Extemporaneous musings, occasionally poetic, about life in its richly varied dimensions, especially as relates to history, theology, law, literature, science, by one who is an attorney, ordained minister, historian, writer, and African American.
Friday, August 31, 2018
BEFORE HIS TIME
"Once Truman was renominated in August , [Harry T.] Moore eagerly threw his support behind him. '[Truman had] stuck his neck out farther for the Negro race than any President--perhaps even farther than Lincoln ,' Moore enthused.
"Throughout the summer and fall, he sent out repeated mailings to Florida 's black leaders, comparing Truman 's record to those of Thomas E. Dewery, the Republican nominee, and Henry Wallace. After Truman pulled off his miraculous comeback in November, Moore called it 'one of the greatest political upsets in American history' and boasted of the importance of the black vote in putting Truman over the top.
"By most standards, Moore's first two years as a full-time NAACP executive secretary had been a dazzling success . He had chartered over thirty new branches and revived a half-dozen defunct ones, bringing the total to seventy -eight. In 1947, the Florida conference had led the nation in branches formed...
"At an NAACP Southeast Regional Conference in March 1947, Moore reviewed his successes in a report to the 235 delegates. 'We are pushing into areas where the name of this organization could hardly be whispered a few years ago,' he said, proudly noting the seven new branches in the panhandle. Moore also described his frustrations with 'an uneducated citizenry' that bought newspapers 'just to get a [bolita] number ' and with black ministers who '[teach] the people nothing but Heaven and immortal glory.'...
"His eloquent writing was also drawing attention ....
"Despite his success , however, there were ominous storm clouds on the horizon. Moore 's greatest achievements had come in the political arena, with the PVL [Progressive Voters' League], yet his only financial base was within the NAACP. And here there were signs of trouble . The voluntary quotas assessed on each branch, which Moore was counting on for his salary, had been a dismal failure....Total contributions to the state conference had been less than $4,000--far short of his proposed budget of $7,000--and Moore had been forced to abandon plans to hire a stenographer and rent an office. By November 1948, he has an operating deficit of $800, including $250 in salary and $328 in travel and office expenses...
"On top of his financial problems, an even more threatening schism was developing within the state conference over Moore's political activities. Through his leadership of the PVL, Moore was pushing to register blacks as Democrats, at a time when many prominent black leaders were life-long Republicans whose status, prestige, and political connections were entwined with the GOP. And while Moore was actively endorsing candidates for state and local races, the NAACP was strictly nonpartisan, with a constitutional provision against any partisan political activities. Some NAACP leaders were apparently frightened by Moore's forays into the dangerous waters of southern politics."
P. 75-77, BEFORE HIS TIME: THE UNTOLD STORY OF HARRY T. MOORE, AMERICA'S FIRST CIVIL RIGHTS MARTYR (1999) by Ben Green
Thursday, August 30, 2018
DISPEL GROSS DARKNESS
DISPEL "GROSS DARKNESS "
Public service and private interests have combined to pinion people of non-Western European descent to their cross of imperial oppression, beginning with Portugal and Spain, and cresting with France/England.
This dual tandem of public service and private interests operated from the 15th century in Congo, West Africa, through the present day of "Brexit" 2018, despite "liberation, independence" "decolonization" or any other palliative label associated with the continuing process of plasticity facilitating dual controls .
When any people's money, trade and economy which are its source of power and sustenance are under any foreign control; and when that people's education, which is their culture and religion is controlled, they too are controlled by others.
Before the rise and domination of the Western European nations, the same principle and process had been applied to African people by Western Asian Islamic people from the 8th century forward ; who still dominate much of Africa: North, East, West, Central, culturally and politically, if not all economically, due to the supervention of Europe.
Thus, Islam, Christianity, trade, literacy, military, navy, numeracy, slavery, mercantilism all worked to create global capitalism, using the slaves ' labor, natural resources of Africa's indigenous, transshipment people.
Private is its economic exploitation. Public is its mental indoctrination. These wove a powerfully effective global pattern, whose attributes yet deceive all oblivious to its weave in Africa, Americas , Caribbean Seas.
Africa's "gross darkness," i.e. Africans', means its "uneducated citizenry" ("my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge," Hosea 4:6) has been Africa's bane for centuries. Africa's "fall" and dispersal from its iconic, apical, Nile Valley Civilizations, yet enriching the world, followed the precipitous "fall" of the 25th Dynasty, the epic Nubian, "Ethiopian Dynasty," over 2500 years ago. There and then is where and when the deluge, repressed memories of black historians begins!
