Book Review—

THE LAWS, by Plato (Penguin Group, New York: 1970, 1975) with translation and introduction by Trevor J. Saunders, Preface by Richard Stalley

By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman

Sunday, July 22, 2012

I bought this book on a whim from a now-defunct Borders Bookstore several years ago. It was on sale. So, I scooped it up, along with another by Cicero, with the noble intention of possibly enriching my solo law practice, by their utilization.

Ha! Such illusions and idealism!

Plato’s The Laws was about as useful to a "grind’m out" lawyer—like me--as a swift kick in the knee!

However, to a student of ancient history and philosophy, also like me, it is a marvel and a masterpiece! Of course, I only had time to finish it after a stroke in 2010 peremptorily,  prematurely, now permanently, terminated my 33 year law practice in Kansas City, Missouri.

I had read that Plato had studied in Ancient Egypt, as had countless other Greeks. That African nation's primordial, civilizing greatness is yet reified in stone pyramids and megaliths, mathematics, navigation, astronomy, philosophy, music, medicine, art, and agriculture. That united nation--land of the red and white "double crown"-- was already flourishing well over 2000 years before the existence or founding of "Greece," that collection and loose confederation of independent city-states and islands. I was curious to read what Plato had to say about that iconic nation of blacks.  It was formed by alluvial, annual Nile siltation, washed downstream, like its people, from inner Africa. Thus, its proper name, is "Kemet," or "KMT--sans vowels--meaning "land of the blacks."

Plato (427-347 BC) did not disappoint! Writing about "Artistic Censorship in Egypt," he states: "…Long ago, apparently, they realized the truth of the principle we are putting forward only now, that the movements and tunes which the children of the state are to practice in their rehearsals must be good ones. They compiled a list of them according to style and displayed it in their temples. Painters and everyone else who represent movements of the body of any kind were restricted to these forms; modification and innovation outside this traditional framework were prohibited, and are prohibited even today, both in this field and the arts in general. If you examine their art on the spot, you will find that ten thousand years ago (and I’m not speaking loosely: I mean literally ten thousand), paintings and reliefs were produced that are no better and no worse than those of today, because the same artistic rules applied in making them." Pp.47-48.

Then, this fabled teacher of Aristotle, who attended Plato’s Academy in Athens, continues his description of education in Egypt in his chapter entitled "Mathematics."

Ironically, Plato is credited by some so-called authorities in "the West" with practically founding mathematics, a canard he never asserts! He writes:

"Total ignorance over an entire field is never dangerous or disastrous; much more damage is done when a subject is known intimately and in detail, but has been improperly taught…So we should insist that gentlemen should study each of these subjects to at least the same level as very many children in Egypt, who acquire such knowledge at the same time they learn to read and write. First, lessons in calculation have been devised for tiny tots to learn while they are enjoying themselves at play: they divide up a given number of garlands or apples…they make uses of elementary arithmetic an integral part of their pupils’ play, so they get a useful introduction to the art of marshaling, leading and deploying an army, or running a household; and in general they make them more alert and useful persons. Next, the teacher puts the children on to measuring lengths, surfaces and solids—a study which rescues them from the deep-rooted ignorance, at once comic and shocking, that all men display in this field…I blushed not only for myself, but for Greeks in general." P.267

Plato, the famed student of and successor to Socrates, who was condemned to death by 500-man jury by poisoning (hemlock) for teaching "foreign ideas" to the youth of Athens, curiously disparages "the sons of Old Father Nile" who were less hospitable to "aliens" than their forebears had been of old. P. 464. Such a nostalgic honorific--"Old Father Nile"--bespeaks a familial homage to, a profound affection for, and a deep familiarity with this African land: its evolving customs and trends relating to foreigners and aliens, now being much less welcomed than before.

There is so much, much more to the book than I have excised and highlighted here! It is rich! One can easily see how "Plato stands with Socrates and Aristotle as one of the shapers of the whole intellectual tradition of the West," both sacred and secular, as book’s preface asserts.

Read it and rejoice, as I have done!

Plato spoke and wrote the truth. He had no reason to lie. It is the latter-day racial ideologues who lie, trying to support their contrived doctrine of "white supremacy." Such "white supremacy" would have been an absurd doctrine to Plato, given his admiration for the black founders of ancient Egypt's arts and sciences of which he wrote and from which he imbibed so tellingly!

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"The two great religions, Judaism and Christianity represent somewhat divergent defections from the ancient occult heritage emanating from the shades of remote antiquity, but transmitted out of historical darkness into historical day by the ancient Egyptians. There may not be scholarly unanimity on the question of the primeval divine illumination from which came our revered holy scriptures, but th...

ere is a weight of academic opinion that the wisdom emanated from Egypt, or at least that Egypt transmitted it to such nations as Greece and Palestine from some remoter source...it is almost a universal tradition that the flowering of philosophical genius that gave the world the Platonic wisdom in Greece was fostered by contact with the Egyptian culture." -- Alvin Boyd Kuhn, A Rebirth for Christianity, pp. 9-10 (Quest Books, Theosophical Publishing House, Wheaton, IL, Madras, India: 2005)

THE 'DARK ENERGY' OF MY PEOPLE

by Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman

We are still here. Through it all, we are still here.

"We" are the descendents of African slaves. "Here" is the United States of America.

"Through" is the preposition that characterizes the tough slough of our sojourn, our "pilgrims' journey." We have been through a litany of tests, challenges, tribulations that have killed others.

Take "yellow fever." We were healing white Philadelphians in 1793, during that then-Capitol city's yellow fever plague, while this young nation's white leadership fled in terror for their lives. "We," in this instance being the "Free African Society," forerunner of the African Methodist Episcopal church.

It was founded in 1787, the same year the United States of America was founded, by Richard Allen, Absalom Jones, and others: all free, self-reliant, devout leaders, one of whom, the treasurer, was a white Quaker. Though thousands of whites died, during the "yellow fever" peril, many more thousands of whites were saved by our nursing, feeding and caring. Meanwhile, a significant number self-sacrificing blacks who had nursed, fed, cared for, washed, and buried the dead whites, also died, themselves. Certain white physicians had falsely claimed that all blacks were immune to the disease, doubtless in an effort to forestall blacks' flight from Philadelphia as its wealthy, leading whites had done. This contention may have been partly due to the practice of "yellow fever" inoculation invented in West Africa, ancestral home of many slaves. Inoculation was then unknown to European medicine. Such immunizations worked only for those who had been inoculated, not for all blacks as alleged!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_African_Society

Richard Allen

Absalom Jones

"We" received no apparent reward, for this great altruistism. Certainly, we did not receive the promised legal equality, like the right to vote. This blessed promise was a carrot so often dangled before our credulous, sedulous eyes from the forked "white" stick of distress and distraint.

These broken promises of legal equality accumulated, fueling unrest, until the "Dark Energy" of Black people irrupted, most dramatically, in the Civil War, and 100 years later in the Civil Rights of the 1960's.

Faith in God is the cosmological constant of black life in America, from its founding through the present. This faith abides and abounds whether expressed denominationally or secularly enmeshed in the idioms of popular culture.  Slave songwriters sung of it in their spirituals, from which the other major forms of black musical expression primarily derived. He--God--"made a way out of no-way, over and over again!" This insipid physical cosmology is the source and it is the soul of black folks.

It is what is meant by "Dark Energy"  whose complement is "Dark Matter." Both being symbiotic coefficients of God's divine light! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_cosmology

"This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine!"

 

 

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SOMETHING'S "FISHY"

SOMETHING'S "FISHY"

by Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman


Jesus never wrote a book.

Yet, he is the author and finisher of our faith.

Hebrews 12:2--"Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God."

Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu never bore any children.

Yet, she is "Mother Teresa of Calcutta" (26 August 1910 – 5 September 1997).
An Albanian-born, Roman Catholic nun, by citizenship, an Indian, awaiting sainthood.

 Man has no wings.

Yet, he flies higher, faster, longer than any bird.

Man has no any gills. Yet, he swims deeper, faster, longer than any fish.

Jesus compares himself to birds and to fish. Thereby, "the only begotten son of God" becomes "the Son of Man."

Matthew 8:20--

Jesus replied, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head."

Matthew 12:40--

For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

There's a marvel and a mystery in all of this! There's a marvel and a mystery in all of this!

At the risk of appearing "flighty," something appears to be down right "fishy!"

An "author" without a book. A "mother" without a child. Man out-flying birds. Man out-swimming fish. Jesus simultaneously both "the son of man" and "the only begotten son of God."

John 3:16.-- "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life".

Given these mysteries, one might suspect, or even fervently "believe," that eternal life is in store somehow for other sons and daughters of man!

Amen.

Carthage in the context of black history

Carthage was founded by the Phoenician-descended Queen Dido ("Alyssa"), who was exiled from Tyre in a political dispute. The
Phoenicians founded Tyre and Sidon and were famous merchants, traders and navigators, who taught the Greeks their alphabet. The Phoenicians were Canaanites whose god was Baal. Canaan was a son of Ham, and a brother of Cush (Ethiopia), Mizraim (Egypt) and Phut (Libya--north Africa) of Genesis 10. Carthage was the home of Hannibal, the military genius, who crossed the Alps and the Pyrenees mountains with war elephants to invade Italty, harrassing it for 15 years, before being recalled home to defend it from counter-attack by Scipio Africanus. "Punic" was their language, (short-hand for "Phoenician") and 3 "Punic Wars" were fought with Rome. Augustine of Hippo, Father of Theology, was among the last of the great Punic speakers, which language is now extinct. Simon of Cyrene, who was compelled to bear the cross of Christ, was also from this region of North Africa.

“SQUARE”: SOCIOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS ON THE NON- “HIP” SOCIAL REJECT

“SQUARE”: SOCIOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS ON THE NON- “HIP” SOCIAL REJECT

09/18/12

By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman

Back in the 1950's and 1960's, to be called a “square” was considered to be an insult.

“Hip” was the thing to be! “Hip” enabled admission into, and retention inside of, “the in-crowd:” a song and an idiom popularized by Dobie Gray, a popular “soul” singer of that era.

A definition of a “square” was never, however, precisely articulated by its endorsers or its traducers. Neither was its provenance nor its origin entirely certain. By inference and implication, its definition was deduced to be the opposite of “hip,” whatever that happened to be, as it was also being undefined.

“Hip” and “square” were both overarching, black cultural memes in that era, however. They continue to accrete: culturally, sociologically, pedagogically, still essentially undefined, until now.

For example, “Detroit Red,” Malcolm Little a/k/a Malcolm X a/k/a El Hajj Malik-El Shabazz got his hair “conked,” processed, chemically straightened, to avoid being “square” in the 1940's. He also began to wear zoot suits; to steal and burglarize homes and businesses in order to be deemed a hustler, with money to flash and women to sport. Prison, his brother Reginald's love, and his initiation of his self-help reading program in the dictionary and other works began him on a trail of rehabilitation. While he was on this path, he was converted to the Nation of Islam, lead by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.

Malcolm X's Boston-based, “Detroit Red” cultural caricature of black manhood stands in stark contrast to this Omaha, Nebraska, native's former straight-A high school background. It also vilifies his father, a Baptist preacher, murdered by racist whites for espousing the philosophy of Marcus Mosiah Garvey. Malcolm's archetypal story is brilliantly set forth in The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley.

In an effort to remain “hip” several well-known musicians pursued self-destructive lifestyles, which culminated in death from overdosing on drugs or alcohol, or from complications associated therewith. Prominent among them were Charlie “Yardbird” Parker and Billie “Lady-day” Holliday both prominent in the 1930's and 1940's. Homicides afflicted Sam Cooke and Marvin Gaye in the 1960's and 1970's. Tupac Shakur, Biggie Smalls and others, all homicides, followed in the 1980's through 2000's.

Whatever “hip” may be, however defined, its sequel is too often tragedy.

It is also virulently contagious. It took root and spread rapidly in the North as well as in the South in rural areas, suburban areas, and in urban areas. In this context, the cultural hegira of blacks from the South to the North in the late 1870's and continuing in surging waves through the 1950's, in search of economic opportunity and educational parity, played a key role in this “hip” vs. “square” dichotomy.

Those rural migrants were branded as “square” by their pseudo-urbane brothers and sisters, who were themselves “fresh from the country,” give or take a generation. Rather than to be teased or ostracized socially, these new emigrants assumed the lingo, lifestyles and values of their “hip” northern kindred.

Thus core family values imported from the South like religion, education, discipline, and hard work slowly dissipated. These core values enabled these rural emigrants to survive white-hate oppression and discrimination of the post-Reconstruction South. There official and unofficial white terrorism was overt and open, a way of life and legal! In the North, it was covert and disguised, dissembled behind platitudes about freedom and equal opportunity. Yet, the police and courts were just as bad, effectively.

Relaxing their grip once they arrived in the North, some families were dissolved by the acid of “hip,” dissolute lifestyles, in which: education was not valued; religion was “old-fashioned;” discipline was either totally absent or wantonly abused; hard work—any work—was lacking, and families dissolved.

Meanwhile, the “squares,” went to church, finished high school or college, got married and raised families; disciplined their children and worked hard, sometimes working 2 or more jobs to preserve their families. “Squares” also tended to avoid jail and early graves brought on by dissolute lifestyles.

This “hip”/ “square” over-generalization continues to be this day over 140 years since the Black Exodus from the South began in 1879. This dichotomy manifests in many evils. Among them is black-on-black crime, extremely high abortion rates, incarceration ratios that lead the world, unenviable education deficits, religions that conform rather than transform, unemployment and underemployment and an unreasonable expectation that the government will save them, somehow.

Black troops saved the government, the Union, from utter destruction in the Civil War! Remember? Therefore, how can government, the anomalous salvee, possibly save blacks, the anomalous salvor, from themselves, from their own “hip” lifestyle choices? What was once “hip,” has now “hopped,” across the racial divide and even across national divides, becoming globally known now as “hip-hop.”

