 June 2, 2012 at 10:08 pm  blackskeptics
By Sikivu Hutchinson
A video clip featuring a little white boy singing “I know the Bible’s right, somebody’s wrong…ain’t no homos gonna make it to heaven” in an Indiana church has gone viral. The boy finishes his joyful noise to a thunderous standing ovation, macho high fives, and raucous laughter from the cornfed Americana congregation. The video concludes with verses from First Corinthians citing how idolators, fornicators, and the “effeminate” will not inherit God’s kingdom. Homophobe Christian fascist culture terrorists pollute the minds of little children and call it the love of Jesus. They slaughter human rights, spawn a new generation of jack boots and call it morality, God, country, and liberty all wrapped up in putrid red, white and blue.
On another tip, President Obama’s recent endorsement of same sex marriage signals a small transition in mainstream black perceptions about homosexuality but no one should get too happy. It is still a drop in the bucket vis-à-vis substantive policy change that would dismantle economic and social discrimination against LGBT people and their families; reverse the cycle of homelessness amongst queer black youth and protect their lives in classrooms and schoolyards. The fact that there are virtually no prominent out black LGBT celebs or national public figures underscores how toxically politicized homophobia and heterosexism are in African American communities. In the black Bible Belts that spawned rumored closeted gay man Tyler Perry, no black LGBT celeb dare rear his or her head in neighborhoods where economic blight and capitalism contribute to there being a quota of five churches to every block.
As Son of Baldwin says about the closeting of actress/rapper Queen Latifah:
“Queen Latifah’s reticence to say publicly that she is a lesbian tells me a great deal about the complicated beast that is homophobia. It tells me that it doesn’t matter that everyone in the world already knows that she’s a lesbian. It doesn’t matter that she be all up in the hottest lesbian clubs in the nation. It doesn’t matter that there are pictures and video of her cuddled up on vacation with the on-again-off-again, same gender love of her life. It doesn’t matter that she headlines shows at gay-themed events. It doesn’t matter that heterosexual, cisgender people rarely have to worry about navigating the invisibilizing, perverting, and shaming of their love lives. Heterosexual, cisgender people never have to use the sham word “privacy” as a euphemism for complicity, cowardice, fear, inauthenticity, and loss.
The key is that as long as Latifah doesn’t SAY IT OUT LOUD and confirm it for her largely homophobic audience (whether the homophobia be casual or formal, benign or deadly), she will continue to earn millions of dollars in revenue and the adoration of the public. And that is, primarily, with few exceptions, the contract between the queer person and the homophobic society (ESPECIALLY for the queer of color): You will be rewarded for as long as you remain as small, loveless, and sexless as they imagine you.”
America the Beautiful.
May 25, 2012 at 5:25 pm blackskeptics
By Sikivu Hutchinson
The percentage of white feminists who are concerned about racism is still a minority of the movement, and even within this minority those who are personally sensitive and completely serious about formulating an activist challenge to racism are fewer still. Barbara Smith, Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology
In the American imagination, Black women are the poster children for disreputable irresponsible motherhood and Latina “illegals” a close second. From birth to adolescence every girl of color must navigate a political climate in which Ronald Reagan’s racist welfare queen caricature casts long shadows. Ending its noble boycott of covering black women, the L.A. Times recently served up some red meat for welfare queen watchers. The front page featured an extensive profile of 27 year-old Natalie Cole, a jobless unmarried unskilled black mother with four kids. Entitled “Caught in the Cycle of Poverty” the article trots out an expert from Harvard who sagely proclaims that “poverty is bad for kids”; offering no further analysis on how the richest most militarized nation on the planet pimps out its children. Instead, we are regaled with Cole’s hot mess of personal failure and pathology. Coming from a long line of young single mothers, by the time she was 17 she was raising two children. She can’t be bothered to do a résumé or use birth control to avoid having a fifth child. The prayer “God in heaven, hear my prayer keep me in thy loving care” is taped to her bedroom wall. Needless to say she will not be getting her Oxygen, TLC or Lifetime reality show any time soon.
The article was especially timely, tragic, and enraging because I recently found out that one of my most inquisitive students is pregnant at 16. Several of my Women’s Leadership Project alums, who worked their asses off to become the first in their families to go to college, speak of friends that have had children shortly after graduating from high school. As budding feminists they are overly familiar with the “validation” pregnancy supposedly provides working class young women of color inundated with media propaganda that hyper-sexualizes black and Latina bodies and demonizes abortion.
In this South Los Angeles school-community only a small fraction of the student body goes on to college and many youth are in foster care, often having to raise themselves. Small evangelical store front churches grossly outnumber living wage job centers, God and Jesus are touted as some of the biggest “cultural” influences, and high teen pregnancy rates are a symptom of the expendability of “other people’s children” (to quote education activist Lisa Delpit). Thirty years ago scoring a living wage job with benefits was still a possibility for a South L.A. teenager with only a high school diploma. Now, having a college degree is the bare minimum for getting a decent paying job. However the regime of mass incarceration has made the barriers to college-going even higher for youth of color. One in six black men has been incarcerated and in some instances whites with criminal records elicit more favorable responses from employers than do black or Latino applicants with no records. Mainstream media focus on the staggering unemployment rates of men of color has eclipsed attention to the economic downturn’s equally devastating impact on black women. Deepening segregation, diminishing job prospects due to the gutting of public sector employment (23% of black women are employed in public sector jobs) and mental health crises have pushed more women of color into the church pews, or, alternative spirituality, with a vengeance.
May 25, 2012 at 12:50 am fredericksparks
By Frederick Sparks
After President Obama expressed personal support for marriage equality, pundits wasted no time pondering the effects on the upcoming presidential election, including whether or not the president’s “evolved” position would alienate African-Americans, the President’s most loyal voting bloc.
And indeed there has been negative reaction from the black clergy. Maryland based anti-gay preacher Harry Jackson stated “Obama laid down the gauntlet on black leaders..the question we are being forced to address is ‘are you going to be black or be godly.’” (Being godly of course means being homophobic) And a group of African-American pastors, the Coalition of African-American Pastors (CAAP), led by Memphis based “Reverend Doctor” William Owens soundly condemned the president’s statement, with Owens asserting that there was no doubt that the president would lose black votes: “Absolutely it will and especially among the black churches where the conviction against same-sex marriage is so strong…”I think many black Christians feel somewhat betrayed by the president on this – this is something that black churches have always stood firmly against.”
Yet there are suggestions that the views of these “leaders” may be increasingly disconnected from the masses. Polling conduct by Public Policy Polling on a Maryland referendum that would keep the states marriage equality law in place showed a dramatic swing in opinion among black voters; in March 56% were opposed to the new law, now (following Obama’s statement) 55% are in favor of marriage equality. This also tracks an ABC News/Washington Post Poll showing 59% of African-Americans nationwide in support of marriage equality. While other polls of African-Americans on the gay marriage issue have yielded mixed results, presidential election polling so far has shown no real shift in African-American support away from President Obama.
Following the President’s statements, Black entertainers and athletes have also expressed support for gay marriage or made gay positive statements, including music mogul Jay-Z and Heisman winner and No. 2 NFL draft pick Robert Griffin III. For better or worse, entertainers and athletes hold sway in influencing public opinion.
Perusing the website of this Coalition of African-American Pastors, one sees that the group’s mission is the breaking down of church/state separation, and opposing marriage equality and reproductive rights. No mention of the myriad of important issues that contribute to continued African-American economic and social disadvantage. This is a prime example of the increasingly irrelevant and out of touch yet stubbornly entrenched phenomenon of blowhard black religious leadership that finds itself increasingly opposed to progressive social change and largely impotent or uninterested when it comes to real issues of social justice.
May 7, 2012 at 11:18 pm blackskeptics
“We Say NO MORE”
The following statement is being circulated for signatures and to influence broad public opinion:
“We Say NO MORE”
The killing of Trayvon Martin and 2.4 million in prison make clear that there is a whole generation of Black and Latino youth who have been marked and treated as a “generation of suspects” to be murdered and jailed. This is not an issue for Black people alone but for all who care about justice; it is not a random tragedy. We say NO MORE!
