The 'N-word' at Lake Worth City Hall and Buddy Nevins: "The Fight To Replace Alcee Hastings"

Buddy Nevins has the blog called Broward Beat. He penned a post on April 9th that I encourage all my readers to read: it's about U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings. This article aligns perfectly with the issue surrounding Mrs. McNamara's use of the 'N-word' at Lake Worth City Hall recently: how much work there's left to do. (Even Margaret Menge, who claims to be a 'journalist/editor', is excusing this terrible behavior [more on that tomorrow].)

Alcee Hastings represents parts of Palm Beach County also, including areas in the City of Lake Worth. Mr. Nevins focuses on the early work of Hastings in Broward County:

     Hastings is one of the few true Broward County political heroes.
     As a 1960s era civil rights attorney, Hastings helped pry the door open for blacks. He fought hard-core segregationists who controlled the business and political community in the courts and with his melodious speech.
     Young people in today’s liberal Broward County can not even imagine what it was like just 60 or 50 years ago.
     Racists like Ben Klassen, the author of The White Man’s Bible who founded the self-proclaimed white supremacist Church of The Creator, was elected to the state Legislature from Lighthouse Point.
     Hastings, an outspoken attorney, was a target of those who wanted no change. He was called a radical “monkey” [emphasis added] in a hate sheet regularly distributed by the conservatives in the Broward GOP.
     This was an era when the Fort Lauderdale newspapers segregated news of blacks under a headline “black news” deep inside the paper.  Working for one of those papers, this then-very young police reporter was told by a casually racist editor that we don’t cover murders in “that neighborhood.”
     Hastings was fighting this ugly status quo.
     Mostly as a symbolic gesture, he ran for U. S. Senate in 1970 for the seat left open after Spessard Holland retired. He campaigned in places where blacks had never entered the restaurants and hotels through the front doors, much less appeared on a ballot.

On January 19th, only 83 days ago, the City of Lake Worth held its largest Martin Luther King March ever and it was great to be there and write about it. Fifty-three days later Mrs. McNamara demonstrated how there is still much ugliness and bigotry in our little City of Lake Worth. Here is an image from Mrs. McNamara's Facebook page (which was later taken down):

Mrs. McNamara had an opportunity to apologize and she chose not to take it. Now she's left it to her band of allies and friends to defend her. Her defenders are more upset that Mrs. McNamara lost her job than having the word 'N****r' used in our Lake Worth City Hall. 

Retha Lowe was one of the organizers of the Lake Worth Martin Luther King March this year. At a City Commission meeting on 3/24 she had a few choice words for Mrs. McNamara during public comment on this very subject: