The Mississippi Supreme Court informed attorney Chokwe Lumumba on March 17, 2005, that he should review Terri Schiavo's plight. Unlike whites, Jim Crow demands that Blacks survive on feeding tubes and vanish, hopefully, by euthanasia. It immediately removed his feeding tube and, unlike Schiavo, he has no allies in Congress or in the White House.

Although Mississippi abridged Chokwe's First Amendment right by disciplining him for talking back to a white judge, outside a legal proceeding, Justice Clarence Thomas is expected to steer the Supreme Court away from him. The only Black justice filed the only undivided dissent.

The Mississippi Supreme Court ruled that six months is sufficient to put Chokwe in an irreversible, vegetative state. The court has shooed away his clients. If Chokwe survives, he will have to retake the Bar examination and give a Stepin Fetchit performance before the character and fitness committee to ensure that he has learned his lesson.

Chokwe is a victim of double jeopardy. Initially, he was held in contempt, jailed for two days and fined $500. Now, he has been suspended, fined $1,000, required to pay court costs and has suffered a loss of his clients. A disciplinary committee recommended a public reprimand to buttress the contempt citation. Nonetheless, it would have still been double jeopardy.

Rep. Alisha Thomas Morgan of the Georgia House of Representatives, which still requires a loyalty oath, learned a valuable lesson after she took the podium in the House and started to sing "Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around" to protest repressive legislation requiring a photo ID before voting in Georgia. If passed, it will become the worst attack on Black franchisees in the nation.

House Speaker Glenn Richardson rebuked her for singing a freedom song after he was unable to gavel her down. The Black legislators chimed in with him and constructively formed a posse against her. They advocate compromise rather than confrontation. Blacks must learn to go along to get along.

Morgan vows to stand her ground. Her mission is to be a voice for the people rather than to become a member in good standing in the House. Today, most Black elected officials and leaders are in it for themselves and for their families. Everyone else can take a hike. They have hijacked the Civil Rights Movement.

The legislation requiring a government-issued photo ID will be a further reduction of the right to vote in Georgia. The Republicans now control all three branches of state government and are reducing Black political representation to Black political presence in Georgia. By placing all of our eggs in one basket, we are losing.

If these Uncle Toms and Aunt Jemimas were holding the reins in the 1950's, we would still be riding in the back of the bus. Preachers, trained in the cemetery and recipients of public funds, are finally able to impose the slavemaster's theology on descendants of enslaved Africans. We are ignoring the constitutional doctrine of separation of church and state.

Hollywood launched the assault on Black lawyers. "Amos 'n' Andy" started on television in 1951. The television program added characters including Algonquin J. Calhoun. At a time when Black lawyers were in the vanguard of the Civil Rights Movement, Calhoun was created to underscore racial stereotypes. The actor, Johnny Lee, played Calhoun to the hilt.

Of all the "Amos 'n' Andy" characters, Calhoun created the greatest ire in the Black community. Hollywood was attacking Black professionals and, specifically, Black lawyers on the screen. The NAACP had approved this minstrel show for radio but objected to its television version.

White supremacists were bent on Blacks relying only on whites for legal representation after seeing Charles Hamilton Houston and his students perform in the courtroom. Like in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," Hollywood was ushering in vertical integration by subjugating Black professionals.

Calhoun was employed to question the legal talents of Black lawyers who were assaulting Jim Crow. There were few Black lawyers and the public had to be convinced that Calhoun was representative of the lot. Chokwe, on the other hand, is no Calhoun. He is a white supremacist's nightmare.

Last week, Pam Africa urged an Atlanta radio audience to stop the assault on Black lawyers and particularly singled out Chokwe and myself for reciprocal protection and support from the Black community. She has been a fierce advocate for freeing Mumia Abu-Jamal from death row.

More than two decades ago, white supremacists sicced a Calhoun on Mumia, who allegedly murdered a white cop. Judge Albert Sabo, the twentieth century version of Judge Roy Bean, presided over a minstrel show. The slavemaster had his boy representing Mumia.

While theologians and their sycophantic Black preachers teach that it is permissible for Blacks to hide behind sacrificial lambs like Callie House, Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, David Walker, Harry and Harriette Moore, Medgar Evers, Khallid Muhammad, Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, and Bruce Wright. This is the critical point in Christianity and it is reaffirmed every Easter.

Like Justice Bruce Wright, Chokwe is a sacrificial lamb. In 1979, I joined a cadre of lawyers in the National Conference of Black Lawyers who stood up to the political establishment. Mayor Edward I. Koch was bent on ending Justice Wright's judicial career for extending the Eighth Amendment to the poor. Mayor John Lindsay had appointed him to the Criminal Court in 1970.

We laid the groundwork for Justice Wright to be elected to the Civil Court in 1979. Three years later, we steered his successful election to the state Supreme Court. A coalition of Blacks, Latinos and progressive whites won. Koch and company lost. In those days, people would support you if you stood up for them. Today, loony tunes are in charge of the plantation.

Justice Wright was an extraordinary jurist and the tallest tree in the judicial forest. He taught us the relationship between bail and a defendant's judicial fate. An adverse bail decision usually advances a conviction and makes a trial an exercise in futility. He made his transition on March 24.

The latest casualty, of an Eighth Amendment violation, is Brian Nichols. After his longtime white girlfriend cried rape, Nichols was placed in preventive detention despite no criminal history and no evidence of being a flight risk. Facing a life sentence, Nichols apparently concluded that he was being framed and railroaded and the chief culprits were the trial judge and the court stenographer.

If the judicial officials in Georgia had listened to Justice Wright, the carnage at the Fulton County Courthouse may have been circumvented. His wisdom fell on deaf ears and his chief tormentor was the PBA, who Fernando Ferrer is willing to get into bed with in order to secure a four-year lease on Gracie Mansion. With Ferrer perched atop City Hall, we would never see another Justice Wright.

See Reinstate Alton Maddox

© 2005 by AfroStaff