That same ancestral "gross darkness" of the civilizational glory that Africans gave the earth, ironically aided the recurring Islamic, Christian invasions! The same "gross darkness" of truth contributes to coups, corruptions , national underdevelopment, today!
Isaiah 60:2 offers encouragement:
New International Version
"See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the LORD rises upon you and his glory appears over you."
To be free--Africans, Africa--you must know the truth about itself, about yourself relative to the other persons on the planet. Knowledge of this is free online and it is also buried in public, private libraries and museums, homes, schools, temples. "You shall know the truth and the truth will make you free," said Jesus Christ, all of you African men, women, boys, girls, globally!
Wednesday, August 29, 2018
ROOT AND BRANCH, EXCERPT
"Had life been a little more fair or comfortable, Thurgood Marshall would not have met Charles Hamilton Houston until years later, perhaps when Houston served as the NAACP's special counsel and Marshall volunteered legal advice to its Baltimore chapter. Howard Law School was for Marshall, as it was for most of its students in 1930, the campus of last resort. The University of Maryland Law School was near his parents' home but did not accept black applicants; his mother dissuaded him from submitting a futile application. He could not afford to go to the northern law schools that admitted a few African Americans each year . Howard Law School was all that remained. This was the first time segregation had determined his course, and it wounded him deeply...
"Even before the Crawford trial thrust him to national prominence , Houston was fundamentally changing what it meant for a black person to be a lawyer in the United States. He was enacting sweeping reforms that transformed Howard Law School from what the city's wealthiest black residents called 'a dummy retreat ' into an institution whose uncompromising rigor and singularity of purpose drew comparisons to the military academy at West Point....
"Mordecai Johnson began to search for someone to replace the vice dean of the law school's day program. He sought a scholarly lawyer who believed, as he did, that black folks should no longer depend on white attorneys to wage their legal battles. Their legal war would be won by black attorneys with a blood-stake in their cases' outcomes. Johnson soon settled on a thirty-four year old professor in Howard Law School's evening program who, along with his father, owned a small but prosperous downtown law firm.
"At that moment, Charles Hamilton Houston was almost certainly the most academically accomplished African American attorney in history. As the only black student in Amherst's class of 1915, Charlie may have been stunted socially, but his racial isolation had failed to stunt his unwavering drive; he was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa and graduated with highest honors. A few years later at Harvard Law School, he became the first African American member of the law review. Mentored by future Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter, Houston again graduated with the highest honors offered by his law school. Not content with a lawyer's Juris Doctor, he remained at Harvard to earn a Doctor of Juridical Science, a rarely earned degree equivalent to a Ph.D. in the law. Professor Frankfurter was by now so impressed with him that he recommended him for a prestigious traveling fellowship, which Houston won handily. As a Frederick Sheldon Fellow, Houston studied law at the University of Madrid and traveled through countries in Europe and Africa , before returning to a hometown poorer and more segregated than he had left it.
"In Charlie Houston, Mordecai Johnson had found his man. He offered him the job at a salary that, although modest , would allow him to suspend his private practice and dedicate his full professional vigor to revolutionizing the day program at Howard Law School."
P. 16-23, "Ambitious , Successful, Hopeful Dreams," ROOT AND BRANCH: CHARLES HAMILTON HOUSTON, THURGOOD MARSHALL, AND THE STRUGGLE TO END SEGREGATION (2010) by Rawn James, Jr.
RETURN OF MAAT
Tuesday, August 28, 2018
THE INSTRUCTION OF PTAH-HOTEP
"1. Be not proud because thou art learned; but discourse with the ignorant man as with the sage. For no limit can be set to skill , neither is there any craftsman that possesses full advantages. Fair speech is more rare than the emerald that is found by slave-maidens on the pebbles."
P.42, "The Ethics of Argument " THE INSTRUCTION OF PTAH-HOTEP: THE OLDEST BOOK IN THE WORLD (2016)
EXCELLENCE MAKES ITS OWN RULES
EXCELLENCE MAKES ITS OWN RULES!
Me and Ted (the late Theodore Roosevelt Bush, Jr.) were great busboys in the 1960s in St. Louis, Missouri. In fact, given our eclat, we considered ourselves to be among the greatest busboys who had ever lived or worked tables!
We worked as a pair, beginning in Clayton, Missouri's Hanover Haus (later known as the Clayton Inn). We then moved to The St. Louis Club, atop the tallest building in Clayton, resort of movers and shakers in the global money world.
Next, was Schneidhorst Restaurant in ritzy Ladue. Lastly, there was Al Baker's Restaurant where we worked over Christmas Holiday in 1969, our Freshman year in college.
We swaggered into Al Baker's with our impressive busboy resumes and were hired on the spot by cool Al Baker himself! We reported for work through the kitchen like other help. Once oriented we repaired to the milk dispensing machine for some refreshment. Some of the old timers interrupted us, warning that Mr. Baker didn't allow the help to drink that white milk! "Say what?"
We kept on dispensing milk and drinking milk, heedless to such unwary pettiness , day after day.
After awhile, we would observe certain people among the help, now embolden by our example, doing the same, albeit furtively.
Excellence makes up its own rules! Even if it's only at the milk machine!
Monday, August 27, 2018
THE MIRACLE OF ENGENDERING
THE MIRACLE OF ENGENDERING
The human reproductive impulse, event, activity, engenders human beings. Steeped in mystery, symbology, rut ritual, law, religion, social mores, human sexual activity is rooted in those hormonal pleasures that drive bodily breathing, eating, sleeping, excreting, etc.,required for sustenance, maintenance, life.
"Be fruitful and multiply," the iconic scripture provides in Genesis 1: 28, as our Biblical injunction, would hardly seem necessary, given our biology. In like manner "to everything there is a season and a time to every purpose" of Eccl. 1-8 with its "time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing," certainly seem to contemplate human sexual behavior ritual.
Reinforcing this human view of the mystery of engendering, is its majestic ubiquity, prolixity of sexually, asexually engendering in and among every plant, all living non-human animals, birds, fish, insects, microbes, now living, now extinct , known and unknown; each one, having in season as defined by its nature, reproduced, in its turn, as it was reproduced in turn, or not reproducing--for whatever reason--, in consonance with the impulse of its own majestic engendering miracle.
DIVINE RELATIVITY
Saturday, August 25, 2018
SLAVERY THEN AND NOW
SLAVERY: BACK THEN. RIGHT NOW!
Yesterday, August 24, 2018, when I posted an essay on Facebook entitled "Ballots Are Bullets," based upon my uncle's statement that slavery did not end, at the end of the Civil War, nor with the 13-15th Amendments, but had survived into the 20th Century, in Mississippi, at least, I had no idea that "Amen's"' would be received from Arkansas, southwest Virginia, elsewhere, as to slavery's vestiges there as well!
Now to be sure, we had examined the question of when and whether African chattel slavery had ended in two symposia in 2011; "we" being the former Lorenzo J. Greene branch of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) to which I belong.
In Kansas and Missouri each esteemed panel of scholars from respective states' universities had concluded that chattel slavery did not end with the election of Barack Obama, nor had it with any earlier legislative enactments, nor judicial decisions preceding his seminal victory in 2008. Thus , it still existed! We did not proclaim this on any rooftops, although surely we may well have done so, in retrospect! Although local newspapers reported on our symposia's occurrence; they may have done so, given the rarity of cooperation between the states.
It was my maternal uncle's statement however that made the fact of slavery real for me; made me reflect back over prior experiences and readings, that had led me to write my essay.
Today, i called him to thank him for putting a human perspective on the academic conclusions about the ongoing issues of slavery in its facile forms: unidentifiable except to those who have lived through it. He bemoaned the killings going on by people without knowledge in our communities. He said when you try to tell them about what things were like, back in the day, they dismiss what you are saying as "back then."
But "back then" is also right now ! As my uncle says there are some white people looking to tear you down, as there are other white people trying to protect you. That sounds very much like abolitionism! Abolishing modern form of slavery and racism and discrimination now!
To top it all off, I had read several days ago, where Harriet Beecher Stowe had disdained any law's transformation power to change entrenched racist sentiments in her little known and lesser read classic A KEY TO UNCLE TOM'S CABIN (1853). It contains copious sources proving whereof she wrote in her iconic novel, of that name, that I am now re-reading! You must read at least one of her books to grasp!
She wrote:
"In the 'Code Noir' [Louisiana] we find it set down that:
"'Every person is expressly prohibited from selling separately from their mothers 'the children who have not yet attained the age of ten years.'...
"What a freshness of nature is suggested by this assertion! A thing could not have happened in a certain state because there is a law against it!...
"And what is the law, against the whole public sentiment of society?--And will anybody venture to say that the public sentiment of Louisiana 'practically ' goes against the separation of families?"
P. 92, A KEY TO UNCLE TOM'S CABIN by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1853)
Despite the laws, Louisiana slaves' children were sold separately from their mothers at any age. One may now understand why in 2018 little Central Americans can be callously separated from their parents and deliberately scrambled and lost!
HELP
“HELP!”
Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
Tuesday, August 25, 2015
Help comes in many forms. Some help is easily recognized.
Other help is not so easily recognized.
Some help is welcomed. Some help is resented.
All help is salubrious and appreciated. No “help” ever is injurious.
Some help is immediate.
Other help takes years, even decades, maybe centuries to activate.
You shall know it by its fruits, if it helps, when it helps.
An old lawyer once told me, “An ounce of preparation outweighs a pound of brilliance.”
That helped.
A late historian once told me, “Accuracy trounces error, as specificity, generality.”
More Help.
Euclid’s Elements teaches me “Prove and demonstrate all things, repeatedly, recursively.”
Sublime Help.
The Bible and the Quran and Lao Szu and Buddha embodied all the above kinds of help.
Supreme Help.
Similarly have these helped: Imhotep, Aesop, Plato, Augustine, Emerson, Einstein, Carver, et al.
Extraordinary Help.
Dear Reader, you help. By reading, understanding, sharing these words/ideas, you help.
Indeed, the Greatest HELP of all, after Jesus Christ, is:
YOU!
Friday, August 24, 2018
BALLOTS ARE BULLETS
BALLOTS ARE BULLETS!
I was somewhat incredulous, even disappointed, when my maternal uncle, Cyrus Arlander Moreland, told me, recently, that slavery still existed in parts of Mississippi in the 1940s. '50s, even into the '60s, and that he had seen some of the conditions under which they lived, when he had worked as a delivery man for a meat merchant there!
"Impossible?" I had rejected it out of hand. Surely, he is pulling my leg I thought to myself, respectfully; daring not to offend, to dispute, by questioning, this 80+ years man who loved me. He had taught me and shown me so much to prove it.
After all, I had been to college, to law school and worked for the Justice and Labor Departments, before going into my own private, solo law practice . My uncle had not! Still he had said that he had witnessed slavery . I had not!
Turns out that my uncle was right! Also turns out that I had, unknowingly, witnessed some vestiges of it in Money, Mississippi in 1971, while poll watching in a cotton gin with a friend, now an attorney, also, from Howard University. Two armed white men had unloaded a truck loaded with black men and escorted them inside the polling place, where they voted in front of us on a flat table open for viewing.
Naturally, my friend and I were more concerned with our own safety than electoral proprieties in my birth state of Mississippi, in light of those two armed, vicious -looking, white men; who escorted the entire lot of men back to the flatbed truck that they rode in on, when "voting" was done for them, that very dark, Mississippi night!
That they were slaves had never occurred to me, until I write this. Then. I had assumed that they were simply sharecroppers, especially since black prisoners still cannot vote there, here. Nor vote much of anywhere else!
For, if they could vote, their prison conditions, sentences, terms and rehabilitation opportunities, during their imprisonment, would surely all have vastly improved for this large aggregate of respectful, respected citizens-voters! Ballots are bullets!
Then, reading books by Charles E. Cobb, Jr., Robert Moses, who had led, and had fought the civil rights battles in Mississippi in the 1960s in SNCC, and others' books ; including having viewed a Facebook video of an elderly brother who said that he had been a slave, in Mississippi, back in the 1960s, I am more convinced than ever about my sage uncle!s truthfulness. And my brainwashed unknowing ruefulness!
Ballots are bullets, powerful media!
'SLAVES' OBEY YOUR 'MASTERS'
A Good Slave is a Good Christian...
“Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.” (1 Peter 2:18: )
H/t Kweku Ofori
[Unfortunately, this New Testament scripture has fueled several false narratives, when coupled with the photo. "African" is synonymous with "slave" to those of us who scarcely know African American history. When this was written there were more white slaves than there were Africans, since neither the Islamic nor Christian slave trades has begun at that time. Second, Christianity itself began in Africa since the Greeks and Romans and satellites who later copied , stole, appropriated it as their own were all pagans! But many people lack knowledge of the origin of Christianity as lack who lack knowledge of world history. Ignorance is the evil here, for addressing the text forthrightly, it is true that obedience of children, soldiers, servants, students, employees, citizens, church's members is a desirable thing of any color! On the other hand men may misuse anything for any purpose! So, ever be on your guard for deceit! Many African American "slaves" rejected the attempt to misuse the Bible for the sake of white supremacy and their oppression. They ran away to freedom by the tens of thousands; they fought in and defeated the slave holders in the Civil War. They are still fighting through their descendants like me and some of you! Finally in his book JESUS AND THE DISINHERITED, late Dr. Howard Thurman of South Carolina says colored folks would reject white preachers who brought slave sermons, preferring slave preachers who preached freedom in the forest's brush arbors, and elsewhere. There they could worship freely with their own preachers like Richard Allen, Denmark Vesey, Gabriel Prosser, Nat Turner and many more anonymous ones, who saw through the delusion that the white devils on earth had used to try to separate original black man from God! "1 Corinthians 7:23 (ASV) Ye were bought with a price; become not bondservants of men."}
Thursday, August 23, 2018
EXPEDIENCY RULES
MORNING AFTER DONALD TRUMP EXPEDIENCY EXPOSTULATIONS
Every "morning after" day is always memorable . "What now?" issues becloud, bewitch, well up, in the wake of what had happened the day before, between the parties.
