Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 10, 1992 TAG: 9201100290
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: PHOENIX LENGTH: Medium
RAP VIDEO OUTRAGES ARIZONANS
Arizona is getting a bum rap in a Public Enemy video that calls it a racist state, many residents said Wednesday, denouncing the rappers' performance as destructive and bigoted.Some also called it a disservice to efforts to enact a state holiday honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the video's central theme.
The video, shown nationally for the first time Wednesday, shows state leaders being killed for failing to honor the ardently non-violent civil rights leader with a holiday.
Arizona is the only state without a paid holiday honoring the slain civil rights leader.
The video, "By the Time I Get to Arizona," shows rapper Chuck D leading an armed paramilitary force "on a war mission," interspersed with footage of 1960s civil rights marches.
An actor representing an Arizona governor, though not identified, is shown making a racist speech.
By the end of the video, a senator falls to his office floor after eating poisoned candy and the governor's car is blown up after he steps into it. The killings are interspersed with re-enactments of King's 1968 assassination.
From radio talk shows to the governor's office, Arizonans criticized the video.
"There's nothing healing in this song," said the Rev. Warren Stewart, pastor of First Institutional Baptist Church and a leader of the King holiday movement in Arizona. "It does a disservice to Martin King as well as the efforts of thousands of Arizonans trying to honor his life and legacy."
"Decent people do not listen to this kind of trash," said former Gov. Evan Mecham, who during his first few days in office in 1987 rescinded a King holiday, saying it had been proclaimed illegally. He was impeached for unrelated actions the following year.
Since Mecham abolished the holiday, the issue has convulsed Arizona politics, costing Phoenix the 1993 Super Bowl and the state millions of dollars in convention business.
Mecham eventually declared an unpaid Sunday civil rights day recognizing King, and cities across the state have their own holidays in his honor.
A proposal to create a statewide paid holiday is on the November ballot, and Gov. Fife Symington, who took office in March, campaigned on a promise to press for state recognition of the national King day, the third Monday in January.
At a news conference in New York on Tuesday, Chuck D said the video was part of the rap group's Black Awareness program. He called it "a step in the right direction, black people getting respect and seeing themselves as having some sort of importance."