Governments can and must help. As they now and have historically helped banks, investors, farmers, industry, unions, non-profit by domestic, tax and fiscal policies. It must do likewise for those it was once subjugated, terrorized and oppressed. But governments cannot save! Only people can save themselves.

Once people squarely face and squarely accept self-responsibility, things will change for the better for themselves Until then, not!

Geometrically, a “square” is a parallelogram with 4 right angles and 4 equal sides. A parallelogram is a quadrilateral with two pairs of parallel sides. Parallel lines are lines in the same plane that never intersect. A quadrilateral is a polygon with 4 sides. A polygon is a closed two-dimensional figure with 3 or more sides. A right angle is an angle that has a measure of 90 degrees. “Squaring” a number is when that number is multiplied by itself. Example: 7 x 7 = 49; 10 x 10 = 100. (Note: all definitions used in this paragraph are taken from Math-E-Magic: 169 Astonishing Numerical Challenges, by Raymond Blum, Adam Hart-Davis, Bob Longe, and Derrick Niederman, “Glossary,” (Sterling Innovation, an imprint of Sterling Publishing Co., Inc. New York/London: 2010)).

A “square” is complete and self contained, comprising 360 degrees, unlike its more “hip” triangle kindred which only comprises 180 degrees! Thus, any square contains any two triangles. Or, put esoterically, even in a “right” triangle, the area of the hypotenuese is equal to the combined areas of the squares of its other two sides triangular sides. Hence, a² + b² = c² otherwise known as the Pythagorean theorem obtains. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoras%27_theorem.

So, “squares” of the world, look up! Colloquially, a square deal is a fair deal. Nutritionally, a square meal is a balanced meal. Since, “square” connotes balance, fairness, and “right,” “Hip,” its opposite, necessarily connotes imbalance, unfairness and wrong. You're twice the better of your “hip” cousins!

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“BATTLE OF ISLAND MOUND, MISSOURI”: MEMORIALIZING THE FIRST BLACK TROOPS TO FIGHT IN THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR

Thursday, September 13, 2012

By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman

“BATTLE OF ISLAND MOUND, MISSOURI”: MEMORIALIZING THE FIRST BLACK TROOPS TO FIGHT IN THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR

AUTHOR’S AFFILIATIONS:

Itinerant Elder, African Methodist Episcopal Church; former Pastor, Brooks Chapel A.M.E. Church, Butler, Missouri; former Second Vice President, Civil War Round Table of Kansas City; Founder, The Amen Society; Attorney, Missouri Bar (Inactive); Member, Association for the Study of African American Life and History; first Chaplain, National Bar Association; Founder, former Historian and Guardian, Section on Law and Religion, National Bar Association; Former Assistant United States Attorney; Former Publisher, THE NILE REVIEW newsletter; former instructor, “Black History: The Sacred Secret,” Communiversity Program, University of Missouri at Kansas City; former Parliamentarian, Jackson County Bar Association; Member, Prudence Lodge, Prince Hall Masons.

On October 28-29, 1862, the First Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry fought and won the profoundly historic battle now modestly known to history as the “Skirmish at Island Mound, Missouri.”

These unusual troops dislodged a twice-larger contingent of Confederate irregulars from “Hog Island,” a bivouac in the Osage River, 8 miles southwest of Butler, in Bates County, Missouri. From it, rebels had launch murderous attacks into Kansas, a newly admitted “free” state that had fought a “Border War” with Missouri since 1954, when the Kansas-Nebraska Act was enacted. That Act brought forth many names to the fore like John Brown and U.S. Senator James Lane, who formed this incredible unit of freedom fighters. This mélange of men-- escaped slaves, freed men and one Cherokee Indian and his “slaves” plus their white officers-- routed their enemy in a battle involving cavalry raids, infantry maneuvers, smoke, fire, and hand-to-hand combat, ending in retreat by the defeated rebels, whose leader said “They fought like tigers!”

This was the first battle in which black troops had fought in the American Civil War, albeit under the flag of Kansas. These men were organized and armed by Kansas’ U.S. Senator, James Lane, prior to President Abraham Lincoln’s issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, and prior to Lincoln's desperate war measure finally authorizing the muster of black troops into Union forces later that year. Their battle field success, coupled with embarrassing Union losses elsewhere, as graphically emblazoned on the nation's awareness by Harper's Weekly, validated the need for black troops to fight and to win “The Freedom War,” as slaves termed the so-called “Civil War.” Or, the Union would be no more!

