‘King Day At The Dome’ with Mildred Gaddis 2011

Charles T. (Bud) Ferillo, Jr., APR, a native of Charleston, S.C., is founder and president of Ferillo & Associates, Inc., a full service public relations and advertising firm based in Columbia, S.C. The firm was founded in 1987.

“CORRIDOR OF SHAME: the neglect of South Carolina’s rural schools” is a 58 minute documentary that tells the story of the challenges faced in funding an adequate education in South Carolina’s rural school districts.

The documentary, supported by many of South Carolina’s leading foundations and community leaders, tracks the evidence presented on behalf of eight school districts in Abbeville County School District v. The State of South Carolina.

This documentary is the story of their extraordinary struggle to seek funding for an adequate education in rural South Carolina and the growing support for their cause.

“CORRIDOR OF SHAME”: the neglect of South Carolina’s rural schools” is dedicated to the children of South Carolina’s I-95 corridor. It was produced and directed by Bud Ferillo. John S. Rainey is Executive Producer.

They plan to march in the township — about 12 miles east of Ann Arbor — on Jan. 16 in an effort to call attention to a bill that could soon lead to an emergency manager in Detroit.

The group opposes the bill because an emergency manager has unilateral authority to cut union contracts, sell assets and dismiss elected officials, such as the mayor and city council.

“We started this fight in Benton Harbor but we plan to end it in Superior Township,” said Rev. D. Alexander Bullock, local leader of the Michigan Chapter Rainbow Push Coalition, a social justice group founded by Jesse Jackson. “We will show the world that democracy is at stake in Michigan just as it is in Libya or Egypt.”

“We’ve been fighting the dictator bill since its passing, all the time knowing it was meant for unilateral opportunity to take over Detroit just like it did in Benton Harbor,” said the Rev. Charles Williams II, pastor of the Historic King Solomon Baptist Church and one of the state’s leaders of Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network. “An emergency manager has yet to prove that it can get rid of deficits.”

Read this entire article in the Detroit Free Press

Cornel West Arrested On The Steps Of Supreme Court In Occupy DC Protest!

Dr. West was holding a sign that said “Poverty is the Greatest Violence of All.” He was arrested because holding political signs on the Supreme Court steps is illegal. Dr. West spoke to more than 500 people on Freedom Plaza where he said that “if Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. were alive today, he would be on Freedom Plaza.

“West described how the struggle against, poverty, war and injustice continues and confidence that the people will succeed. He applauded the occupation as “an inclusive social revolution for all of us” and a “leaderless-leader-filled movement” where people are “finding their own political voices rather than echoing others.”

Go to October 2011 to  read more about what happened on Occupy DC

(wording–AP Charles Dharapak)

NcftTV’s Dennis Trainor and Dr. Cornell West arrested on the steps at Supreme Court

MLK Memorial: Reflections On The Day

We Must Revise The Inscription On King Monument

On April 3, 1968, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his final public speech. In a crowded church in Memphis, Tenn., King spoke of the injustice felt by the city’s sanitation workers, who were on strike protesting low pay and poor working conditions.

Martin Luther King speaks out against the Vietnam War

King’s staff at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) did not want him to go to Memphis. They were frantically organizing the Poor People’s Campaign. They argued that King had far too much to do already. Memphis would be a distraction.

But King insisted. On March 18, 1968, King spoke to an enormous crowd at the Mason Temple, a Memphis Pentecostal church. It was perhaps the largest meeting space for African Americans in the South. King based part of his speech on the New Testament parable of Dives (pronounced DYE-veez) and Lazarus. King’s point was that white Memphians were willfully indifferent to the suffering of the city’s black working poor. One day these whites would suffer for their blindness, he warned.

Read more about Dr. King’s last speech and listen to audio clips on American Radio Works

VIA:  NewsOne.Com

On Friday, President Obama signed a renewal of the executive order that assists historically black colleges.  While the executive order itself follows the form of orders in previous administrations, the head of the Obama administration’s effort for the colleges said that the executive order would set off a change in philosophy on how the government could work with the institutions.

In his remarks, Obama noted the financial challenges facing black colleges (and just about all of higher education) these days, and also their role. “It was because of these schools that America’s middle class was filled with black doctors and educators and judges and lawyers and engineers and entrepreneurs,” he said. “And today, it’s because of these schools that one out of every two wide-eyed freshmen who arrives on their campuses with big backpacks and bigger dreams is the first in his or her family to go to college.”

Click here to read more…

July 2nd, 1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act.  The signing of this act was the most sweeping civil rights legislation since reconstruction.  The Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, religion or national origin.  See President Johnson’s remarks on the signing of this bill:

On October 1, 1962 James Meredith became the first African American student to enroll at the University of  Mississippi.  President Kennedy had to send 5,000 federal troops after rioting broke out.  Check out some footage from that day below: