Plain Dealer And Call And Post Newspapers Spar Over Aunt Jemima Caricature Of State Sen. While Journalist Says Mayor Got Her To Get At Call And Post
Ohio State Senator Nina Turner (D-25)
Cleveland NAACP President George Forbes
Plain Dealer Editor Susan Goldberg
Cleveland, Ohio Mayor Frank G. Jackson
Call and Post Associate Publisher and Editor Connie Harper (center), and Call and Post former and current reporters and staffers
Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Kathleen Ann Keough
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason
Ohio State Representative Barbara Boyd (D-11)
Journalist Kathy Wray Coleman
From the Metro Desk of The Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.Com (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com).
The Cleveland Plain Dealer Newspaper and the Call and Post, a historical Cleveland weekly that targets the Black community, are at blows over a front page caricature cartoon and editorial in last week's Call and Post that links State Sen. Nina Turner (D-25), who is Black, as an “Aunt Jemima” for the White establishment.
Aunt Jemima is a stereotype and cultural icon to many Whites, and a racist caricature to many African Americans. Its trademark was registered in 1937 and stems from the subservient "Aunt Jemima" pictured on the Quaker Oats pancake box for pancakes, syrup and other breakfast foods, though it has had makeovers throughout the years, the last in 1989.
The dispute with Turner began brewing early this year, though some say sooner, after the lawmaker, as the only prominent Black politician in the county, joined Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason and The Cleveland Plain Dealer in pushing Issue 6, a county reform measure that Cuyahoga County voters overwhelmingly approved Nov 3.
On Dec. 1 the Plain Dealer, Ohio's largest newspaper, published a responsive article and took on the Call and Post in support of Turner. And, the exchange has no doubt set the stage for an all out show down with the Plain Dealer and Call and Post officials including publisher Don King, a native of Cleveland and renowned boxing promoter, legal counsel George Forbes, and Connie Harper, the paper's associate publisher and editor.
The newly adopted county reform measure replaces the previously elected and now all Democratic county sheriff, auditor, recorder, clerk of courts, coroner, engineer and three-member board of commissioners with a subsequently elected 11-member county council and elected county executive. Black leaders have said that Mason crafted Issue 6 with an all White team of county movers and shakers and that the posse gerrymandered the 11 county districts to the detriment of the Black community because only one is potentially guaranteed to be won by a Black, though Cuyahoga County is roughly 29 percent Black. The new power brokers, when elected next year to the county council with an elected county head, will have control over thousands of millions of dollars in county contracts, a posture that upend the bid for Issue 6 to pass in November, and drew the financial support of big business.
“They gerrymandered the districts and Turner was the only Black they consulted,” State Rep. Barbra Boyd (D-11) told The Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.Com earlier this year. Boyd, also the president of The Black Women's Political Action Committee of the greater Cleveland area, joined Forbes, a former Cleveland City Council President and current president of the Cleveland Chapter NAACP, in saying Black children will not benefit.
Forbes said in a previous interview that Mason had no answer when he met with Call and Post officials prior to the November election to his question of how the predominantly Black Cleveland city school children would benefit from Issue 6.
Mason, through a spokeswoman, said at that time that all would benefit by a reduction in county corruption and political restructuring, and told The Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.Com that Forbes was being disingenuous, and that he recalled no such conversation.
Issue 6 was a hot topic during the Nov. election with 67 percent of those voting showing favor. And in embracing it Cuyahoga County voters trounced the competing ballot measure dubbed Issue 5, a proposal placed on the ballot by county commissioners Peter Lawson Jones and Tim Hagan that would have allowed an elected 15-member committee to study county reform and make revision recommendations to voters in 2010.
After Issue 6 passed the Plain Dealer taunted the Black leadership and the old Black political guard that opposed it, including Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-11), Forbes, Jones and Call and Post officials, rubbing Turner in their noses as the up and coming chosen Black of the White community. Such a a move has been viewed by some as a no-no for the 42-year old Cuyahoga Community College history teacher who was councilwoman of Cleveland's Black but middle class Ward 1 before being appointed as a state senator to the term that expires in 2010, when she must run for the seat.
“The PD underestimated the Black leadership in this area when it thought it could treat the Black community as it pleased and certainly its rank and file did not give a hoot about Turner when she was put out there by White folks as the chosen new Black leader,” said an elected Cleveland public official under condition of anonymity. “Cleveland voters were the first in this nation to elect a Black mayor of a major metropolitan city when it chose Carl Stokes in 1967, who is the late brother of retired Rep. Louis Stokes, who took a stance against Issue 6 early on. That should have alerted Plain Dealer officials to know better than to pick a fight with some of the Black leaders that helped to propel Carl Stokes to the office of Cleveland mayor decades ago.”
