FBI goes fishing again

Historically, Black leaders have been targeted for destruction by the U.S. government.  From Black nationalists like Marcus Garvey to civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr., Blacks have been the crosshairs of the government since we've assumed political offices.

The government wanted Chicago's first Black Mayor Harold Washington and sent a convicted killer to entrap him, but it didn't work.  They wanted Washington, D.C., Mayor Marion Barry out of the way, and they were successful for a moment.

Whether they are threatening or not, the fact that the political leader is Black is reason enough to keep him or her destabilized--thus keeping him or her from consolidating power--by harassing and/investigating them.

Atlanta's Mayor Bill Campbell seems to have attracted the government's attention.  Recent reports say that the government is snooping around Mr. Campbell's friends asking them to give up--or perhaps create--some dirt on the mayor.

Once such friend, Atlanta Civil Service Review Board Chairman Fred Prewitt, was dragged in by authorities, according to the mayor, and told to give up some incriminating evidence on the mayor.  When the 72-year-old Prewitt could not give them what they wanted, the government indicted Prewitt on three counts of income tax fraud.

Two weeks later Prewitt's wife died of a massive stroke, more than likely due to the added stress placed on her family by the unjustified FBI probe.

Incredibly, the FBI also did not inform Mayor Campbell about a $20,000 offer made by Michael Childs, a strip club owner, to injure Mayor Campbell.  Mr. Child's reportedly was later charged in a federal indictment with paying to have three competing strip clubs torched.

Over the last quarter century, according to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a Washington think tank, 15 percent of the 70 congressmen who have faced criminal charges were Black and minorities.  That's four time their percentage in Congress.

And with the changing demographics of the country, Black and Latino office holders---by virtue of their increased numbers in population of their community--can become even more threatening as the possibility for united efforts will allow them to take power in many instances in the future.

So it's clear that Black elected officials will continue  to get the government's attention far more frequently than their white counterparts.  Our politicians must keep the FBI at bay by being the moral and upright politicians fighting for the little man that they promised they would be when they campaigned for office.