ETHIOPIA

Ancient Greeks were so overwhelmed by the Ethiopians of their era (500 B.C.) that Ethiopia was known to them as the "Land of the Gods." Ethiopia was the original home of the Greeks (and later Roman) gods. Greece's gods returned home annually to Ethiopia for twelve days of feasting and partying, says iconic Greek poet, Homer, in the ILIAD. Indeed, The Ethiopians and Egyptians (northern migrant Ethiopians) were deemed by them, the Greeks, to be the handsomest, tallest, most righteous of men on Earth, founders of all civilization literature, geometry, science, medicine, all.

WHAT MANNER OF MAN AND WOMAN?

"What man has done, man can do," we may be prone to say. But then there are the pyramids of Kemet and Kush. Those exquisitely cut, meticulously placed, massive limestone, sandstone, granite blocks, sealed without mortar. These blocks had been quarried, then ferried from hundreds of miles away by Nile River barge. These megatons were then precisely cut stones were pointed toward stellar constellations in perfect geodesic, geometric, patterns that meter the realm of the divine on earth. Their incomparable mathematical, astronomical accuracy marvel us thousands of years, incomprehensibly, blubbering over 5,000 years later! Surely these were men and women who were one with nature, one with God, like us before! But, what manner of man, what manner of woman, were we in that vastly different time?

RACISM

Racism is a diseased social philosophy whose cure entails self-repentance

RACISM IS PHILOSOPHY

“Racism” is Philosophy ‘Racism’ was invented by Western European settler -colonizers, after, not before, African people were bought in Africa and brought to the Americas in order to build it up from a ‘howling wilderness.’ Therefore “racism”, as philosophy, came into being later, after slavery, not before slavery, to self-rationalize, to self-justify, the sinfully contradictory Catholic and Protestant Christians’ violent subordination, vile enslavement, cretinous repression of Africans in the Americas in order to force them to labor long, hard, without respite or compensation, nor rights, without dignity of “personhood” by such as who profited by their crass avarice. Racism is practical self-philosophy.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING 2019

I give thanks this day, Thanksgiving Day, 2019, that I have come into the knowledge of the source of the Bible. It was not King James of England, whose poetic version I love; nor was it the Vulgate or Latin Bible, that I do not possess ; nor was it the Latin’s source, the Septuagint , that was written in Greek by the 70 Jewish translators in Alexandria, Egypt. Nor was it the Hebrew Torah, which contains our “Old Testament” books of Moses; nor the other two Hebrew books that comprise the ‘Mithra’ and the Torah, as ‘TaNaKh’. For the Bible’s source material is from Africa, where Alexandria was; which the Hebrews translated into Greek; where the great thrice -burned Great Library of Alexandria, Egypt was located from which they extracted substantial resources; that Great Library, “a wonder of the world,” having been thrice burned down by Romans, Christians, Muslims, variously. Egypt is ancient, a gift of the Nile, whose sediment and floods made it the world’s breadbasket; and whose contributions to philosophy, theology, astronomy , literature , medicine, science, mathematics, civilization is utterly incalculable. Its ancient cities today continue to yield treasuries such as those at Oxyrhyncus, Egypt, that contains Papyri of knowledge from every discipline , including the earliest Euclid’s geometry. Also there in Oxyrhyncus written in ancient Egyptians’s three written languages: hieroglyphics, Hieratic, Demotic, are yet untranslated facts (only 1-2% of which have been translated) in addition to Aramaic, Greek, Syriac, others. Plato says Egypt was over 10,000 years old, when he wrote his “The Laws.” Manetho, who was the last priest alive capable of reading the sacred hieroglyphics—who wrote a list of kings during the reign of the Greek Ptolemies—who dates Egypt more than 30,000 years old from the 4th century BC in which he listed kings. So on this Thanksgiving Day, in 2019, I give holy thanks for having stumbled upon the source of the Bible: the gyroscope, barometer, thermometer, basal foundation, of Western Civilization that is the base of our national holiday, Holy Day! Hurrah! Huzzah! Bravo !