Politics is not excepted from more conjugal customary "morning after" conniptions with media mass/social talk: speculations, expostulations.
The conviction of Trump Campaign Manager, Paul Manafort, and guilty pleas of Trump's personal attorney and Republican Party Deputy Campaign Manager, Michael Cohen, on August 22, 2018, have clearly implicated President Donald Trump, and others, in their clique.
I add my bit to the expostulations.
First, as President of the United States of American Donald Trump is no ordinary man, but is a man.
His political status and personal status conflate but do not conflict. He is not a god, nor a king. As ruler of men he is subject to their rules.
Rules change as conditions change for expediency's sake . We have seen this fact unfold expediently in recent American political and legal history following the controversial, yet precedential, Presidential election in 1876, between Ohio's Rutherford B. Hayes, Republican, and New York's Samuel B. Tilden, a Democrat. Their infamous "Hayes-Tilden Compromise" ended post-Civil War "Reconstruction" timid attempts to fulfill black citizenship, legal rights, as it affirmed, ratified "white power's racist segregation.
The dictates of the Constitution were cast aside, peremptorily, by wealthy white men , who, by agreements between certain of themselves, who yet remain anonymous, over 150 years later.
These very practical people reached a deal removing federal troops from the South, leaving the fate of blacks to those who "best knew" how to deal with them. In consideration of removing federal troops and abandoning the blacks, the Republicans would be awarded the Presidency, regardless of the Electoral College or Constitution!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compromise_of_1877
Expediency is powerful. Apostle Paul, 1 Cor. 10:23, and "The Common Law" author, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, have both acknowledged expediency's legitimacy. I suspect that such expediency will end the torrid Presidency of Donald Trump.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Wendell_Holmes_Jr.

IMAGINATION
Wednesday, August 22, 2018
TRUTH AND FALSITY
MUELLER TIME NOW!
SEANCE IN ZIMBABWE
MY SEANCE IN ZIMBABWE 🇿🇼?
In Victoria Falls (MOSI O TUNYA). Zimbabwe , in 1983, three local brothers , one of whom was a banker, shepherded me into the hut of a tribal vizier, or spiritual man, "hoodoo man"--in African American parlance--to have my fortune told. The priest mumbled some unknown words, shook some bones together, and threw them onto the ground. He spoke some more. Shook again. Threw again . Looked up at me. And said something to my hosts.
In English, they told me things that have subsequently become true, about my life, that he had learned.
I have never forgotten about that session, that seance, with their medicine man, and my three friends, in Zimbabwe in Victoria Falls nee Mosi O Tunya (smoke that thunders): nor of its efficacy or accuracy.
A couple years later , one of my Zimbabwean friends called me in Kansas City, Missouri, from Dallas, Texas , where he had surprisingly emigrated and married. I had named him "cool man, " at his request, in Zimbabwe.
Naming friends must be a revered, honored tradition among them. As per requests, I had nicknamed all three.
Tuesday, August 21, 2018
DR. KING, BRER RABBIT RACIAL PARADOXES
DR. KING, BRER'S RABBIT, FOX, TAR BABY: DOUBLE RACIAL PARADOXES
The fuel of white hatred must not be grievance-based; it's something else, since black people have never done anything to white people to cause them to grieve nor hate. On the contrary, it is white people who have consistently harmed, killed, enslaved, robbed us for centuries.
Notwithstanding such, the black people, have not hated, do not hate, but love, tho' greatly grieved!
These are great paradoxes, ironies; indeed, this is doubly paradoxical. For whites to hate but blacks don't.
Perhaps, we misconceive. Maybe white people do not "hate" black people, but prefer to exploit black people for their material gain and for emotional security. This may explain "whites'" peculiar conduct.
