Black Leaders Rebuke Tuberville Stance On Reparations, Crime

BY COREY WILLIAMS

FILE - Homes line Richardson Drive in Africatown on Jan. 29, 2019, in Mobile, Ala. Republican Tommy Tuberville told people Saturday, Oct. 8, 2022, at an election rally in Nevada that Democrats support reparations for the descendants of enslaved people because “they think the people that do the crime are owed that.” His remarks cut deeply for some, especially in and around Africatown, a community in Mobile, Alabama, that was founded by descendants of Africans smuggled in 1860 to the United States aboard a schooner called the Clotilda. (AP Photo/Julie Bennett, File)

As far as Jeremy Ellis is concerned, Republican Tommy Tuberville should know or learn more about the long history and struggles of the Black Alabama residents he represents in the U.S. Senate.

Tuberville told people Saturday at an election rally in Nevada that Democrats support reparations for the descendants of enslaved people because “they think the people that do the crime are owed that.”

His remarks — seen by many as racist and stereotyping Black Americans as people committing crimes — cut deeply for some, especially in and around Africatown, a community in Mobile, Alabama, that was founded by descendants of Africans who were illegally smuggled into the United States in 1860 aboard a schooner called the Clotilda.

The 2019 discovery of the vessel in the muddy waters near Mobile offers the best argument for reparations of some type to the descendants of the enslaved people who survived the long and arduous Atlantic crossing.

“I think that Sen. Tuberville’s comments were misinformed, ignorant in nature and an embarrassment for the state of Alabama,” said Ellis, who now lives in Marietta, Georgia, and is president of the Clotilda Descendants Association.

Before running for the U.S. Senate, Tuberville spent four decades in coaching, including 11 years as the head coach at Auburn University, which is about a three-hour drive northeast of Mobile.

Ellis graduated in 2003 from Auburn’s engineering school and said he attended all of the football team’s home games while at Auburn. Ellis also said he served as a student assistant for the team under Tuberville.

“I think it would suit Sen. Tuberville to visit Africatown,” Ellis said. “It’s an area he is extremely familiar with since he recruited a number of his players there when he was head football coach.”

Tuberville’s remarks about the Democratic Party’s response to perceived rising crime across the nation come just weeks before the Nov. 8 general election, as Republicans seek to regain control of Congress.

“They’re not soft on crime,” Tuberville said of Democrats. “They’re pro-crime. They want crime. They want crime because they want to take over what you got. They want to control what you have. They want reparation because they think the people that do the crime are owed that.”

The first-term senator has not publicly responded to backlash from his words, which have revived the national debate about reparations.

In April 2021, a House panel approved legislation that would create a commission to study the issue. President Joe Biden’s White House said earlier that he backs studying reparation s for Black Americans.

“When they illegally brought my ancestors to the Mobile, Alabama, area a crime was committed,” Ellis told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “And now that we have the actual artifacts, evidence of the crime, I think this is a clear and perfect case study.”

Tuberville’s statements “are the words of a man who is trying to lead a desperation effort to discredit and discount the fact that reparations are owed,” said Darron Patterson, past president of the Clotilda Descendants Association and Ellis’ cousin.

Patterson, who lives in Mobile and says his great-great-grandfather was a slave aboard the Clotilda, criticized Tuberville’s assertions.

“Are you saying the descendants of slaves are the only ones doing crime in this country?” Patterson said. “We’ve got people in Washington that really don’t understand what their job is. We sent you there to do the job. The job is to have America’s best interest at heart. How in the world is America’s best interest at heart when you make a statement that Democrats are for crime and the ones doing the crimes are the ones hollering for reparations?”

Patterson said he plans to meet next week with Tuberville.

Tuberville’s message was directed at the base of MAGA Republicans seeking office and supporters of former President Donald Trump, an ally of Tuberville, according to Ron Daniels, convener of the National African American Reparations Commission.

The remarks present “an Emancipation Proclamation moment” for Biden, a Democrat, to embrace the federal study on reparations and say, “‘I stand on the side of racial justice and racial healing,’” Daniels said.

But Frederick Gooding Jr., an African American studies and honors college professor at Texas Christian University, believes Tuberville was simply “testing the waters.”

“I think this is quite strategic,” Gooding said. “Let’s see where it goes. He’s in a small town in Nevada. We’re a couple years away from the next major national election. He’s leveraging time, pulling some of the rhetoric out piecemeal and in small dosages. Being a successful football coach for so long, strategy literally is his game.”

But what Tuberville said about reparations and crime “doesn’t make any sense,” Gooding added.

“The idea that ‘they want to take over what you got, then control what you have’ stokes fearmongering,” Gooding said. “Then he throws in reparations. Reparations has to do with repairing the human crimes that were committed.”

