THE SLAVE IN A DISMAL SWAMP

This poem by Longfellow was quoted by Harriet Beecher Stowe in A KEY TO UNCLE TOM'S CABIN (1853), p.86, where she discusses outlaw slaves, who have escaped into the Dismal Swamp of North Carolina. We read "Evangeline" in junior high. Not any of Longfellow like this gripping Poetry! http://www.hwlongfellow.org/poems_poem.php?pid=99 The Slave in the Dismal Swamp Poems on Slavery 1842 The Good Part, That Shall Not Be Taken Away The Quadroon Girl The Slave in the Dismal Swamp The Slave Singing at Midnight The Warning The Witnesses To William E. Channing In dark fens of the Dismal Swamp The hunted Negro lay; He saw the fire of the midnight camp, And heard at times a horse's tramp And a bloodhound's distant bay. Where will-o'-the-wisps and glow-worms shine, In bulrush and in brake; Where waving mosses shroud the pine, And the cedar grows, and the poisonous vine Is spotted like the snake; Where hardly a human foot could pass, Or a human heart would dare, On the quaking turf of the green morass He crouched in the rank and tangled grass, Like a wild beast in his lair. A poor old slave, infirm and lame; Great scars deformed his face; On his forehead he bore the brand of shame, And the rags, that hid his mangled frame, Were the livery of disgrace. All things above were bright and fair, All things were glad and free; Lithe squirrels darted here and there, And wild birds filled the echoing air With songs of Liberty! On him alone was the doom of pain, From the morning of his birth; On him alone the curse of Cain Fell, like a flail on the garnered grain, And struck him to the earth!

EATING AND COOKING AMBIENCE

EATING AND COOKING'S AMBIENCE There are people who eat, even relish eating, raw meat. Steak Tartar is a dish of raw hamburger topped with raw egg. It is eaten by the customer under a table cloth in "fine" restaurants. In like fashion is squab dispatched. Squab is a small bird. Raw fish, sushi, of course, is all the culinary rage these days, skewered decoratively. Of course certain tribes of warriors eat the hearts of their fallen enemies for strength. Cannibalizing fellow seafarers after shipwreck or other life-threatening disaster is very well documented. These thoughts were brought to mind when I reflect upon Harriet Beecher Stowe's observation in her classic UNCLE TOM'S CABIN (1852) that cooking is "indigenous" to Africans. She noted this attribute when she compared the states of orderliness in two kitchens that both were run by enslaved women on plantations : Aunt Chloe and Dinah. Mrs . Stowe has written: "There is all the difference in the world in the servants of Southern establishments, according to the character and capacity of the mistresses who have brought them up . "South as well as North, there are women who have an extraordinary talent for command, and tact in educating. Such are enabled, with apparent ease, and without severity , to subject to their will, and bring into harmonious and systematic order, the various members of their small estate, to regulate their peculiarities, and so balance and compensate the deficiencies of one by the excess of another as to produce a harmonious and orderly system.... "Dinah was a character in her own way, and it would be injustice to her memory not to give the reader a little idea of her. She was a native and essential cook, as much as Aunt Chloe--cooking being an indigenous talent of the African race; but Chloe was a trained and methodical one, who moved in an orderly domestic harness, while Dinah was a self-taught genius, and like geniuses, in general, was positive, opinionated, and erratic to the last degree ." P.191-192 Firing up outdoor grills evokes earlier days, when fire was deemed spiritual and cooking with fire was civilizing .

SWARM TO THE TRUTH!

SWARM TO THE TRUTH! Mathematics were invented by Africans. So say Plato, Aristotle, and other Greeks, to whom latter day Western Europeans and Americans presume to attribute these divinely natural sciences. Their creators were ancient, original black and brown people of inner Africa. The evidence of African autochthony in math, science geometry, chemistry, medicine are found in papyri in European and American museums. They are also in books in public libraries and are free on the internet. These ancient African exemplars readily contradict white supremacists' lies, plagiarisms, mind-numbing distortions, in thousands-year old carved stone, rock edifices in Kemet to Nubia, in addition to papyri and other media. Africans invented writing. They actually possessed, at least, three kinds of writing : hieroglyphics, hieratic and demotic. To them are due mankind's earliest, therefore holiest, religious, medical, scientific, military, poetic, aphoristic, mathematical, technical, and literary writings. These prove the obvious; the AFRICAN GENESIS OF MANKIND AND OF CIVILIZATION. Yet, to judge from the subversive and apoplectic conduct of far too many African Americans toward math, writing, reading, one would think they were loathsome diseases! They are, we are, the very ones who fear mathematics like the plague! and who scorn, or abhor reading and writing as though they were poison!"To hide something from a black man put it in a book," is an all-too-true statement! To flee one's natural heritage, history, progeny is not only unnatural, but flight is shameful, unnecessary, wasteful, and pitiful. If African Americans are ever to be "free," as they constantly claim that they want to be, then, they must not only free themselves of such spooky phobias over mathematics, reading, writings; but black folks must rally to learn and to apply, mathematics, reading, writing, as global progeny! They must, we must, swarm to them, learn of them, love them all over again as long-lost beloved kindred! They are us! They are the truth! They conceal the truth that is within us, and that shall make us "free" indeed!

