PLAY BALL? NOT IN THESE STATES
Student athletes should consider nixing Ala. & others that war on diversity
Before even one more high school athlete considers throwing a pass, swinging a bat or dunking a basketball at any college or university in Alabama, he or she should consider what legislators and the governor there are doing to diversity programs, and consider going to school somewhere else.
In fact, it would be nice if the athletes already there, like the players suiting up for the University of Alabama in the NCAA’s college basketball tournament, would sit out a game in protest.
That would really be March Madness.
I admit I found myself rooting against the Crimson Tide during their first-round tournament game the other day for no other reason than that the people making laws in their state want to take them back 60 years.
Alabama won by 13 points. So much for retribution.
But that should be the last victory any program associated with the state enjoys until Alabama rights the wrongs of its governor and state lawmakers who seem like they won’t be happy until Black people are riding on the back of the bus again.
At issue is a new law that will prohibit the use of state funds for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs and offices at state agencies, higher education institutions and other public entities.
The law, scheduled to go in effect in October, would also “authorize certain public entities to discipline or terminate employees or contractors who violate this act.”
Alabama Republican Gov. Kay Ivey signed the bill Wednesday.
“My administration has and will continue to value Alabama’s rich diversity,” Ivey (photo) said in a statement.
“However, I refuse to allow a few bad actors on college campuses — or wherever else for that matter — to go under the acronym of DEI, using taxpayer funds, to push their liberal political movement counter to what the majority of Alabamians believe.”
The shortsighted statute is much like Florida’s racist war on “woke,” which includes bigoted legislation that restricts lessons and training on race and diversity in schools and in the workplace, particularly anything that discusses privilege or oppression based on race.
Florida’s “Stop WOKE Act,” signed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis nearly a year ago, even features a clever acronym: “Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees.”
Alabama’s legislation doesn’t include anything quite so catchy, but it is every bit as damaging.
“Today, the Alabama government has failed our children,” said NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson. “The ongoing assault on diversity, equity and inclusion is part of an anti-Black agenda that seeks to revert our nation back to a time where Black students and teachers were denied adequate access to the classroom. We refuse to go back.”
One fight-back tactic Johnson suggests is to encourage Black athletes to go to schools in other states. He said they should “choose wisely.”
Alabama, Florida and Texas schools have racked up trophies — and billions of dollars — on the backs of Black student athletes, and this is the thanks they get.
“The value Black and other college athletes bring to large universities is unmatched,” Johnson said in a statement. “If these institutions are unable to completely invest in those athletes, it’s time they take their talents elsewhere.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, signed a law last year ordering DEI offices at all state-funded colleges and universities to shut down. In the current legislative session, Republican lawmakers in more than 30 states have introduced or passed more than 100 bills to either restrict or regulate DEI efforts, according to an NBC News analysis.
Make no mistake, the war is on, and it is every bit as vicious as it was 60 years ago when Southern police chiefs sicced snarling dogs on protesters, and Alabama’s thenGov. George Wallace, uttered his famous battle cry — “segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever” — several months before he stood in a schoolhouse door at the University of Alabama and tried to keep Black students out.
On Aug. 6, 1927, readers got a double dose of terror in their morning papers. Two violent crimes had disturbed what was usually a mundane aspect of New York City life.
“BOMBS WRECK SUBWAYS,” screamed the Daily News front page. The photos showed the aftermath of two bomb blasts that rocked the IRT and BMT stations at 28th St. shortly before midnight on Aug. 5. The stations were reduced to “a mass of bricks and mortar,” The News reported in a caption under a photo of the destruction.
Then, on page 2, there was another story, linked to the first only by location.
“WOMAN SLAIN IN SUBWAY” was the headline that stretched across the top of the page.
The shooting happened on the morning of Aug. 5 at the City Hall station. No one noticed when it happened. The sound of gunfire probably had been drowned out by the “steady drum of the turnstiles and the rumble of the trains,” The News observed.
