Rep. Harold Ford, Jr: Family (Race) Issues?
 

Rep. Harold Ford, Jr. Insults His Grandmother and Our People
by BC Publishers Glen Ford and Peter Gamble

Rep. Harold Ford, Jr., who wants to become a U.S. Senator from
Tennessee, has sunk lower than a snake. He has defamed his
grandmother, and his great-grandparents, by claiming that their lives
were frauds and lies - that they were whites passing for Black.

There seem to be no limits to the young congressman's perfidy and
stupidity. In the process of depicting his own ancestors as people
living a lie, Ford has also insulted the Black public and Black
history - not to mention common sense, a quality of which Harold Jr.
seems to be totally lacking.

Ford's allegation, now mimicked by much of his highly political
family, but never mentioned by any family member before the
35-year-old senatorial candidate casually smeared his grandmother in
USA Today, in December, defies all reason. Grandmother Vera Ford, who
died in 1994 at the age of 78, was the daughter of John Davis and
Lottie McGinnis, both of whose death certificates list them as "Negro"
- as skillfully reported by the Memphis Commercial Appeal's Wendi C.
Thomas on March 19.

Vera Ford's parents were married at a time of great racial violence in
Tennessee and the nation. Shelby County - Memphis - recorded the
highest number of lynchings of Blacks in the state. In 1917, a year
after Vera's birth, according to the Tennessee Encyclopedia of History
and Culture, white mobs vented their racist anger en mass:

Tennessee's "greatest lynching carnival" was held in Memphis in
May 1917 when Ell Person, the allegedly confessed ax-murderer of a
sixteen-year-old white girl, was burned to death in the presence of
fifteen thousand men, women, and little children. The mother of the
murdered child cheered the mob as they poured oil on the man and set
him afire. The Memphis Press said that "the mob fought and screamed
and crowded to get a glimpse of him and the mob closed in and
struggled about the fire."

Young Harold Ford (known as "The Prince"), who ascended to his
father's congressional seat at the age of 26 in 1996, would have us
believe that, during this period of murderous white mob violence, a
white couple from Memphis would both decide to become Black, and to
subject their children to Jim Crow schools and lynch law justice. It
defies all reason - an amazing fiction concocted in Harold Jr.'s head
for purposes unknown.

Grandmother Vera attended all-Black Booker T. Washington High School.
In 1934, at age 19, she married Harold's grandfather, N.J. Ford, a
somewhat darker Black man. Together, they launched the family funeral
home and political dynasty. Nobody questioned Vera's Blackness. As
Wendi Thomas reports, "Vera was named the Tennessee Mother of the
Year, 'the first black woman ever so honored in Tennessee,' the
Nashville Banner wrote in 1976."

Vera's death certificate, like those of her parents, John and Lottie,
identifies her as Black.

There is a level of corruption that even the Ford family of Memphis
have never stooped to - until now. Harold "The Prince" Jr. has
submerged himself in the muck, and all but one close family member has
dived in with him in order to save his senatorial campaign. None say
that Vera ever fessed up to being white. Retroactively, they now say
it was assumed. "She looked white," (indicted) son state senator John
Ford told reporter Wendi Thomas.

Actually, we don't think she looks white - however, we have eyes
trained for this sort of thing. But that's not the point. The Ford's
collective violation against Black people's history in this country is
far more disturbing than the pretensions and self-debasement of one
Black family. They make a fiction of their own family history, and
thus allow others to extrapolate larger fictions, to further confuse
the Black and white public about the real nature of African American's
past and present.

There is really only one definition for the people who became African
Americans: those who were eligible to be legally sold as chattel, and
whose children were condemned to also be chattel for slavemaster scum.
The "one drop" and "one-sixteenth" Black blood rule was simply a
commercial arrangement, that allowed white men to exercise their
sexual privileges among the slaves while carrying no parental
obligations. As a result, the United States became the only country in
the world in which rich and respected men routinely sold their own
children - an abomination almost beyond comprehension, one that
challenges normal notions of human behavior.

Because of the high cost of slaves in the U.S. - the driving force in
this grotesque social arrangement that led to child-selling - and
because the United States had a large and heavily armed white
population, there was no need to create a mulatto class with
privileges recognized by the white rulers. Unlike elsewhere in the
African Diaspora, the "one drop" rule reigned. All of the "one drop"
or more people were herded together, to be sold during slavery, and
Jim Crowed in its aftermath.

However, in this centuries-long process, a people came into being:
African Americans of many hues but sharing the same references and
history. During slavery, all could be sold. Afterwards, all could be
lynched, and all were segregated - unless they "passed," which usually
required leaving the region where everybody knew who was who and where
they came from. But most did not, because of their ties to their land,
family, community and collective aspirations.

A distinct people emerged from the cauldron, a people who developed
their own institutions in opposition to white institutions, and their
own view of the world. A people with a sense of community that had
been forged in - among the many oppressions of slavery and Jim Crow -
the sexual oppression of Black women that created the multi-hued
African American group.