EDUCATION YOU NEED

BLACK LAWYERS IN AMERICAN HISTORY

SOME NOTABLE BLACK LAWYERS IN AMERICAN HISTORY In addition to the outstanding lawyers "of color," as William T. Coleman terms them, in his outstanding legal autobiography, COUNSEL FOR THE SITUATION (2010), namely: Charles Hamilton Houston, William Hastie, Thurgood Marshall, I would hasten to add his name to that extraordinary list of lawyers, his exemplary career being the archetypal "Philadelphia lawyer." However, the list of outstanding black lawyers neither starts nor ends withe the aforementioned list. From William Morris, the first black lawyer in the United States in 1840's Boston to John Mercer Langston of the 1850's Ohio and Washington, D.C, who founded the Howard Law School, to Charlotte B. Ray of Howard first woman lawyer of 1870's Washington, D.C. to James Milton Turner of the 1880's Missouri and Oklahoma, educator, Indian claims litigator: to William T. Greener, first black Harvard Law graduate, later Howard Law dean; John Wesley Cromwell, 1890's Howard Law grad, black historian and secretary of the American Negro Academy; Kelly Miller, lawyer, mathematician, sociologist, dean, Howard School of Liberal Arts; and even more recently, Douglas Wilder, Virginia Governor; Johnie Cochran and Willie Gary, litigators extraordinare; Reginald Lewis, Wall Street phenom and philanthropist; Vernon Jordan, Wall Street partner and National Urban League; Barack Obama, U,S. President; Benjamin Crump, civil rights; many more as well.

CELEBRATING THE 14TH AMENDMENT SESQUICENTENNIAL?

Are you celebrating the 14th Amendment's sesquicentennial? It was ratified into Constitutional law on July 28, 1868. Its legal sweep has been epic; although it was not as fully distended, nor its electoral reprisal as fully unfurled as envisioned, as it might have been. I now make specific reference to sec. 2, the Congressional voting representation reduction provision; that section should have been applied to states that either have actively illegally repressed, or, which have failed to act to suppress terrorism contra newly acquired black voting rights. Section 2 of 14th has never been enforced by federal court. http://ij.org/cje-post/fourteenth-amendment-150-cje-symposium/ The 14th Amendment provides, following a brief introduction: 14th Amendment The Fourteenth Amendment addresses many aspects of citizenship and the rights of citizens. The most commonly used -- and frequently litigated -- phrase in the amendment is "equal protection of the laws", which figures prominently in a wide variety of landmark cases, including Brown v. Board of Education (racial discrimination), Roe v. Wade (reproductive rights), Bush v. Gore (election recounts), Reed v. Reed (gender discrimination), and University of California v. Bakke (racial quotas in education). See more... Amendment XIV "Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state. Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability. Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any state shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void. Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article."

BETWEEN TWO STATES OF BLESSEDNESS

Nothing dead can be revived nor rehabilitated. If it can be revived or rehabilitated, it was not truly "dead." This I know from my left side-left arm experience. After my ischemic stroke in July 2010, that ended my legal career, my left arm was flaccid, devoid of life, in the sense that I could not move it, nor flex my fingers. My arm had sensation. It was sensitive to pain and to temperatures. But it lacked mobility or movement. My left leg was less so. I could walk on it slowly. While my left arm has progressed beyond my "pass me my left arm please, Dear," days of yore, it can, still, only do a few, limited things. I have said that to say this: one's sensitivity to pain, pressure, temperatures, are indeed signs of life, but, without movement or without mobility, one's limbs are both alive and dead, at once. Thus, there appears to be another state of being, another phase, another modality, between life and death in persons, places and things. Especially is this so in the United States of America in which aspects of life and death are yet exhibited, experienced! From myself, now, I wheel around, to analogize, to try to extrapolate, more broadly, from myself, by applying my own ischemia to black people's African American history spiritual, epigenetic legacy. Therein, my and our mobility and movement, have been similarly limited, confined, constrained, frustrated by culture, environment, laws, taboos, lies, racism ignorance, superstition into a state of "disability," between life and death. Blacks exist between two states in American society, dead and alive. We are more denizens than citizens even as late as 2018. We are sensitive to pain, pressure and temperatures. But we have no mobility, nor movement, that typifies complete citizenship. We are unfairly bruised, broken, battered, by billionaire rulers and by their agents: legislators and governors; mayors, city councils; police, by all courts, by finance companies, banks, landlords, stores, credit cards, schools, and even by each other! Fortunately, we have the complete use of our minds, of our right arms even if our left arm/leg's movements still remain limited. The "strong right arm of God" can save us, having brought, sustained us, thus far on the way, As God's agents, actors, witnesses, we, too, must work joyfully, faithfully, in love, to revive, to rehabilitate, to rejuvenate ourselves more fully, indeed, completely, however encumbered, disabled, we may be! We must "Take up your our beds ! And Walk!" Away from the pool of Bethesda. Still, through it all, I praise God! We praise God for life! We praise God for life! "This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine! Let is shine, let it shine. Let it shine!" Until my, until our, change comes; and then I, we, shall see and be the light! Genesis shed light on our being "between two states of blessedness" by the use of it Biblical allegory. Genesis contains two separate accounts of mankind's beginnings in chapters 1 and 2. In chapter 1, God creates male and female in "our likeness and image." In chapter 2, Adam is molded from the dust, and Eve is made from a rib in Adam's side. Thus, the Bible affirms that we coexist with each other and God between of states of blessedness. Reading the Bible is the greatest of all of my literary gains, accomplishments. Its spiritual teachings have opened doors that were closed for me and for many with me and many more before me! Amen.

CONFRATERNITY

t is a wonderful thing when brothers have each other's backs! Today I posted that "Jesus was African," because he was "born in Africa." Another brother asked me for the specific location. I was so sure that it was Egypt that I had not bothered to double check the scriptures prior to posting. When I did double-check, I discovered and published my error and apologized for making a mistake. Later, however, another friend, Eric James, posted a series of maps that I post here to support my first claim that show that Jesus was indeed born in Africa, because of tectonic plates make Judea part of Africa. My friend, Omari Gardner, then further corroborated the accuracy of the first "Jesus was African" post based on Egyptian history where that area was known as northeast Africa. It was Egyptian by trade, culture, conquest and by Kemet's prolonged rule over Canaan-land. Thanks Eric James and Omari Gardner!

SELF-RECOGNITION

ACHIEVING SELF-RECOGNITION Looking, yesterday, at the learned credentials of Tertullian, I was surprised to notice that they look a lot like mine, with law, rhetoric, literature. As I recall Origen 's credentials were like these too! As were Augustine of Hippo's also like ours. So too were Apostle Paul's. Perhaps, as the late Rev. Sam Carpenter had looked at me and mused aloud back in the 1970s in Kansas City, Missouri, on Commerce Bank's escalator: "God might have reached down into Canton, Mississippi, to raise [me] up for work. You never know." He said that while moving right on. In the same time frame, Rev. William Howard Clark, then President of the Kansas City Urban League, who later married me to my second wife, Lyla, said as he jocularly entered an elevator on Walnut Street, "What's happening , Governor!" I busted out laughing! We both laughed loudly, then I replied, "You've got it, Senator !" Reflecting further back, Mama and Daddy had told me often as a boy, as well when I became a man, that some great unnamed Bishop in a rural Mississippi church revival had paused, while precessing out of the church , to say to her about me, when I was a babe in her arms, that I would be somebody, someday. Mama's brother, Cyrus Arlander Moreland, my uncle, has said often in recent years that my name was to be made in the ministry of Jesus Christ, rather than in law practice. "Big Unk" had unintentionally hurt me when he had said that. But I now recognize its worth, if not, as yet, its total truth. By the same token, I can now recognize the worth, if not the total truth, of Rev. Christopher Columbus Butler's sage excited utterance that I was a "philosopher!" Pastor Butler was then pastor of our Coleman family home church, St. Matthews C.M.E.Church in Meacham Park, Kirkwood, Missouri. Philosophy, as it was presented to me in college my freshman year, I found to be repugnant, distasteful . Only now, as I read Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus , Tertullian, Origen, and more, unconstrained by others ' precepts or concepts, but freely, as informed by God, does its love and spiritually nutritious value over flow my soul and spread abroad to all. Lest I seem now to have become too enamored of myself, let me share that earlier today I deeply experienced a dollop of humility! I had posted on FB about Jesus being "African," because he was "born in Africa." A guy asked where in Africa Jesus was born? When I turned to the scriptures, I was surprised to see that he was born in Judea and carried into Egypt after his birth. Of course, I knew that from having read it many times! Perhaps , I heard Hosea 11:1 "Out of Egypt have I called my son." Naturally, I apologized on FB and published a factual retraction based on scripture. It was then that these two angelic FB brothers swooped down to corroborate my first post about Jesus' Africanity, at two different sites or groups. One angel had used geology, tectonic plates with representative maps, to show that where Judea sits is in northeast Africa geologically . The other one used history, showing that Egypt had long lain claim to that Mediterranean region by trade, culture, conquest. I was gratified! I have written this expiatory précis for myself. It happened to spill over unto you, most of whom may have already heard from God about the self-identity issues posed in here. If not, ask and it will be given unto you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened. Amen! 