AFRICAN AMERICAS' AGGREGATIONS

AFRICAN AMERICAS' AGGREGATES Disaggregation is the opposite of aggregation. Aggregation is gathering. Disaggregation is scattering. In that most African Americas' efforts to aggregate to liberate in the Americas are deemed to be threateningly hostile, historically, by our expropriators, our Americas' enslavers, and have been crushed, except for 1791-1804, in Haiti, we are left with the much less desirable--though no less achievable--disaggregation options to pursue in our firm unrequited quest for African Americas' restitution and freedom. “Disaggregation” is that singular, but indivisible, effort which is jointly invisible, indiscernible as such. It is our individually performed, personally realized self-ambitions, our self-goals, our duties to ourselves, first. Then, that seeming group “disaggregation”, while ostensibly achieving our own unique personal victories, is that which "magically" attains unto broader African Americas' victories. However, it must yet be accompanied by the prudent austerity of avoiding self-congratulatory braggadocias: as caveats for effectively restoring African Americas' solidarity, liberty. In effect, our ‘disaggregation’ is disssembling. Thus, ‘aggregation’ is reassembling while still dissembling (hiding) individual efforts in service, in production, in unity, in the African Americas. But wait! Are we not now, in 2019, disaggregating and reaggregating ? Yes. And have we not been doing so since 1619, in the United States of America, at least? Yes! We have been doing so, autonomously, even if their integrally linked disassembly-reassembly processes of life and death, less by more, were unrecognized, hence, also unnamed. Without a name we did not know them, philosophically, ontologically, even if we may have intuitively grasped them. "Scattered and peeled" we knew we were; we know that we are; but does disaggregation lead to aggregation? "In that time shall the present be brought unto the LORD of hosts of a people scattered and peeled, and from a people terrible from their beginning hitherto; a nation meted out and trodden under foot, whose land the rivers have spoiled, to the place of the name of the LORD of hosts, the mount Zion." Isaiah 18:7. We have observed recurrently this "disaggregation-reaggregation" phenomenon in nature, in the heavens among the stars, but yet unperceived, if conceived, was the same natural African Americas' pertinence to ourselves. The pendulum always returns to its balance point. Nature returns to its source. New International Version "Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name." Gen. 2:19. Now at least we have a name for our historic dissembling, for our secret aggregations of knowledge, power, wealth, resources, faith, hope, love. “Aggregation by Disaggregation.” Our, also natural and divine, seeming inversion of expected outcomes is like the reassembling toys purchased at Christmas; like sewing holy garments by God-given patterns . Amen 🙏

EGYPT IS AFRICAN

"[I]t is one of the astonishing results of the written history of Africa, that almost universally in the nineteenth century that Egypt was not regarded as part of Africa.Its history and culture were separated from that of the other inhabitants of Africa; it was even asserted that Egypt was in reality Asiatic, and indeed Arnold Toynbee's "Study of History" definitely regarded Egypt as "white", or European! The Egyptians, however, regarded themselves as African. The Greeks looked upon Egypt as part of Africa, geographically and culturally, and every fact of history and anthropology proves that the Egyptians were an African people varying no more from other African peoples than groups like the Scandinavians vary from other Europeans, or groups like the Japanese from other Asiatics. There can be but one adequate explanation of this vagary of nineteenth-century science: it was due to the slave trade and Negro slavery. It was due to the fact that the rise and support of capitalism called for rationalization based on degrading and discrediting the Negroid peoples. It is especially significant that the science of Egyptology arose and flourished at the very time that the cotton kingdom reached its greatest power on the foundation of Negro slavery." p.99, "Egypt," THE WORLD AND AFRICA by W. E. Burghardt DuBois (1946, 1965).jpg" width="319" height="320" data-original-width="956" data-original-height="960" />

