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BETWEEN THE LINES: Loss of an Original Sista 'Soulja' -- Ode' To Attorney Melanie Lomax
*I got word about 90 minutes after it happened. It seemed too crazy to be real, that my friend, Melanie Lomax, had backed her Jaguar over a cliff. I got the call from a firefighter friend who was on the scene.
And if something crazy like that had happened, the Melanie Lomax I knew have crawled out of the car, flicked off her clothes, said, "Damn brakes," and walked off. That's how tough she was. Melanie didn't let too many things get the best of her.
The small circle of friends I called that I knew were also friends of Melanie, thought so too. They couldn't believe it either, as late as Monday afternoon wondered why they hadn't heard anything and I must've got it wrong. I wish I had got it wrong. Finally, Monday night, the news broke. I guess all of our perceptions of Melanie being "bigger than life" were deflated.
This time, even "the jaws of life" couldn't save her-as she had to be cut out of her car. To all who knew her, Melanie wasn't infallible, but she certainly was impenetrable. You couldn't shake her. And she was more likely to shake you, than you shake her. We loss an original true old guard (within the new guard) soldier last week. To us, she was a true life Sista Soulja and will be missed.
Over the last twenty years, Melanie Lomax's advocacy was legendary. Her civil rights work, indisputable. And her temperament was even more legendary. She had these big hazel eyes that always seemed to stare right through you, as if to say, "Are you sh*tin' me? Cause if you are, I'm going to hand you your head." In the twenty plus years I knew Melanie, I think I saw her smile like ten times, and half those times was after she knew she had just whupped up on somebody. I'm sure she smiled a lot more on the inside-it just wouldn't have been consistent with the persona she established as a fierce, no-nonsense competitor.
Melanie didn't play and was serious about everything she did. If you held a poll of the one person you didn't pick a fight with in Los Angeles during the late 1980s (after Mike Tyson), Melanie would have been in the top three. Whether it was in a courtroom, corporate boardroom, a police hearing or a community forum, you understood where she stood. In a street fight, if you had to pick between three USC linebackers, two gang members and Melanie Lomax, I'd bet dollars to donuts Melanie wouldn't be picked last (and might've been picked first-because she'd have to get everybody else out of jail). The point is, she could play on any level with the same intensity (and loyalty). If she liked you, she was in the fight with you. And if she was against you-you knew you were in a sho' nuff fight. That was Melanie.
In our early civil rights days (we were both Vice Presidents in the LA/NAACP at the same time), we came along when the movement was in transition. The early Post-Civil Rights era was a time when the game had changed, only the civil rights generation didn't recognize it. Reaganomics and Colorblindness hadn't quite played itself out yet-but certainly was in its formulating stages, as we knew by the end of Reagan's first term. Those of us in the second generation of the movement, who came of age after 1975, knew the game had changed, and Melanie was probably one of the first to call out the "new racism," the politics of subvert passive-aggressiveness versus the overt aggressive supremacist politic that we had come to expect. Racism with a smile, a handshake, a check for the chicken dinner and months (even years) of disingenuous negotiations became the politic of the 1980s and 1990s. Second generation civil rights activists had to not only now fight "smilin' whitey" but the new "Dancin' Negro" too, who didn't want to get out of the way because "Mr. Charlie was workin' wit us" and we "youngstas" might "mess it up for everybody." Well, 20 years later, it's pretty messed up (and that's after being forced to do it the Negro's way)
Melanie came to national prominence when she was appointed by the NAACP National Office as the West Coast Fairshare Negotiator. The NAACP National Fairshare Program negotiated the first corporate commitments to spend dollars with black communities that supported their products. McDonalds, Coors, Pacific Bell and the like were some of the first targets and ownership of franchises, distributorships and contracts made black millionaires almost instantly. Many of whom wouldn't even write a $1,000 back to the NAACP (but that's another article). Melanie helped negotiate
many of those early agreements. Being in the room, I saw how she cut to the chase, through the disingenuousness, to get to the real issues. When she wouldn't play their passive-aggressive game, they called her "hostile"-but they never called her wrong. A valuable lesson I learned and used in my advocacy roles in later years during the six years I was in NAACP leadership. I learned the advocacy game from Melanie Lomax. She perfected the new advocacy.
She almost singlehandedly took on the record industry when she challenged Tina Turner, Lionel Richie, Michael Jackson and Prince to hire more black lawyers, accountants, managers and agents. She was removed from the position because the National was moving too slow on the issue, and she got out ahead of them. Melanie didn't wait on nobody. Soon national's conflict became the branch's conflict and politics forced Melanie out of the branch, but she was still one of the LA Branch's biggest supporters, underwriting scholarships for the branch every year after she left. But others knew the value of her brand of advocacy, and when Mayor Tom Bradley had gotten enough of the abuse politic of LAPD police chief, Daryl Gates (and after the community burned half the city down again), he appointed to the police commission with the sole purpose of removing Daryl Gates, and if not for a vote switch by Nate Holden when it came to the city council-it would have happened on her watch as President of the Police Commission. She reinforced her reputation of being fearless in her dissection of the LAPD. And she continued her civil rights advocacy in her law work, as she became the name (behind Johnnie Cochran) people sought out when injustice became a legal matter. There has been no greater soldier, in our generation, in the civil rights game.
I was honored to have soldiered in the trenches with such a soldier. A soldier called Melanie. She is one that won't be easily replaced. I loved Melanie Lomax. May God rest her soul.
Anthony Asadullah Samad is a national columnist, managing director of the Urban Issues Forum (www.urbanissuesforum.com) and author of 50 Years After Brown: The State of Black Equality In America. He can be reached at www.AnthonySamad.com
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