Data compiled by the FBI shows that crime has slowed in the last year and most crimes are committed by white people, who make up more than 75% of the U.S. population, according to the Census Bureau.

The data was released Oct. 5. It showed violent and property crime generally remained consistent between 2020 and 2021, with a slight decrease in the overall violent crime rate and a 4.3% rise in the murder rate. That’s an improvement over 2020, when the murder rate in the U.S. jumped 29%.

Figures from some of the nation’s largest police departments weren’t included in the FBI report.

An analysis of crime data by The Brennan Center for Justice also shows that the murder rate grew nearly 30% in 2020, rising in cities and rural areas alike.

Williams, based in Detroit, is a member of AP’s Race and Ethnicity team.

Georgia Resident Pleads Guilty To COVID-19 Unemployment Fraud Targeting Several States

USDOJ NEWS TODAY

BIRMINGHAM, ALA. – An Austell, Georgia resident pleaded guilty today to using stolen identities to fraudulently collect more than $4 million in unemployment benefits from the Illinois Department of Employment Security (DES) and attempting to defraud at least five other states, announced U.S. Attorney Prim F. Escalona and United States Secret Service Special Agent in Charge Patrick Davis.

Olushola Adewole Afolabi, 39, of Austell, Georgia pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud before U.S. District Court Judge Abdul K. Kallon. Afolabi’s co-defendant, Olugbeminiyi Aderibigbe, 38, of Powder Springs, Georgia, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in May.

“Defrauding government programs designed to assist struggling Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic is shameful,” said U.S. Attorney Prim Escalona. “The United States Attorney’s Office and our law enforcement partners will aggressively target individuals who used a national pandemic as an opportunity to line their own pockets.”

“The defendants stole millions intended for those suffering during the pandemic and sent the proceeds overseas. Thanks to the hard work of the Northern District of Alabama, these criminals have been brought to Justice,” Office of Deputy Attorney General, Director of COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Kevin Chambers said. “This case and others to come demonstrate the Department’s commitment to aggressively pursue and disrupt transnational actors who exploited pandemic relief programs.”

According to court documents, Afolabi and co-conspirators orchestrated a scheme from September 2020 through July 2021 to defraud the Illinois DES into paying out more than $4 million in unemployment insurance benefits. As part of the scheme, the conspirators filed fraudulent claims using stolen identities of elderly Illinois residents. The conspirators deposited the proceeds of the fraudulent claims into bank accounts opened specifically to perpetrate the fraud. Afolabi and co-conspirators then used the associated debit cards to withdraw cash and purchase money orders from retail stores across the Northern District of Alabama and elsewhere. The conspiracy further laundered the unemployment insurance funds by using the money orders to purchase salvaged automobiles in the United States and ship them to Nigeria.

The maximum penalty for conspiracy to commit wire fraud is 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

U.S. Secret Service investigated the case. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jonathan “Jack” Harrington and Edward J. Canter are prosecuting the case

On May 17, 2021, the Attorney General established the COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force to marshal the resources of the Department of Justice in partnership with agencies across government to enhance efforts to combat and prevent pandemic-related fraud. The Task Force bolsters efforts to investigate and prosecute the most culpable domestic and international criminal actors and assists agencies tasked with administering relief programs to prevent fraud by augmenting and incorporating existing coordination mechanisms, identifying resources and techniques to uncover fraudulent actors and their schemes, and sharing and harnessing information and insights gained from prior enforcement efforts. For more information on the department’s response to the pandemic, please visit https://www.justice.gov/coronavirus.

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US Catholic Clergy Shortage Eased By Recruits from Africa

The Rev. Athanasius Abanulo introduces newborn, Nathalia Perez, to the congregation at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church on Sunday, Dec. 12, 2021, in Wedowee, Ala. Originally from Nigeria, Abanulo is one of numerous international clergy helping ease a U.S. priest shortage by serving in Catholic dioceses across the country. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)

BY KWASI GYAMFI ASIEDU

WEDOWEE,  ALA. (ASSOCIATED PRESS)--The Rev. Athanasius Chidi Abanulo — using skills honed in his African homeland to minister effectively in rural Alabama— determines just how long he can stretch out his Sunday homilies based on who is sitting in the pews.

Seven minutes is the sweet spot for the mostly white and retired parishioners who attend the English-language Mass at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in the small town of Wedowee. “If you go beyond that, you lose the attention of the people,” he said.

For the Spanish-language Mass an hour later, the Nigerian-born priest — one of numerous African clergy serving in the U.S. — knows he can quadruple his teaching time. “The more you preach, the better for them,” he said.

As he moves from one American post to the next, Abanulo has learned how to tailor his ministry to the culture of the communities he is serving while infusing some of the spirit of his homeland into the universal rhythms of the Mass.

“Nigerian people are relaxed when they come to church,” Abanulo said. “They love to sing, they love to dance. The liturgy can last for two hours. They don’t worry about that.”