This historic battle banished the white supremacists’ lie that black troops could not fight and would not fight for their own freedom. Indeed blacks' fight for freedom assumed many forms and dated back to their initial importation into Virginia in 1619 as “servents.” Escaping slavery individually was the primary means of obtaining freedom; purchasing one's own freedom was another. Yet, armed revolt was always simmering just beneath the placid veneer of peace.

The bloody “Stono Rebellion” in South Carolina in 1739 led the way! It was led by a literate slave named “Jemmy” from Angola, resulting in the deaths of 22 whites and 44 blacks. Later, free man, Denmark Vesey, who had purchased his freedom from lottery ticket winnings, conceived an African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church-based plot in 1822, in Charleston, using Bible study, and the church's class-leader structure, as cover. Vesey's elaborate plan was betrayed by a fearful slave, who warned his master to get away; he, in turn, alerted the militia who hung dozens of slave, and who shut down the A.M.E. Church there till after the Civil War.

In Virginia, Gabriel Prosser, a 25-year old blacksmith and preacher in 1800, also organized about 1,000 slaves to revolt in Richmond. But, his plan was frustrated by a sudden, violent thunderstorm storm, which washed away bridges and roads delaying its August 30 commencement. But, like the others, it too was betrayed by a slave before it could be reorganized. Then, in 1831, the greater liberator, Nat Turner, a slave and a self-taught preacher, rose up and slew over 60 white slave masters in Southampton Virginia, near New Jerusalem. This bold stroke for freedom sent shock waves across the nation, especially as “Prophet” Nat Turner, who quoted scripture and saw hieroglyphics written in blood, eluded capture for 3 weeks after his rebellion was quelled.

In October 1999, tiny Brooks Chapel A.M.E. Church of Butler, Missouri, located in Bates County, Larry Delano Coleman, Pastor, hosted a community-wide celebration to commemorate the memory of the 8 men who died near Butler, during the Battle of Island Mound. The battle's occurrence was unknown to the locals of both races, being lost to history and lore. At that celebration, money was raised for the erection of a monument to those heroic fallen soldiers, which was superintended by the Amen Society, a benevolent corporation created by attorney/pastor Coleman, and run by his church members.

Finally, on October 20, 2008, the bronze statue of a fully armed black soldier, designed by sculptor, Joel Randall, of Edmund, Oklahoma, was unveiled on the north side of the court house square in Butler to citizens amid great public fanfare and political acclaim! Uniformed First Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry re-enactors from Oklahoma marched and drilled. Dr. Jimmy Johnson, a descendent of an original First Kansan, and a history teacher, gave background about the unit. A parade was hosted; Pastor Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman preached a sermon entitled “Angels Rolled the Stone Away.” The anointed sculptor, Joel Randall described his involvement in, and inspiration for his beautiful life-like design. A free dinner was hosted by Butler-area churches on the Fairgrounds serving to all comers. Proclamations were read by city, county and local museum officials. Walter Wright, then-President of the Amen Society spoke in tribute to Elnora Burton, the Amen Society's original President, whose name appears on the statue, who had died a few years earlier. Two U.S. Congressmen, Emanuel Cleaver II and Ike Skelton, appropriately framed the national importance of the dedication and complimented the Butler cooperative spirit exhibited throughout the festivities.

More than civic importance, however, the statue's erection and dedication, was of great spiritual and religious importance for the entire region and for country! Pastor Coleman learned about the battle from Noah Andre Trudeau's book, LIKE MEN OF WAR: Black Troops in the Civil War 1862-1865, while visiting Ft. Scott, Kansas' federal bookstore. When he saw Butler, Missouri, on a map in the front of that book, he was shocked, as he was ignorant of anything historic about Butler, notwithstanding its border with Kansas. His “official” church members—all 3 of them—were also ignorant of such. So, they all resolved to acclaim this victory and to erect a notable tribute to these now, apparently, forgotten men, “in Jesus' holy name,”totally undeterred by their laughably small numbers!

It turns out that these fallen men, these heroes were not forgotten.

Unbeknown to Pastor Coleman, or to the members of his flock, Chris Tabor, a white ex-Marine and cartographer, then a resident of Butler, was researching the history of the battle and was writing prolifically about it. Amazingly, a rash of articles written by Tabor, along with illustrations and photographs appeared in the Butler weekly newspaper, The News-Xpress, on the same weekend as the Amen Society's celebration at City Hall, which was attended by over 300 people! That October 1999 event was when and where these two passionately Christian men, Coleman and Tabor, met and became fast friends, neither knowing about the others' efforts or existence.

Eventually, Tabor led Coleman out to the Toothman Farm, where the battle was fought, and where “Fort Africa,” as the sable soldiers' had named their fortifications. Irorically, it was erected, on the abandoned farm of inveterate, Confederate rebel, John Toothman. Tabor doggedly pursued recognition for the site as an historic battleground with state and federal authorities. Coleman, meanwhile, accompanied Realtor Bob Baer on site visits to adjoining properties in the expectation that “the Lord will make a way, somehow” through purchase or otherwise, for the famous battleground to be secured.

