Today’s topic and guests are inspired by the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center’s upcoming community forum “Dialogue or Divide: Race and The 2008 Presidential Election”, click here to learn more.

Mr. Westmoreland’s guest for the first hour was Ms. Angela Corley, Community Affairs Director for the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. Ms. Corley and Mr. Westmoreland discuss the power and importance of the right to vote and other aspects of civil rights from the 1960’s through today.

Mr. Westmoreland’s second guest was Peter Bronson, Columnist for the Cincinnati Enquirer. Mr. Bronson and Mr. Westmoreland discuss race relations and other issues that have plagued Cincinnati’s communities.

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Thirty years ago, Doubleday published a book written by Alex Haley called ROOTS. Nearly everyone read the book and watched the TV mini-series. African Americans from the Pacific to the Atlantic and all points in between revisited their own “roots”: interviewing great-aunts; poring over microfilm (no ancestry.com then!) and squinting to make out spidery handwriting on 19th century documents. We wanted to know. Who are we? Where did we come from? On whose shoulders do we stand?

When I was a child, my great-grandfather presided over the Thanksgiving table, assisted by my grandfather, who carved the turkey, and served by my father and mother. If I behaved myself (which I often didn’t), I was allowed to stay up past my bedtime and listen to the grown folks’ conversation. It was the late fifties and we were colored then. They talked about the NAACP and discussed articles in The Crisis and what Mrs. So-and-So down the street was doing. And later, if I was still awake, I heard family stories, too: the “mountain man” grandfather who smoked a cheroot pipe; the grandmother who gathered herbs and plants to make medicines. I wish I’d asked more questions but I didn’t.

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The 2008 Presidential election has captured the world’s attention. What is especially compelling this year is that, for the first time, an African American candidate has won the nomination of a major political party.

The selection of Barack Obama as the Democratic Party nominee was the culmination of an intense and lengthy political process that brought unprecedented focus on the age, gender, religion, culture, and race of the various candidates of both parties. It’s also spurred any number of news articles probing the question of race in America, and whether Obama’s candidacy will help foster meaningful dialogue on racial issues, or lead to further divisions.

These questions will be at the heart of a Community Forum at the Freedom Center on September 2. “Moving Beyond Race in the Presidential Election” will explore the news media’s influence on attitudes about race through the filter of the 2008 Presidential campaign. Hosted by Senior Curator Carl Westmoreland, the forum will feature three local media panelists:

Peter Bronson, editorial columnist for the Cincinnati Enquirer;

Jeri Tolliver, radio host on 1230 The Buzz;

Michele Hopkins, reporter, WLWT Channel 5.

The forum will be held in the Harriet Tubman Theater from 6 - 8 p.m. It is free and open to the public. For more information about Community Forums please contact acorley@nurfc.org or 513.333.7518.

The Partnership for Human Freedom, an initiative at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, is hosting a first-ever Ohio Statewide Meet-Up on Human Trafficking on August 27, 2008.

This event will bring together Ohioans who are involved in addressing local and regional human trafficking/contemporary slavery issues. Attendees include law enforcement, legal entities, social service providers, health care providers, nongovernmental organizations, faith-based organizations, survivors, etc. Attendees from anti-trafficking organizations in Indiana and Kentucky also have been invited to participate.

The Partnership for Human Freedom envisions the meeting to be an annual event to continue the American abolitionist tradition of seeking to end slavery, said Kathleen YS Davis, the Freedom Center’s Director of Contemporary Slavery Programs. The key, she said in a recent interview with CityBeat, is educating people that slavery is not only a problem on the other side of the world. “Unfortunately, slavery does exist today, Davis said. “It happens in Cincinnati. It happens in Ohio. It happens nationally, internationally.”

The one-day event is supported by several Ohio Anti-Slavery coalitions/agencies, including Second Chance of Toledo, End Slavery Cincinnati (Rescue & Restore), Central Ohio Rescue & Restore (Columbus), and Collaborative to End Human Trafficking (Cleveland).

For additional information about the meeting, contact Kathleen Davis at kdavis@nurfc.org.

With the Beijing Olympics nearing completion, China’s assertive efforts to control free speech — by its own citizens and international visitors — remain iron tight. Following on the heels of a punishment of a year-long detention for two elderly Chinese women who attempted to protest the amount they were paid when their homes were confiscated for Olympic venues, it’s now reported that a half-dozen American citizens have been given 10-day detentions for trying to draw world attention to China’s domineering policies towards Tibet.

The latest crackdowns provide yet another dramatic example of how the Chinese government wants to keep a lid on protests so as to avoid any diminishing of the worldwide publicity coup surrounding China’s hosting of the Olympic games. The Olympics, by any measure, have been an overwhelming commercial success, with viewing audiences measured in the millions each day. NBC, expects to earn more than $100 million from advertising on its 17-day coverage of the games, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

It’s fair to point out that some protesters clearly want to be arrested by staging stunts designed to attract media attention, thus amplifying their message. That was apparently the intent of the American demonstrators outside Beijing’s iconic National Stadium. But two Associated Press photographers who were on the scene when the Americans were stopped from unfurling their “Free Tibet” banners were “roughed up” by police, according to the Times account, and had their camera memory cards taken.

Still, these incidents don’t appear to be causing much of an impact, certainly not on the policies of the Chinese authorities. With its athletes leading in the race for Gold Medals, and highly laudatory articles and broadcasts praising the host nation’s handling of the Games, the Beijing Olympics are proving to be a public relations bonanza.