Initial Signatories
Ron Ahnen, President of California Prison Focus
Charles Alexander, director of the Academic Advancement Program at UCLA
Rene Auberjonois, actor
Eleanor J. Bader, freelance journalist
Dan Barker, co-president, Freedom From Religion Foundation
Kathleen Barry, author Unmaking War, Remaking Men
Missy Comley Beattie, peace and justice activist, Counterpunch contributor
Ken Bonetti, educator
Robert Bossie, SJC 8th Day Center for Justice
Herb Boyd, author/activist/journalist/teacher
Elizabeth Cook, activist in New Orleans
Chris Crutcher, author: Whale Talk, Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, Deadline
Colin Dayan, author, The Law is a White Dog, How Legal Rituals Make and Unmake Persons
Carl Dix, Revolutionary Communist Party, USA
Niles Eldredge, Curator Emeritus, American Museum of Natural History
Eve Ensler, Tony Award winning playwright, performer, activist, founder of V-DAY
Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president, Freedom From Religion Foundation
Frances Goldin
Kathleen Hanna, musician
Chris Hedges, author, War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning
Lyn Hejinian, Professor, Department of English, University of California, Berkeley: poet
Merle Hoffman, founder, president and CEO of Choices Women’s Medical Center
Adam Horovitz of the Beastie Boys
Sikivu Hutchinson, editor, blackfemlens.org, freethoughtblogs.com/blackskeptics, author Moral Combat: BlackAtheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars
Ron Jacobs, author and journalist
C. Clark Kissinger, Revolution Books, NYC
Vinay Lal, university professor and social critic
Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun and chair of the interfaith Network of Spiritual Progressives
Dennis Loo, author, Globalization and the Demolition of Society
Robert Meeropol, Rosenberg Fund for Children
Leo Mintek, Outernational
Tom Morello, Nightwatchman
Florence M. Rice, consumer advocate
Cindy Sheehan, peace and justice activist
Tavis Smiley, talk show host and co-author of The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto
Dr. Donald Smith, past president of the National Alliance of Black School Educators
Sunsara Taylor, Revolution newspaper
Saul Thomas
Cornel West
David Zeiger, filmmaker, director of Sir! No Sir!
Organizational and institutional affiliation provided for identification purposes only.
To add your name, contact: wesaynomore2012@yahoo.com.
May 4, 2012 at 11:04 pm blackskeptics
 Diane Arellano
By Sikivu Hutchinson
Bitch, ho, honorary mammy, Buena mujer. When it comes to images of Latinas in American mainstream media it’s either Sofia Vergara jiggling out of her shirt channeling Charo or caregiver/maid extraordinaire Lupe Ontiveros clutching her rosary beads, eyes rolling heavenward. Similarly, the range of casting opportunities for African American women is just as limited, with over 70% of TV roles still going to whites. Cultural and historical stereotypes about hypersexual women of color continue to define public perceptions of black and Latina women. And while African American and Latina women have some of the highest poverty and intimate partner violence rates in the country they are also two of the most “churched” groups in the U.S.
Over the past decade the number of Latinas involved in Pentecostalism has skyrocketed. Many Latinos are breaking away from the pedophile culture, scandal, and hierarchy of the Catholic Church in a quest to find religious traditions that offer greater community involvement, accessibility, and social connection. According to the U.S. Latino Religious Identification Report, authored by Juhem Navarro Rivera and colleagues, “Latino religious polarization may be influenced by a gender effect, as in the general U.S. population, with men moving toward no religion and women toward more conservative religious traditions and practices. Two traditions at opposite poles of the religious spectrum exhibit the largest gender imbalance: the None population is heavily male (61%) while the Pentecostal is heavily female (58%).” Given these challenges it’s not difficult to see why fewer Latinas can publicly risk coming out as atheist or find safe humanist spaces that are culturally responsive. Until there are secular community-based social, cultural, and economic institutions that redress systemic racism, sexism, patriarchy, and economic injustice secularism will be hollow, abstract, and white-identified for the majority of working and middle class people of color. Addressing these issues, Los Angeles-based feminist artist and undocumented youth advocate Diane Arellano breaks down the politics of being a Latina non-believer in a reactionary misogynistic era:
What is your cultural/religious background (i.e. were you raised in a religious household) and when did you make the shift to your current belief system?
I’m a Mexican. I was raised in a de facto secular household. We were peripherally Catholic. Our observance of the Christmas season was more aligned with American mainstream consumerism than the traditional Mexican/ Mexican-American holiday rituals (Posadas, attending Christmas Mass, Christmas donkey song, etc.). We did and still do observe the Christmas tamales or pozole traditions though.
