Personal security Awareness Month - What Does It Mean to You?

With the cheaper at an all time low, crime is a reality anywhere in America.

Crime is not just in big cities, it is in small towns and even in rural communities. Assaults, robberies, rapes and car jackings, these are not pleasant thoughts but they are a reality today.

It's confident there is a need for people, just like you and I, to begin protecting ourselves and our families against these criminal acts of violence.

Safety is all the time on people's minds but most citizen are "under-protected" and admit that "they ought to..." but never get around to it.

Emergencies can occur anywhere, and preparedness matters. There's no one you meet who can't use a personal protection or guard product.

Parents, homeowners, college students, teachers and hunters just to name a few and the list can go on and on. Use the products as fundraisers, raffles or buyer give-aways.

Get the gift that you hope nobody has to use, but if you do find yourself or a loved one in a situation, be prepared and decrease the crime rate in America.

Take the time Now, browse through our products. Don't wait or you too will be saying, "if only...", "I should have...", "why didn't I..."

Do not let yourself come to be an additional one statistic, protect yourself or a loved one. Personal protection products are becoming a must have for college students everywhere. Students need to start protecting themselves when they are far away from home and family.

Be safe and take back your life.

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Dying to Vote in Mississippi, Part Iii

--Medgar Ever College of Dying to Vote in Mississippi, Part Iii--

over at this website Dying to Vote in Mississippi, Part Iii

"Birdia was brave, but she also lived in fear of the sheriff and others after she won her voter registration rights in 1961. That made the sheriff and the others really angry with her - more than ever." Rev. Willie Blue

Dying to Vote in Mississippi, Part Iii

Charles Sudduth, a native Mississippian who has studied and written about Klan murders, confirmed that decapitation and "cleanly severed arms" indicate strong evidence of the Klan's involvement in the deaths of Birdia Keglar and Adlena Hamlett.

"Klansmen were separate in their murders than others. They weren't afraid of the law, since many lawmen were Klansmen. They didn't run away from the crime scene but felt comfortable in staying colse to for a while. They also were known for torture and for mutilating the body."

Rev. Willie Blue, a Sncc member who worked in the Greenwood Sncc office and knew Keglar well, said that he never believed her death was an accident, but that Keglar "had to have been murdered."

"Birdia was brave, but she also lived in fear of the sheriff and others after she won her voter registration rights in 1961. That made the sheriff and the others really angry with her - more than ever."

The Charleston priest tells how he once scared Keglar when she was at work.

"I was driving to Charleston and exterior of town a car with Klansmen started following me. I was scared but I drove on into Charleston and to Birdia's office at the funeral home.

"When I walked in and told her what happened, she was terrified and asked me why I had come there. She was afraid I had led a trail to her."

Blue also confirmed that Keglar was found decapitated.

"We all knew this was no accident. She was in the front seat with Grafton driving, and he was injured but not killed. Everybody colse to here knew that Birdia was murdered but they would not talk about it.

"They were all fearful of what could happen to them and their families. There were no police or deputies who would have taken this seriously, anyway - that she was murdered by the Klan."

Klan shootings and murders were not unusual in Tallahatchie and Leflore counties, said Blue, "in fact they had picked up in the last two years, from 1964 to 1966."

He recalled an earlier shooting that took place in Greenwood "right in front of me" when three Klansmen drove up where he and Silas McGhee, also a Snc volunteer, were working exterior of the Greenwood Sncc office.

"It was raining and we were waiting for it to stop. A car came up with three men, one of them was Byron de la Beckwith [the convicted murderer of Medgar Evers] - he was still running loose. They shot McGhee, right out in the open.

"But no one was going to listen to us, especially the sheriff." McGee was injured but not killed in the accident. Robert Keglar was kept away from the urgency scene but slipped away to the small town later that night to try to learn what happened to his mother.

"All I saw were some population there [in Sidon] talking about the wreck. It was near a bridge and they were saying that something didn't look right."

Don Whitten, Tallahatchie County Prosecutor, visited Birdia's son at home that night. "He asked me permission for something, I just don't remember what. But he asked me to sign a paper and I did."

Keglar says that he never collected the life insurance his mum carried. "The enterprise would not pay me, and they would never say why."

The Charleston man has continued seeking data about his mother's death. In 2004, he helped deliver Foias to sheriffs in Tallahatchie and Leflore counties and later wondered if that was a good idea.

"I was visiting friends a few months later. When I came home, a friend who was house-sitting asked if I knew a short man and a tall man who drove a pickup truck.

"They came to the door while I was gone and asked to see me. They wouldn't leave their names or a card. I don't think it was the Fbi."

Several Incidents surrounding these deaths contribute context in searching for what happened (and why) to Keglar and Hamlet.

oIn the same week that Vernon Dahmer, Birdia Keglar and Adeline settlement were killed, the Ku Klux Klan was under laberious investigation by the House Committee on Un-American activities or Huac. The hearings opened at the end of 1965 and continued into the first months of 1966. As Klan representatives from colse to the country testified, there were planned cross burnings, lynching, bombings and other activities taking place in each of their regions at the same time their members appeared before Huac.

oThe Mississippi Klan group was scheduled to appear before Huac on January 13, 1966, the day after Dahmer's death and the Sidon incident. The United Klans of America dramatized its proximity in Mississippi by burning over a hundred crosses throughout the state "less than two weeks after Christmas" in protest against Huac's recovery of hearings on the Klan.

oThe Ku Klux Klan had increased activities in the Delta from 1964 to 1966, together with the Hills region colse to Charleston and Greenwood, state several observers of the region. Klansman and longtime Citizen's Council member, Byron de la Beckwith of Greenwood, who earlier murdered Medgar Evers, became a White Knight Kleagle or recruiter in August of 1965, and later joined the United Klans of America.

Beckwith appeared before Huac in January of 1966, as did Gordon Lackey of Greenwood, who earlier helped write the 40-page constitution of the White Knights, the state's most incommunicable Klan organization. John Winstead and Wesley Kersey, also of Greenwood, were active Klan members according to Huac reports.

Several residents of colse to Winona, Greenville, and Yazoo City were also listed as members of their respective Klaverns, according to an connected Press reporter exterior the hearings; hence, Klan action in Mississippi was not microscopic to the Southern counties as it was (and is) so often reported.

oA story filed by the connected Press appearing in the Memphis industrial petition on October 31, 1965, about ten weeks before the Sidon car wreck, stated that Fbi and Mississippi officers obtained in advance of the Huac hearings, a "top-secret document" of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, "including a virtual guerrilla warfare order."

The document, a three-page report, was really an menagerial order of the secretive White Knights and gave details about harassment of enemies, deception of the public, and instructions for burying firearms and ammunition in case of a "crack-down." The narrative named Klan members in both Tallahatchie and Leflore counties, together with colse to Greenwood and Charleston. Klan members were also reported residing in Yazoo City, Shaw, and Greenville.

oTwo months before the Sidon car wreck, a Klan leaflet was distributed throughout the small cotton town "around November 18 [1965]," telling white population to get registered in order to "combat communists and liberals." The pamphlet, described in Sovereignty Commission files, also stated that Gov. Johnson and Senator Eastland were "too liberal" and should be voted out of office. The leaflet named 15 "liberals" and civil rights leaders together with a local white man who served as a federal registrar.

Also named were Mrs. Laura McGhee and sons Jake and Silas, Mr. Dewey Green, and known activist and union organizer Liz Fusco. Sidon had already been targeted that fall by the Klan as one of several small havens for Klansmen to determine into, according to connected Sovereignty Commission reports.

oFinally, on the same day that Dahmer, Birdia Keglar and Adeline settlement were killed, J. Edgar Hoover for the first time ever visited the Fbi's new Mississippi headquarters in Jackson for the grand opening. He was in Mississippi the day before the state's Klansmen were to testify in Washington, D. C.
Margaret Block, Sncc volunteer and friend of Birdia Keglar, learned of Keglar's death several months after interesting to California.

"I remember mental right then she was probably murdered. She was a smart woman, a good strategist who commonly knew if there was impending danger," Block said.

Block had moved to the west coast, fearing her own life was in danger, and went on to graduate from San Francisco State University and the Pacific Union College in instruction to come to be a master instructor in San Francisco.

She returned to the Delta after 22 years where she often teaches black history to children and adults, drawing upon her own experiences, together with her time spent in Tallahatchie County.

