others embrace him as our local Black Messiah in the mold of not just Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael, but especially the late Fred Hampton. (If you haven’t already done so, you should watch the docudrama, “Judas and the Black Messiah.”) I can assure people, from my personal early experience with Reverend Stokes, that he has been outraged for decades, from his younger active years until now. And over the years, he has learned to harness his outrage and direct it in ways that benefit the Black community and Springfield as a whole.
Actually, Stokes also reminds me of Reverend Al Sharpton, who founded the National Action Network out of New York. Sharpton’s career got off to a rocky start but when he finally found his way, he became a respected national figure whose outrage, thankfully, has never waned. Though rockier, Reverend Stokes’ trajectory has been similar. His recent dust up with Mayor Sarno over the recent death of Orlando Taylor III is a perfect example. He joined Taylor’s grandmother and other family and friends to lead the protest against the callous misuse of a tragic death by the mayor and police commissioner for political purposes. I caution Black Springfield, don’t let the mayor and the Uncle Toms he surrounds himself with trick you into becoming the unwitting instrument for the denigration and destruction of the Charles Stokes of the community. Reverend Charles Stokes is a valuable asset.

SPEAKING OF VALUABLE ASSETS…
Justin Hurst and Tracye Whitfield make for quite a team. They both are unafraid to speak truth to power and their courage was never more demonstrated than in their very detailed news release regarding Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno’s and the police commissioner’s mishandling of the evidence in the police killing of Orlando Taylor III. In an extremely well written news release (see pg. 17), among many other important things, they wrote: “…Mayor Domenic Sarno and Police Commissioner Cheryl Clapprood succeeded in eroding what little trust remained between the executive office, the top brass of the police department and the community at large.” What they graciously did not write about and which I must call out, is the silence of all of the other Black city councilors who are so busy cowering to the mayor that they fail to look out for their own community. The same goes for our lone Black state representative who does a lot to line his pockets and little to defend his community…photo ops, yes…defend his community, no.

SYDNEY POITIER
As you must know by now, the well-known, breakthrough Black actor, Sydney Poitier, just died. White folks write about how they are mourning Poitier’s death while Black folks talk about how they are celebrating his life. I’m not ashamed to point out that when I say Black folks, I’m absolutely distinguishing between Black folks of my generation and before and those who came after, who might not, and more than likely will never, fully understand the smoldering anger that lingers in the subconscious and conscious memories of we who lived before Poitier emerged and during the time he broke the Hollywood race barrier. Leonard Pitts wrote (The Republican, January 14, 2022): “These days we have Denzel Washington. We have Viola Davis, Kevin Hart, Jamie Foxx. We have Octavia Spencer, Regina King and Samuel Jackson. We have Idris Elba, Lupita Nyong’o, Taraji P. Henson, Michael B. Jordan, Mahershala Ali, Tiffany Haddash and Will Smith….We have, in other words, a bounty of bona fide, mainstream Black movie stars (and many more, I might add). But once upon a time, we African-Americans – had only one. His name was Sidney Poitier, and he died last week at the age of 94.”
I’m not going to go into details. But I recommend the book “The 1619 Project” that so many White folks view negatively simply because it tells the truth about America’s history of race and racism and sets the historical record straight on the role of Black folks in the making of America. Even White writer George Will, whom I’ve always viewed as a pompous, nose-turned-up intellectual and disagreed with often (even as I have always appreciated his logic), surprised me with his intemperate comments about the book and its authors. One thing that came to my mind was the cowboy movies that I loved to watch when I was young and hate to watch now. They were such an absolute distortion of the role of Black folks in settling the West that I didn’t even know it until I was much older and learned more about the real history of America on my own. And I am still learning because there is so much to learn and so much to unlearn because so much of American history as taught in our schools is fictional and written for the purpose elevating White folks and reducing anybody who is not White and in erasing the deep wrongs inflicted by White folks to African-Americans and the genocide committed against Native Americans. If George Will wants to write about his imagined errors in the 1619 Project, he should first clean up his own morbid written history which is far more error filled to the extent of being close to fiction.

FOR THE RECORD, MANY WHITE FOLKS I DISAGREE WITH, I DON’T DISLIKE
Take Liz Cheney for example – I don’t dislike her. In fact, even though I disagree with her on many things – probably most things – I like her and I respect her because it is obvious that she is a principled person who can’t be bought and places principle over politics and America over party. First and foremost, that’s my kind of person. She strikes me as a White person I could be friends with because she can tell me what she thinks and I can tell her what I think, both of us without mincing words or casting aspersions. And we might even change each other’s minds on some things. I have received many comments from folks who wonder why I dislike White people. The truth is I like White people who are honest and demonstrate integrity and especially those who have learned to recognize and temper their racism, however difficult it may be. I thoroughly dislike White folks who think they are superior to Black folks and act it out or go out of their way to deny the privilege that comes along with being White in America. I think I’m reasonable. And I think it is reasonable to say that some of the retrograde white behavior going on in America today is disheartening and dangerous and more good White Americans – liberal, moderate and conservative – need to be more vocal about it and more active in confronting it. ■