Somewhere in college, I felt the need not to proactively counter the general assumptions that as a Mexican woman, I must be a Catholic or Christian. This is conscious shift in my identity was informed by my interests and participation in activism. When I searched for models of Latino activists, I was very disappointed to see or read about “seeking strength” from “La Virgen” or claiming their work is the work of “God.” I thought about how oppression functions in communities of color and asked myself, “isn’t there a good argument that can be made about the Church’s role in institutionalizing the oppressive gender, race, class, and sexuality paradigms that these activists are fighting so hard against?”
How have atheism, free thought and/or secular humanism shaped your world view?
I don’t feel the shame or guilt that many of my religious women of color peers carry on their shoulders. In my experience, my religious friends often feel the pressures of complying with “good womanhood.” These pressures include having children that they aren’t at the very least economically ready for at an early age. Another pervasive cultural pressure is “where to find a good man?” This quest for “Prince Charming” is a burdensome weight on many young women, who often attach themselves to men not worth of any kind of attention. I used to feel those pressures too but at this juncture in my life I want to focus on things that matter to me. Leaving my religious identity has allowed me to do that. In essence I believe all women, but especially women of color, are policed so heavily that we seldom ever question or see beyond gender roles and gender expectations. Few of us ever think about what it would be like to pursue our own dreams vs. supporting “our man” or catering to the best interests of the family. What kind of world would this be if women were provided with the same encouragement, interest, and networks that are provided when a boy or man talks about his dreams and goals?
As an atheist/freethinker what are some of the main issues you’re concerned with?
I’m primarily interested in addressing violence against women of color (sexual abuse, emotional, and physical); the quality of educational opportunities in communities of color; job opportunities and promotion for people of color; and access to non-religious community resources for communities of color (day care, quality schools, food banks, shelter, Narcotics Anonymous).
How can atheism, freethought and/or secular humanism be promoted to appeal to larger numbers of Latinos?
I believe that having non-religious community resources can help people shift from a church-dependent consciousness into a secular or humanist one. I think, especially in communities of color, we tend make the assumption that if you do work helping people, then you must be a “Good Christian.” I can’t tell you how many times the parents of students have told me they include me in their prayers or “God bless me” for helping their children.
April 25, 2012 at 6:30 am blackskeptics
By Sikivu Hutchinson
April is sexual assault awareness month. It also marks the global observance of Denim Day for sexual assault survivors. Black and mixed race women have some of the highest sexual assault rates in the U.S. Yet, recently, when young women of color in my class spoke on the disproportionate number of women of color victimized by sexual violence they initially trotted out stereotypes like “mixed race women are more likely to be raped because they are the ‘prettiest’ and “black women get assaulted more because they have ‘big butts.’ This intersection of internalized racism and sexism is most potent when youth grapple with how representations of young women of color in the media normalize sexual violence.
The normalization of sexual violence breeds silence in the classroom. In the clockwatching ten minutes-before-the-bell-rings clamor of my peer health workshop of 11th and 12th graders there is silence, deafening and thick as quicksand. I have asked them a question about the widespread use of the words “bitch” and “ho” to describe young women of color on campus. Several boys are holding forth in response. They are the same four opinionated boys who have been the most vocal throughout these sessions, always ready with a quip, a deflection or, sometimes, serious commentary that reveals deep wisdom. They are bursting with perspective on this topic, but the girls in the room are silent. Some twist in their seats, some study the tops of their desks in calculated boredom, transporting themselves outside of the room, slain by the language of dehumanization. Finally a few girls chime in and say they use the terms casually with friends, as in “my bitch or my ho,” supposedly neutralizing their negative connotations akin to the way they use the word “nigga.” Some claim the words are justifiably used to describe “bad girls” who are promiscuous and unruly, not realizing that black women have always been deemed “bad” in the eyes of the dominant culture, as less than feminine, as bodies for violent pornographic exploitation. When I wondered aloud whether white women call themselves bitch and ho as terms of endearment I got uncertain responses. My guess is that they don’t, not because white women are necessarily more enlightened and self-aware than women of color on gender, but because white femininity is the beauty ideal and hence the human ideal. Despite the misogyny that pervades American culture there is inherent value placed on the lives of white women. Every aspect of the image industry affirms their existence, and the spectrum of culturally recognized white femininity extends from proper and pure to “sexually liberated.”