THE BRIDGE THAT BROUGHT US OVER

THE BRIDGE THAT BROUGHT US OVER It is more than mildly ironic to me, indeed it is downright confounding to me, that so many people of African descent, in the Americas, are either atheist or agnostic; and that so many African descendants , are so decidedly anti-Christian. Of course mankind began in Africa. There "religion" began with history, arts, sciences, mathematics, crafts, languages, agricultural; in short all that is associated with man began with man, well over a million years ago. Thereafter man emigrated to the rest of the earth and mutated. In process of time, new forms of man came to be, who were unique unto themselves; but still were men. Phenotypes differed from the original versions of man in African, which has differences themselves. The megalithic monuments of the ancient African world , Kemet , Kush, Carthage, are assiduously dedicated to God or to the gods, according to their conceptions of same by their votaries, priests, followers. Their ancient papyrus writings, tales, wise sayings, instructions, were affirmed by all of divine nature, heavenly, terrestrially, memorialized in stone. When these and other ancient African nations' iconic civilizations were conquered by non-African people from Asia and Europe, there began a gradual decline, descent from celebrations of things African to celebrations of things foreign brought on by the conquering nations' images and conceptions of God. Especially was this so with Christianity, which, like Jesus, was indigenous to Africa, his birthplace. The earliest scholarship is African. The earliest martyrs were African. Much more was African in Christian worship, religion, literature, polity . Certainly the crucifiers of Jesus Christ (or any other name), Rome, reluctantly came to the knowledge of "the way"--as the Christian motif was first known--through Emperor Constantine to preserve his empire. After feeding tens of thousands of original African Christians (and others) to hungry lions, or as lethal gladiators in amphitheaters all across the Roman Empire--as 2nd Century African theologian, the Carthaginian Tertullian wrote in his "Apology," --Romans still had failed to blot out "the way."' Chastened by their embarrassed and frustrated by failures, and without stamping out this "pernicious superstition," after crucifying many thousands more, Romans finally woke up with a new strategy: "if we can't beat them, join them!" Saying in effect, "since we Romans can't wipe out these holy folks' pernicious superstitions, or them, which now threaten Rome; then, let us do what we best do; that is to conquer them and "the way," then then remake them all over in our image and likenesses for our glory!" It is the devolution of this Roman makeover, centuries ago, that has come down into modern times that has flummoxed so many present day African American descendants! They find "the worship of the white man as God," as they put it, to be utterly intolerable, utterly anathema! So did I, until I learned better, after my mother's persistent prayers and pressure! Somebody prayed for me! My eyes were opened to see! And to seek the truth about black history, and Christianity! So, I write as one who understands the angst of religious abnegation that is especially hard-felt by black men, who must suffer through images alien to himself as if divine! These images came to be after 14-15th century Renaissance era Italians like Cesar Borgia had his image painted as model for Jesus Christ appearing on religious memorabilia and in pictures. And it was especially after many American slave masters' white ministers began to quote selected passages favoring slavery, scriptures, supporting the doctrine of white supremacy and hoax of black inferiority, that they began to slip away. As written by Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman in JESUS AND THE DISINHERITED the sanctity of brush arbor lifted up slave preachers like Nat Turner; and ex-slave, Methodist itinerant, more beneficent and enduring Richard Allen. These men stole away, broke away to their own vine and fig trees to find peace and love, and to find their reasons for being here! Even so, if too many, modern day, urban-modified, post-migration, African Americans who "claim" to have an innate disdain for Jesus Christ , were to seek their reasons for being, as did Nat Turner, Richard Allen, Martin Luther King, Jr, and their immediate ancestors did and do, it would liberate them and embolden them too! This relation was the bridge that brought them over. It was a rope that they clung to in swampy waters of slavery, Jim Crow, lynching, mis-education! Many still are faithfully holding on to the lifeline from heaven that is anchored in Christian faith. They did not know and do not know, the history or the theology, but they did know and do know Jesus as their personal savior! And that's what made all the difference! That's what gave them power to make a way out of no way. It is what brought us here today! Amen!  http://www.blackandchristian.com/articles/academy/djones-07-07.shtml

AMERICAN LAW UNVEILED

AMERICAN LAW UNVEILED Too many exceptions destroy any rule, while establishing new rules. Rules are those that are observed in practice, even if not written. Law is practical, while pretending to be ethical, philosophical, and rational. That is for show, for consumption. The real deal with rules are their practical outcomes applied to fact. "Practical," as used here, means that the rules, laws, Constitutions, conform and confine themselves to the powers that be, ruling powers ' needs, desires, interests habitually. All the rest is pretensive hoax. This pretentiousness is not necessarily unfair, if it were not written to be contrary to true practice otherwise. Such is the nature of American law.