Further deepening the mystery, the State of Missouri, which had long resisted according sorely-sought recognition to the “Battle of Island Mound,” purchased 40 acres of the Toothman Farm, including the “Fort Africa” site. The state constructed thereon a visitor's center, and made it a part of its state park system under the Department of Natural Resources. The State's dedication services are October 26-27, 2012, in Butler, and at the site, now deeply hallowed in history.

This paper recounts for posterity the evolutionary process of this observance from the perspective of one, central to its execution.

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CONTACT INFORMATION:

Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman

LCOLE81937@AOL.COM

THE COLORED GREEN TREE: an admonition and plea

My short, 24-page, novelette, THE COLORED GREEN TREE, is written for and about Negroes who won't read, who don't read, or who studiously refuse to read! That non-reading fetish is the root cause of our present malaise, our anomie as a people. So these inveterate non-readers (ask former "black" bookstore owners) probably won't read my book, either! 

 

The first "big word" they encounter, over two-syllables, will alienate them! Should the more adventurous ones, adventitiously, discover a dictionary, online, or else where, and bother to look up that "big word;" then, the book's ostensible subject matter, collard greens, "soul food," will surely estrange even them! Collard greens are "slave food" to these sham-"conscious" or faux-"enlightened" folks! Never mind collard greens' that their ancestors ate them, gladly and righteously! Totally irrelevant to these "happy-nappy" folks is collard greens' unassailable nutritional value, ease of planting, care and harvest, and still reasonable costs!

This book was not specifically written for or about white people.  Mention of them is incidental to their celebration of, or to their ignorance of, collard greens. White people will probably be--if they have not already been--my book's predominant purchasers. Langston Hughes, openly acknowledges in THE BIG SEA, his first of two autobiographies, that whites are, and have been historically, the principal puchasers of all so-called "black" and non-black books, including his! This fact he notes with bittersweet irony, bordering on humor. 

There is a direct correlation, 1 to 1, between those who read and those who lead, throughout history, just as there is an inverse correlation between non-readers and societal slaves and flunkies, throughout history! Both Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. have pointed this out.

 

This fact may not dissuade the "conscientiously ignorant," to quote Dr. King, from their non-reading fixation. But, it may help one or two along the way!

 

My book, THE COLLARD GREEN TREE, is allegorical non-fiction: infusing science, history, current events, the Bible, music, folklore, and, of course, food!

Read it and rejoice with me in joy and the wonder!

It is on both Kindle and it is also at Amazon.com "books."

COLORED BATTERY FOUGHT IN HISTORIC CIVIL WAR BATTLE OF WESTPORT IN 1864

By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman

I had long wondered whether black troops had fought in the “Battle of Westport?” Said long-ranging battle, involving a combined 40,000 troops, was the most prominent battle to be fought in or near Kansas City during the Civil War, 1861-1865.

No one gave me a straight answer. I intuited, however, that black troops must have done so, given the “Kansas dynamic,” that tendency of bold and resolute Kansans to launch black troops into battle, whether officially sanctioned or not by Washington officialdom.

Well, I can now categorically state my intuition was accurate!

Black--"Colored"-- troops definitely fought in the “Battle of Westport,” in October 1864, and did so under the command of colored officers, William D. Matthews, Captain, and Patrick H. Minor, Lieutenant. The evidence is linked below. They were known as "The Independent Kansas Colored Battery." As things turned out, they were indeed truly “independent” in the sense that they were not officially mustered into the Union army, until December 1864 at Ft. Scott, Kansas.

Their status was similar to that of the “First Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry,” the first black unit to fight in the Civil War in October 1862, winning the “Skirmish at Island Mound.” They defeated a much larger force of Confederate “irregulars” in Bates County, eight miles southwest of Butler, Missouri, near the Osage River.

Both Kansas “colored” units were mustered into the Union army, long after they had already rendered signal service. The “Independent Kansas Colored Battery’s” formation, however, was officially sanctioned by order of U.S. Secretary of War E.M. Stanton. Not so, for “The First Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry”. It was not only “not authorized” by Washington, but was independently formed, organized, and out-fitted by Kansas U. S. Senator James Lane (“The Grim Senator”) at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas before Abraham Lincoln issued the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation . In fact, General Lane directly disregarded Lincoln’s countermanding directive not to go forth. The First Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry was mustered in January 13, 1863. http://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/first-kansas-colored-infantry/12052

The “Independent Kansas Colored Battery,” long before it was officially mustered into the Union Army, had already fought with the Kansas militia as part of the Third Federal Brigade, under the command of Major General Samuel R. Curtis, the same commander of Ft. Leavenworth, who had requested and received permission for its formation, as a “colored battery” under “colored officers.” In the Battle of Westport, the Union forces defeated and diverted Confederate General Sterling Price’s last desperate offensive foray into Missouri, and sent him retreating “back to Arkansas.”

