Written by Jesse Bennefield, MBA
Springfield, Massachusetts is the third-largest metropolis in the Commonwealth and only one county to the east of W.E.B Du Bois’ birthplace.
The community is comprised of nearly thirty-thousand African Americans, and is home to many great things: the Basketball Hall of Fame, American International College, and Merriam-Webster dictionaries. Thankfully, much less notably, we have been home to the “African-American Point of View” news magazine since its creation in 2003.
The news magazine is owned by spouses, Frederick and Marjorie Hurst. Frederick operates as publisher and is a Springfield native son, and local Attorney admitted to the Massachusetts Bar in 1982. His legal background is nearly as light as the sourcing in his publication, Frederick almost exclusively uses the news magazine to amplify the endeavors of his personal network, and even more frequently, to endorse the political careers of family and close friends.
Frederick rarely avoids the opportunity to use the publication’s front page to lament a variety of current community and political issues, with these stories usually progressing to contaminate consecutive interior pages.
Chief among familial benefactors of Frederick’s written geriatric ramblings and full-throated endorsements is his son, Justin Hurst, now the former President of Springfield City Council.
Justin was elected to the city council in 2013 and has won each subsequent campaign for reelection since, usually by sizeable margins.
A UVA graduate since the year 2000, with a JD that was earned a few years later, twenty years into the new millennium, Justin is often cast as a ball to Frederick’s chain.
Justin’s wife, Denise, is also a local elected official, who serves on the Springfield School Committee, with great mastery of the subject matter. That said, even non-politically astute readers of the Af-Am POV news magazine can see the flagrant connection between perspectives penned by Frederick in the monthly publication and issues that are taken up or spearheaded by Hurst Junior in the city council’s chamber.
When the local election season rolls around, forget it. Frederick Hurst’s full-page ads supporting his family members might as well read, “VOTE FOR HURST ‘CAUSE DNA AND MY FAMILY’S LEGACY!” Fortunately for an open and free society, many of the candidates endorsed by Frederick via the Af-Am POV last election cycle were not victorious in their individual races—not to say that some of them weren’t the best choices available, but imagine this city if an ethically unsound publisher had the influence to pick and choose elected officials in races where their surname is on the ballot.
That is not to say that I am not often enlightened and educated by many of the professionals featured in the Af-Am POV and their work across various segments of society impacting black people. Instead, what I’m offering is a call to action on behalf of those very talented professionals who work for Af-Am POV, to hold (or at least try), their publisher accountable, should he choose to continue with his monthly tirade against and misrepresentation of, the Springfield African-American community.
The publication does more harm than good when it operates as an extension of the Hurst Family political arm. Perhaps an editorial board where opinions and political endorsements are overseen by a body impartial to the candidates, as to ensure that one man cannot appear to unilaterally hijack the community’s voice to endorse his relative over another candidate vying to represent our neighborhoods.
Of all the problems associated with a single publication proclaiming that it is the unified voice of the African American community, the Af-Am POV adds to the list in perpetuity through its rampant nepotism, lack of diversity, and by functioning as an echo chamber for the thoughts, opinions, and politics of one city family.
No matter whether you prefer a stringent application of journalistic principles or a more liberal one, the Af-Am POV is guaranteed to disappoint both audiences.
Philosophically, one does not need to share W. E. B. Du Bois’ views on the diaspora to understand the inherent harm of the kind of fossilized approach to culture & lifestyle reliably penned throughout the Af-Am POV news magazine. This dangerous monolithic entrenchment begins with the publication’s title and transcends every article, byline, and community story within.
The news magazine, which ostentatiously brandishes “Your Voice, Your Community, Your Point of View” on its cover, is nothing more than Frederick Hurst’s poorly executed effort at dynasty-building.
Nonetheless, the Hurst publication outfit is incredibly dangerous to the Springfield community which faces so many critical challenges and that deserves, yet is continually denied the inclusion, multiculturalism, thought variety, and nuance required to successfully respond to them in effective contemporary ways. Particularly in a city where broad-based multicultural coalitions are emerging with increasing prominence, the century-old consolidated point of view publication is and should be an endangered species in the public forum.
Such may even be why city hall appears to think it can sweepingly generalize us and our challenges and throw bad policy at us, typically only supported by one or two self-proclaimed arbiters of our community.
We all share some of the blame, either we have knowingly or unknowingly contributed to the truncation of our Diaspora’s spectrum, by allowing the Af-Am POV to operate with impunity for so long, claiming to speak with our collective voices.
Personally, I myself feel responsible to a degree — as a black man, I was moved to publicly speak out only after Frederick’s brutal take-down of City Councilor Malo Brown, then a candidate, in the October 1, 2019, Af-Am POV issue. Frederick Hurst’s adaptation of dog whistle racist language to convey an illustration of a dark-skinned, immoral, broken, unethical black male to the Ward 4 electorate one month before the election was repulsive and unforgivable, especially to me, even as I supported Malo’s opponent during that race.
A portion of Frederick’s rambling directive to the community regarding the November 2019 election, which was ultimately rejected at the polls, states, “…he [Malo] violated more laws and rules guiding a candidate behavior than I have ever personally witnessed…stopping voters as they entered the zone where he had no right to be, walking some up to the polling door, escorting some inside and, in one instance at another precinct, actually walking up behind a voter filling out a ballot in a manner that made her feel threatened.”
Frederick…c’mon now Frederick, I’m a few hues darker than the current variation of the Hurst DNA, myself, and I must say — if a person ever described me during a political campaign with the words and in the way you chose to describe Mr. Brown, we’d have a lot more talking to do. Yet I digress. Frederick’s October 1, 2019, attack on Malo Brown, printed in the Af-Am POV, and inaccurately represented as the community’s point of view, clearly was not, as a plurality of votes from Ward 4 (the African American stronghold of the city) was cast for Malo, over the explicit directive by Frederick to vote for his more competent and integral opponent.
I’m often disappointed that something like this publication is even possible in my hometown, or anywhere in America.
The Af-Am POV is unique in that not only does it operate with a failing ideology, but a failing business model as well. At a time when print publications are overhauling their operations nationwide—expanding into digital spaces (as in the case of the publication I’m writing for now), the Af-Am POV is running the presses hot and burning lots of gas to print and transport-free copies of their misrepresenting, culturally appropriating, family journal, and free publication across two New England territories; surprisingly you won’t find an Af-Am POV distribution point in the capitol city & national intelligentsia epicenter—Boston, MA, and considering what the publication lacks that is probably by design.
In many cases, it serves as a Black barber and hair salon interior décor until several months later, when somebody needs an applicator to apply window cleaner to their automobile in the parking lot. It’s pretty clear that the Af-Am POV is as stubborn with its operational strategy as its leader is in his inability to concede that Blacks have dissenting opinions from his.
For nearly two decades, Black voices within the City of Springfield have been sequestered and ultimately misrepresented by a man seemingly obsessed with his preoccupation with a child-like fantasy where he is some sort of periodical power broker, at the community’s expense.
The Af-Am POV is regularly sponsored by the Western Massachusetts services industry that, perhaps unknowingly, inaccurately consolidates nearly thirty-thousand points of view into that of one single man, with each advertising dollar contributed to the Af-Am POV publication.
Unfortunately, local commerce isn’t the only enabler of this destructive and monolithic wannabe propaganda tool, as the city’s governmental apparatus has also allowed the theft of multidimensional racial perspective, by failing to counter the Hurst Family narrative, although otherwise, the Mayor seems to do a good job at ignoring it.
When reflecting on how we got to this current juncture, we’d be remiss if we did not examine the void, or the slow pace of evolution that made the creation and sustainment of the Af-Am POV possible; a now downwardly favored community organizing strategy that told us that single-issue solidarity was how we would achieve progress.
Although that is probably as true today as it was twenty years ago, what the Af-Am POV represents is a gross misinterpretation and bastardization of the single-issue solidarity principle; by presuming that in order to have it, we must also have a single voice or perspective. It is true that we can support the same cause, without having the same voice or perspective regarding it.
It is equally true that we can choose not to support a “black” issue, and still have our black voice matter. For the sake of effective and inclusive government in Springfield, Massachusetts, I hope the Mayor and City Hall along with the organizations who purchase ads in the Af-Am POV, realize the ideological corrective actions already in progress that will decommission platforms such as the Af-Am POV and render all unauthorized vehicles of the same ilk, an embarrassing detour on our march toward racial equity.
Like crawling traffic on the incredibly busy and always-expanding road to progress, a Hurst is sitting in our way.
While I suppose it could be said that the Af-Am POV has contributed to the waking and organizing of black consciousness in Springfield, we now stand at a crucial crossroads where we must decide who we are going to be. Will we haphazardly build our progress on the kind of weak foundational ideologies and old-world customs indicative of the Af-Am POV publication, or will we move forward into this decade with the ideals of our contemporary beliefs of inclusion, multiculturalism, fairness, and equity of opportunity?
Frederick, we can’t tell you not to play with publishing any more than we could have told you not to play with teaching or the law, but if you’re going to, then do it with your voice, not our community’s.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed are determinedly those of the writer and not necessarily the views of the Metro Record Newspaper.