INDENTURES ARE STILL HERE

Debts are indentures, contracts, binding you and your property to defined terms of repayment of the debt: house, car, credit cards, student loans, taxes, payday loans, child support, etc. Formerly, tens of thousands of persons would bind their labor for a term of years in exchange for "free" passage to America; or such persons were brought here as British prisoners to work off their passages as colonial contract laborers. These persons were the first indentured servants. Africans were later exported to Virginia and Maryland from 1619 to labor as indentured servants, like the earlier persons for owners of large, colonial tracts lands taken from the indigenous Indians by force or fraud. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indenture

WHITE SUPREMACY'S LAND AND POWER

WHITE SUPREMACY'S LAND AND POWER The American doctrine of white supremacy was born of colonial necessity, in 1666, after the frightening "Nathaniel Bacon Rebellion. " "White" supremacy's objectives were definite and concrete, to retain wealth, and and power by dividing and conquering the indentured servants by color. This way their former competitive coalescence against the colonial rulers for the acquisition of Indian lands would be thwarted! Instead these new "whites," now newly assured of being equipped with "free law" accouterments: small amounts of cash, tools, dray animals, seed, and smaller land allotments--when freed from their indentures --would identify with the other new "white" people, of any class, history, culture or tongue , and not with their former indentured allies, "blacks." Blacks' indentures were torn up; slaves for life they became, including all descendants of black mothers. By this "whiteness": construction,ideal, apostrophe, paradigm, norm, the large ruling colonial landowners were thereby assured retaining of real power, real wealth and all privileges. These were used to build a thriving economy and subdue a continent. The apostrophe of "whiteness-blackness" provided tremendous profits to the colonial rulers, by irresistible subjugation and enforced ignorance . By political algorithms in "majority rule" minority repressive constitutions, brutality , injustice and racism they preserved themselves and forged an enduring constitutional legacy. Lesser "whites" were then deputized and paid to enforce these unjust laws that the rulers had passed to enforce the dichotomy between the black and the white people in early America. From this firm footing in power and in land, white supremacy continues to enshrine and enshroud itself in the vestments of religion, history, law, science, commerce, education, literature, government. So it has come down to us in 2018 in the Presidency of Donald John Trump, who wears substantially similar white supremacy garb, vestments, only with broader phylacteries, borders to accommodate more low-level, passé blanc, groups like Hispanics, whose emigrant children are now being dispossessed, as were black slaves' children for centuries. I said all of this to say that: as land and power are white supremacy's economic , cultural and political foundations ; desperately fervent appeals to "white" morality, apart from land and power moves by blacks and others, to acquire land and power, individually, and collectively, are doomed, misplaced measures falling far short!

"JUNETEENTH" AND MISSOURI SLAVES

Ignorance about "Juneteenth" in Missouri is officious, malicious, pernicious. Missouri's slaves were freed January 11, 1865, by law; 6 months before Texas slaves are reputed to have learned the Civil War was over, from Gen. Granger. Over 6,000 former Missouri slaves, in fact, fought in two separate United States Colored Troops (USCT) units, after Jan. 1, 1863' "Emancipation Proclamation," valorously. One such unit the 62nd USCT, ironically, among other venues, served and saw action in Brazos, Santiago,Texas and its environs, from 1864-1866, during the very time that the "Juneteenth" legend arose., which Dr. Myron Pitts debunks. That same unit gave over $6,000 cash to establish Lincoln University in Jefferson City to their commanding office, Col. Richard Baxter Foster. They realized that their people had "no time to lose." Foster taught his troops to read and write while soldiering. If Texas slaves learned later, as their famous June 19, 1865, celebration date suggests, it was what Missouri slaves had already known, years earlier--before the 1850s-- that they were free to fight for freedom in the "Kansas Border Wars," with John Brown, Doc Jamison, Col. James Montgomery; to sue for freedom in court and win as did Dred Scott and Harriet Scott, at first;as had hundreds had done in "freedom suits" from the 1820's forward; or flee to freedom in Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma and Nebraska territories!, as did others! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_Missouri_Regiment_of_Colored_Infantry

NOSTALGIA

"During the 1870s, there was a surge of martial enthusiasm across the United States. This was stimulated in part by Civil War veterans 'who retained a longing for military association." 'Longings' for past associations often expressed in new forms and associations, however meaningful, inevitably all must fall short of yesteryears' former dream-like spiritual refreshment.