While some contend that the Call and Post caricature of Turner represents an anti-Black stereotype of Black women others have said that the Plain Dealer is racist in still picking with the Black leadership by challenging the Turner caricature since it targets whom it pleases and allegedly targeted Stokes' daughter, Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Angela Stokes, with a negative article while leaving White judges like Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Kathleen Ann Keough alone. Keough is running a Cleveland Municipal Court mental health clinic and illegally diagnosing defendants that come before her without a mental health license, in violation of the law, not to mention maliciously railroading illegal jury verdicts against Black women.
“Last year I was dragged to the county jail, harassed over articles on county reform in the Call and Post, given a knock out drug, held naked in a jail cell supervised by a disgruntled male, and released four days later without charges,” said journalist Kathy Wray Coleman, who says she was threatened at the jail after writing an article last year that was published in the Call and Post that said that county reform would “steal the Black vote.”
Coleman is now the editor of one of Cleveland's Black online magazines, The Determiner Weekly. She says that Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, a Turner supporter, directed Cleveland Law Director Robert Triozzi to maliciously prosecute her on behalf of the city as to the aforementioned arrest itself, though sole White male arresting sheriff deputy Gerald Pace did not accuse her of it or even testify at trial. Keough, in turn, directed the jury to illegally convict her of resisting arrest and then issued a warrant for Coleman to be arrested, the journalist says. Moreover, she adds that threats allegedly on behalf of the judge, who is White, have yet to cease. At trial city prosecutors dogged the Call and Post saying people would not even read it, an indication that the Call and Post officials, not Coleman, were the ire of Keough, Triozzi, Jackson and others, particularly since Triozzi works at the pleasure of Jackson.
“Mayor Jackson could not get to Call and Post publisher Don King, Mr. Forbes or Connie so he got me and he will not let up,” said Coleman. “He was only pretending to be a Black leader against Issue 6 where it is obvious how he feels about Blacks since the city's law director, safety director, chief of police, chief prosecutor, ems commissioner, deputy ems commissioner, health director and chief of staff are all non- Black and non-female in a majority Black and predominantly female major metropolitan city.”
Coleman said also that after Triozzi initiated the malicious prosecution Jackson, through press secretary Andrea Taylor, then called the Call and Post to ask if it would lay low and order Coleman not to publicly criticize him while the city maliciously prosecuted her, though to no avail.
“I wish the Black leadership would help me get out of the middle of this where the stress is wearing and I am tired of being illegally arrested without probable cause and harassed at the hands of whom I view as a potentially unbalanced judge like Judge Keough, Jackson, Triozzi and others,” she said. “I pray that somebody like Congresswoman Marcia Fudge will intervene to get these culprits off by back.”
Cleveland NAACP President George Forbes
Plain Dealer Editor Susan Goldberg
Cleveland, Ohio Mayor Frank G. Jackson
Call and Post Associate Publisher and Editor Connie Harper (center), and Call and Post former and current reporters and staffers
Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Kathleen Ann Keough
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason
Ohio State Representative Barbara Boyd (D-11)
Journalist Kathy Wray Coleman
From the Metro Desk of The Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.Com (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com).
The Cleveland Plain Dealer Newspaper and the Call and Post, a historical Cleveland weekly that targets the Black community, are at blows over a front page caricature cartoon and editorial in last week's Call and Post that links State Sen. Nina Turner (D-25), who is Black, as an “Aunt Jemima” for the White establishment.
Aunt Jemima is a stereotype and cultural icon to many Whites, and a racist caricature to many African Americans. Its trademark was registered in 1937 and stems from the subservient "Aunt Jemima" pictured on the Quaker Oats pancake box for pancakes, syrup and other breakfast foods, though it has had makeovers throughout the years, the last in 1989.
The dispute with Turner began brewing early this year, though some say sooner, after the lawmaker, as the only prominent Black politician in the county, joined Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason and The Cleveland Plain Dealer in pushing Issue 6, a county reform measure that Cuyahoga County voters overwhelmingly approved Nov 3.
On Dec. 1 the Plain Dealer, Ohio's largest newspaper, published a responsive article and took on the Call and Post in support of Turner. And, the exchange has no doubt set the stage for an all out show down with the Plain Dealer and Call and Post officials including publisher Don King, a native of Cleveland and renowned boxing promoter, legal counsel George Forbes, and Connie Harper, the paper's associate publisher and editor.
The newly adopted county reform measure replaces the previously elected and now all Democratic county sheriff, auditor, recorder, clerk of courts, coroner, engineer and three-member board of commissioners with a subsequently elected 11-member county council and elected county executive. Black leaders have said that Mason crafted Issue 6 with an all White team of county movers and shakers and that the posse gerrymandered the 11 county districts to the detriment of the Black community because only one is potentially guaranteed to be won by a Black, though Cuyahoga County is roughly 29 percent Black. The new power brokers, when elected next year to the county council with an elected county head, will have control over thousands of millions of dollars in county contracts, a posture that upend the bid for Issue 6 to pass in November, and drew the financial support of big business.