The unit was mustered in under the command of Hezekiah Ford Douglas. All of its officers were black, which was an exceedingly rare occurrence during the Civil War, or any American war!

http://www.kansasguardmuseum.org/dispunit.php?id=2

C:\Users\LARRYD~1.COL\AppData\Local\Temp\Rar$ML13.504\williamdmatthews.rar

PRAYER FOR MY FATHER

PRAYER FOR MY FATHER

By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
Sunday, June 19, 2011

Thank you, Lord! Thank you, Master! Thank you, Heavenly Father!

It is now, and again, Lord, that I raise my voice in prayerful supplication.
Even then, Father, I lower my head in humble submission.
It is you, Master, who gives me breath to pray.
It is you, Lord, who supplies me with a head to submit.

I surrender all, right now, Lord! I surrender all, in Jesus’ holy name!

On this Father’s Day, I pause in remembrance of my earthly father.
It was he who told me of you, Lord! It was he who taught me to love you, Lord.
He showed me and my siblings that we had another Father:
of all--
above all--
for all--
who was in us all--
Who is master and creator of all!
I thank you for my earthly father, Heavenly Father! And for his father, and for all our fathers, this morning, Master!

Lastly, Lord: I thank you for life, for my wife, for our children, for their wives and for their children, and for our entire family, whether by blood or by affirmation.

Thank you, Lord!

In sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, in joy and in sorrow, you’ve been a way-maker and a mind-regulator. For all these things I thank you, Master!

“Your grace and mercy brought me through. I’m living this moment, because of you. I want to thank you and praise you, too. Your grace and mercy brought me through! Oh, Jesus! Thank you for saving a sinner like me to tell the world salvation is free. There were times when I just didn’t do right. But, you watched over me both day and night. Justice demanded that I should die. But grace and mercy said “Oh no! Oh no! No! We’ve already paid the price!” You see, I once was blind but now I can see. It was because grace and mercy came along and rescued me!”

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PONDERING “PI” … AND WONDERING WHY

09/10/12

By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman

What is “pi?” Shown as 3.141592654 (scientific pi) … 22/7 (astronomical pyramid pi) or 3.142857143.

Pi has been defined as “The number obtained by dividing the circumference of a circle by its diameter. It approximately equals 3.14.” Math-E-Magic: 169 Astonishing Numerical Challenges, by Raymond Blum, Adam Hart-Davis, Bob Longe, and Derrick Niederman, “Glossary,” p.5 (Sterling Innovation, an imprint of Sterling Publishing Co., Inc. New York/London: 2010).

What ancient geometer first happened upon pi and why? Plato is reputed to have said “God is the Great Geometer.” http://www.aloha.net/~johnboy/pi.htg/pi.htmhttp://www.aloha.net/~johnboy/pi.htg/pi.htm

What are the implications of Pi? What does it denote and/or connote cosmologically? These questions get to the nature of man, the nature of the universe; indeed, the nature of God.

According to the definition above, Pi is the number: obtained by dividing, its “creator”—its circular circumference—by its “created”--its diameter. Put another way, it can be viewed as the linear plane (straight line) divided into the curvilinear plane (circle) describing it.

The website cited above was created by John Charles Webb, Jr. It contains much useful, albeit evocative and provocative, information, some of which being quite esoteric, is well beyond my present ken.

Of course, we are rotating, imperceptibly, on Earth every 24 hours at 1670 km/per hour (1037.69 mph)

http://calculator-converter.com/converter_mph_per_miles-hour_to_km-hour_calculator.php

while revolving around the sun at 107,000 km/per hour (66,486.72 mph), equally imperceptibly. http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast161/Unit4/movearth.html. How strange is that?

Despite such break-neck speeds, we don't feel a thing and we can't fall off the planet!

Pi permeates and regulates our total being from here to eternity, from Earth to infinity.

Pi makes each pebble, grain, leaf, droplet, and person, in existence at any time, unique! Male, female, and Pi, holy spirit, which is the Law of Life!

Romans 8:2-- “For the law of the Spirit in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.”

Pi, I have concluded, is the constant of life misperceived as a mathematical, non-repeating variable. Pi is the most rational of numbers misperceived as irrational! Now, that's really something to ponder!

Go figure!

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Education is the key to the elevation and to liberation of all black youth, indeed for all youth, history has shown repeatedly. If properly designed and immplemented, it will educe each child's innate genius, as the example of Helen Keller has shown, as newly-freed, American slaves have shown or as home-schooled children now show!