During his 18 years in the U.S., Abanulo has filled various chaplain and pastor roles across the country, epitomizing an ongoing trend in the American Catholic church. As fewer American-born men and women enter seminaries and convents, U.S. dioceses and Catholic institutions have turned to international recruitment to fill their vacancies.

The Diocese of Birmingham, where Abanulo leads two parishes, has widened its search for clergy to places with burgeoning religious vocations like Nigeria and Cameroon, said Birmingham Bishop Steven Raica. Priests from Africa were also vital in the Michigan diocese where Raica previously served.

“They have been an enormous help to us to be able to provide the breadth and scope of ministry that we have available to us,” he said.

Africa is the Catholic church’s fastest-growing region. There, the seminaries are “fairly full,” said the Rev. Thomas Gaunt, director of Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, which conducts research about the Catholic church.

It’s different in the U.S. where the Catholic church faces significant hurdles in recruiting home-grown clergy following decades of declining church attendance and the damaging effects of widespread clergy sex abuse scandals.

Catholic women and married men remain barred from the priesthood; arguments that lifting those bans would ease the priest shortage have not gained traction with the faith’s top leadership.

“What we have is a much smaller number beginning in the 1970s entering seminaries or to convents across the country,” Gaunt said. “Those who entered back in the ‘50s and ’60s are now elderly and so the numbers are determined much more by mortality.”

From 1970 to 2020, the number of priests in the U.S. dropped by 60%, according to data from the Georgetown center. This has left more than 3,500 parishes without a resident pastor.

Abanulo oversees two parishes in rural Alabama. His typical Sunday starts with an English-language Mass at Holy Family Catholic Church in Lanett, about 125 miles (200 kilometers) from Birmingham along the Alabama-Georgia state line. After that, he is driven an hour north to Wedowee, where he celebrates one Mass in English, another in Spanish.

“He just breaks out in song and a lot of his lectures, he ties in his boyhood, and I just love hearing those stories,” said Amber Moosman, a first-grade teacher who has been a parishioner at Holy Family since 1988.

For Moosman, Abanulo’s preaching style is very different from the priests she’s witnessed previously. “There was no all of a sudden, the priest sings, nothing like that…It was very quiet, very ceremonial, very strict,” she said. “It’s a lot different now.”

Abanulo was ordained in Nigeria in 1990 and came to the U.S. in 2003 after a stint in Chad. His first U.S. role was as an associate pastor in the diocese of Oakland, California, where his ministry focused on the fast-growing Nigerian Catholic community. Since then, he has been a hospital chaplain and pastor in Nashville, Tennessee, and a chaplain at the University of Alabama.

Amid the U.S. clergy shortage, religious sisters have experienced the sharpest declines, dropping 75% since 1970, according to the Georgetown center.

When Maria Sheri Rukwishuro was told she was being sent from the Sisters of the Infant Jesus order in Zimbabwe to West Virginia to work as a missionary nun, she asked her mother superior, “Where is West Virginia?”

She was scared, worrying about the unknowns.

“What kind of people am I going to? I’m just a Black nun coming to a white country,” Rukwishuro told The Associated Press from Clarksburg, West Virginia, where she has been teaching religious education to public and Catholic school students since arriving in 2004.

Rukwishuro vividly remembers that at her introduction, a little girl walked to her and “rubbed her finger on my fingers all the way, then she looked at her finger and she smiled but my heart sank…She thought I was dirty.” Despite that, Rukwishuro says most people have been very welcoming. She’s now a U.S. citizen and says, “It feels like home.”

One of her first culture shocks was an overnight snowfall. “I really screamed. I thought it was the end of the world,” she said. “Now I love it. I do my meditations to that.”

During their integration into American life, it is commonplace for newly arrived clergy to face culture shocks.

For Sister Christiana Onyewuche of Nigeria, a hospital chaplain in Boston administering last rites for the dying, it was cremation. She recalled thinking, “Like really? …How can they burn somebody? I can’t even imagine.”

She came to the U.S. 18 years ago and previously served as the president of African Conference of Catholic Clergy and Religious, a support group for African missionaries serving in the U.S.

Onyewuche said African clergy can face communication challenges with the Americans they serve. To address this, many dioceses have offered training to soften accents, she said. Abanulo, who went through the training in Oakland, says it helped him slow down his speech and improve his pronunciations.

Abanulo, who moved to Alabama in 2020, admits he was initially apprehensive about his latest posting, which meant exchanging a comfortable role as university chaplain for two rural parishes.

“People were telling me ‘Father, don’t go there. The people there are rednecks,’” he said.

But after a year, and a warm reception, he says he now tells his friends, “There are no rednecks here. All I see are Jesus necks.”

Associated Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment through The Conversation U.S. The AP is solely responsible for this content.