Word: douglass
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...stage is being set for the next phase in the struggle for the leadership of black America. That struggle began in slavery, when the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass emerged as the first unquestioned spokesman for the African-American agenda. Over the decades, the battle to inherit Douglass's mantle sparked epic struggles, such as the early 20th century clash between the accommodationist Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois, the militant founder of the N.A.A.C.P. The most recent chapter played out in the early 1970s, when Jackson himself displaced Martin Luther King Jr.'s closest confidant, Ralph David Abernathy, putting...
...real issue is whether the one-leader-fits-all model of black politics still makes sense. Back in Douglass's day, the overwhelming majority of blacks were slaves who could not speak for themselves. Even at the time of King, the movement to tear down segregation so overshadowed every other item on the black agenda that having one figure to symbolize its urgency was almost inevitable. But the black America of 2001 is vastly different--an increasingly middle-class, multifarious ethnic group whose interests extend far beyond civil rights. There is no way for any single leader, no matter...
Sixteen-year-old Brooks Douglass was on the floor, shot in the back, hog-tied and bound to his gagged parents, who were choking on their own blood. Two men, posing as stranded motorists, had come to their farmhouse in Okarche, Okla., asking to use the phone. Once inside, the armed men tied up Brooks and his parents, took turns trying to rape his 12-year-old sister, Leslie, then shot all four of them. Brooks helped free Leslie, who ran for a kitchen knife, while he gnawed at the ropes confining his mom and dad. By the time...
...years later, Brooks Douglass, by now an Oklahoma state senator, stood clasping his sister's hand in a cramped, brightly lit room at the state prison. Brooks had pushed for legislation allowing crime victims to witness executions, and now he and Leslie were watching Steven Hatch, one of their parents' killers, die by lethal injection. As poison flooded Hatch's veins, Brooks and Leslie re-lived their parents' deaths. Brooks describes it as a healing experience. When Hatch died after seven minutes, Brooks says, "I was happy... Witnessing the execution was an assurance that this is over...
...contest that has since brought the eyes of the world into Sauls' courtroom. When reporters started scrambling to profile him, the judge didn't even have a resume to give them. Instead, he handed out a list of friends who could vouch for him. Among his hunting buddies: Dexter Douglass, the courtly Floridian who is one of Gore's lead lawyers. Douglass says he gets no breaks in Sauls' courtroom, and so far that has been true. The legal arguments of the lawyers may be as well tailored as their suits, but the judge doesn't seem impressed. One team...