COLONIAL COLOR-CODED CARD TRICK

COLONIAL COLOR-CODED CARD TRICK Reshuffling the deck was the tricky legerdemain that was played in the Chesapeake Bay after the 1660s in response to the nearly successful revolution by indentured servants @ the British colonial rulers in Virginia. English, Scotsmen, Welch, Irish, Europeans became “white” under the political colonial reshuffle. African indentured servants became the “blacks.” Divided by color, the threat of revolution (“Nathaniel Bacon”) to colonial rule was defeated. Former indentured servants, former equally yoked and former allies in oppression, became thereafter enemies in the colonial political reshuffling of the deck. Former “free law” emoluments like land , seed, tools, dray animals that were given only to the “whites”, put additional distinctions between the now “white” and now “black” folks. Previously all indentured servants of any color had been given “free law” earnings at the end of their contractual term of indenture. This grant had helped the newly freed men to get a new start on their own. But now the “blacks” became slaves for life under the new perverse colonial dispensation , as reified by law: judicial, legislative, religious, trade, cultural, education. Whites became fellow citizens, who were freighted with voting privileges if they owned sufficient property. Of course a panoply of other laws were put in place to frustrate the rejoining of former indentured servants . Interracial marriage was outlawed. The one-drop of African blood rule was adopted to clarify coverture, descent , distribution. Moreover blacks could not inherit, nor contract , nor bear arms, vote or enjoy any incidents of citizenship. Indeed, blacks became something other than human in the popular cultural conceptional expression. The book, NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA (1785) by Thomas Jefferson, in “Query XIV” directly states that black women are akin to Orangutans. His Sally Hemings was therefore an orangutan like he was! The color divided America’s early colonists to perpetuate power in the elite. Enslaved blacks proved to be pliable, inventive, moral, profitable, prolific in reproduction, smart. So the color system that was designed to prevent revolution among the lowers sustained itself through the Civil War down to the present day. Another merit paradigm must be conceived to replace the old black white political one, for America to shake free of the baleful color coded disability under which it has labored so long. The Declaration of Independence is as good a place as any to begin our national renewal. (By the way , our “Declaration” was written by iconic pamphleteer, Thomas Paine, not Thomas Jefferson , as falsely claimed. Thomas Jefferson was one of five men on a Continental Congress editing committee—with Benjamin Franklin and John Adams—who edited the original 86 times before it was finally promulgated as it is.)

BUBBLE-LOVE

Bubble love. Airtight. Skintight. Aloft . Wind blown . Glistening gleaming, radiating iridescently, peacefully. Bubble love. Chaste . Forlorn. Love. Hopeful hopeless love. Inflated by social pressure. Sealed by sincerity. Bubble love. Romantic not tragic. Inspiring not despairing. Evocative not provocative. Secret erotic love is the bubble love of which I sing. Bubble love. Divine not sacerdotal; aloft not aloof. Palliating mediating insinuating love. Not lust. Lush not plush. Quietly mutually intuitive . A force of nature. An ineffable force.

NUTRITION

Nutrition is the beginning of social consciousness.

ME AND THE BIG UNK

Me and my brilliant, Holy Ghost-filled, Uncle Cyrus Arlander Moreland in St. Louis, Missouri, for his 80th birthday, Thanksgiving 2016. It was celebrated by our family and friends with music, dancing, food, drink, testimony and love.

OUTLAWRY

systemic outlawry is of at least two types. 1. those privileged by the system to exploit; 2. those forced by the system to exploit

SANCTIONS

When I was sanctioned in 1988 by Federal Judge Joseph Stevens in the Doretha Bryant lawsuit that I had been brought, under federal RICO statutes, against Preston Kerr’s cronies at the Golden Ox Restaurant, in an attempt to thwart their bold corporate takeover of the nationally renowned Kansas City barbecue legend, “Arthur Bryant’s Barbecue,” it altered the orbit of my life and law practice. I was brought into the case by Israel Hawkins of Kansas City , Kansas, who befriended me in my legal practice’s infancy. I was anathematized as an attorney in the black community, later. I was ostracized by lawyers. My solo law practice was fiscally paralyzed, by Joe Stevens’ very racist and public order that accused me of using the press to coerce, to sue, but not prosecute the RICO suit. Yet , I toughed it out. I survived the deaths of Joe Stevens, Doretha Bryant , Bruce Houdek, Esq., Preston Kerr’s lawyer , Preston Kerr, himself ,the Golden Ox Restaurant praise God! I also survived the imprisonment of Israel Hawkins—who was convicted years later and sentenced to 30 years in federal court of defrauding some of his other investors in a wild scheme—with which I was not involved. Also years later, I paid $8,000 to settle the $14,000 legal sanction imposed upon by Stevens. The point of this is that my wings were clipped as access to media was the best way for me to leverage disproportionates, so we could win. I have written of this legal history, because certain of my sharing privileges in Facebook have been suspended until February 20, 2020. There was nothing that I did wrong to my knowledge to bring this sanction about. Just as my sanction by Stevens was not due to anything wrong that I had done. But rather it was done, ostensibly, for what I had not done: serve the RICO lawsuit on the defendants within 120 days of filing it pursuant to now-repealed Rule 4(j) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, extant in 1980’s. Not serving the lawsuit but filling it was my reason for being sanctioned after the “K.C. Star” wrote about my lawsuit filing , on its own, in the regular, as part of court-coverage news . Anyway, I have confronted my old ghost. My old demons, have now been exorcised. I move on to deal with the new ones before me. But inexplicably while exorcising old demons inside me , I have found another even greater travesty in 1989, the year of my 8th circuit sanction affirmation. That very year the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed in “Connor v. Graham”, the principle that is the basis for police killings; now loudly, widely decried as being unconscionable, unconstitutional. In my case as in “Connor v. Graham” both courts deferred to what was happening on the ground at the time of the occurrence. They deferred to an “objective fact -intensive” moment, test for guidance as to the propriety of police conduct. They did this rather than to rely upon the more customary subjective analysis—whether by supervisory police or forensic police experts. The subjective test is outside of the immediacy of police officers under “stress” or a federal judge under duress in the press. If outside of the police in the moment, or if outside of a federal judge who is in the moment, the courts deferred to the fact-based "moment." 1989 was a rough year all around!

