BEATITUDES

Our endemic spirituality, religiosity, as African Americans is traceable to very ancient African antecedents in Kemet's city of Thebes ( "Waset") and in Nubia's Gebel Barak's ("Temple of Amun.). Theirs, ours, were the primordial spiritual, religious, foundations of practically all global counterparts. Consequently, ancient Africans were the bases of practically all global civilizations. These facts explain our miraculous survival, revival as a cognizable people. True! we have been "scattered ad peeled" "from the places, oh God! where first we met thee." But we are still here praising over two thousand years. Divine seeds and spores we are, scattered ad peeled.

ALEXANDER ARCHER (AND MORE)

Dorris Keeven-Franke December 28 at 9:10 PM As a historian and writer in St. Charles County I was familiar with the story of the slave Archer Alexander, and his heroic deed during the Civil War. In 1863, the “uppish” slave had overheard a plot to destroy a Railroad bridge near his home. How many of us would be brave enough to run five miles in the dark to warn the Union troops – if we were a slave and knowing what would happen if we were caught? In 1885, William Greenleaf Eliot, a Unitarian minister and founder of Washington University wrote Archer Alexander – From Slavery to Freedom – March 30, 1863 which was published in Boston by Cupples, Upham and Company, that shared the story of Archer. Eliot explains that this is what 75-year-old Archer shared with 69-year-old Eliot in his last days, five years earlier. Eliot says that he is writing this book for his family, who also want to see the story of Archer shared with everyone. Archer Alexander had been immortalized as the emancipated slave kneeling beneath Abraham Lincoln as his chains are broken, in the Emancipation Memorial, in Lincoln Park on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Then a descendant contacted me and asked if I knew “where Archer Alexander is buried?” I replied “maybe” thinking that the information was in Eliot’s book. Keith Winstead, who is a descendant of Archer and an excellent family historian, has been researching his family history for well over 30 years. He has also recently connected with his cousins, linked by DNA, the family of Mohammed Ali who are also descendants of Archer. He had been unable to locate Archer’s gravesite. Sometimes being familiar with the local history does help. Jim Guenzel, a fellow research volunteer at Bellefontaine Cemetery and Arboretum and I theorized the possibilities, and looked closer at the Centenary Cemetery near the Clayton Courthouse, and scrutinized their records. Guenzel and I started searching every possible African American cemetery in St. Louis. We covered Washington Park, Greenwood, Father Dixon, and consulted with all the experts such as Friends of Greenwood’s Etta Daniels, with no success. Then Guenzel said that he had a “hit” on Ancestry. I use the site but prefer original sources and must confess I didn’t follow up right away. I realized that it was Ancestry’s listing of the indexes made of the St. Louis area cemeteries INDEXED by the Genealogical Society. It took me to a church, that wasn’t near the Clayton Courthouse, or even one considered African American. I had also forgotten one of my own cardinal rules, when searching for those elusive relatives that seem to have just disappeared – look where their children are living or where their spouse was buried. I knew that Archer was a widower and had had a wife named Julia that had died the year before him. Guenzel’s hit took me to the website of St. Peter’s United Church of Christ on Lucas and Hunt Road. The indexer had listed the burial of Olvehey Allexander on December 8, 1880. Knowing that Allexander and Alexander can easily be the same person, and that the death date is right, I began wondering, could this really be him?! Still skeptical, I searched further for other Alexanders and discovered his wife Julia had also been buried there on September 13, 1879, the year before. I am yet more determined than ever to see the original record. I visit the wonderful staff at the St. Peter’s U.C.C. Cemetery and kindly beg them to locate the musty old record book in their archives, explaining who Archer Alexander is. Everyone is as ecstatic as me when the old handwriting reveals it to truly be our Archey! Buried in an early German Evangelical Church’s “common field” lot with absolutely no marker to reveal him for over 138 years! Unknowingly, the indexer had done their best, and only someone as “German” (aka stubborn) as I would say “show me” before being satisfied enough to really say “we found him!”. Thank YOU again for all the work you do indexing all those records! P.S. I am doing a program on Archer on February 28, 2019 at the Maplewood Public library at 6:30 if you want to hear more about Archer! Feel free to share! [[Outstanding research ! I searched in vain for the grave of Rev. John Berry Meacham in St. Louis' Bellefontaine Cemetery, where records say that it is, without success years ago. He moored his own ship in the middle of the Mississippi River (federal river) when Missouri outlawed black literacy in 1841 in which he taught black students legally away from harassment . One of Meacham's most successful scholars was James Milton Turner, who later established public education for blacks in Missouri after the Civil War. Meacham was a Baptist preacher who owned a barrel factory. He had bought his own freedom and he had bought other slaves to work in his barrel factory to buy their freedom from him and to acquire a valuable trade at the same time.]]

VERY EARLY FREEDOM FIGHTER AND LITIGATOR

‎Edwin Lear‎ to Real Black History Facts 5 hrs "December 28, 1829: Elizabeth Freeman (later in life known as Mum Bett), great great-grandmother to W.E.B. DU BOIS, died. Freeman's real age was never known, but an estimate on her tombstone puts her age at about 85. She was buried in the Sedgwick family plot in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Freeman was among the first black slaves in Massachusetts to file a "freedom suit" and win in court under the 1780 constitution, with a ruling that slavery was illegal. Her county court case, Brom and Bett v. Ashley, decided in August 1781, was cited as a precedent in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court appeal review of Quock Walker's "freedom suit". When the state Supreme Court upheld Walker's freedom under the constitution, the ruling was considered to have informally ended slavery in the state. "Any time, any time while I was a slave, if one minute's freedom had been offered to me, and I had been told I must die at the end of that minute, I would have taken it—just to stand one minute on God's airth a free woman— I would."—Elizabeth Freeman LIFE & TRIAL: Elizabeth Freeman was illiterate and left no written records of her life. Her early history has been pieced together from the writings of contemporaries to whom she told her story or who heard it indirectly, as well as from historical records. Freeman was born into slavery about 1742 at the farm of Pieter Hogeboom in Claverack, New York, where she was given the name Bett. When his daughter Hannah married John Ashley of Sheffield, Massachusetts, Hogeboom gave Bett, then in her early teens, to them. She remained with them until 1781, during which time she married and had a child, Betsy. Her husband (name unknown, marriage unrecorded) never returned from service in the Revolutionary War. Throughout her life, Bett exhibited a strong spirit and sense of self. She came into conflict with Hannah Ashley, who was raised in the strict Dutch culture of the New York colony. In 1780, Bett prevented Hannah from striking her daughter Betsy with a heated shovel, but Elizabeth shielded her daughter and received a deep wound in her arm. As the wound healed, Bett left it uncovered as evidence of her harsh treatment. Catharine Maria Sedgwick quotes Elizabeth saying, "Madam never again laid her hand on Lizzy[sic]. I had a bad arm all winter, but Madam had the worst of it. I never covered the wound, and when people said to me, before Madam, "Betty, what ails your arm?" I only answered - 'ask missis!' Which was the slave and which was the real misses?" John Ashley was a Yale-educated lawyer, wealthy landowner, businessman and leader in the community. His house was the site of many political discussions and the probable location of the signing of the Sheffield Resolves, which predated the Declaration of Independence. Soon after the Revolutionary War, Freeman heard the constitution read at Sheffield and these words: “ All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness." —Massachusetts Constitution, Article 1. Bett sought the counsel of Theodore Sedgwick, a young abolition-minded lawyer, to help her sue for freedom in court. She told him, "I heard that paper read yesterday, that says, all men are created equal, and that every man has a right to freedom. I'm not a dumb critter; won't the law give me my freedom?" Sedgwick willingly accepted her case, as well as that of Brom, another of Ashley's slaves. He enlisted the aid of Tapping Reeve, the founder of America's first law school, located at Litchfield, Connecticut. The case of Brom and Bett vs. Ashley was heard in August 1781 before the County Court of Common Pleas in Great Barrington. Sedgwick and Reeve asserted that the constitutional provision that "all men are born free and equal" effectively abolished slavery in the state. When the jury ruled in Bett's favor, she became the first African-American woman to be set free under the Massachusetts state constitution. The jury found that "...Brom & Bett are not, nor were they at the time of the purchase of the original writ the legal Negro of the said John Ashley..." The court assessed damages of thirty shillings and awarded both plaintiffs compensation for their labor. After the ruling, Bett took the names Elizabeth Freeman. Although Ashley asked her to return to his house and work for wages, she chose to work in her attorney Sedgwick's household. She worked for his family until 1808 as senior servant and governess to the Sedgwick children, who called her "Mum Bett". Also working at the Sedgwick household during much of this time was Agrippa Hull, a free black who had served for years during the Revolutionary War. The Sedgwick children included Catharine Sedgwick, who became a well-known author and wrote an account of her governess' life. From the time Elizabeth Freeman gained her freedom, she became widely recognized and in demand for her skills as a healer, midwife and nurse. After the Sedgwick children were grown, Freeman and her daughter bought and moved into their own house in Stockbridge. LEGACY: The decision in the case of Elizabeth Freeman was cited as precedent when the State Supreme Judicial Court heard the appeal of Quock Walker v. Jennison. Walker's freedom was upheld. These cases set the legal precedents that ended slavery in Massachusetts. Vermont had already abolished it explicitly in its constitution."

BLACK PIONEERS

WHAT? BLACK PIONEERS? INDEED! Most famously, the "Trail of Tears" saga customarily depicts the cruel uprooting of the so-called "Five Civilized Tribes" from their wealthy, American assimilation roots, lands, possessions, in the southeastern states, and their overland trek to distant Oklahoma with their own mixed multitudes of African slaves. The 1830s and 1840s are the periods in history, when uprooting occurred in North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Florida, and other southeastern states or territories. Then-President Andrew Jackson was the moving spirit and principal political, "white" manifest destiny maven behind most of it. But, there also was another, less famous, as infamous, trail of tears, involving multiple generational families of "free" African American veterans, whose freedom roots go back to the American Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, some were before this, dating back into the 17th century as being FREE people. These brave resourceful people had later married, bought land--land that they had wrestled from the howling wilderness-- to make into productive colored farming communities, consisting of kin, friends, collaterals, in the nation's still hopeful adolescence when the stirring rhetoric of the "Declaration of Independence" still resounded! Anna-Lisa Cox in her rousing book, THE BONE AND SINEW OF THE LAND: AMERICA'S FORGOTTEN BLACK PIONEERS & THE STRUGGLE FOR EQUALITY (2018), recounts family generations' moves from the same lands as the "Trail of Tears" Indians, in roughly the same time period, into land of Northwest Territory of the Ordinance of 1787. Here is Indiana, Ohio, Illinois , they sought to restore their uprooted lives from encroaching whiteness' privileges, who free blacks defied. White privilege took away their rights to bear arms, vote , educate their children, have black preachers and others that were designed to deny them personhood, prosperity, and anything but subservience. The descendants of free black men and women found this to be wholly unacceptable , so they moved into the Northwest, where matters were not ideal. But were far better than what they were facing in States like North Carolina, Tennessee, etc . These black pioneers are easily forgotten as we see versions of white pioneers traveling 'West;' but these black ones had pioneered, when what was then the "West," before 1804's Louisiana Purchase. 

Missouri Meditatios

In the spirit of Lewis, Clark, York, Sacajawea; James Beckwourth; Judge Matthias McGurk; Charlotte and Celia, famous slave women who fought; Captain John Brown, Col. James C. Montgomery, Pathfinder, Gen. Jon C. Fremont, Gen. Nathaniel Lyons; Rev. Hiram Revels; Hiram Young; Rev. John Berry Meacham and wife, Mary, martyr, Dred Scott and Harriet Scott; James Milton Turner; the 62nd and 65th United States Colored Troops and Captain Foster; the First Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry, Kansas U. S. Sen. James Lane, and Lt. William D. Matthews; Madame CJ Walker; Annie Malone; Rube Foster, Homer G. Phillips, Esq.; Lloyd Gaines, Percy Green, Ollie Gates Barbecue and other Missouri heroes, heroines, great , small, rich, poor, known and unknown FB page of : "MISSOURI MEDITATIONS" is dedicated to all. 

SLAVERY STILL EXISTS

AMERICAN SLAVERY STILL EXISTS Focusing on substance, not forms; upon facts, not fantasies or fiction, I do state that slavery still exists in the United States of America under forms in which its debilitating legal presence is cleverly dissembled. If there is any good news to be gleaned from this fact it is that it now is mainly hitting migrants under President Donald Trump, primarily, rather than African Americans. Even so, this latter class of people, my own, still must deal with the residual consequences of the 1965 Daniel Patrick Moynihan Report sociology predictions that preceded the black urban 1960s riots, after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. murder in 1968, in whose wake many black families were destroyed to a great extent with job losses, jails, school dropouts, school bussing, welfare state regulators and regulations; tough on crime policies, and a plethora of others. In partial support of my "slavery still exists" premise, I cite and quote Harriet Beecher Stowe . She wrote: "Slavery is despotism... "The object of it has been distinctly stated in one sentence by Judge Ruffin,--'The end is the profit of the master, his security , and the public safety.' "Slavery, then, is absolute despotism, of the most unmitigated form. "It would, however, be doing injustice to the absolutism of any 'civilized ' country to liken American slavery to it. The absolute governments of Europe none of them pretend to be founded on a 'property' right of the governor to the persons and entire capabilities of the governed. "This is a form of despotism which exists only in some of the most savage countries of the world; as, for example, in Dahomey." P. 120-121, A KEY TO UNCLE TOM'S CABIN (1853) by Harriet Beecher Stowe, author "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (1852) A regally clad male ambassador from Benin, formerly known as Dahomey, speaking in fluent French, via a translator, apologized profusely to a throng of us in Howard University's Cramton Auditorium in the early 1970s, for his nation's own extensively complicit participation in the slave trade that had brought thousands of Africans to America over years. I was struck by the theater of it all, and by his seemingly, genuinely felt sincerity. But what was done was done. And very few people who were sitting there in the rapt audience of African Studies and History scholars in the early 1970s, were inclined to trade their present American places with any native of Benin, whose ancestors had been, fortunate enough, blessed to avoid the bloody trauma of the Dahomey enslavers' nets, coffles, spears, bullets, beheadings, barracoons . So while it might seem strange to some that in discussing "despotism of slavery" that Harriet Beecher Stowe would mention the nation of Dahomey, it was not so to me . The Benin ambassador affirmed what Stowe had written in 1853. So had Frank Yerby in his epic 1970s novel, THE DAHOMEAN, which affirmed Stowe's statement about savagery. It seems to me that we have the same kind of Dahomean savagery loose in the inner cities of America in the form of white, tax-paid police & black criminal gangs, who both stalk and prey upon the same folks, vulnerable, often gullible, blacks. When they kill, disable or injure, the law enables the police to get away with pay, and the black criminals are seldom caught, or, if caught, seldom seriously charged or prosecuted, given the victim's race. We cannot be too indelicate in facing the facts of the miracle of our survival as a people from forces on the right and left who mean us no good, though they may look like us, are citizens like us, profess to be Christians (or another faith) like us. Two million black men and women in jail in 2018 are leaving as many children behind to fend for themselves or perish ! Slavery is despotism and slavery still exists in the United States of America, whatever the law or Constitution or courts may ever say. 'The end is the profit of the master, his security and the public safety,' said Judge Ruffin. We have all three present now in 2018, alive and also well !https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Yerby 

"ROCK" AND A HARD PLACE

A "ROCK" AND A HARD PLACE Reading along in THE SUMMER OF 1787 by David O. Stewart (2007), especially those portion on the Presidency, I now more clearly see that what we view as a form of hyper-wizardry, is simply avarice and expediency under a gloss and floss of latter day American history. It is a long way, a very far cry from Plato's REPUBLIC, which patterned itself after and on ancient Egyptian, priests-led governments , whom Plato termed "philosopher-kings." As the Bible says "in that day, many will cry 'Lord, Lord!' but the Lord will reply "Begone from me Satan!"https://www.google.com/…/%3fsearch=Matthew%2b7:22-24&versio… Philosophy may have been the shill and the shell of vaunted American democracy, but its contents were and are still some graven hypocrisy. "Having the number of electors equal the total of all senators and congressmen would please the large states; it also gave extra electors to slave states through the three-fifths ratio. To gratify small states, each state cast an equal vote when the Senate decided elections. "[David] Brearley's committee changed the presidency in two other ways. He transferred important powers from the Senate to the president, who now would make treaties and appoint ambassadors and Supreme Court justices (subject to Senate approval). Also, the committee moved impeachment trials from the courts to the Senate, making them more political." P. 214 Delegate David Brearley of New Jersey chaired the "Committee on Postponed Parts", a fitting name for the small body to which matters were referred for many matters deemed to be too cumbersome or too quarrelsome to be resolved in gamboling regular sessions of the Constitutional Convention of 1787; a gathering called to amend the 1781 Articles of Confederation; but which morphed into far more! The ancient Egyptian government that lasted for over 10,000 years, at least, according to Plato, was built upon a "rock." That "rock" being nature in the sky and on earth as symbolized in a pyramid's Benben, or pyramidion, at the rock's apex.

AFRICAN AMERICAN

Isolated by land and sea from our place of nativity, ours is no option but to return to thee, oh Lord! to secure our true liberty.

LEARNING ABOUT HOME

LEARNING ABOUT HOME I was born in a house on Cameron Street in Canton , Mississippi, on January 3, 1951. It was owned by my maternal great grandparents, Rev. Walter and Lilly Merriweather. I learned about that Merriweather house's construction history today from mama's brother, Arlander Cyrus Moreland, who has taught me a great many facts about our family history, when in Mississippi. My great-grandfather "Papa," was allowed to work 400 acres of land that was owned by a white man, for $1.50 a year , due to his respect for Papa. That wonderful man, Mr. Laws, also told Papa that if anyone messed with him about that land, he was to come see him about it and them. No one messed with them. They worked in peace and God 's blessings were on their side. They raised 35 bales of cotton, each containing 500 lbs. of cotton in 1945. Mr. Laws had told Papa that he was not to sell the cotton until he told him as the price was a then merely $.29 per pound. About 6 months later, according to my Uncle Arlander, Papa was given the word to sell the 35 bales of cotton, whose price had risen to $.69 a lb. The sale realized enough money for them to build our house on Cameron Street, which big, fine, house was built from the ground. The house had an indoor bathroom replete with accoutrements; 3 or 4 bedrooms, living room, halls, dining room, front and back porch and a kitchen. The costs was $4500. I remember living there as a small child, until age 4, when our family moved from Canton, Mississippi to St. Louis , Missouri, where all 8 of mama and daddy's kids graduated. 

GENIUSES

GENIUSES What is commonly referred to as "genius" may be evidence of certain children being "raised right;" whose divine, natural gifts, interests, curiosities, are being fed, cultivated, enriched, by their observant, attentive, loving "parents", who are unconvinced of, impatient with, societal strictures, limitations, taboos, imposed upon their child's, any child's, possibilities, potentialities, hopes. https://edition.cnn.com/2015/03/09/africa/esther-okade-maths-genius/index.html?no-st=1545753901

JESUS CHRIST

JESUS CHRIST, GRACE & MERCY We humans were sent here to the planet earth , to consciousness , to activity, by divine acts of grace and mercy , as surely as were the stars, rivers, plants, insects, winds, rains. Thus, Jesus Christ, whose birth we now celebrate as "Christmas" was always comparing, when teaching truths, human behavior to nature: animal behavior, insects, or plant life due to our natural kinship from the same divine eternal source, God, Jehovah, Yahweh, Jah. He promoted our understanding by the use of analogies and aphorisms. He taught incessantly, involuntarily. Like all else, Jesus of Nazareth was sent here, to earth for a season and for a reason, like us. When it is up that is it. "We" return to the Source. Too easily and too often forms are misperceived as essences, and if that happens, confusion, illusions set in, dividing mankind internally and externally from all else as the one unique thing in the "universe." Abdication of personality in favor of acquisition of divine universality is to relinquish your form for a whole. This is true selflessness. One stops being one, but becomes complete. One gains by subtracting. Death becomes victory by it! Anomaly? Certainly! as we perceive life and death . "Be ye perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect". This Matthew 5:48 enjoins us to be, do. The true and perfect gift is Jesus, is us , by default, by grace, mercy.

TRUMP HAS EARNED PRISON WALLS

If Donald Trump is not dumb nor stupid as many Americans seem to believe him to be , that would mean that his official Presidential conduct is and has been purposeful, evincing specific intent. If he is or has acted willfully, then, he is or has committed treason. Treason by reason of colluding with Russia, deliberately breaking the law, and , undermining the country. Acting willfully rather than unintentionally or inadvertently, means acting criminally.

GODS WITHOUT DIVINE SELF-KNOWLEDGE

WE ARE GODS WHO DON'T KNOW IT! Reading the "Preface", written by abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison, to NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS, an AMERICAN SLAVE (1845, 1994), I have now acquired a better basis for understanding the epic fear that has afflicted by so many fully-armed, law enforcement white people who usually claim to be afraid of confronting or even speaking to unarmed black people, of any age or gender, size or economic class.This irrational "fear" had left me and had left us black people flummoxed, bewildered, confused; since, during slavery we lived in extremely close associations, from 1619-1865. But now, I do see the answer to its mystery. First, Garrison lauded our enslaved people, when describing, when ascribing their spiritual essences to Douglass, who was then, yet and still, a runaway slave, to "godlike nature of its victims." In referring to our enslaved African forbears, as having a "godlike nature," Garrison was just echoing the sentiments of ancient sages like Homer, Diodorus Siculus, Herodotus, Plato, etc,, who had described ancient Africans of Kemet and Nubia similarly. Garrison also said in 1841 that the African slaves were "needing nothing but a comparatively small amount of cultivation to make him (and them and us) an ornament to society and a blessing to his race." P.4 But he did not stop there! William Lloyd Garrison, the foremost white abolitionist in the North, "LIBERATOR" publisher, President of the New England Abolition Society, continued, using the young fugitive, Frederick Douglass as the apostrophe, as our representative symbol of manhood: "He has borne himself with gentleness and meekness, yet with true manliness of character . As a public speaker, he excels in pathos , wit, comparison , imitation, strength of reasoning, and fluency of language. There is in him that unity of head and heart which is indispensable to an enlightenment of the heads and winning of the hearts of others. May his strength continue to be equal to his day! May he continue to 'grow in grace and in the knowledge of God' that he might be increasingly serviceable in the cause of bleeding humanity, whether at home or abroad...Let the calumniators of the colored race despise themselves for their baseness and illiberality of spirit, and henceforth cease to talk of the natural inferiority of those who require nothing but time and opportunity to attain to the highest point of human excellence. "It may, perhaps , be fairly questioned whether any other portion of the population of the earth could have endured the privations, sufferings and horrors of slavery, without having become more degraded in the scale of humanity than the slaves of African descent. Nothing has been left undone to cripple their intellects, darken their minds, debase their moral nature, obliterate all traces of their relationship to mankind and yet how wonderfully they have sustained the mighty load of a most frightful bondage under which they have been laboring for centuries!" P.5-6 Given these effusive praises of the character of our enslaved people, as embodied in Douglass and quite independent of his descent , it has now becomes crystal clear why repressive whites fear these "godlike" African American descendants: We/they are godlike! "We are gods" indeed as Psalms 82:6 has so boldly declared in even more ancient days pre-1841. "Fear the wrath of God! Flee the wrath of God," the Bible says to such demonic persons, who have wronged, despised, tormented, unmercifully, these gods! blessedly divine people, who have, by grace and mercy, like Jonah, Daniel, Shadrach Meshak and Abednego, also have survived: the belly of the whale; thrived in the lion's den; and basked in the 400 year old fiery furnace of United States of America's cauldron, hell!https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lloyd_Garrison

GODS

WE ARE GODS WHO DON'T KNOW Reading the "Preface", written by abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison, to NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS, an AMERICAN SLAVE (1845, 1994), I have now acquired a better basis for understanding the epic fear that has afflicted by so many fully-armed, law enforcement white people who claim to be afraid of confronting or even speaking to unarmed black people, of any age or gender, size or economic .This irrational "fear" had left me and had left us all flummoxed, bewildered, confused; at least, until now it had! First, Garrison lauded our enslaved people, when describing, ascribing the spiritual essences of Douglass, who was then yet a runaway slave, to "godlike nature of its victims." In referring to our enslaved forbears, "godlike nature," Garrison also said in 1841 that they were "needing nothing but a comparatively small amount of cultivation to make him (and them and us) an ornament to society and a blessing to his race." P.4 But he did not stop there! William Lloyd Garrison, the foremost white abolitionist in the North continued, using the young fugitive, Frederick Douglass as the apostrophe, as our representative symbol of manhood: "He has borne himself with gentleness and meekness, yet with true manliness of character . As a public speaker, he excels in pathos , wit, comparison , imitation, strength of reasoning, and fluency of language. There is in him that unity of head and heart which is indispensable to an enlightenment of the heads and winning of the hearts of others. May his strength continue to be equal to his day! May he continue to 'grow in grace and in the knowledge of God' that he might be increasingly serviceable in the cause of bleeding humanity, whether at home or abroad...Let the calumniators of the colored race despise themselves for their baseness and illiberality of spirit, and henceforth cease to talk of the natural inferiority of those who require nothing but time and opportunity to attain to the highest point of human excellence. "It may, perhaps , be fairly questioned whether any other portion of the population of the earth could have endured the privations, sufferings and horrors of slavery, without having become more degraded in the scale of humanity than the slaves of African descent. Nothing has been left undone to cripple their intellects, darken their minds, debase their moral nature, obliterate all traces of their relationship to mankind and yet how wonderfully they have sustained the mighty load of a most frightful bondage under which they have been laboring for centuries!" P.5-6 Given these effusive praises of the character of our enslaved people, as embodied in Douglass and quite independent of his descent , it has now becomes crystal clear why repressive whites fear the African Americans: We/they are godlike! "We are gods" indeed as Psalms 82:6 has so boldly declared in the even more ancient days pre-1841. "Fear the wrath of God! Flee the wrath of God," the Bible says to such who have wronged, despised, tormented, unmercifully, these gods! blessedly divine people, who have, by grace and mercy, like Jonah, Daniel, Shadrach Meshak and Abednego, who have survived: the belly of the whale; thrived in the lion's den; and basked in the fiery furnace of an American hell!

SLAVE TO MANHOOD

MOVING SELF FROM SLAVE STATUS TO MANHOOD STATURE There are three books, stories from my youth, that demonstrate the power of redemption of black men, who have been caught up in a web of crime, sin: AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X, MANCHILD IN THE PROMISED LAND & SOUL ON ICE. Though some of these men had been "raised right", albeit briefly , they had gone wrong, into prison. Evil often overcomes good in the world since its sensate tendencies receive succor, success ; thereby are renewed, reinforced in gravitas. The one who eats is the survivor. It not only takes individual's personal desperation; outside intervention; a renewed sense of self-worth from any accretive successes; but, most importantly the rejuvenated "hope" that, he will have been transformed from what he was, to what he wills himself to become, by faith & work. The accounts of these three men's emergences (Malcolm X's , Claude Brown's and Eldridge Cleaver's) from broken, "enslaved minds" and lives, into moving examples of men into vigorous, liberated, manhood recalls to mind the story of iconic, 19th century, Frederick Douglass. Frederick Douglass' extraordinary emergence from the humble status of being an actual physical slave, in Maryland, into the refined stature of redoubtable Frederick Douglass, of history, is described in his three autobiographies (NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE, MY BONDAGE AND MY FREEDOM, and LIFE AND TIMES); representative, demonstrative of human transformation from slave status into the stature of manhood. Douglass' epic battles with the slave-breaker, Covey, is about young Fred refusing to be whipped anymore: but turning around and beginning to whip the whipper with its own whip! Thereby he assumed the faith that he could command his own destiny by similar means of self-assertions and exertions. This pairing requires equal parts faith and work. Assertion invites testing. Exertion proves the assertion (or not). Thus our formerly, famously enslaved forbears used to sing a song of assertive self-exertion: "Oh, walk together children, don't you get weary! Walk together children, don't you get weary! A big camp meeting is up ahead ." The same may be said for the two million "slaves" who are in prison. That they are "slaves" clarifies for them, as it does for us, the actual breadth and meaning of the 13th Amendment, which excepts from its freedoms those who have been "duly convicted" of crimes. Those who have been "duly" and unduly convicted of crimes are principally, disproportionately, black people! So one way to help our prisoners to pull themselves up out of the rut of slave status is to empower them to work from within self to move from slave status into manhood stature. They cannot go wrong reading any or all of the six books listed above.

BLACK SOLDIERS

"LEMMINGS" ARE US

Lemmings are subject to the mass mythic misconception that they en mass commit suicide. I believed it till just now, having seen it on television, where it was staged!!! So much that is claimed to be true iin this era is so often staged! It is "we", the truly credulous "believers" who are the true "lemmings," dupes! Commercially, historically, theologically, socially, we are tricked, fooled, lied to continuously, en masse, to react irrationally! We are the lemmings, in effect, actors on stage!https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemming?fbclid=IwAR16BAXgnFB2UN_Ir4Ym5D3NoS2-u5Wk1Kojy2q5K9oxVwMfmu37mMBW2s0

WHITE CHRISTMAS

WHITE CHRISTMAS In the late 1950s in Gary, Indiana, a black man boarded a crowded bus and burst into singing "White Christmas." All was "so delightful", until he sang "I'm dreaming of a white woman," and not white Christmas. Then what was delightful was frightful! This anecdote was related by our late, elder brother, Elvis, Jr., who said that he was on the bus, when the black unknown bard sang! I found its irony quite humorous ,given its narrator's gifts.

REVERSING AMERICAN COUNTERREVOLUTION

AMERICAN COUNTERREVOLUTION THAT IS PROCEEDING UNSEEN The American Revolution of 1776 was suborned by a "counterrevolution" in which the founding "common sense" principles of justice and equality for all were betrayed by white legal privileges in the federal Constitution of 1787. Upon its ratification in 1789, slavery was sacralized and sacrificed at the altar of avarice, prejudice , injustice. Thus murder, mayhem, rape, riots, lynching, miseducation, heresy, racism and apostasy became the standard of all operating legal, political, economic systems; from 1789 forward through an all-too-brief post-Civil War "Reconstruction" from 1865-1876, when by Amendments 13-15, some attempts were made to restore faith in the founding equal justice traditions. This was then followed by the white majority "Reconciliation," that lasted until 1968, with the assassination of the Rev . Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose massive civil disobedience campaign had reversed segregation , that survived the legal challenges of Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall, and the NAACP/LDF from 1935-1954, when Brown came down ! To "suborn" is to perjure, bribe or betray. Thomas Paine's "Declaration of Independence" was falsely ascribed to the deceitful slaveholder, and white supremacist, Thomas Jefferson, who owned hundreds of slaves. He was on the 1776 Continental Congress editing committee, which scrapped referring to African slaves and American Indians, as were in the original draft, as reasons for separating from England . In 1785, Jefferson further suborned the ideal of the American Revolution by writing and privately publishing NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA. In "Query XIV," he claimed Africans are mentally and physically defective compared to whites. In 1787, a convention was held to amend the government's Articles of Confederation, it was claimed. There was too much power left in the states and too few tax dollars or tariffs in the central government, whose supremacy and sovereignty was being seriously tested by unkept promises about land on the frontier and unpaid troops. So, in Philadelphia, a new governing document, the present Constitution, as now amended, was hammered out among and between competing interests, merchants, farmers, slaveholding and non-slaveholding. The criteria for unity resolved itself in the 3/5s clause in Article 1 section 2, which enabled the number of slaves to be added to the number of white men to determine representatives in the House, which determined taxation. American democracy is based on the premise of African American remaining subordinate and subservient to whites. This is of course a mockery of what is claimed and of what is written in the founding documents and sentiments. But, Civil War, white reconciliation , race segregation, Richard Nixon, and Donald Trump are all residual white supremacy symptoms and tools that are used to effect "counterrevolution!"

fighting in first grade

"FIGHTING" IN FIRST GRADE My first grade "fight" ended quickly in Mrs. Riley's classroom. She sent us directly to the principal's office! Oh! Crying all the way down the hall, me and my former "adversary" dejectedly reassured each other, repeatedly, that we had really been playing! but not, not ever, fighting! Too soon, we warily arrived at the principal's office. He, Mr. Wynn, was not there. We thought then he spelled it "Wind", from his paddle! His secretary put us in a separate room, while we awaited his return. We kept on crying . Finally, unable to take all the racket anymore, she sent us back to the classroom to abide his return. Hope! We shut up and walked quietly back into Mrs. Riley's class. She was unaware that Mr. Wynn was not there. Neither of us told her either! He never came to get us that day nor any day! We were very happy and never fought each other again in school. Whew !

MAN?

"WHAT MANNER OF MAN?" When pondering "What manner of man is this?" as Lerone Bennett,Jr. did in his biography of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., it may well be well to review a definition of man. This man, this woman, is unique. These suffer much but do not hate ; have been robbed of so much but are not jealous; been down so long but keep on rising! What manner of man is this? Ask rather is this really a man or a god? Is this really a man or a god; who have already acceded to sermon on the mount precepts in dealing with their oppressors? Who have been crucified by the thousands on lynching trees, but do not die; but who live on, like Jesus, return to life like the Christ? What manner of man is this? This is not a man at all! no man in the least, appearances aside. This is a god bound in iron chains. This is the cosmic miracle made manifest in flesh blood bone! https://biblehub.com/matthew/8-27.htm

AMERICAN COUNTERREVOLUTION

AMERICAN "COUNTERREVOLUTION" United States Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall, the nation's fourth , is fondly favored with the sobriquet, "The Great Justice," by we lawyers and judges, as though he were a demigod or a legal titan. However, after reading his 1813 ruling in an appeal from a freedom suit from Prince George's County, Maryland, "Mima Queen and Child, Petitioners for Freedom v. Hepburn," (7 Cranch C.C. 290), I now have a considerably different opinion and conception of the man, who wrote so many of our nation's earlier iconic legal decisions . In a powerful, carefully researched, 2018 book, APPEALING FOR LIBERTY FREEDOM SUITS IN THE SOUTH by Loren Schweninger the following observation appears: "One of the lawyers for the Boston plaintiffs, Gabriel Duval, who by 1813 had become an associate justice of the Supreme Court, had fought for many years against the counterrevolution following the American Revolution, as white Marylanders sought to solidify the 'peculiar institution ' of slavery in the Upper South . In his minority dissent to Marshall 's opinion, Duval pointed out that in Maryland many claims for freedom could be proved only with hearsay, because 'no living evidence' existed. The admission of such evidence in freedom suits had thus been affirmed by the unanimous opinion of the high court of appeals after full and fair argument by the ablest counsel at the bar. 'If the ancestor neglected to claim her right , the issue could not be bound by any length of time, it [freedom] being a natural inherent right,' Duval reasoned , and therefore found the argument for admitting hearsay evidence more compelling in freedom suits than it was in cases concerning pedigree or land boundaries: 'It will be universally admitted that the right to freedom is more important than the right of property.'" P. 24 Justice Marshall saw matters quite contrarily . He therefore perfected the American "counterrevolution" by ruling against Mima Queen and her child in their bid for freedom . That he hid behind hearsay in the plaintiffs' case, while deeming it to be efficacious and admissible in a variety of other cases, shows how much he devalued human freedom; especially that of African slaves! We were not introduced to the "Mima Queen" case even at the Howard Law School, rightly renown for its historic civil rights legacy. Our curriculum was essentially the same as that in white law schools. Nor in the middle 1970s, were we made privy to any semblance of similar cases to "Mimi Queen's reflecting the virulent American "counterrevolution," which surely would have changed our conduct. Given the foregoing, one may now have a better appreciation for the fact that Roger Taney of Maryland (Dred Scott fame) succeeded John Marshall of Virginia on the court !

APPEALING FOR LIBERTY & TORT REFORM

Tort reform has an undistinguished history of descent from slavery. While reading "African American Women and the Genealogy of Slavery," in APPEALING FOR LIBERTY: FREEDOM SUITS IN THE SOUTH by Loren Schweninger (2018), I read: "Slaves in Maryland continued to sue slaveowners for their freedom in subsequent years , but even as the Boston slaves' trial was drawing to a close the Maryland Assembly in 1796 passed a law altering the process of such suits . No longer, it stipulated, could such suits originate in the General Court of the Western Shore, considered by many to be 'the most prestigious judicial body in the state.' Rather such future contests would be adjudicated in the county of plaintiff's residency. In addition both plaintiffs and defendants could request a jury trial, and appeals could be made only 'as to matters of law.' Further, if a freedom suit was dismissed and brought again by the same party, the court could order a stay until the court costs of the first case had been fully paid. Lastly, free blacks could not henceforth testify against whites." P.22 Of course, the Legislature in Missouri replicated the Maryland Assembly, in tightening the terms of its own Freedom Suits, after its 1821 statehood. These fetters followed an earlier more hopeful period of victorious prospect at common law. That was when the McGirks were lawyers and judges. By 1850s such statutory strictures had produced the infamous Dred Scott decision. But. I digress . Tort reform strictures also follow venue, juries, costs, witnesses and other regulations to limit the prospect of plaintiffs ' prevailing, as was done in Maryland and Missouri with respect to slave Freedom Suits. https://www.courts.mo.gov/page.jsp?id=120760

EMANCIPATION MAKING OF BLACK LAWYERS

"The year 1944 had a dual significance for black American lawyers because it marked the seventy-fifth anniversary of Howard University School of Law and the centennial anniversary of the admission of Macon Bolling Allen, the first black lawyer, into the legal profession. In addition to these benchmarks, between 1871 and 1944 the law school had graduated more than one thousand students, many of whom had achieved distinction, as Dean [John Mercer] Langston and Professor [Albert Gallatin] Riddle had forecasted. "In addition to being the first American law school to open up its doors with both a black dean and a white professor, Howard University's law school was the first to declare a nondiscriminatory policy in 1869. White male and female students were admitted to Howard University from its inception... "Mary Ann Shadd Carey, a black woman, claimed that she was admitted to Howard University's first class in 1869; if her contention is true, this makes her and Lemma Barkaloo, who entered Washington University's law school in Missouri in the same year , the first women admitted to an American law school. However, the honor of being the first black woman to receive a law degree and the first to be admitted to the bar in the nation belongs to Charlotte E. Ray, who was graduated from Howard University School of Law in 1872. She became the first black woman admitted to the bar of the District of Columbia. Only three other white women had graduated from a law school prior to Ray." P.54-55, "Black Students in the Law Schools, EMANCIPATION THE MAKING OF THE BLACK LAWYER 1844-1944, by J. Clay Smith, Jr. (1993) http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/1790.html 

GOD IS & WAS

GOD IS & WAS BEFORE THERE IS & WAS TIME, SPACE, MATTER, ENERGY & AFTER THEY CEASE TO BE. AMEN .

LINCOLN HIGH SCHOOL DELIGHTS

LINCOLN HIGH SCHOOL WAS A LABOR OF LOVE One of my most savoring experiences was being a volunteer in education instructor at Lincoln High School KCMO, 1977-1978, when I was employed by the U.S, Dept. of Labor. As a new Missouri lawyer, I had applied to teach at Lincoln, in a joint program with the KC Bar and the school district, when Dr. Charles Wheeler was Superintendent. Mrs. Katherine Smith was the teacher to whose room I was assigned. The students were bright, eager, attentive and disciplined. While we were supposed to talk about juvenile delinquency, I knew better then to bring that mess into my context. it was not me! So, me being me, I brought in black history, spirituality, and upward mobility to these all-black students. Consequently, I brought in stock brokers, commodities dealers, real estate brokers, insurance agents, physicians. and others, after explaining to the class how these people interacted with their lives, and showing them, how they, too, come become such. The program lasted just one year. The students showered me with gifts in the end, and with a surprise classroom party. A few years later, a young woman came to work in the United States Attorney's Office, in KC, where I then worked, as a clerk. I was delighted! she regaled in my tutelage at Lincoln. After that, a former male student, sent his sister to me with a worker's compensation case, when I was in private practice; that male student had become a railroad executive in France. Finally, a few years later, another of my students, a Senior V.P. with Charles Schwab & Co. retained me to represent him in his legal case. in KC, while he lived and worked in Florida. At a concert in KC, a young man in a gas mask approached me, with marijuana smoke seeping from its seals. Turned out to be another of my students! "Mr. Coleman! Mr. Coleman!" he said, "I'll bet you didn't recognize me, did you?" No indeed! I conceded. I took this example to talk about drugs and chemistry, relative to obtaining "utilizable skills" in life, rather than being victimized by any public, scurrilous conduct. No names were mentioned. I later learned he had eared a degree in chemistry from a Missouri university. Praise God! All of these wonderful experiences rewarded me for my work, as a volunteer- educator. All rewards are not immediate; nor cash. Feelings of love, joy, communion, hope are rewarding !

RULER AND SUNDAY SCHOOL BOOK

A RULER, A SUNDAY SCHOOL BOOK A ruler and a Sunday School book were our late Uncle Emmett Love's emblems, symbols, stock in trade. Uncle Emmett Love Coleman was our father's younger brother, who went to trade school in Mississippi, who built a house at age 16, who became a licensed bricklayer and stonemason of note in St. Louis from the 1950s-2000s. He was an artist with his trial, a magician with his creative artistic imagination in construction and homebuilding. At age 4 or 5, I walked about in a big house on Big Bend Boulevard in Meacham Park, Kirkwood, Missouri, that he and other skilled workers, including Daddy, were repairing and rehabilitating prior to moving his family from Electric Street, where they resided down the street from us. A bit of plaster nearly splashed in my face, as I was watching one of the Ward brothers plaster the ceiling. He told me to "get back out of the way", lest I be hurt, accidentally injured! I have never forgot plaster's near-miss! My brother Harold recently recalled Uncle Love to mind, in a phone call. Harold reflected upon our uncle's ruler and Sunday School book, that he carried around with him as he traveled. His being a brick and stone mason explains the ruler. The Sunday School book was from church. For like all our Coleman clan, Uncle Love loved the Lord! Uncle Love was a vested member of the Olive Chapel AME Church. A stained glass window bearing his name is still in the church. He was a delegate to the AME Church's 1984 General Conference in Kansas City, Missouri, that I briefly attended just in time to receive a "Discipline" that was distributed freely to delegates. I was not a delegate, but at Uncle Love's behest, I went down to the gathering of colored folks in KC to witness the wonder of it all, and to see our beloved Uncle Love! So. I got a Discipline too in their mass distribution, being colored myself! Ten years later, I would be first a member, then a preacher then an ordained itinerant elder at Brooks Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church, myself, after joining Allen Chapel KCMO, under Rev. Alvin L. Smith; then being assigned to the Butler, Missouri, 1871 facility by then Presiding Elder, W. Bartallettte Finney, in September 1995. But whenever I was in St. Louis, I especially enjoyed attending Uncle Love's Sunday School class at Olive Chapel AME Church in Kirkwood, Missouri. It was taught by the late Harold Whitfield, Esq., an older black attorney, who may have been the first such in St. Louis County, a testament in itself to a lowly status. Though in my 40s-50s by this time, I was still viewed as a pup by these elders. But a bright and active pup! In a way, then, Uncle Love's ruler and Sunday School book led me straight into the AME Church from a period of religious uncertainty as what followed my fellowship in the St. Matthews CME Church, also in Meacham Park, Missouri, our family Church, where Daddy and Mama raised all of us; where also Mama's named is etched in its cornerstone. More broadly, then, having some command of the technical and the spiritual is a winning family ticket! Get you a ruler and Sunday School book! You will see! wonders, when you put them to their naturally intended uses!