OUR GENTRIFICATION ISSUES

OUR "GENTRIFICATION" ISSUES. Relative to "gentrification" issues, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the vicinity of Mother Bethel AME Church at 6th and Lombard Streets, in 1999, I was surprised to see how white , how "gentrified" that epic 18th century black neighborhood had become! The site of first AME Church hardly had any parking spaces, except right beside the church itself! What would Bishop Richard Allen have thought of that? Bishop Allen's remains are interred in Bethel's church's basement, with his wife's, and Daniel Coker's of Baltimore, Maryland. Rev. Coker had declined his own election as the church's first bishop in favor of Bishop Richard Allen in 1816. In Washington, D.C. f/ka "chocolate city," I wish we activist-students had had the requisite consciousness to buy up those dilapidated properties, all around Howard U., back in the 1970s! But we did not know! Could not even appreciate where we were nor what we had ! Nor,apparently, could the non-students, whether Howard affiliated or community folk!

"DISAGGREGATING " OUR WAY TO FREEDOM

“DISAGGREGATING” OUR WAY TO FREEDOM Wednesday, June 20, 2018 By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman Why not model our societies, governments, organizations upon the atom? Earlier societies used animal organization principles to model their societies. The female-led elephant herds and male lion-led prides of lions are two examples. In this, our post-atomic, age, surely, more efficacious models have presented themselves, albeit unknowingly, due to conceptual distortions of perceptions. Of course, many may have to learn about the structure, properties of atoms to be completely comfortable. Many more may not need to do anything more than to “feel” their way forward in the spirit in order to catch the flair, as done in church. Why not elevate human associations among African Americans to match our new found science knowledge, our new-found nature knowledge, that accretes daily? “Disaggregation” of a whole or individualization reduces complexity to simplicity in mathematics, biology, chemistry. Our African American community can use its historic and present disaggregation for its immediate gain, advantage: politically, sociologically, economically. Since we have long been purposefully disaggregated, --“scattered and peeled”—from at least the fifteenth century forward, by those nations who have exploited by our technical credulity, we may need to do no more than to remediate that technical deficiency to provide for our own families, adeptly, diligently. Doing so will defeat others’ ongoing disaggregation attempt. Our rediscovered, now-remediated, technical proficiencies may then be used against them, whose efforts only empower us more! By perfecting our own, by utilizing their habitual disaggregating energy for our strategic advantage, we rise. #30

MAGNA CARTA TO THE 14TH AMENDMENT

MAGNA CARTA TO 14th AMENDMENT The Magna Carta of 1215 required that King John of England capitulate to the combined force of the nobility by extending certain previously exclusive, royal privileges and prerogatives to his barons, to his English aristocracy, before risking the loss of them all. Better than four centuries later, Oliver Cromwell and his Protestants wrangled the crown from the Catholic King Charles I in 1649, in the English Civil War, whom he also conveniently beheaded , thereby he secured additional concessions for his "nobility" --landowners--and for himself. "The Protector" was Oliver Cromwell's nomen in the "Commonwealth era." The common man under Oliver Cromwell, as also under the Magna Carta's resultant baronial aristocracy, got nothing. Following form, including a fashion of the earlier English civil war, with Oliver Cromwell, the American colonies under George Washington, in 1789 ratified a United States Constitution that granted privileges and immunities to its own "aristocracy" sans titled honorifics. A Bill of Rights was added, in 1791, as a sop, almost an afterthought, containing the first ten Constitutional Amendments. A truer Civil War a mere seventy years later, 1861-1865, not only freed the class of African slaves who had been imported in chains to hew from this land's vestigial forests: tobacco, rice, indigo, cotton, sugar, other cash crops for export to English capitalists and to Europe; but their "Freedom War" brought about the 13-14-15th Amendments to the Constitution. The 14th Amendment with its Due Process and Equal Protection Clause provisions was that which made the "Bill of Rights" apply to the states' actions and actors. First ratified for now-African Americans, but later deemed to apply to all citizens "white people" too! The latter people benefit far more from the 14th Amendment than do the blacks, for whom it was ratified! So, ironically those individual rights that first began to be extended to the nobility of England in 1215, did not finally find their full expression, or common, general amenability to all, until well within the 20th-21st centuries in the United States of America, through the agency of laws intended to benefit colored descendants of the formerly enslaved, legally repressed, faithful dutiful, absolutely-essential, mainly Protestant, African Americans.

