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Frank Dukes, Influential Leader of the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement, Dies at 92

By Barnett Wright The Birmingham Times The Rev. Frank Dukes, an influential Birmingham Civil Rights Movement leader and President of Miles College’s trailblazing student body in the early 1960’s, has died. He was 92. Mr. Dukes, who passed on Saturday morning, would have turned 93 in fifteen days. “It is with profound and nearly indescribable […]
The post Frank Dukes, Influential Leader of the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement, Dies at 92 first appeared on BlackPressUSA.

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2 years ago

December 5, 2023

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Frank Dukes, icon of the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement, has died. (Screengrab YouTube)

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By Barnett Wright

The Birmingham Times

The Rev. Frank Dukes, an influential Birmingham Civil Rights Movement leader and President of Miles College’s trailblazing student body in the early 1960’s, has died. He was 92.

Mr. Dukes, who passed on Saturday morning, would have turned 93 in fifteen days.

“It is with profound and nearly indescribable grief and sadness I announce that this morning my precious father, Reverend Frank Dukes, icon of the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement, Co-Creator of the Selective Buying Campaign of 1962, Co-Leader of the Easter Sunday March of 1963 and one of the Birmingham bodyguards for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr,” has passed, wrote his daughter Donna Dukes in a Facebook post on November 11.

Frank Dukes with daughter, Donna, founder/CEO, Maranathan Family Learning Center & Academy, Inc. for at-risk youth and adults. (Donna Dukes/Facebook)

Mr. Duke’s passing comes as the city is commemorating 60 years since the 1963 Birmingham campaign for Civil and Human Rights.

In the early 1960s, Mr. Dukes, as a 31-year-old Miles Student Government Association president, organized students to challenge Birmingham’s stringent segregation through the Selective Buying Campaign.

The campaign grew into a local movement designed as an economic boycott of white merchants who refused to hire Black workers or to desegregate their facilities. It demonstrated the power of non-violent protest and prompted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to come to Birmingham the following year in 1963 to lead nonviolent demonstrations to end segregation.

Mr. Dukes is also a former Director of the Alumni Affairs Department of Miles College, second Black hired by the Alabama State Department of Education as a vocational rehabilitation counselor, US Army/Korean War veteran and President Emeritus of the nonprofit Maranathan Family Learning Center & Academy, Inc. for at-risk youth and adults, founded by his daughter Donna.

“He served a purpose that was very necessary and the Movement would not have been the same without that type of individual …,” Birmingham historian Dr. Horace Huntley told the Birmingham Times. “[Frank Dukes] was a person that spoke the truth and he could speak to people from all walks of life. That’s always important because at that particular juncture [in Birmingham] you had to speak to those who were in ‘control’ and those who were in the street if you were going to be effective. And was very effective with that.”

Few in the Movement were as fearless as Mr. Dukes, said Huntley.

“I really looked up to him because he had a varied background, meaning that he grew up here in Birmingham, he’d gone off to the service and grew up in the military and then he came back and he was not afraid to challenge,” said Huntley, who interviewed Mr. Dukes in 1995 for the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute’s Oral History Project. “A lot of us when we left [the city], we always had in our mind that we were coming back to help change Birmingham, to solve the problems of Birmingham and he epitomized that thought.”

Mr. Dukes was instrumental in the Selective Buying Campaign at downtown Birmingham stores in early 1962, which had its genesis in December 1961 when he had drafted a public statement entitled “This We Believe” which called for more educational and employment opportunities for Blacks in white stores.

The campaign led by Dukes and other boycott leaders such as Miles College Professor Jonathan McPherson; Miles alumnus retired Judge U.W. Clemon; and three prominent Black housewives, Deenie Drew, Althea Montgomery and Ruth Barefield-Pendelton set in motion the end of segregation in Birmingham.

The following spring the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and Alabama Christian Movement for Human Right’s ‘s (ACMHR) Birmingham Campaign launched with Mr. Dukes serving both as a Miles campus organizer and as a guard, protecting leaders during meetings. He was one of four leaders of a mass march from Thirgood Memorial CME Church on Easter Sunday, April 14, and was arrested along with A. D. King, Nelson Smith and John Porter

“He was one of those individuals who was not afraid of [Birmingham Public Safety Commissioner] Bull Conner,” Huntley said. “A lot of us were afraid of Bull Conner, afraid of the police. Frank Dukes [wasn’t] and they knew that, and they respected him for that. White folks and Black folks respected him for the same thing – they couldn’t run over him.”

Mr. Dukes was the third of eight children born to a Fairfield steelworker’s family. He was a graduate of Fairfield Industrial High School served in US Army from 1949 to 1950. After his discharge he worked for Dodge motor company in Detroit, Michigan. In 1954 he re-enlisted for the Korean War and served until 1957. He returned to Detroit, but, after being laid off in 1958 he came home to Fairfield to wait for his recall.

Instead he decided in 1959 to enroll at Miles under the GI Bill. With his broader perspective on justice, and inspired by student protests in North Carolina, Mr. Dukes began urging fellow students to engage in public opposition to segregation in Birmingham. He formed an Anti-Injustice Committee at the college and began formulating demands, including the desegregation of public buildings and businesses and the hiring of African Americans in stores and government departments.