April 19, 2012 at 5:15 pm blackskeptics
From People of Color Organize:
The Stop Mass Incarceration Network has called for a National Day of Action to Stop Mass Incarceration on Thursday, April 19th. These national actions have everything to do with, and joins with, the upsurge associated with the “Trayvon Martin moment.” On April 19th everyone who is concerned about injustice will join in saying — NO TO MASS INCARCERATION! There will be rallies and demonstrations in cities across the country, from New York to Houston, to Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area. College and high school students will hold teach in’s and other actions on their campuses. There will be cultural events held on that day. And the architects and enforcers of mass incarceration will be challenged about the inhumanity of the policies they are inflicting on society.
Why? Because, More than 2.4 million people, most of them Black or Latino, remain warehoused in prisons across the country; Black and Latino youth are treated like criminals by the police and the criminal justice system, guilty until proven innocent, if they can survive their encounters with police to prove their innocence; Former prisoners wear badges of shame and dishonor even after they serve their sentences — discriminated against when applying for jobs, denied access to government assistance, not allowed in public housing, denied the right to vote. In a short statement being released and circulated nationwide today, Wednesday, April 4th, it declares: “It is time and way past time to stand up and say NO MORE! Our youth are being treated like criminals—guilty until proven innocent, if they can survive to prove their innocence. The vigilante murder of Trayvon Martin concentrates the racial profiling that leads into more than 2.4 million people being warehoused in prison and the millions more who are treated like second-class citizens even after they’ve served their sentences. April 19th must be a day of standing up and saying NO MORE to all of this. Join us to organize a day of teach ins and rallies in high schools and colleges; a day of youth, tired of being demonized, taking to the streets—joined by many others from different backgrounds, races and nationalities who stand with them; a day of speaking bitterness to the way the whole criminal justice system abuses millions of people. All saying in a powerful voice: NO to mass incarceration and all its consequences.”
To contact the Stop Mass Incarceration Network, please email stopmassincarceration@ymail.com, or call 866-841-9139 x2670.
April 11, 2012 at 8:39 pm blackskeptics
 Women's Leadership Project alum & students By Sikivu Hutchinson
Recently former GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum called President Obama a snob for having the audacity to suggest that going to college should be a priority. As a privileged white male college graduate on big government’s payroll Santorum’s message to youth of color is: why go to college when there are unskilled sub living wage jobs selling oranges, cleaning houses, washing cars and shoveling French fry grease awaiting you in the ghetto? Santorum’s anti-college diatribe comes in an era when the need for a college degree has increasingly been questioned by both right wing policy makers and mainstream media. Yet, college-going continues to be one of the bedrock civil rights issues for youth of color in the U.S. Over the past several years the wealth gap between black and Latino households and white households has widened. Over the course of their lifetimes college graduates earn nearly one to several million more than do high school graduates. However, in California, Latino youth have the lowest college going rates among youth of all ethnicities despite the fact that they comprise over 50% of students in California schools. While college-going for African American students has increased college completion for youth of color overall remains abysmally low at major colleges and universities. Historically, colleges and universities that have few African American students and few culturally responsive on-campus resources have lower black graduation rates. According tothe Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, “Curriculum differences also play an important role in graduation rates. Carnegie Mellon University and Cal Tech are heavily oriented toward the sciences, fields in which blacks have always had a small presence. It continues to be true that at many high-powered schools black students in the sciences often have been made to feel uncomfortable by white faculty and administrators who persist in beliefs that blacks do not have the intellectual capacity to succeed in these disciplines.”
April 11, 2012 at 7:17 pm blackskeptics
By Sikivu Hutchinson
Word has it that the murderer George Zimmerman will finally be charged in the killing of Trayvon Martin. But the fight for Trayvon has rightfully exposed the polecat underbelly of lynch mob justice in the U.S.