The blacks', seemingly historical, lack of integral resentment toward the whites' systemic racial pattern of exploitation based upon color, and blacks massive profitability for the whites have naturally combined to reinforce the fact, the farce of plasticity in European, American, Muslim--African-based resources exploitation for many centuries.
The Africans' legendary lack of "guile"; holy Ethiopian integrity, innate goodness, that is famously celebrated by classical writers, like Homer, Plato, Diodorus Siculus, may have played a crucial part in this pageant of successive exploit.
Certainly the Africans exhibited great hospitality towards all of the whites: Greeks, Asians, Romans, who poured into Africa, in waves as pupils, traders, travelers emigrants, supplicants, who further sparked, encouraged more whites to come to Africa to prosper as well from it.
In due course, the passage of time, and cosmological change brought about the fall of primal African civilizations to the vast hordes of invading armies and navies from Asia, islands of the seas, Europe, into Africa to topple the glory of ancient Egypt (Kemet), ancient Nubia (Ethiopia) others, like Libya, Numidia, for over '2,000 seasons.'
This continental breakdown caused massive migrations, dislocations to much lesser populated parts of Africa in order to escape from their plagues , pilfering, pillaging, plunder. But there was to be no escaping; they all found them, again, in East, West, South Africa and in the interior. Africa convulsed! into a global hunting ground for offspring of the outside earlier invaders. Eventually, the trans-Indian Ocean, and trans-Atlantic slave trade began: to work the "new world", to delight the old.
Slowly, patiently, some modern blacks have come to perceive the truthful dimensions of the racial dilemma of all blacks, as not something emotional, involving hatred nor love. But the logical, logistical, profitable expediencies of emotionless power. The lion does not hate the lamb, nor does the hawk hate the sparrow. All must eat. Whites too must eat; do eat us!
The Rev . Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s final book, THE TRUMPET OF CONSCIENCE (1967) includes "A Christmas Sermon on Peace," that has prompted my rather vivid asseverations. In it, he writes:
"I've seen too much hate to want to hate myself, and I've seen hate on the faces of too many sheriffs, too many white citizens councilors', and too many Klansmen of the South, to want to hate myself; and every time I see it, I say to myself, hate is too great a burden to bear. Somehow we must be able to stand up to our most bitter opponents and say: 'We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws and abide by the unjust system, because noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good, and so throw us in jail and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities in the midnight hour and drag us out on some wayside road and leave us half-dead as you beat us and we will still love you. Send your propaganda agents around the country, and make it appear we are not fit, culturally and otherwise for integration , and we will still love you. But be assured we'll wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day, we will win our freedom. We will not only win freedom for ourselves; we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory."
P. 76-77
His "we will still love you" refrain lashes and gashes like a leaden whip upon my raw flesh. It may be so for you too! That fact certainly has been historically true. Our unrequited love, during the Civil War, 1861-1865, precluded mass murders , rapes, arson, rebellions, when most white men were gone away to war, leaving only slaves and children to see about and care for white women, white elderly, in towns, on Southern plantations and other property also ! That notorious black nonviolent fact precludes any further inquiry. That utterly amazing fact further suggests that enslaved black people had been living the gospel of Jesus Christ all along during thralldom, relative to white people. Whites have been the reprobates! The ungrateful, and ungodly man relative to the blacks!
Having said that much about black history as unassailable proof, there now is no need for me to allegorize Dr. King's ringing, "we will still love you " refrain to the "Tar Baby" fable of African American folklore, as another form of proof. That proof would have involved the famous tale about Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, the nemesis of Brer Rabbit, and the "Tar Baby" doll that was erected in by Brer Fox in the middle of a near wayside road to trap Brer Rabbit .
Brer Rabbit rabbit had struck the lifeless, sticky, tricky doll with all four paws, when it was "too uppity" to reply after having been spoken to.
Thus, Brer Rabbit literally was by all four's stuck to the "Tar Baby," when Brer Fox came along. Brer Fox had finally caught that ole Brer Rabbit, who had evaded him for years! But Brer Fox congratulated himself and gloated too long, speculating about how he would kill and eat, Brer Rabbit. This gave Brer Rabbit time to think, to say repeatedly after each articulated option: "Brer Fox, please don't throw me into the briar patch!" Silly Brer Fox was moved by greed to punish rabbit for years of humiliation. Thus, he then himself was beguiled by Brer Rabbit's "briar patch" putsch. He threw him into rabbit in briar patch!