“They gerrymandered the districts and Turner was the only Black they consulted,” State Rep. Barbra Boyd (D-11) told The Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.Com earlier this year. Boyd, also the president of The Black Women's Political Action Committee of the greater Cleveland area, joined Forbes, a former Cleveland City Council President and current president of the Cleveland Chapter NAACP, in saying Black children will not benefit.
Forbes said in a previous interview that Mason had no answer when he met with Call and Post officials prior to the November election to his question of how the predominantly Black Cleveland city school children would benefit from Issue 6.
Mason, through a spokeswoman, said at that time that all would benefit by a reduction in county corruption and political restructuring, and told The Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.Com that Forbes was being disingenuous, and that he recalled no such conversation.
Issue 6 was a hot topic during the Nov. election with 67 percent of those voting showing favor. And in embracing it Cuyahoga County voters trounced the competing ballot measure dubbed Issue 5, a proposal placed on the ballot by county commissioners Peter Lawson Jones and Tim Hagan that would have allowed an elected 15-member committee to study county reform and make revision recommendations to voters in 2010.
After Issue 6 passed the Plain Dealer taunted the Black leadership and the old Black political guard that opposed it, including Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-11), Forbes, Jones and Call and Post officials, rubbing Turner in their noses as the up and coming chosen Black of the White community. Such a a move has been viewed by some as a no-no for the 42-year old Cuyahoga Community College history teacher who was councilwoman of Cleveland's Black but middle class Ward 1 before being appointed as a state senator to the term that expires in 2010, when she must run for the seat.
“The PD underestimated the Black leadership in this area when it thought it could treat the Black community as it pleased and certainly its rank and file did not give a hoot about Turner when she was put out there by White folks as the chosen new Black leader,” said an elected Cleveland public official under condition of anonymity. “Cleveland voters were the first in this nation to elect a Black mayor of a major metropolitan city when it chose Carl Stokes in 1967, who is the late brother of retired Rep. Louis Stokes, who took a stance against Issue 6 early on. That should have alerted Plain Dealer officials to know better than to pick a fight with some of the Black leaders that helped to propel Carl Stokes to the office of Cleveland mayor decades ago.”
While some contend that the Call and Post caricature of Turner represents an anti-Black stereotype of Black women others have said that the Plain Dealer is racist in still picking with the Black leadership by challenging the Turner caricature since it targets whom it pleases and allegedly targeted Stokes' daughter, Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Angela Stokes, with a negative article while leaving White judges like Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Kathleen Ann Keough alone. Keough is running a Cleveland Municipal Court mental health clinic and illegally diagnosing defendants that come before her without a mental health license, in violation of the law, not to mention maliciously railroading illegal jury verdicts against Black women.
“Last year I was dragged to the county jail, harassed over articles on county reform in the Call and Post, given a knock out drug, held naked in a jail cell supervised by a disgruntled male, and released four days later without charges,” said journalist Kathy Wray Coleman, who says she was threatened at the jail after writing an article last year that was published in the Call and Post that said that county reform would “steal the Black vote.”
Coleman is now the editor of one of Cleveland's Black online magazines, The Determiner Weekly. She says that Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, a Turner supporter, directed Cleveland Law Director Robert Triozzi to maliciously prosecute her on behalf of the city as to the aforementioned arrest itself, though sole White male arresting sheriff deputy Gerald Pace did not accuse her of it or even testify at trial. Keough, in turn, directed the jury to illegally convict her of resisting arrest and then issued a warrant for Coleman to be arrested, the journalist says. Moreover, she adds that threats allegedly on behalf of the judge, who is White, have yet to cease. At trial city prosecutors dogged the Call and Post saying people would not even read it, an indication that the Call and Post officials, not Coleman, were the ire of Keough, Triozzi, Jackson and others, particularly since Triozzi works at the pleasure of Jackson.
“Mayor Jackson could not get to Call and Post publisher Don King, Mr. Forbes or Connie so he got me and he will not let up,” said Coleman. “He was only pretending to be a Black leader against Issue 6 where it is obvious how he feels about Blacks since the city's law director, safety director, chief of police, chief prosecutor, ems commissioner, deputy ems commissioner, health director and chief of staff are all non- Black and non-female in a majority Black and predominantly female major metropolitan city.”
Coleman said also that after Triozzi initiated the malicious prosecution Jackson, through press secretary Andrea Taylor, then called the Call and Post to ask if it would lay low and order Coleman not to publicly criticize him while the city maliciously prosecuted her, though to no avail.
“I wish the Black leadership would help me get out of the middle of this where the stress is wearing and I am tired of being illegally arrested without probable cause and harassed at the hands of whom I view as a potentially unbalanced judge like Judge Keough, Jackson, Triozzi and others,” she said. “I pray that somebody like Congresswoman Marcia Fudge will intervene to get these culprits off by back.”
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