Exhibit A is John Derbyshire, swinging his balls to the breeze for whites fed up with “nonstop” coverage of the lynching of Trayvon. Derbyshire, a former National Review columnist and mathematician recently broke down a white peoples’ guide to navigating the violent criminal subhuman tendencies of inner city Negroes. Entitled “The Talk: The Non-Black Version,” Derbyshire’s neo-Birth of A Nation piece offers rich insight into the depth of the white nationalist backlash and the politics of the New Jim Crow. Martin’s murder elicited a national conversation amongst black parents about how to counsel black youth on public conduct given the realities of racial profiling. But Derbyshire wanted to set seditious black folk straight about who the real victims were. Evoking the image of the scary bestial black spook, the post is a mini-primer on black depravity, advising whites and other non-blacks to steer clear of black neighborhoods, avoid events with large numbers of black people, and anticipate situations where they could potentially become victims of black violence. So if we just arm ourselves to the teeth, make sure those spooks stay in their ghettoes and neutralize race card-playing black politicians we can divide Negro-hood into a neat taxonomy of hostile blacks and domesticated intelligent blacks:
(10a) Avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally.
(10b) Stay out of heavily black neighborhoods.
(10c) If planning a trip to a beach or amusement park at some date, find out whether it is likely to be swamped with blacks on that date (neglect of that one got me the closest I have ever gotten to death by gunshot).
(10d) Do not attend events likely to draw a lot of blacks.
(10e) If you are at some public event at which the number of blacks suddenly swells, leave as quickly as possible.
(10f) Do not settle in a district or municipality run by black politicians.
(10g) Before voting for a black politician, scrutinize his/her character much more carefully than you would a white.
(10h) Do not act the Good Samaritan to blacks in apparent distress, e.g., on the highway.
(10i) If accosted by a strange black in the street, smile and say something polite but keep moving.
As with any good quasi-academic white supremacist, Derbyshire cherry picks pseudo science and sociology to reinforce his belief in the innate intellectual inferiority and moral depravity of blacks:
(11) The mean intelligence of blacks is much lower than for whites. The least intelligent ten percent of whites have IQs below 81; forty percent of blacks have IQs that low. Only one black in six is more intelligent than the average white; five whites out of six are more intelligent than the average black. These differences show in every test of general cognitive ability that anyone, of any race or nationality, has yet been able to devise. They are reflected in countless everyday situations. “Life is an IQ test.”
Derbyshire’s link to “everyday situations” tracks back to an article on mortgage lending discrimination. Nationwide, black and Latino homeowners have been disproportionately targeted by predatory and subprime lending practices (Disgraced mortgage lender Countrywide having been the subject of a major lawsuit and settlement thereof); practices which implicitly benefit white homeowners and hence constitute the very preferences (i.e., affirmative action) that Derbyshire decries as corrosive to the racist fantasy of ”pure meritocracy”:
(12) There is a magnifying effect here, too, caused by affirmative action. In a pure meritocracy there would be very low proportions of blacks in cognitively demanding jobs. Because of affirmative action, the proportions are higher. In government work, they are very high. Thus, in those encounters with strangers that involve cognitive engagement, ceteris paribus the black stranger will be less intelligent than the white. In such encounters, therefore—for example, at a government office—you will, on average, be dealt with more competently by a white than by a black. If that hostility-based magnifying effect (paragraph  is also in play, you will be dealt with more politely, too. “The DMV lady“ is a statistical truth, not a myth.
(13) In that pool of forty million, there are nonetheless many intelligent and well-socialized blacks. (I’ll use IWSB as an ad hoc abbreviation.) You should consciously seek opportunities to make friends with IWSBs. In addition to the ordinary pleasures of friendship, you will gain an amulet against potentially career-destroying accusations of prejudice…
Although the National Review fired Derby last week the post merely expresses what segregated American television, film, neighborhoods, workplaces, schools, and polls bear out — that separate, apartheid inequality is still as Americana as apple pie.
April 4, 2012 at 6:56 pm fredericksparks
By Frederick Sparks
 Actress Nichelle Nichols, best known for her role as Star Trek’s Lieutenant Uhura, recently shared a picture of her White House visit in February. She also tweeted this interesting tidbit: “Months ago Pres Obama was quoted as saying that he’d had a crush on me when he was younger. I asked about that & he proudly confirmed it!”
Nichols spoke previously about meeting Martin Luther King, Jr. during the show’s initial run from 1966-1969. The civil rights leader told her he was a fan and the two discussed the importance of the image she presented on the show. Nichols credits this conversation for changing her mind about leaving the show after the first season.
Nichelle, my crush is still intact.
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