Plop! Back in the briar patch and free. Brer Rabbit taunted Brer Fox, as he skipped merrily away, "I was born in the briar patch Brer Fox! My whole family is here!" So to me "Tar Baby" was Dr. King's torturous "we will still love you," incandescent. As stated above, I was disposed to use just the tale "Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, and Tar Baby" in a parallel, eschatological analogy, before the timely visitation of the Holy Spirit upon my historical literary spiritual, very African American imagination!
Thank you Jesus!
Monday, August 20, 2018
WHEN WE RULED, EXCERPT....
"Senwosret III had a long and illustrious career on the throne , ruling for 39 years. In Egypt, he undermined the power of the nomarchs. In Wawat, he built a string of castles spread over a distance of 30 miles Throughout Nubia, he was worshipped as a god . In Palestine his armies marched, spreading Egyptian writing and the Egyptian calendar. Finally, on the cultural front, there were great developments of expressive portraits sculpture during this time.
"Amenemhet III, the last great ruler of the [12th] dynasty (3242-3195 BC), built two important pyramids. at Hawara and Dashur. The former has a sepulchral chamber weighing a staggering 110 tons of yellow quartzite. He built a hall of granite pillars for Sobek. At Medinet Madi he built a temple to Renenutet, the Goddess of the harvest. At Hawara he built the Labyrinth with its massive layout, multiple courtyards, chambers and halls . The very largest building in antiquity, it boasted 3,000 rooms. One thousand five hundred were above ground and the other one thousand five hundred were underground. Our old friend , Herodotus, saw it in ruins 3,000 years later. He was still somewhat impressed:
"'I visited this place, and found it to surpass description; for if all the walls and other great works of the Greeks could be put together in one, they would not equal in labor or expense this Labyrinth; and yet the [Greek] temple of Ephesus is a building worthy of note, and so is the temple of Samos. The pyramids likewise surpass description, and are equal to a number of the greatest works of the Greeks; but the Labyrinth surpasses the pyramids.'"
P. 186-187, "The Later History of the Nile Valley," WHEN WE RULED by Robin Walker (2006)
REMEMBRANCES OF OBAMA BIDEN
Larry Delano Coleman
August 20, 2017
AFRICAN-AMERICAN ANOMALY MUST BE DIVINE HETERODOXY
Part of the enduring American anomaly, puzzle, riddle, is not just that President Donald Trump would succeed President Barack Obama's two prior terms, electorally--whose differences are stark--but that the United States of America can be a nation, at all, given its heterodoxy.
Being founded upon compromise between agricultural interests, and mercantilism interests, which were both codependent upon the bodies and properties of millions of black people over four (4) centuries, who were captured in Africa, then, over oceans shipped to America to bind America's economic dissimilarities into one national identity, was more than unpredictable, it was divine.
It matches if does not surpass any epic ever conceived in any religion!
Its magical manifestation in North America was not just objectively unprecedented in history, but was also inconceivable, philosophically.
Thus, in our African presence is the mystery of an American hegemony.
These facts are foremost of all of American anomalies: all resonant of the African presence in the making, in the maintaining, of American life. Neither singly, nor, co-dependently, without African people's indisputably rich agency in the development of America's globe-leading agriculture, trade, culture, politics, education, business , law, shipping, exploration, invention, nor military, could either North or South, East or West, have progressed, from sea to shining sea!
These facts are foremost of all of American anomalies: seminal resonance of the long African presence in the making and in the maintaining of American life.
Saturday, August 18, 2018
AFRICAN AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM
AFRICAN AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM
Efforts to isolate us from them, by segregation, Jim crow, resulted in too many literate, prosperous homes, black churches, colleges, businesses, organizations, communities, cultural affinities, in music, dance, fashion, inventions, cooking, crafts, that they became jealous. So much so, that their hard core recalibrated their bearings. They turned to destroying black Wilmington, NC; Memphis, TN, Atlanta, GA, Springfield, IL, Springfield, MO, Tulsa, OK, East St. Louis, IL, and many more such, in and around World Wars I & Ii, when, it leaped to Chicago, Detroit, Omaha, and more. So, colored isolation having failed, as exemplified by the "Harlem Renaissance." where whites openly "aped" blacks in "Nigger Heaven," sterner measures were required. First, they sabotaged the Universal Negro Improvement Association; falsely prosecuted, convicted, deported, its inspirational leader, Marcus Mosiah Garvey, an acolyte of Booker T. Washington, whose self-help program, Garvey expanded domestically, and projected internationally. Then, with Garvey gone home to Jamaica, a new phase of migration from the South, to material and civil "rewards" in the North, Midwest, and far West, became the industrial model, with which came ghettos, Bantustans; and a plasma status of not free nor enslaved; not isolated nor integrated; an African American epic of "exceptionalism." This largely is where we are now restrained but not constrained riding on the "A-Train" of our ever-divine destiny to multiply and to replenish earth.
