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Week of October 16 -22, 2002
by Bud Johnson

“If what we’re doing is wrong, then I guess we’ll never be right,” countered Roy Douglas Malonson, publisher of African-American News&Issues, when informed that Houston Area Urban League (HAUL) CEO Sylvia Brooks openly attacked Texas’ widest circulated newspaper with a Black perspective during the Oct. 3, Town Hall Meeting that had been organized at SHAPE Center, 3815 Live Oak, by community activist Quanell X.

Malonson, who added the business complex’s media arm in February 1996 (to uncompromisingly report all news without fear or favor from the perspective of grassroots, disenfranchised African-Americans), was responding to reports of statements that were admittedly made by Brooks. When Malonson contacted her via telephone to learn why she was reprimanding his newspaper, she explained, “I was speaking what was on my heart.” She said that she resented insulting articles about Texas Southern University’s President Priscilla Slade mainly because she was a powerful Black woman.
More specifically, Brooks who feels that Slade “is doing a fine job of solving TSU’s problems,” took serious issue when Malonson’s August 28-Sept. 3, 2002 Publisher’s News Analysis queried: “Is TSU’s Priscilla Slade arrogant or crazy?” Malonson says he was more puzzled than upset, when he was first informed about Brooks’ remarks. “We are just as concerned about Black leadership as we are about white leadership. As Thurgood Marshall stated, ‘there is no difference between a Black snake and a White snake.’ I talked to Brooks, but it’s still not clear where she was coming from. The nearest as I could figure it was a female thing, since she also mentioned how Joan Horton was mistreated by the Black media when she was president of TSU.”

Woman’s Lib notwithstanding, Quanell X quickly responded to Brooks’ timing, insofar as the meeting was called to address how Houston’s mainstream media negatively reports alleged wrongdoing by prominent African-Americans, inasmuch as Wayne Dolcefino’s damaging investigative reports on Kid-Care opened old wounds. Old wounds that Channel 13’s intellectual assassin inflicted on the Black community when he literally destroyed Rep. Sylvester Turner’s chances of making history as Houston’s first Black mayor. Houston’s Black leaders called for a boycott of Channel 13 newscasts during sweeps week next month and other acts of protest.

Deloyd Parker, SHAPE’s director, invited Kid-Care founder Carol Porter and Constable Perry Wooten, who has been indicted on charges of abuse of official capacity to join him in front of a capacity crowd that included City Councilmembers Carol Mims Galloway and Ada Edwards, former Councilman Jew Don Boney, State Rep. Ron Wilson and representatives of various organizations. Minister Robert Muhammad outlined a plan to deliver a minimum of 100,000 complaint letters to the FCC. “Our purpose is to say to the media, ‘This is our family and they are innocent until proven guilty,’” explained Parker.
Apparently Brooks seized an opportunity to impress Houston’s powerbrokers by including Black newspapers that she considers just as guilty of denigrating Black faces in high places as the mainstream media. Even so, Quanell X was quick to remind her that unlike the mainstream media hierarchy, Malonson isn’t very difficult to find. He reminded her that she certainly owed Malonson a telephone call, rather than speaking against his newspaper publicly.
Islam, as well as Christianity, teaches that when you have an issue with a brother or sister, you should meet with him or her to address it personally. It’s ironic that Brooks chose Slade to defend, insofar as John Britton was also in the audience. Britton, if you recall, was the subject of a series of articles addressing Slade’s alleged misdeeds at TSU.
Britton, the former dean of Thurgood Marshall Law School at TSU, in fact, spoke against the indictment of Police Chief Clarence Bradford. “The district attorney should never have presented this to the grand jury,” Britton said. Strangely, when AAN&I published the story behind the story (why Britton abruptly resigned from TSU), every copy mysteriously disappeared from the newsstands in a five-mile area surrounding TSU.

After receiving several reports that TSU employees had stripped the racks, the paper was obligated to publish the same article in it’s entirety the following week, since the information was provided by former employees and insiders at TSU, who referred to Slade as “the worse president in the school’s 54-year-old history.” Nevertheless, Brooks has the constitutional the right to defend Slade, who certainly needs a few friends from what can be gathered from the stack of damning letters AAN&I has received since publishing the original story urging TSU alums to follow PVAMU’s alums’ example and jettison a president (Dr. Charles Hines), that appeared to be working against their school.

In the interim, AAN&I received a supportive e-mail, after Brooks’ attack us at SHAPE Center. “Bite your tongue….??…Not in this lifetime” was the subject of the e-mail, which Omowale 32, aka “The Cyber Soldier,” sent on October 5, 2002: “Dear Sir: I would first like to applaud you for your service to the Black community of providing unprecedented access to much information which somehow seems to go uncovered by traditional and other so-called independent Black media sources. Your coverage of organizations and leaders who have been ‘Black-listed’ - the ‘Front-line’ articles by a true warrior, Bro. Kofi Taharka, Uncle Bud and others who write for your paper, are truly a god-send for those of us who do understand (intended reference to We Must Understand), issues like the City Council reparations’ vote, Michael Berry’s totally insulting campaign tactics, the reparations issue in general, the Aldine ISD fiasco, along with numerous other subjects make me long for the day, when AAN&I, might become a daily publication or at least twice weekly.

“I was one of many who attended the town hall meeting dealing with the ‘Attack on Black Leadership’ convened by Minister Quanell X at S.H.A.P.E Center on Thursday of this week and was totally outraged that one of our so-called leaders had the nerve to question your integrity, label accurate reporting as chauvinistic; specifically the validity of reporting dealing with Texas Southern University’s President, Priscilla Slade, who has been absolutely inaccessible to the Black community, in addition to at the very least being incapable of making coherent decisions, and at worst bent and bound on the closure of this historically Black Institution.

“I am totally in agreement with AAN&I, and your guest writer who hit the nail directly on the head in questioning why the community is not holding her and other TSU administrators accountable. I for one would like to see a community hearing dealing specifically with TSU’s numerous blunders, and an advisory board consisting of grass-roots community leaders and TSU alumni with power to effect critical decision-making, thus making TSU fully accountable to the African-American community. This needs to happen!!! I thank you for affording me this opportunity to communicate my feelings about the only Black media outlet in Houston which does the Right Thing, in bringing the community real news it can use, and the uncalled for and invalid remarks at S.H.A.P.E. Center. Keep up the good work! Sincerely, The Cyber Soldier.”

With that said, equal space is offered to Brooks, the NAACP, The 100 Women, or any one else who agree that Priscilla Slade is doing a good job at TSU, or that Roy Douglas Malonson owes her an apology. On the other hand, if there be none, including the vociferous Mrs. Brooks that is willing to endorse Slade in print—the paper proudly stands accused! And, if what AAN&I is doing is wrong, it won’t ever be right.