TRUMP BUCHANAN ANDREW JOHNSON

"Like Trump, Johnson was vicious under political duress. At staged rallies, he compared himself to Jesus, launched into ruthless personal attacks against “traitorous” Republican opponents and called for the lynching of political rivals like Thaddeus Stevens and Wendell Phillips. Johnson’s extemporaneous harangues also included conspiracy theories accusing the “Radical Congress” of nurturing black violence in the South and “poisoning the minds of the American people” against him. The Republican press declared Johnson “a vile, drunken demagogue disgracing the presidency,” and even his allies lamented that “he is a slave to his passions and resentments.” Disgusted voters responded by giving anti-Johnson Republicans supermajorities in both houses of Congress. That set up the titanic clash between Johnson and Radical Republicans in Congress that played out in 1868 and raised important constitutional questions. After Johnson dismissed Secretary of War Edwin Stanton in violation of the Tenure of Office Act, the House issued 11 separate articles of impeachment against him. Revealing just how dangerous Johnson’s harangues against his political enemies were deemed to be in the 19th century, one of the articles condemned the president’s inflammatory speeches for attempting to bring Congress into “disgrace, ridicule, hatred, contempt and reproach.” Johnson’s Senate trial riveted the nation; newspapers covered each twist and turn with relish, and huge crowds packed the gallery (only after securing cherished admission tickets) to hear senators make their arguments. Johnson narrowly escaped conviction, but he was deeply isolated politically: A former Democrat who had joined Abraham Lincoln on the 1864 “national unity” ticket, he failed to unite a loose and fractious coalition of disgruntled Democrats, conservative Republicans and white Southerners. As a result, he failed to secure either party’s nomination in 1868 and limped off the political stage, a demagogue shorn of power." https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/10/01/why-donald-trump-is-much-more-dangerous-than-andrew-johnson/?fbclid=IwAR1OTOQqRtEKkhNXJu4-PHc0_IqYIdpGTTDJjXRY_qQxGhdShh2FsVdcp8c

DRUG-WARS/BLACK-WARS

DRUG WARS ARE BLACK WARS Political white supremest based “Drug wars” in the United States have wickedly, neatly, nefariously turned the nation against nature; have discredited thousands of years of ancient African cultures; have maligned modern African American jazz and musicians’ culture, in which the drugs use was first popularized here; and have repressed that incipient mercantile and organizational instinct of young black men who sell drugs for income, all at one and the same time, legally, brazenly, wickedly, by spuriously criminalizing pot, weed, marijuana in the 1930’s, with pseudo-science lies about its unhealthy impact on its consumer! As though the health of blacks ever mattered and more lying political science about cannabis sativa’s adverse public health effect on the nation. Teams of employees at various agencies have generated reams of politically inspired pseudo-scientific lies about marijuana at public expense. These distortions mirror like distortions in black history and culture that are also still being disseminated politically. The pernicious canard has continued to grow till now, November 2019, through both Republican and Democrat administrations, blacks and whites, despite the move in a few states to undercut the federal laws’ stranglehold on criminality, toward state legalization of medical and recreational marijuana. The federal government has persisted in its facade of fake science, despite disclosures of scandals like “drugs for hostages” involving Americans in foreign policy and amid disclosures of the CIA’s imports of drugs/guns to American inner cities. Drug wars in America have continued through 2019, because they have done, successfully, what they were specifically designed to do, fallaciously, unpatriotically, and unnaturally; that is, to destroy black economic power, black cultural influences in American society, above all else, first and foremost, to beat down our black men by having them to “turf-war” each other, obliviously, blindly. https://www.civilized.life/articles/6-facts-about-how-cannabis-was-used-in-ancient-egypt/

ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S "THANKSGIVING"

APPRECIATING “THANKSGIVING AND PRAISE” Tuesday, November 20, 2018 By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman Approaching Thanksgiving 2018, my mind turns to President Abraham Lincoln, who established “Thanksgiving and Praise Day,” as an annual national November Holiday on October 3, 1863, after Gettysburg, Pennsylvania’s bloody July 1863 battle and September 1862’s Antietam, Maryland’s emboldening battle stalemate. Antietam was the launching pad for (and political cover for) the preliminary Emancipation of September 22, 1862, which Lincoln issued. This “preliminary” declared in words that would become operative on January 1, 1863, that southern slaves, would be deemed to be “free” if there were no complete surrender by that date of the rebels, of the Confederate States of America (CSA), from their self-secession from the United States. Matthew 12:26 King James Version: “26 And if Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself; how shall then his kingdom stand?” King James Version (KJV) Abraham Lincoln had in his 1858 Senate campaign against Stephen F. Douglas prophetically decried then prevailing, ineffective, “house divided” policies being pursued. After the President’s assassination in 1865, his successors—Vice President Andrew Johnson and Union Major General Ulysses Grant, in the throes of grudging “Reconstruction,” recalled, remembered, that Lincoln had quoted the Bible: “And if Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself; how then shall his kingdom stand?” Thus, President Lincoln’s successors also applied Lincoln’s subsequent “let them up easy” post-war policy in the “Reconstruction”, of the South, not the former slave, who was incidental to the greater aim of a national reunion, as Lincoln had earlier instructed, toward rehabilitating the Confederate States of America, the “South,” into loyalty. That clear expression of sympathy meant “saving” the nation at the expense of the black man and black woman, whose bravery, patriotism, diligence, creativity, had indispensably “saved” the country from dissolution! For despite his ineluctable reputation as the “liberator” of the slaves, President Abraham Lincoln was most expediently the political and military leader of a nation engaged in civil war, not abolitionist, never an abolitionist, nor ever an equal rights for freed slave advocate. Indeed, if anything, he is closest to being a white supremacist! From Lincoln's Speech, Sept. 18, 1858: "While I was at the hotel to-day, an elderly gentleman called upon me to know whether I was really in favor of producing a perfect equality between the negroes and white people. While I had not proposed to myself on this occasion to say much on that subject, yet as the question was asked of me, I thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes in saying something in regard to it. I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the black and white races -- that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making VOTERS or jurors of negroes, NOR OF QUALIFYING THEM TO HOLD OFFICE, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there, must be the position of superior and inferior, and, I, as much as any of her men, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." In the very first speech of their joint debate, -- made at Ottawa, Aug. 21, 1858, -- Mr. LINCOLN, after quoting some previous remarks, thus spoke of this very subject: "Now, gentlemen, I don't want to read at any greater length, but this is the true complexion of all I have ever said in regard to the institution of Slavery and the black race. This is the whole of it; and anything that argues me into his idea of perfect social and political equality with the negro, is but a specious and fantastic arrangement of words, by which a man can prove a horse-chestnut to be a chestnut horse. I will say here, while upon this subject, that I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of Slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge DOUGLAS, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary." In truth, very few white abolitionists favored equal rights and suffrage for black men. William Lloyd Garrison did not favor it; nor did Harriet Beecher Stowe, surprisingly. The few white “radicals” who did favor equal rights and black suffrage, included John Brown, Wendell Phillips and Gerrit Smith . President Abraham Lincoln, as a practical politician, was against both, equal rights and suffrage. Even his famous executive order, 1863’s “Emancipation Proclamation” was actuated by an admitted “military necessity.” Translation: Either I free the slaves in the Confederate States of America, with careful exclusions like New Orleans, Louisiana, and “border states” of Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware. Or, lose the war! Stark and simple, yet brilliant! For the engine of the South was slaves’ uncompensated labor, whom it ruthlessly exploited and brutally, vigorously repressed to forestall their efflorescence into full personhood. But the slaves were neither stupid, nor inactive. They seized and maximized every opportunity to free themselves from slavery, whether by lecturing, by press, by books, by espionage, by running away, and especially by a formidable force of 200,000 “sable arms” in United States Colored Troops and United States Navy. In addition, hundreds of “Contraband” camps that contained millions of fleeing, self-sufficient slaves in communities, who escaped to safety, from plantations, whenever, foraging, marauding Union troops came nearby. The former slaves also performed important services for the North as they had for the South. Fortunately, our “house” yet stands. And as fortunately, noble black people continue to rise high up in it, despite the timorous duplicity of certain “friends,” despite the pathetic self-defeating efforts of fallen “enemies.” HAPPY THANKSGIVING! #30

