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JDO, ADL, N.Y. Post force Time Warner to alter Black History Month. program
There is a power in this city, indeed in America, that Black people must begin to know and understand, lest we all be sucked into the illusion that we are Americans too, thus priming us for the "ethnic cleansing" in America that is sure to come if we do not wake up and begin to support one another.
Just recently a campaign was begun by the New York Post in an editorial that chastised the executives at Time-Warner for inviting certain persons to speak during a four-week lecture series that they sponsor through one of their units, Warner Music Group. The series, "Our Roots Run Deep," is Warner Music Group's way of celebrating Black History Month. The first editorial that appeared in the Post on January 30, 1996 appears below.
Time Warner -- still at it
Time Warner still doesn't get it. Next month, its Warner Music Group subsidiary is presenting a four-week lecture series at the Equitable Building in Manhattan entitled "Our Roots Run Deep" -- the purpose is to commemorate Black History Month.
Perhaps the best-known speaker will be the Rev. Al Sharpton, fresh from his incendiary and racist campaign against the "white interloper" who owned Freddy's Clothing Mart on 125th Street. The anti-Freddy's boycott, organized by the "Buy Black" committee of Sharpton's National Action Network, ended when one of the boycotters -- following through on the logic of the protest -- rushed into the store shouting anti-Semitic epithets and torched the place. Seven innocent people -- five Latino, one black and one white -- perished in the horrific blaze.
Sharpton -- who endeavored to blame the tragedy on Mayor Giuliani and the NYPD -- will lecture on Feb. 8. On the final Thursday of February, the Nation of Islam's Conrad Muhammad, a ranking Louis Farrakhan acolyte, is scheduled to speak (along with comedian Dick Gregory, whom we'd actually like to hear).
But the scheduled lecturer whose presentation may reveal the most about Time Warner's anything-goes sensibility is the Chicago-based racial huckster Steven Cokely; he is due to speak on Feb. 15.
Like Sharpton and Conrad Muhammad, Cokely comes with a considerable reputation. He was an aide to Chicago...