On the other hand, a child that is deliberately abused by the education system will either drop out of school or drop out of society, vocationally and sociologically. The school system can be used for  good or for evil. It can continue, filling the nation's unemployment lines, family assistance rolls, jails, grave yards, hospital wards, even military barracks, with rejects it purposefully designs! Or, it can transform this nation positively from the ground up. Education is the key!

Wrest its control away from its abusers while there's still time! Then, watch things change rapidly!

BOOK REVIEW

MIGHTY BE OUR POWERS, A Memoir: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War by Leymah Gbowee (with Carol Mithers) (Beast Books, a co-publishing venture with Perseus Books Group, New York: New York: 2011)

by Rev. Dr...

. Larry Delano Coleman

09/02/12

This is one ugly, awful book, because it deals with one ugly, awful subject: murder, rape, bloodshed, corruption, children soldiers, devastation—civil war in Liberia—from the bottom's-up point of view.

The author, Leymah Gbowee, is one of two Liberian women who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011. The other is Liberia President, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first elected (now re-elected ) woman President in the entire African continent, whose book is THIS CHILD WILL BE GREAT. Leymah pulled herself up from the lower tiers of Liberian society by her grit, determination, and just plain luck. Just as easily as she became an author, globetrotter, and world-resource on insurgent women's “peace” movements, she could have, just as easily, been killed, incapacitated or gang-raped into oblivion.

It is also an unforgettable book, and one that is imminently readable. Its “in your face” honesty is both alarming and disarming. The famous “sex-strikes” of the Liberian-women peace and reclamation organizations, with which she was affiliated, gained international notoriety. But they were of little practical effect. She writes: “The strike lasted, on and off, for a few months. It had little or no practical effect, but it was extremely valuable in getting us media attention. Until today, nearly ten years later, whenever I talk about Mass Action, “What about the sex strike?” is the first question everyone asks.”

Above all else, this book is about healing. The “least of these”--uneducated women from traditional African societies—organized, “tied their waists,” and stepped boldly into the political struggle epitomized by the Liberian civil war. “When an African woman tells you she will tie her waist, it means she will do anything for you, give you anything she has...Before you can take action, something must shift inside of you ...Soon I would have four children, but no husband, education, no income or skills. I was a damned baby machine...I was a twenty-six year-old woman with children who depended on me...I had to take action. I had to stop blaming my parents, Daniel, single motherhood, the war, for what I was. I had to stop hating myself, find my strength again and step forward. My children had suffered so much, and they deserved so much more than they had. I was the only one who could give it to them.” She wrote these cathartic words from the depths of human desperation. She tied her waist!

The “waist” metaphor is fitting. It is as easily tied, as untied, being elastic and plastic. After “Daniel,” for example, came “Tunde” tenderly tapping. Then, along came “James” with whom she also “connected physically.” Worst than her serial lovers, and diverse “baby-daddies,” though, was her alcoholic-binge drinking. That nearly killed her. But, in the end, she kicked it, too! All the while, she was counseling, organizing, speaking, traveling. She earned a living under horrid conditions, through Lutheran charities, doing a type of social work; perfecting the principle of “shedding the weight,” another Liberian metaphor with her sisters, whose symbol she became, even as she, herself, became!

Leymah's earthiness was mediated through and mollified by a stoic, Nigerian attorney, Thelma Ekiyor, who founded WIPNET (Women in Peace Building Network) which gave political focus to Leymah's Trauma Training workshops for abused and displaced Liberian women. Out of their combined efforts, and those of others, women “shedding the weight”—releasing their hidden fears and deprivations in communal sharing encounters, they coalesced into a firm force for regional peace, primarily in Liberia.

Beginning with demonstrations: placard carrying and letter-writing, they morphed into the fearless, “women-in-white” demonstrators who badgered so-called peace negotiators in Ghana. There, these women, in desperation, bared their breasts and joined hands to lock the dead-locked civil war negotiators indoors in the luxury hotel's conference rooms, in a powerful symbol of abject shame and humiliation to African men, whose mothers they embodied. Peace was thereafter attained. Dictator Charles Taylor was thereafter exiled. And, Africa's first woman President was elected in Liberia.

While the chain, and mechanism, of causation of all of these events remains unclear, what is clear is that Leymah Gbowee attributes them, along with her acquisition of an education, an income, fame, freedom, and her family's salvation to Almighty God! Her special Bible verse is: “Do not be afraid. You will not suffer shame. Do not fear disgrace, you will not be humiliated.” Isaiah 54:4.

A powerful video entitled “Mighty Be Our Powers” portrays the history of this movement. But, being a book lover, I believe the book is better. View both, if you can!

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