"You know, I probably would have been in that car with Birdia and Adlena that day if I had not been in California," Block said.

("Dying to Vote in Mississippi, Parts I, Ii and Iii Copyright 2005 are excerpted from "Where Rebels Roost, Mississippi Civil rights Revisited," by Susan Klopfer. See http://themiddleoftheinternet.com)

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Sister Betty X Shabazz

--Medgar Ever College of Sister Betty X Shabazz--

on front page Sister Betty X Shabazz

Nobody seems to know about Betty Sanders early life and family background. She was born, however, in Detroit, Michigan, and is the daughter of Shelman Sandlin and a woman named Sanders. Sanders was an illegitimate child, one with a troubled upbringing, and she was given over to raise parents, growing up in a nice, middle class house in Detroit. Due to her difficult childhood, she devoted her life to African American childcare, condition and sexual education.

Sister Betty X Shabazz

After high school, Shabazz left the comfortable home of her adoptive parents in Detroit to study at the Tuskegee institute (now Tuskegee University), a familiar historically black college in Alabama. It was at Alabama that she encountered her first racial hostilities. She did not understand the causes for the racial issues, and her parents refused to retort these issues. She mentioned this in an autobiographical essay she wrote in 1992, published in Essence Magazine: "They notion [the problems] were my fault."'

Betty moved to Nyc to get away from the narrow minded views of the white South, studying nursing at Brooklyn State Hospital. One night, her friends took her to hear Malcolm X speak about the Nation of Islam at an Islamic temple in Harlem. Essence Magazine, a magazine specifically for American black women, stated in 1992 that Betty's friend offered to introduce her to Malcolm X after he was done speaking.

Betty's reaction to that was "Big deal!" But she went to the speech. She later prolonged in the interview: "But then, I looked over, and saw this man on the extreme right aisle sort of galloping to the podium. He was tall, he was thin, and the way he was galloping, it looked as though he was going someplace much more prominent than the podium...well, he got to the podium, and I sat up straight."

Betty was quite impressed with Malcolm X's speech. Afterwards, she caught him backstage, and they discussed racism in Alabama. She started attending all of his speeches and lectures, and by the time she graduated nursing school, she was a member of the Nation of Islam. As Elijah Muhammad bestowed the last name "X" on all of his followers, she was now Betty X, like Malcolm X, no longer encumbered with "a slave name."

Betty X stated supplementary in her autobiographical Essence interview: "I never 'dated' Malcolm as we think of it because at the time single men and women in the Muslims did not 'fraternize' as they called it. Men and women all the time went out in groups." Once she had completed her nursing studies in 1958, Malcolm X proposed marriage, and by the time Betty X was 23 and Malcolm X was 32, they were legally wed in the Moslem church.

Like her husband, Betty walked the Hajj to Mecca, becoming a Sunni Muslim, and she maintained her faith in the Nation of Islam's role in Malcolm X's assassination until 1995. She then had a collective reconciliation with Louis Farrakhan, then the leader of the Nation of Islam.

Betty X supplementary stated in her Essence Magazine interview: "I nothing else but don't know where I'd be today if I had not gone to Mecca to make Hajj shortly after Malcolm was assassinated. And that is what helped put me back on track. I remembered one of the things Malcolm all the time said to me is, 'Don't be bitter. Remember Lot's wife when they kill me, and they nothing else but will. You have to use all of your power to do what it is you have to do."

After the assassination, Betty X had at least six girl children to raise as a single mother. Her six daughters were: Attalla, Qubilah, Ilyasah, Gamilah, and the twins Malikah and Malaak. She was thought about to raise her daughters in the Islamic faith, and one of them, Ilyasah Shabazz, wrote a celebrated autobiography, "Growing Up X."

Betty X was a registered nurse, persisting her study at Jersey City State College, as she needed to provide for her large family. She also wanted to set a good example and provide a strong female role model for them. She received a degree in collective condition education, next attaining her scholar of Arts in the same area in 1970. She ultimately received a Ph.D. In study management at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, and was a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority.

