October 12, 2009
TO: Editors, Internet, and beyond
The Valdosta Daily Times published an excellent article covering the Valdosta City School of Board Meeting on October 12, 2009, and included the following quote from my address: “George Rhynes said that before the meeting Cason agreed to have the meeting aired live on a local radio station and asked the audience to thank him. The applause was brief.”
This was not the case. There was a long applause from the audience, and it was exceptionally respectful as the entire event. However, below is my actual prepared address for all to see and review. G.B.R.
My Address Before
The Valdosta City School Board of Education:
I am George Boston Rhynes, a Retired Military Veteran of twenty-years. I too am asking for the resignation of Superintendent Bill Cason and this is a serious matter. To the Valdosta City School Board, and NOT to Superintendent Cason. There have been forty-three (43) White Male Presidents that preceded President Barack Obama. There have been eight (8) Valdosta City School Superintendents and to my knowledge NOT one of them denied the other forty-three (43) White Male Presidents to address the students in our school system. No, not one of them.
Moreover it is strange that several local radio stations use the word racists and refers to our president as a clown. Even more sickening is that our Superintendent Bill Cason, Mayor John Fretti, and other elected officials see nothing wrong with making this their favorite place to address citizens on talk radio. This offends me as a retired military veteran, and I was almost killed in an airplane in Guam. This hurts!
President Obama is the Executive Commander-In-Chief of our armed forces, and many of these members are now facing death on a daily basis in Iraq, Afghanistan and on other foreign battlefields the world over. Some have died for this country. But their children here in the Valdosta City School System could not hear the president that sent their parents into harms way. How Sad?
This is the home of Moody Air Force Base and these same parents place their life on the line. These are their children----attending our school system. Hello somebody! But they were denied the right to listen to their president and you cannot tell me. That this does not hurt those children who are old enough to understand the danger that their mothers and fathers have been placed in by our Executive Commander-In-Chief. I mean this is unbelievable in 2009. It is totally unbelievable.
In closing. The reasons given in the Times by the superintendent for not allowing the president speech to be heard mystified me. That the speech interfered with or did not comply with Georgia Performance Standards or something along those lines. But like a previous speaker said, teachers are afraid to speak out about the concerns of our children. So they get behind a desk and say. “Brother Rhynes, Rev. Rose, Mark Georgia here is what goes on in our school. We don’t know. We are not in the school system. Even White teachers come and tell me, and I am a Black man, as black as they come.
The teachers informed me that last year. They “sat for two hours watching a play put together by Valdosta State University Drama Department. They did fundraiser drives, band concerts, boy scouts recruitment, book fair, pep rallies, student duck walk, school pictures, steep testing and it goes on and on….” So how could the president speech waste time, but not this other junk they complained?
Now in conclusion, please listen, please listen.
Not even during America’s brutal days of the Black experience of slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, the lynching crusades, denying Black African American Citizens the right to vote, use a restroom on the highways, eat in a restaurant, called 3/5 of a human being and worse
Yet! {I then pointed to an extremely large 2009 Presidential Calendar (“39 X 27) with all (44) American President Pictures displayed with Barack Obama in the Center}. History records that Black African Americans NEVER disrespected the other forty-three White Male Presidents as is NOW being done to our 44th President of the United States. Then there was an extremely loud applause from the audience.
No! Blacks never criticized these other 43 White Male Presidents! We never did it. Yet our ancestors were brought to these shores as slaves, considered beasts of the field---but we respected the Office of The President of the United States of America. {Loud applause}.
So, how do you think, we feel Mr. Superintendent. How do you think, we feel when you denied these children, attending our inter city school system? “The Superintendent should have been gone!“
GEORGE BOSTON RHYNES
Retired United States Armed Forces Veteran
A concerned citizen and brother of humanity.