NUMERACY AND LITERACY

If illiteracy and innumeracy were not insuperable barriers to our enslaved ancestors, who fought for and who achieved freedom, for themselves and for this nation; who raised families and bought farmland during the nadir of Jim Crow segregation; and who built churches, schools, lodges, businesses of all kinds, with only very limited access to these vital, after-acquired rudiments of letters and numbers amid their "unequal education,"( without affirmative action, nor equal opportunity,) why should today's unlimited access to literacy and to numeracy nodes in public schools, in public libraries and that are widely available online, yet prove to be be a stumbling block to many among us who repeatedly fail? They should not be! They must not be!? Our people have historically done more with less. "Give a Negro an inch, and he will take a mile," the aphorism goes, and we've demonstrated its truth repeatedly in diverse fields. Some folks get rich off our subjugation and benefit from our inertia. Many of them look like us! They make excuses to thwart that sacred, indomitable spirit inherent in the aboriginal human personality, that derives directly from God! Garvey said it best, "Up you mighty race you can accomplish what you will!" No excuses! Zero. Zip. None!

CUMULATIVE VOTING KILLS GERRYMANDERING

http://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/supreme-court-gerrymandering-wisconsin?utm_source=just-in&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=trump-kim-summit-analysis&utm_content=061318 Cumulative voting would scuttle political gerrymandering, and Congressional districts. Each state with cumulative voting would have its Constitutional representative seat allotment. After voting, candidates with the largest vote totals would win those open seats in a state. Each voters' number of votes would be equal to the number of seats then open. Voters could divide all their votes among any number of candidates. Or they could vote all their votes for just one candidate. Cumulative voting would finally and truly democratize American elections, and protect majority/minority interests.

REV. SAM GREEN AND UNCLE TOM'S CABIN

Rev. Sam Green was sentenced to Maryland prisons for ten years for having a copy of UNCLE TOM'S CABIN in is possession in 1857; pardoned 1862. https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc3500/sc3520/013700/013785/html/13785bio.html

HAPPY FATHERS' DAY!

"There's more in the man than there is in the land." --Grandfather Toney Mitchell Coleman, a Mississippi farmer

JEFFERSON AND JOY

I had earlier read Query XIV in Thomas Jefferson's NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA (1785), wherein he asserts the inherent intellectual inferiority of blacks (which Benjamin Banneker refuted in an exchange of correspondence with him in 1791), but I had not read Query XVIII, until tonight. Dr. Joy DeGruy, author of POST TRAUMATIC SLAVE SYNDROME (2005) quotes critical portions of it in her epilogue to her masterfully written book that I also finished tonight. Read her book and both Queries from Thomas Jefferson's classic! http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/notes-on-the-state-of-virginia-query-xviii-manners/

LAND: UNFINISHED BUSINESS

LAND: OUR UNFINISHED BUSINESS Freedmen wanted land to farm and to live upon among themselves in peace in January 1865. An elected group of ministers in Savannah, Georgia, had related their particularly defined interests to an inquiry committee sent to inquire of them from Washington, D.C. , sent by President Abraham Lincoln to ask what they wanted as the war was winding down to victory. This extraordinary inquiry committee was composed of War Secretary Edwin Stanton and Union General William Tecumseh Sherman, who had marched to the sea from Atlanta to Savannah, and a court stenographer, among others. Their unique conversations are recorded for posterity. They are the clearest declarations, if not the earliest declarations by freely elected African American representatives to power. http://www.freedmen.umd.edu/savmtg.htm I had long sought to know where we, as black people had left off, stepped off, in our renegotiation for our new, now-freed living terms and conditions, going forward, as American people. Where and when had we first staked out our aims after Civil War, prior to entering into this bewildering maze of deceitful political options, I asked. They wanted land to work; land and to be left alone to live, work it, in peace. This transcription makes that plain. Before today, I had thought that we had left off our progression with the April 4, 1968, assassination, apotheosis, martyrdom of our great philosopher-king. But I was wrong. Before Rev Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. , before Malcolm X, before the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, before Booker T. Washington and Marcus Garvey, these twenty black preachers, whose spokesman was Rev. Garrison Frazier, said that we to be free from bondage, to keep beneficiaries of the fruit of our labor from our own land, and to do for ourselves, and to help the government perform its duties. And land they/we got! Literally tens of thousands of acres that had been abandoned by fleeing planters on the coastal islands and lands of Georgia and South Carolina were ceded to the black people, and they set about their customary business of working the land they knew so well, now for their own account. These twenty preachers had faith, had trusted that the government officers from Washington,DC, who were sent to them , would abide their word . And they did abide their word at first, until President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865. Then arose a new racist regime under Andrew Johnson, Lincoln's Vice President, a Tennessee native, who rescinded the land cessions to the slaves in favor of restoring the land title to its former rebel owners, and if none, to Northern land speculators. That Congress never overrode this covenantal breach of faith by President Andrew Johnson respecting land is heresy ! Congressional failure and Johnson reneging on our formally expressed desire for land, and later retraction of the ceded lands, were the first acts of official government renunciation of "reconstruction" that Washington had made by conduct to freedmen. This shameful pattern of obloquy would be repeated again and again until the present day. So now knowing, let us now resume where we all left off our African American sojourn with the unfinished business of land! https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/fight-andrew-johnson-impeachment-fight-future-united-states-180967502/

post traumatic slave syndrome

"We, as African Americans are also affected by this racist socialization. Many of us behave as though we believe that white is somehow better, that we are the deficient people that white people say we are. This is one of the most insidious consequences of Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome. At the same time many of us believe in the illusion of the American dream. Becoming clear about who we are as well as what is needed for our material and spiritual success is the foundation upon which our health depends. We need to tell our children the truth and prepare them to thrive in the real America ." P. 193, "Racial Socialization," POST TRAUMATIC SLAVE SYNDROME by Dr. Joy DeGruy (2005)

ALREADY

Some go to a gym looking for him . Others are lost in a blur to find her. Yet: Because you are, they already are. And: Because they already are, you are. Amen 🙏

INVENTION OF NATURE

ohann Wolfgang von Goethe heaps high praise upon Alexander von Humboldt when he stated that "In eight days of reading books, one couldn't learn as much as what he gives you in an hour." This quote is found in a most remarkably well written biography by Andrea Wulf, THE INVENTION OF NATURE: ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT'S NEW WORLD (2016), p.28. Ms. Wulf paragraph containing the quote begins, "During Humboldt's visit, the men met every day . They made a lively group. There were noisy discussions and roaring laughter until late at night. Despite his youth, Humboldt often took the lead. He 'forced us ' into natural sciences, Goethe enthused , as they talked about zoology and volcanoes, as well as about botany , chemistry and Galvanism." Earlier, Wulf had written: "During the eighteenth century 'natural philosophy '--what we would call 'natural sciences ' today--evolved from being a subject within philosophy along with metaphysics, logic, and moral philosophy to becoming an independent discipline that required its own approach and methodology. In tandem new natural philosophy subjects developed and emerged into distinctly separate disciplines such as botany , zoology, geology and chemistry . And though Humboldt was working across different disciplines at the same time , he still kept them separate. This growing specialization provided a tunnel vision that focused in on ever greater detail, but ignored the global view that would later become Humboldt 's hallmark." P.24

OUR SOCCER TEAM

OUR TURNER SCHOOL SOCCER TEAM We boys had a soccer team in the winter of 1963, at James Milton Turner Elementary School, even if we did not have any coaches, any equipment, nor even a complete understanding of the rules . But , we had spirit ! We had speed. And we had fun! We played in cold, at times, blustery-winter weather in our homemade, green-dyed, t-shirts against other grade schools' soccer teams upon Nipher Junior High School 's usually frozen field . The other teams had coaches , equipment, and an understanding of the rules. They were white. We were black. And that explained all of the differences in the Kirkwood, Missouri School District in 1963. We would walk from Meacham Park into Kirkwood, proper; play a game that we would usually win; then we would cool-walk back home to Meacham Park, savoring victory in our own raucously loquacious way. In the championship soccer game , we learned about the off-sides rule the hard way ! Our speed was our main asset , dribbling being foreign to us , as, indeed, was soccer itself foreign to black boys like us, in the winter, 1963. Baseball, basketball, football and track were the team sports that our culture best knew. Soccer to us was akin to kickball that we played on our playground. Our team modus operandi on our Turner soccer team was to kick the ball forward, race speedily ahead, while outrunning the opposition downfield, to kick it into the net for a goal. It worked brilliantly for us soccer neophytes until the championship match at Nipher. There, as already stated, the officials cited us for being off-sides, often! This caused us to lose the match , and lose our triumphal swagger walking home . Many people may not recall our boy's soccer team at Turner School in 1963. But we do. We always will remember!

EUCLID AND PROOF

It is noteworthy to me that "Euclid"--a name mis-attributed to a Greek, but whose ancient Egyptian megalithic proofs predate Greece by thousands of years-- proves all propositions in the book "Element's" 13 books, using each proposition as infrastructure in geometry from the least to the greatest.."Prove all things," says 1 Thess. 5:21. "hold fast to that which is good"

PTAHHOTEP

"Sounds like the teachings of Jesus," she wrote to my post from WRITINGS FROM ANCIENT EGYPT (2016). I replied : "True. As do many more of Ptahhotep's teachings. He lived 2,000 years before Jesus in the 12th Dynasty of Egypt."