KNOWING THE NUMBERS

KNOWING THE NUMBERS Media mogul, Byron Allen, in a series of interviews released near the date of his famous United States Supreme Court hearing against the cable giants, Comcast and Charter, on November 13, 2019, shared some important insights. One of them was the absolute necessity of “knowing the numbers.” That stuck home, finally resonated with me. “Know the numbers” ! That motto evoked Paul Cuffee, James Forten, Booker T. Washington, Madame C. J. Walker, Berry Gordy, Oprah Winfrey, Robert F. Smith. I had heard Ervin “Magic” Johnson say the same thing, “Know the numbers”, about twenty years ago as he spoke in a $100 per plate youth motivation luncheon which I had attended with youngest son, Kemet, in Overland Park, Kansas. Until that time, I had not known of the extent of Magic’s financial reach nor of his financial acumen. Don King, the controversial boxing promoter, former Cleveland, Ohio, hustler, killer and inmate, knew the numbers , when he lifted athletic and entertainment promotions from white men, using Muhammad Ali and the Jackson Five. My wife and I had attended a live cablecasting of “The Rumble in the Jungle “ In 1974, in Landover, Maryland, when Ali knocked out Foreman in Kinshasa , Zaire. I had read of Don King in a backhanded biography by a guy named Jack Neuberg. I also had met Don King in Pierce City, Florida at a party hosted by the law office of the great Willie E. Gary, Esq., who surely “knows numbers.” Come to think of it “knowing numbers” may just be more basic than knowing rivers, “ancient dusky rivers,” apostrophied by Langston Hughes’ immortal poetic encomium to African and African Americans’ historic antiquity and ubiquity. Certainly Africans knew numbers! Numbers began with Africans, as did geometry, science, philosophy. We raise great entertainers and athletes by the grace of God! How wonderful if more were mathletes! —versed in mathematics—the “knowledge of numbers” and their indispensable utilization as the instruments of salvation and glory!

FORTEN BLACK FOUNDING FATHER

JAMES FORTEN BLACK FOUNDING FATHER OF THE UNITED STATES James Forten, who was born free, was certainly among our black founding fathers: he fought as a sailor in the American Revolution at age 14; was captured on his second voyage by British and presumed dead . He escaped imprisonment, worked at shipyards in England; experimenting with sails. Returning to America , he worked in a sailors’ loft that he later purchased. Thirty men worked for him of both races. He became very rich. He used his riches to buy land and houses in Philadelphia. He funded William Lloyd Garrison’s “Liberator;” funded the “Underground Railroad” of William Still; co-founded the Free African Society (precursor of the AME Church ) with Richard Allen and Absalom Jones. He also funded schools for blacks and vigorously supported women rights work with his daughters, who married the wealthy South Carolina Robert and James Purvis brothers and continued in their father’s way.  https://explorepahistory.com/hmarker.php?markerId=1-A-28C

JAMES FORTEN

https://www.facebook.com/larry.d.coleman1

NILE REVERIES

https://www.sciencealert.com/the-mystery-of-how-the-nile-has-kept-flowing-for-30-million-years-may-have-been-solved?fbclid=IwAR3Ue-OvouasQsHBD2gVNeS0SMxeIS3E6-E-g0PSQbU-6wP2U24pq9LWFp8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantle_convection AS GOES AND COMES THE NILE, SO GOES AND COMES HUMANITY, CIVILIZATION, GOD'S VISITATION THROUGH NATURE ON EARTH.