NEGRO ISOLATION ATTEMPTS
Efforts to isolate us from them, by segregation, Jim crow, resulted in too many literate, prosperous homes, black churches, colleges, businesses, organizations, communities, cultural affinities, in music, dance, fashion, inventions, cooking, crafts, that they became jealous. So much so, that their hard core recalibrated their bearings. They turned to destroying black Wilmington, NC; Memphis, TN, Atlanta, GA, Springfield, IL, Springfield, MO, Tulsa, OK, East St. Louis, IL, and many more such, in and around World Wars I & I, when, it leaped to Chicago, Detroit, Omaha, and more. So, colored isolation having failed, as exemplified by the "Harlem Renaissance." where whites openly "aped" blacks in "Nigger Heaven," sterner measures were required. First, they sabotaged the Universal Negro Improvement Association; falsely prosecuted, convicted, deported, its inspirational leader, Marcus Mosiah Garvey, an acolyte of Booker T. Washington, whose self-help program, Garvey expanded domestically, and projected internationally. Then, with Garvey gone home to Jamaica, a new phase of migration from the South, to material and civil "rewards" in the North, Midwest, and far West, became the industrial model, with which came ghettos, Bantustans; and a plasma status of not free nor enslaved; not isolated nor integrated; an African American epic of "exceptionalism." This largely is where we are now restrained but not constrained riding on the "A-Train" of our ever-divine destiny to multiply and to replenish earth.
Friday, August 17, 2018
natural law
That law rests upon theology is proven by ethics. Ethics are based on philosophy, cum nature and divinity. SUCH is natural law.
Wednesday, August 15, 2018
ARETHA'S DEATH WATCH
"Death watch" is the ritual of awaiting the descent of death by family and friends at bedside. We are now in Aretha Franklin's death watch. As our "Queen of Soul," as the legendary Rev. C. L. Franklin's diva-daughter, father and daughter, have girded, lifted, loved us with multiple musical spiritual dimensions of the Holy Spirit, as manifested in the firmament of African American culture.
Tuesday, August 14, 2018
YOUR GREATEST LIFE STORY
EGYPT ROME AMERICA
Monday, August 13, 2018
INFAMOUS AARON BURR
AARON BURR: JEFFERSON’S VICE PRESIDENT
Monday, August 13, 2018
By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
A friend has characterized President Donald Trump's insatiable stupidity and viral venality as a consequence of "affluenza," that made-up "affluent white alleged legal ailment defense" that has become apparent to the non-white, or non-affluent among us, as exemplified by the drunken rich white boy who killed 4 people while driving drunk, but who got probation, before fleeing to Mexico. Then, another “affluenza” travesty was the male Stanford student who raped a drunken female, Stanford student in an alley behind a garbage dumpster, and got the same “affluenza sentence”--probation.
I fully appreciate my long-time friend’s perspective. But I am more inclined to align President Trump’s alleged “treason” with the now-little known “Aaron Burr conspiracy treason,” and with treason whereby tens of thousands of Confederate soldiers, received pardons and restored civil rights from Abraham Lincoln’s Vice President, Andrew Johnson, who narrowly escaped conviction after impeachment by one vote. More recently, former Vice President, Gerald Ford's pardon of renown “southern strategist” “tricky-Dick “, Richard Nixon may also offer some insight.
I first caught wind of the “Burr Conspiracy,” reading David O. Stewart's THE SUMMER OF 1787 (2007).
Aaron Burr served as Vice President under Thomas Jefferson (1801-1805) when he killed Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton in a duel and also when Burr was tried and was acquitted of treason by a jury in Richmond, Virginia, over which Chief Justice John Marshall presided. Aaron Burr was acquitted of attempting to form a separate nation in then- “Southwest” aided by Spain , Great Britain, others. As one commentator has crucially noted, “The government, to clarify, charged Burr with levying war, but in attempting to prove the charge, they persisted in using the more lax and indeterminate standards of proof for conspiring to levy war. Treason and the conspiracy to commit treason, Marshall ruled emphatically—and crucially—were two distinct crimes.” This latter point may presage the outcome of Trump-Mueller in our present day, with its Presidential cries of “no collusion.”
At any event facts again seem to verify, that there is “nothing new under the sun!”
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