Thank you!  As a result of your caring support, our U.S. Civil Rights Complaint is now supported by over 200 signatures in less than three weeks of its 2/10/24 publication within the petition forum.  This number subsequently supersedes our goal of closing out Black History Month with 150 signatures.

As we celebrate this success, we now understand the petition is supported by a large base of individuals who are geographically located throughout the nation. We would therefore like to give others the opportunity to sign on, recruit, UNITE with us, and to ensure the petition’s rightful pursuit of DUE PROCESS and redress for unconstitutional punishment are heard and reflect change that heightens human/civil rights protections throughout the larger Black and oppressed communities. 

With the aforementioned said, we would like to establish a new goal of 500 signatures by March 25, 2024.  The petition’s success comes as part of a new movement with the potential to connect with thousands across the country. March 25th is significant because it comes on the anniversary of the transition of a courageous woman who I refer to as “The Mother of Due Process,” Ida B. Wells.  You may read more about her history below.

Our petition seeks DUE PROCESS for all, and power from the ground up (not the top down). Subsequently the petition opposes the unfair and hierarchical acts from National NAACP leadership where the individual President & CEO hands down long-term or indefinite suspensions without due process.  The petition seeks to protect the rights of less powerful members who are working on the ground, and allow civil rights workers the freedom and urgency to serve the larger Black and oppressed community the NAACP was founded to serve, without having their rights violated, their spirits broken, and their hands tied. 

Meanwhile, let’s keep the movement “moving” as I congratulate and thank you for using your voice to ensure that we stop the internal injustices that in turn have for several decades, undermined Black progress and our community’s larger external needs for justice. 

Always in pursuit of justice,

Minister Curtis E. Gatewood 

gatewoodlovesjustice@gmail.com

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Ida Bell Wells-Barnett (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931) was an American investigative journalist, educator, and early leader in the civil rights movement. She was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).  Wells dedicated her career to combating prejudice and violence, and advocating for African-American equality—especially that of women, although her Anti-Lynching Movement was sparked in defense of Black men who were often the target of the lynchings. 

Throughout the 1890s, Wells documented lynching in the United States in articles and through pamphlets such as Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in all its Phases and The Red Record, which debunked the fallacy frequently voiced by Whites at the time that all Black lynching victims were guilty of crimes.  After egregiously violating due process and other human rights of the Black victims of their lynchings, many Whites would produce a false narrative to gain favor of a lynching and to present the lynching mobs favorably as if their criminal and uncivil acts were heroic. 

Wells exposed the brutality of lynching, and analyzed its sociology, arguing that Whites used lynching to terrorize African Americans in the South because they represented economic and political competition—and thus a threat of loss of power—for Whites. She aimed to demonstrate the truth about this violence and advocate for measures to stop it.

Wells was outspoken regarding her beliefs as a Black female activist and faced regular public disapproval, sometimes including from other leaders and colleagues within the civil rights movement.   

Wells’ outspokenness and spirit to pursue justice, even if it meant “disapproval” from some within her own civil rights family, are exemplary of what drives today’s U.S. Civil Rights Complaint to preserve due process, which is supported by over 200 (and growing) other community members and activists.