His daughter wrote on Facebook that Mr. Dukes “has made his Earthly transition to be with his Heavenly Father. Please keep our family in prayer … Rest well son, rest well! Lord have mercy upon us! Christ have mercy upon us! Lord have mercy upon us!

Services for Mr. Dukes will be held on Saturday November 18 at noon ion St. Joseph Baptist Church, 500 9th Avenue North, Birmingham AL 35204.

This article originally appeared in The Birmingham Times.

The post Frank Dukes, Influential Leader of the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement, Dies at 92 first appeared on BlackPressUSA.

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Poll Shows Support for Policies That Help Families Afford Child Care

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — New national polling shows persistent voter concern about the affordability and availability of child care for working parents, alongside broad support across key demographic groups for federal child care policies that help families afford care.

Published

1 week ago

March 2, 2026

Oakland Post

By First Five Years Fund

New national polling shows persistent voter concern about the affordability and availability of child care for working parents, alongside broad support across key demographic groups for federal child care policies that help families afford care.

The national survey was conducted by UpOne Insight on behalf of the First Five Years Fund from January 13–18, 2026.

Key findings include:

• Parents need help: 80% of voters say the ability of working parents to find and afford child care is either in a state of crisis or a major problem.

• This is an affordability issue: 82% believe federal child care funding will help lower costs for working families — including 69% of Republicans, 84% of Independents, and 94% of Democrats.

• And there continues to be strong support (62%) for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), a federal program that makes it possible for hundreds of thousands of families to afford safe, quality care for their children while parents work or go to school, including a majority of Republicans, 63% of Independents and 72% of Democrats.

• Support for funding child care programs remains strong: 75% believe child care funding should be increased or kept at current levels — including 75% of Republicans, 85% of Independents, and 97% of Democrats.

• 74% say funding for child care is an important and good use of tax dollars, including a majority of Republicans, three-quarters of Independents, and nine in ten Democrats.

FFYF Executive Director Sarah Rittling said, “Voters across the country are sending a clear message: federal child care and early learning programs work. These investments help parents stay in the workforce, strengthen families, and support healthy child development. They have also long had strong bipartisan support in Congress. At a time when affordability is top of mind for families, continued federal funding is essential to ensure child care remains accessible and within reach.”

First Five Years Fund works to protect, prioritize, and build bipartisan support for quality child care and early learning programs at the federal level. Reliable, affordable, and high-quality early learning and child care can be transformative, not only enhancing a child’s prospects for a brighter future but also bolstering working parents and fostering economic stability nationwide.

We work with Congress and the Administration to identify federal solutions that work for families with young children, as well as states and communities. We work with policymakers to identify ways to increase access to affordable, high-quality child care and early learning programs for children. And we collaborate with advocacy groups to help align best practices with the best possible policies. http://www.ffyf.org

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Trump’s MAGA Allies are Creating Executive Order Plan to Steal the 2026 Midterms

NNPA NEWSWIRE — The document that could lead to an executive order proposes using the claim that China interfered with the 2020 elections as grounds to “declare a national emergency.” The move would be an unprecedented step that would grant Trump new authority over the voting systems in the U.S.

Published

1 week ago

February 27, 2026

Oakland Post

By Lauren Victoria Burke, NNPA Newswire Correspondent

A group of MAGA pro-Trump activists, who say they are working in coordination with the White House, are circulating a 17-page draft executive order that would claim without evidence that China interfered with the 2020 presidential election. Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential to President Joe Biden by over 7 million votes. Since Trump lost to Biden in 2020, he has repeatedly claimed that the election was “stolen” without evidence. The report of a group of “Trump allies” preparing an executive order to give Trump power over elections was first reported by The Washington Post.

The lies around the right-wing campaign that pushed falsehoods that the 2020 election was stolen was trafficked through right-wing media, particularly Fox News. Fox News was then sued for defamation for the claims by Dominion Voting Systems. Fox lost the case and had to settle for the largest defamation amount on record of $787.5 million in April 2023.

The document that could lead to an executive order proposes using the claim that China interfered with the 2020 elections as grounds to “declare a national emergency.” The move would be an unprecedented step that would grant Trump new authority over the voting systems in the U.S.

The story in The Washington Post arrives as Trump increasingly signals that he may take actions that would alter the result of the 2026 midterms. The Republicans are widely expected to lose as their approval ratings plummet as a result of a failing economy under Trump. Over 50 members of Congress have announced they will retire this year and not return in 2027.

The Trump Department of Justice, which now has a large image of Trump on the side of it, “sued five new states Thursday [Feb. 26, 2026] demanding access to their unredacted voter rolls — escalating a campaign that has been rejected by multiple federal courts and faces resistance from Republican-led states as well,” according to Democracy Docket, a group that works to protect voting rights.

