By Leonard E. Colvin Chief Reporter New Journal and Guide “All my life I’ve been sick and tired. Now I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired. We have been waitin’ all our lives, and still gettin’ killed, still gettin’ hung, still gettin’ beat to death. Now we’re tired waitin’!” Fannie Lou Hamer, a Mississippi activist, was speaking out forcefully here during the 1964 Democratic Party Convention where she and her associates were unwelcome. Black Lives Matter (BLM), National Black Coalition for Justice, the National Action Network, the National Council of Negro Women, the Black Panther Party, the NAACP, SCLC, and The National Urban League. These and other organizations are involved in activism to give voice to Black economic and social equality and justice. Hamer’s statement exemplified her view of the frustration often confronted by Black activists. The oldest of these – the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) –  was formed in 1913 by Black and white activists to confront Jim Crow Segregation. Nearly 100 years later, in 2012, BLM was created in the wake of the death of Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old, killed by a white security guard in Sanford, Florida. BLM’s mission was heightened after George Floyd died in May 2020 under the knee of a white policeman in Minneapolis. Each generation of Blacks in America has witnessed individuals or legions of men and women, marching, speaking, and raising funds to support the aim of resisting and fighting white institutional racism and oppression. Such activism has been met too often by white political and economic opposition and cultural indifference. But Black practices of resistance are undeterred. *** During the direct action fight against Jim Crow, civil rights leaders and organizations challenged white institutional pushback in the face of death, physical abuse, and efforts to weaken their credibility or operations by state and federal agencies such as the FBI. Black activists confronted white southern politicians applying “Massive Resistance” against educational desegregation in the 50s. Today, activists are resisting renewed applications of similar measures against the teaching of Black culture and historic oppression. Whites, activists say, are driven by fear of the weakening or replacement of White Christian values and economic power. Dr. Tommy Booger is currently the acting Dean of Liberal Arts at Norfolk State University. He wrote “Free Blacks in Norfolk, Virginia, 1790-1860: The Darker Side of Freedom.” Bogger noted that even enslaved Blacks in Colonial America exhibited activism in subtle fashions to resist white oppression. He noted examples of free or enslaved Blacks, with the help of sympathetic whites, who sued in the courts or petitioned the Virginia legislature to provide a license to give them some exceptions so they could participate in various trades and jobs. Ship pilot, Henry Johnson, for example, filed a petition to secure a license to guide ships along the Chesapeake Bay. It helped him, a son and grandson to continue in th