Disaster Strikes - Betty X Dies

Malcolm Shabazz, Betty X's 12 year old grandson, set fire to her apartment in June of 1997. He had been living with his grandmother, and it was said he was unhappy about this, wanting to live with his mum Qubilah in Texas. Betty X suffered burns over 80 percent of her body and underwent five skin change operations, being in oppressive care for three weeks in the Jacobi medical town in the Bronx, New York. Doctors said most patients like her had only a 10 percent chance of going on living, so Betty X died of third degree burns on June 23, 1997. She was 61 years old. Her grandson served only eighteen months in teenage detention for his heinous crime, even though it had resulted in the death of his grandmother.

About the time that she died, Betty X had headed the Office of Institutional Advancement and collective Relations at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn. A larger crowd than the one attending Malcolm X's funeral came to her memorial aid at New York City's Riverside Church. prominent Black community and other civic leaders spoke at the service: Coretta Scott King, widow of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Myrlie Evers-Williams, widow of Medgar Evers, Maya Angelou, celebrated poet, Ossie Davis, actor, and four New York City mayors: Rudolph Giuliani, David Dinkins, Edward Koch and Abraham Beame; Maxine Waters, Us Representative, and Governor George Pataki of New York. Plus, the Us Secretary of Labor, Alexis Herman, gave a tribute from Pres. Bill Clinton. Black civil ownership leader Jesse Jackson released a statement saying, "She never stopped giving and she never became cynical. She leaves today the legacy of one who epitomized hope and healing."

They held Betty X's funeral at Nyc's Islamic Cultural Center, and her wake was held at the Unity Funeral Home in Harlem, where her husband's wake had been held 32 years ago. Then Sister Betty X Shabazz was buried next to her husband, Brother Malcolm X Shabazz, at the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. There is also a large mosque, major in Harlem, named after Sister Betty X Shabazz.

Malcolm X - Betty X's Husband

Malcolm was largely into Truth and Justice - but not the American Way. He felt "patriotism" was a crutch determined habitancy were using to get at his own kind, as they were not letting them have their full civil and human rights. However, potent patriotic forces, albeit Black Nationalist ones, were what inevitably killed him. He had stood up to the leadership of the Nation of Islam, perhaps mostly as a political power play, and it had cost him. But he had grown in his appreciation of desegregation and the human ownership of all people, and in his acceptance of the Islamic faith.

Many habitancy would talk to him strangely about his life. They asked him when he was going to come to be a college bound law student, and enter reality. I feel like he had entered circumstances from the moment he was born that precluded such a thing, not because he was incapable of studying law, but because of the extreme oppression against him. Primarily, he had to deal with that by becoming a militant, anti the Usa, and anti everything white community stood for, including to some extent the law.

But Malcolm X did administrate to come to be a kind of amateur lawyer. He kept some black men from going to jail, by lining them up, well dressed, exterior of a courtroom in a celebrated and televised incident. They all seemed to want leadership from him. He kept trying to tell to and lead what was going on, but as he knew, his life was predestined to be short.

Robin Dg Kelley, a celebrated black historian, wrote:

"Malcolm X has been called many things: Pan African, father of Black Power, religious fanatic, closet conservative, incipient socialist, and a menace to society. The meaning of his collective life, his politics and ideology, is contested in part because his entire body of work consists of a few dozen speeches and a collaborative autobiography whose veracity is challenged...Malcolm has come to be a sort of tabula rasa, or blank slate, on which habitancy of separate positions can write their own interpretations of his politics and legacy.

"Chuck D of the rap group collective Enemy and consummate Court Justice Clarence Thomas can both say Malcolm X their hero."

I am determined that to Sister Betty X Shabazz, Brother Malcolm X Shabazz was her many hero, and that he was also a hero to their six (or eight) children as well, not to mention most of Black America while the 1950s and 1960s.

In his book about Malcolm X, "The Autobiography of Malcolm X," in the final scenes about his assassination, Alex Haley wrote: "Sister Betty came straight through the people, herself a nurse, and those recognizing her moved back. She fell on her knees, looking down at his bare, bullet pocked chest, sobbing, 'They killed him!'"

At least the two of them, Brother Malcolm X Shabazz and Sister Betty X Shabazz, met and loved each other, any way briefly. They became a celebrated and popular pair, about whom one story says they met while the taping of a Nation of Islam radio show, and other story says they met after a speech given by Malcolm X. At any rate, they ultimately made it to being with each other. This is an event which many habitancy born on this Earth are not fortunate sufficient to enjoy in the procedure of their lifetimes.

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