Trump claimed back in late 2020, the last year of his first term, that he had the authority to issue an executive order related to mail-in voting for the 2020 elections — which he would then lose. But the Constitution states that control of elections lies with the states. As the GOP works to place hurdles in front of voting, Democrats worked to make voting easier.

In March 2021, President Biden signed an executive order calling on federal agencies to expand voting access as part of the Biden Administration’s effort “to promote and defend the right to vote for all Americans who are legally entitled to participate in elections.”

Trump’s focus is clearly on altering the November 2026 midterm elections. Trump’s polling numbers and the elections and special elections that have taken place around the U.S. over the last year clearly indicate that Republicans are about to be hit by a blue wave of Democratic victories.

Lauren Victoria Burke is an independent investigative journalist and the founder of Black Virginia News. She is a political analyst who appears on #RolandMartinUnfiltered and hosts the show LAUREN LIVE on YouTube @LaurenVictoriaBurke. She can be contacted at LBurke007@gmail.com and on twitter at @LVBurke

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PRESS ROOM: NBA Hall of Fame Nominee Terry Cummings Joins 100 Black Men of DeKalb County to Launch Victory & Values Initiative

NNPA NEWSWIRE — NBA Hall of Fame nominee and Basketball Legend Terry Cummings was administered the official member’s oath and ceremonially pinned during a special induction ceremony held on Friday, February 20th.

Published

1 week ago

February 27, 2026

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Cummings becomes an honorary member, joining other role model sports stars

NBA Hall of Fame nominee and Basketball Legend Terry Cummings has officially become an honorary member of the 100 Black Men of DeKalb County, marking a powerful new chapter for the 100 Black Men and youth development across the region.

Cummings was administered the official member’s oath and ceremonially pinned during a special induction ceremony held on Friday, February 20th. The moment signified more than membership — it marked the launch of the organization’s transformative new platform, the Victory & Values Initiative.

The Victory & Values Initiative is a groundbreaking youth development program designed to empower elementary and middle school students through a dynamic blend of sports, mentorship, and STEM exposure. The initiative focuses on building health, discipline, character, leadership, and access to opportunity — creating pathways for long-term academic and personal success.

“This is about more than sports,” said Cummings during the ceremony. “It’s about using the platform of athletics to teach life lessons, create access, and build the next generation of leaders.”

The induction ceremony also featured notable guests including NASCAR’s newest Star Driver, Lavar Scott and NASCAR Director of Athletic Performance, Phil Horton, who joined Cummings for a powerful Victory & Values Town Hall discussion. The Town Hall was moderated by renowned Sports Emcee John Hollins and focused on leadership, resilience, discipline, and the importance of mentorship in shaping young lives.

A “Day at NASCAR” for 75+ Youth

Cummings wasted no time getting to work. On his first full day as an honorary member, he joined his new brothers of the 100 Black Men of DeKalb County to host a “Day at NASCAR,” escorting more than 75 youth to a once-in-a-lifetime experience at EchoPark Motor Speedway (formerly Atlanta Motor Speedway).

The youth participants received behind-the-scenes access including: an exclusive tour of Pit Row, access to the Garage Area and exploration of the interactive Fan Zone.

The experience culminated with a surprise meet-and-greet and Q&A session with NASCAR Superstar Bubba Wallace, who shared insights on perseverance, preparation, and breaking barriers in professional sports.

The day served as a living example of the ‘Victory & Values’ Initiative in action — exposing youth to new industries, expanding their vision for the future, and connecting them directly with high- level mentors and role models.

Building Leaders Through Access and Mentorship

The 100 Black Men of DeKalb County – a chapter of the largest, national mentoring organization in the county – continues to expand its footprint with programs focused on academic excellence, economic empowerment, leadership development, and health & wellness.

The launch of ‘Victory & Values’ represents a strategic expansion of the organization’s impact

intentionally integrating athletics and STEM to engage youth at an early age while reinforcing core principles such as integrity, accountability, teamwork, and perseverance.

“Our mission has always been to mentor the next generation,” said Vaughn Irons, President-Elect of the 100 Black Men of DeKalb County. “With Terry Cummings joining the brotherhood, along with partners in NASCAR and professional sports, we are creating unprecedented access and exposure for our youth. Victory & Values is about turning inspiration into structured opportunity.”

By connecting elementary and middle school students to professional athletes, executives, STEM professionals, and community leaders, the initiative aims to:

Increase youth exposure to careers in sports business, engineering, and performance science
Strengthen mentorship pipelines
Promote physical wellness and mental resilience
Build character-driven leadership at an early age

Open Invitation to Youth and Families

All youth are invited to participate in the Victory & Values Initiative, along with the other countless, impactful programs offered by the 100 Black Men of DeKalb County.

Parents and guardians seeking mentorship, leadership development, academic enrichment, and transformative exposure opportunities for their children are encouraged to connect with the organization.

As NBA Legend Terry Cummings’ induction demonstrates, Victory & Values is more than a program — it is a movement designed to build champions in life, not just in sports.

For more information about the Victory & Values Initiative or to enroll a student, contact: 100 Black Men of DeKalb County at Phone at 404.241.1338, info@100bmod.org or Tee Foxx at 404.791.6525,