Another protester from Great Britain, Alice Speller, with the group Students for a Free Tibet, summarized the situation this way:

“China is trying to show the world this face, that they are a modern, progressive country but that really isn’t the truth,” said Ms. Speller. “The real face is one that denies freedom of expression, and that denies it brutally and violently when it can.”

One of the exhibition's interactive games

Opening at the Freedom Center on October 17, 2008, Lincoln: The Constitution and the Civil War promises to be an exhibition that’s likely to hold appeal for everyone from school groups to Civil War history buffs and human rights scholars.

We went last week to take a preview look at the 2,500 square-foot exhibit, currently on display at the Truman Library and Museum in Independence, Missouri. The exhibit masterfully shows that Abraham Lincoln’s brief term as President was fraught with unparalleled challenges, any one of which would have overwhelmed even the most capable of leaders. That Lincoln was able — with sheer determination and incomparable vision — to steer a course that brought the nation through a bitter civil war, preserved the Constitution, and set in motion the abolition of slavery is one of history’s watershed accomplishments.

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Mr. Westmoreland has a two hour discussion with Charles Davis, Jr. the Youth Development Manager at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.

Mr. Davis references his experience as an educator and more recently working with the UBS Freedom Scholars program which is a community-based partnership between the Freedom Center and UBS Financial Services.  The program provides 100 high school students with experiences  to increasing youth leadership and economic empowerment.

Three themes frame the program modules:

• Financial Literacy with an savings/matching incentive
• Leadership Development related through the lessons of the Underground Railroad
• Mentoring

The UBS scholars program is currently seeking participants and mentors.  Contact

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Submit a question or comment during the show by using the comment form below.

New federal education funding legislation contains good news for institutions, like the Freedom Center, that provide educational and cultural programming on Underground Railroad history and related topics.

The legislation, H.R. 4137, the “Higher Education Opportunity Act,” was passed by Congress and signed into law this week by President Bush. It covers a huge array of federal education programs, including renewed funding of up to $3,000,000 annually (for the next five years) under the National Underground Railroad Educational and Cultural Program first enacted in 1998. Funding will be awarded annually to applying institutions through a competitive grant process.

Importantly, the new law expands both what can be funded and the potential audiences for programs:

• For the first time, federal dollars can be used to underwrite educational programs that focus on lessons derived from the history of the Underground Railroad. In other words, programming that is relevant to modern-day issues, albeit those that link programmatically to Underground Railroad themes, could be eligible for support through the new legislation.

• Funding opportunities have been expanded to cover education programs for students from kindergarten through college, as well as the general public. Previously, Underground Railroad funding was largely limited to college programs.

As in prior years, organizations seeking funding must demonstrate that they have matching commitments of private or non-federal underwriting equal to four times as much as the receive from the government. Thus, for an organization to obtain a $1,000,000 grant under the new legislation, it must show that it has $4,000,000 in private funding already committed.

Guests include Rev. Almetric Terry the Youth Minister for Licoln Heights Missionary Baptist Church in Mr. Westmoreland’s childhood neighborhood that he refers often refers to as Cincinnati’s Soweto.

Our second guest, David Dowdy, is a young man who also grew up and currently lives in Cincinnati’s Licoln Heights.

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Two elderly Chinese women in Beijing, ages 79 and 77, have been sentenced to a year of labor and “re-education” for attempting to get a permit to protest what they claimed was inadequate compensation for their homes that were demolished to make way for the Olympics.

It’s the kind of story that will quickly be buried beneath the avalanche of feel good news about Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt and the USA basketball team. Yet it stands as a harrowing reminder that individual freedoms and human rights for China’s 1.3 billion citizens are by no means safeguarded.

With the world’s attention focused on China and the Beijing Games, people are learning — and seeing for themselves on wall-to-wall television coverage a rapidly growing, market-driven (and sports-crazy) economic juggernaut, but also the globe’s largest and nearly last remaining Communist-controlled government. Its leaders eagerly attempt to project a progressive, ultra-modern image (reflected in the astonishing architecture of many of the Olympic venues), while simultaneously maintaining strict and pervasive control over virtually every aspect of the lives of its citizens.

The famous image of the student blocking a Russian Army tank on a Beijing boulevard in 1989 remains perhaps the picture that most people in the world envision about China. And no wonder. From its repressive policies towards Tibet and religious minorities within its borders to its laissez faire handling of the genocidal regime in the Sudan, China has earned a worldwide reputation as a nation that cares little about fundamental human rights or personal liberties. The shocking revelations earlier this year that thousands of young Chinese were held as work slaves in remote manufacturing plants was, for many, only additional proof that this is a nation where the rights of the individual have no relevance or meaning.

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Click here to view the Grand Prize Winning video (requires iTunes) produced by Florida college student Donald Strubler in a national video contest conducted by the Freedom Center in cooperation with Apple.

The contest, “What Freedom Means to Me,” was open to college students nationally and completed in July. The videos had to be less than three minutes in length, and had to include the phrase “freedom is . . .” Strubler’s entry depicts a young child coloring shapes and forms that evoke freedom.

His video will also be showcased on Apple’s Student Gallery, the Apple Learning Interchange, and other related Apple and Freedom Center websites.

Click here to listen now.

Today’s first guest,  Judge Nathaniel R. Jones, discusses the relationship between the pursuite of education, voting rights, and freedom for all of America’s citizens.

The second guest, Adriana Leigh, discusses her personal journey in finding her families history.

Submit a question or comment during the show by using the comment form below.