Vera Ford belonged to that group, as did her parents, John and Lottie.
They did not "pass" but stayed within the community. Now, her
grandson, the despicable and underbrained brat who wants to be a
senator, is casting her out, claiming she was white.

Of the Ford family, only aunt Barbara Ford Branch, a retired lawyer
who lives in New York City, seems to have an ounce of pride in her
family or her people. "I will not let them try to make my mother
something she wasn't," Ms. Branch told the Memphis Commercial Appeal's
Wendi Thomas.

However, Ms. Thomas, who is Black, strays into nasty territory when
she introduces the now-familiar white line that race is a "social
construct." Of course it is. But this "construct" has vast social
consequences, that led to annihilation of peoples (most Native
Americans, all Tasmanians) and to the creation of new nations of
people. The "social construct" term has been interpreted by white
popular media as meaning "socially irrelevant" - which is a convenient
way for them to say race doesn't matter, so get over it. But the
centuries of slavery and racial oppression that have been justified by
the "construct" are not irrelevant. They are facts.

These cumulative events - the lives, struggles and accomplishment of
millions of people who came to call themselves Black Americans - have
created a unique people in the world. Vera Ford was one of them, as
were her parents.

Harold Ford Jr. desecrates their graves, and should hang his head in
shame. But he won't, because he is shameless. And amoral.

Glen Ford and Peter Gamble are writing a book titled, "Barack Obama
and the Crisis in Black Leadership."

picture of his G-mom:
http://www.commercialappeal.com/mca/...553713,00.html
She reminds me of my Great Aunt, who is biracial.

I'm slow to understand how these claims would benefit him or his campaign in any way. :confused:

I'm not from Tennessee, but it seems as if Rep. Ford's bid for Senate is "in trouble" (per the articles). Maybe if Rep. Ford asserts that his grandmother was white, it would garner more support from whites.

:confused:


A question that I have...
Have any of you heard of a white person passing for black, during the Segregation Era? :confused:

So this is a black man that is now claiming that his family is acutally white passing for black.

Now, I could see if back during Jim Crow times if a white baby was raise by black folks and just grew up believing he was black, but I can not see grown white people making the decision during those times to all of a sudden which.

I could see it happening now though but that's another thread...:o

A man who has identified as Black, "looks" Black, claiming his grandmama was a white woman passing as Black and using that information to garner white votes? If he's doing this to attract more votes from Whites, he may wanna fire his campaign manager. :o LOL

Where is the White person who will vote for a Black man based on that Black man having a White grandmama? I want to see him. LOL

I can't help but laugh at this. It sounds like a tacky sitcom on Comedy Central.

Too bad Chappelle aint around to make fun of it.

Don't know what to make of this but it seems hard to believe during the era of segregation and Jim Crow that his family would want to be passing for Black, for what reason! usually it is the other way around! Is this some political ploy to garner sympathy from white voters?:(

Smear campaign
 

So someone I know who knows someone... ;)

Would say that this is the beginning of the "smear campaign" against him. They are preparing to throw rocks at him with mud because of something he's done or said to a few folks who do not like him in Capital Hill.

So, this is the start. If folks really want to know what he's all about, they can meet him. I hear his is desparately looking for a wife like Barack Obama's wife. But you have to understand that she is extremely high powered and use to the Beltway set and poor Harold is having trouble finding what he "prefers"--although panties are thrown his way all the time...

Don't ask me how I know this :rolleyes:

Actually, this does not surprise me. At the time a White woman who was with a Black man would pass at Black to keep from being assaulted by her own race. And she would have been embraced by Blacks because of her "light" complexion.

My grandmother's grandmother was Irish, but that piece of info was kept within the family, since she married a Black man.

As for the great grandparents, if they were very poor are for some reason not accepted by other Whites, then they too would have been accepted by Black folx more readily. Those times were really crazy.

Now as to Harold Ford, I do not understand his reasoning for claiming this now. Maybe he is trying to show that "passing" went both ways. :rolleyes:

Re: Smear campaign
 

:rolleyes: How do you know this? :rolleyes: :p












j/k

Re: Smear campaign
 

REALLY? The word inside the Beltway is that he doesn't date AfAm women. So to hear he wants a Michelle Obama is a COMPLETE surprise.

I can't buy the theory that he is doing this to garner support from whites who wouldn't otherwise vote for a black man. The type of person who wouldn't vote for a black man - just because he's black - probably wouldn't be sympathetic to interracial dating during the Jim Crow era (or any other time period).

Re: Re: Smear campaign
 

Honestly, I think Michelle Obama is a huge asset to Sen. Obama because she breaks stereotypes. The stereotypical thought is that someone like Sen. Obama would be married to somebody who is light-skinned or non-AfAm.
Chicago Sun-Times columnist, Mary Mitchell, as I recall, did speak to this in one of her articles. I think Mrs. Obama gives a great image boost for Sen. Obama because of the anxiety about successful AfAm men dating/mating outside the race.

Re: Smear campaign
 

I wonder if he'll catch mine... j/k

Re: Smear campaign
 

Now this I DO know for certain with my experience on the Hill.

SMDH@ all of this mess.