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PRESORTED STANDARD PERMIT #3036 WHITE PLAINS NY Vol. V NO II Thursday, January 13, 2011 Westchester’s Most Influential Weekly White Plains the County Seat Page 7 What Manner of Man Town of Mamaroneck by Robert Scott Page 9 Surprise Guilty Page 2 Plea Page 7 Village of Tarrytown Page 12 John Q. Barrett Four Freedoms Page 13 Ed Koch Death is Part of Life Page 15 John Simon A Small Fire & Dracula Page 21 Mayor Mary Marvin Page 10 Letters to the Editor, Page 14; Murtagh’s Press Conference by Joan Gronowski, Page 18; The Anatomy of Humor, What’s so Funny by the Westchester Jokester, Page 11 westchesterguardian.com Page 2 The WesTchesTer GuardIaN THURSDAY, JaNuarY 13, 2011 Of Significance WHAT MANNER OF MAN cover ............................................................................................2 Ballet ..........................................................................................46 Remembering the Life and Times of community .................................................................................6 courts ..........................................................................................7 economic development .............................................................7 Martin Luther King Jr. Government ................................................................................7 By Robert Scott humor .......................................................................................11 Once again it is time to celebrate the birth who represented harlem in congress for many Investigations .............................................................................13 of Martin Luther King Jr. 82 years ago. This terms and who was himself a minister, will call Letters ........................................................................................14 weekend vote-seeking politicians will make him a failure and refer to him contemptuously Music scene ...............................................................................14 their annual pilgrimages to churches in black as Martin “Loser” King. neighborhoods. as they praise a man they But he will be in distinguished company Oped .........................................................................................15 never knew, their words will reveal how little when he is awarded the 1964 Nobel Peace Politics ........................................................................................18 they understand the black experience in these Prize, the twelfth american, the third black, radio ..........................................................................................18 united states in the 1950s and 1960s. and--at age 35--the youngest person ever to spoof ..........................................................................................19 sadly, too, generations of young people have receive this coveted honor. The first black to grown up with no knowledge of the one whose be so honored had been ralph Bunche, the sports .........................................................................................19 birth is being celebrated this coming Monday, american diplomat who won the 1950 Nobel Technology ................................................................................20 Jan. 17. Nor do they have any perception of Peace Prize for his work on the united Nations Theatre .......................................................................................21 the quiet revolution in constitutional rights he Palestine commission. a decade later, south sparked. african Zulu leader albert Luthuli, who advo- Legal Notices .............................................................................23 Let us revisit now the troubled times a half- cated nonviolent resistance to apartheid, won century ago when there were two americas, the 1960 Prize. one white and one black: In the south, restau- In a journey that will start in Montgomery, rants, movie theaters, public toilets and parks ala., and end in Memphis, Tenn., Martin are racially segregated. even separate drinking Luther King Jr. will do more than any other fountains are provided for whites and blacks. american--white or black--to expose the everywhere in the south, blacks must hypocrisy of de facto segregation in a land dedi- occupy seats at the back of the bus. If these are cated to freedom, equality and justice. Westchester’s Most Influential Weekly filled, they are forced to stand, although seats strikingly in contrast with his message of at the front reserved for whites may be empty. nonviolence, upon his martyrdom in 1968, more than 130 cities in the nation will explode A Prophetic Phone Call in a turbulent Götterdämmerung of rioting. Guardian News Corp. It is a december day in 1955. The telephone P.O. Box 8 Before it ends, 34 blacks and five whites will be rings in the home of an obscure 26-year-old dead. Property damage will reach the millions New Rochelle, New York 10801 pastor of the dexter avenue Baptist church in of dollars. Yet this frenzy of fire and destruc- Montgomery, ala. a tired black woman, Mrs. tion marks no failure of his philosophy. rather, Sam Zherka , Publisher & President rosa Parks, a department store tailor’s assistant, it only confirms the message he preached about has just been arrested after she politely refused [email protected] the emptiness and malignity of violence, the to leave the seat she had taken at the front of uselessness of riot. the bus. The caller, a Pullman porter, asks the Hezi Aris, Editor-in-Chief & Vice President pastor, a Montgomery resident of only two Who Was This Man? [email protected] years, to join a committee organizing a boycott Who was this remarkable man that in of the city’s bus lines. twelve short years almost single-handedly Advertising: (914) 632-2540 The pastor reflects for a moment and then stirred the conscience of america? Born in agrees. This fateful decision will catapult the atlanta, Ga., Martin Luther King Jr. experi- News and Photos: (914) 632-2540 rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to the leadership of enced none of the economic deprivation of his Fax: (914) 633-0806 a crusade of nonviolence and bring him world- race. Two years after his birth, his strong-willed wide attention and acclaim. The boycott will father became pastor of that city’s prestigious Published online every Monday last 381 days. It concludes a year later when the ebenezer Baptist church. Print edition distributed Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday supreme court rules that racial segregation is Nevertheless, young Martin was well unconstitutional on alabama’s city busses. acquainted with the indignity of racial discrim- Before his mission ends with his assassina- ination at an early age. riding with his father, Graphic Design: Watterson Studios, Inc. tion little more than a dozen years in the future, who had been stopped by a white traffic cop and wattersonstudios.com this old-fashioned preacher with extraordinary addressed as “Boy,” he heard the elder rev. King’s rhetorical skills will be beaten, reviled, jailed. his correction. “That’s a boy,” his father said emphat- westchesterguardian.com home will be bombed, and he will be scorned- ically, pointing to his young son. “I’m a man.” -even by blacks. adam clayton Powell, Jr., Continued on page 3 The WesTchesTer GuardIaN THURSDAY, JaNuarY 13, 2011 Page 3 WHAT MANNER OF MAN Remembering the Life and Times of Martin Luther King Jr. Continued from page 2 with evil is as much a moral obligation as Martin Luther King Jr. was educated is cooperation with good. No other person at atlanta’s Morehouse college, entering has been more eloquent and passionate in at 15 after skipping the final year of high getting this idea across than henry david school. The crozer Theological seminary, Thoreau. as a result of his writings and a Baptist institution in chester, Penna., personal witness, we are the heirs of a followed. at Boston university, he legacy of creative protest.” received his Ph.d. in systematic theology. as a theological student, after hearing The philosophies of three seminal a lecture on the life of Mahatma Gandhi figures would play a part in his spiritual given by the president of Washington’s development: the social gospel of Walter howard university, he felt moved. “his rauschenbusch, the Baptist religious message was so profound and electrifying,” leader; the civil disobedience of henry King said, “that I left the meeting and david Thoreau; and the nonviolence bought a half-dozen books on Gandhi’s of Mahatma Gandhi, who sparked the life and works. My skepticism about the nonviolent disobedience that forced power of love gradually diminished, and I Great Britain to grant independence to came to see for the first time its potency India in 1947. in the area of social reform. I came to feel Walter rauschenbusch was a social that this was the only morally and prac- prophet and pastor of New York’s second tically sound method open to oppressed German Baptist church on West 43rd people in their struggle for freedom.” street in hell’s Kitchen, a poor and he came to believe that nonviolent dangerous neighborhood. although he died action is different from simply ignoring an in 1918, rauschenbusch in his writings evil. Instead, it is a “courageous confronta- provided the theological basis for King’s tion of evil by the power of love, in the social activism, giving him hope that the faith that it is better to be the recipient of church could play a pivotal role in correcting violence than the inflictor of it.” the inequities of american society.