At 11:30 a.m., Sarah Lipschitz, 18, entered the women’s rest room in the City Hall BMT station. Lipschitz was powdering her nose when she noticed a woman’s foot protruding from below the half door of one of the booths.
She pointed out the strange sight to two other women. One ignored her, and the other shrugged her shoulders.
“It was believed several persons may have passed through the washroom since the shooting without, in the usual rush of subway passengers, noticing anything unusual,” the United Press noted.
Lipschitz peeked under the door, saw a crumpled body and blood on the floor, and ran screaming in search of police.
The medical exam showed that a bullet had entered below the woman’s collarbone on the right and emerged on her left, just under the shoulder blade.
A New York Central Railroad commuter ticket, retrieved from her pocketbook, was issued to Mrs. Emma Weigand. Another slip of paper read, “Admit for operation,” and had the phone number for the Eye, Ear, and Throat Hospital on E. 62 St.
Police learned that an Weigand had been to the hospital that day to drop off her daughter, Dorothea, 7, for a tonsillectomy. Weigand, 38, and her children — Ruth, 16, Frank, 14, and Dorothea — lived in the Bronx with her mother, Frieda Ahles, 65. Ahles wept when a News reporter tracked her down and gave her the description of the victim’s hair, facial features and clothing.
“That is Emma,” she cried.
Ahles later positively identified the body at the morgue. “Emma left her husband about two years ago and has supported herself as a milliner,” Ahles told police. “She had no enemies and lived for her children.”
Ahles said Emma and her husband, Frank, 40, split because of his drinking. Frank was brought in for questioning, but he had solid alibis that put him nowhere near the scene. Plus, he had no apparent animosity toward his ex. “It was too bad,” he said. “She was a nice girl.”
One hundred detectives were put on the case. Robbery did not seem to be a motive because $35 was still in her pocketbook. Someone reported a man running away from the scene around the time of the shooting. But he eluded police.
Theories poured forth, but nothing concrete. It could have been a jealous lover or one of the unsavory characters loitering underground, some suggested. “Degenerates and perverts by the scores have been found in these places,” said Mary Hamilton, who was once in charge of the Police Department’s women’s bureau. “Too strict a watch cannot be placed on the rest rooms.”
Suicide was another notion, but no weapon was found at the scene. This led to some momentary speculation Weigand had killed herself, and someone came into the rest room and swiped the gun.
By morning, a new possibility had emerged.
“MURDER LINKED TO BOMBS,” was the Daily News page 2 headline on Aug. 7. About 12 hours after Weigand died, a series of explosions rocked the subway stations at 28th St. There was a possibility, police said, that Weigand had stumbled upon a mad bomber about to set off another infernal machine.
At the time, thousands were protesting the death sentence of two Italian anarchists who had been convicted of murder and sentenced to death in Massachusetts in 1921. The case of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti had become a “‘cause celebre’ throughout the civilized world,” The News noted.
On Aug. 3, Massachusetts Gov. Alvan T. Fuller declared that the trial had been fair and that their executions could proceed. The date was set for Aug. 11.
Strikes and massive protests erupted in cities around the world. Many turned violent, including riots, bombings and stabbings.
Police suggested that Weigand may have caught a politically motivated subway bomber in the act. But the slim leads to the identities of the people who blew up the 28th St. stations went nowhere, and no connection was ever made to Weigand’s slaying.
By the end of August, detectives were pursuing their next pet theory — death by pervert. One man tried to molest a woman in a subway rest room. The next day, he became the central figure in the Weigand investigation. But they could find nothing to connect him to her death.
The last time The News reported a possible break in the case was in January 1929, when a flapper followed a woman into a subway washroom and tried to assault her.
The “flapper” turned out to be Stefan Wiszuk, 24, a murderer out on parole who disguised himself as a woman. Police tried to link him to Weigand’s slaying, but he was behind bars at the time of her murder.
Emma Weigand’s death remains yet another Manhattan mystery.