RACE CASES' BURDENS

BURDENS OF PROOF IN RACE CASES ARE UNFAIR The different burdens of proof at trial are where the true burdens began for blacks litigating civil rights claims in federal court: “Burdine” was the case frequently cited. These standards were established by the United States Supreme Court in a series of cases starting with Green v. McDonnell Douglas in the 1960’s. Tomorrow, it will (or may) confront its legacy in the Byron Allen v. Comcast et al. case. In this case the question of the proper burden of proof for black litigants is dramatically, spectacularly, presented yet again. Whether race must be proven by the plaintiff to be the “sole cause” of the alleged discrimination is the most pressing procedural issue that is pending. This disparate burden of proof has been imposed on the plaintiffs not only in “failure to contract cases,” like Byron Allen’s, under the Civil Rights Act of 1866 (amended by Congress in 1991); but the same unfair and unfavorable burdens of proof has been applied perniciously, consistently in cases under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, in discrimination law suits by blacks. Women—white women—who were benign beneficiaries of the black litigation experience by, political legerdemain, have not been, thus far, subjected to the same proof burdens as less-fortunate blacks. Even in criminal murder cases , “intent” may be inferred from the circumstances, unlike civil rights cases involving black plaintiffs, who must “prove” defendant’s “intent!” Those few of us lawyers who were foolish (and conscientious) enough to pursue civil rights law for a living know these are facts, all too well! When we civil rights lawyers fled the federal courts for state courts, seeking a respite from relentless bigotry in legal procedural burdens, then, invariably the big defense firms’ well-heeled counsel would “remove” our fugitive state civil rights cases into federal courts, with us kicking and screaming ! There they could easily get Rule 56 “summary judgments” against the blacks without trials, based on filing affidavits of non-discrimination and relying on the impossible procedural burdens of proof that were applied to the blacks, exclusively ! These unfair proof burdens had already been imposed on us by Supreme Court or by most lower federal circuit courts of appeals, whose cases the Supreme Court refused to review, or denied certiorari to. These burdens of proof were unique to blacks in civil rights cases. It was as though the black plaintiffs were defaming corporate defendants by even daring to sue them for their discriminatory deeds, per law. Many of us civil rights lawyers (black and white) were punished, were victimized by the imposition of monetary sanctions that we had to pay to stay licensed, for daring to sue for discrimination, pursuant to law. Sometimes even our own clients would file bar complaints against us after losing a contingent fee case, (that we had urged them to settle) or were sanctioned by the bar for seeking to withdraw from a doomed civil rights case under the circumstances, as happened to me! The point being missed in much of public discussion about 42 U.S. C. 1981, is this procedural one that kills the cases, while dissembling fairness! Watch carefully how the Court rules on the burdens of proof. Will the plaintiffs have the burden of proof about race put on the same plane as other civil litigants? Will the Court rule that “race” (intent) was the sole, only,  factor leading to Byron Allen’s denial of access on Comcast and Charter’s cable servers? Or might the court rule that race discrimination may be proven if race (intent) was merely a motivating , not the sole factor, and thus affirm the Ninth Circuit ruling. Even if Byron Allen wins, he must still convince a California jury on a trial of the merits that race was a factor in his non-selection by the cable giants, itself, a very tall task!

WHITE IS NOT RIGHT; RIGHT IS RIGHT

WHITE IS NOT RIGHT; RIGHT IS RIGHT Americans were warned not to trust immigrants who were old war time enemies, before trusting in African Americans , who had saved them & us, often. Americans were warned by blacks: Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington , Nannie Helen Burroughs. But ‘white’ was right to them, for they were brainwashed and rewarded by culture, deputized by law, favored by legislation , apotheosized by religion. The real miracle is that any individual whites could see through this white-hype to truth. Fortunately a few did, blessedly enough did, to assist the blacks win the Civil War & civil rights movement ; for the nation to prevail in each test of its sovereignty, blessedly! Now, we have the results of this hard -headed , stiff-necked politicians’ racism and greedy corporate leaders’ zeal : the present impeachment of a criminal President, a foreigner’s son and grandson who does not pay taxes; who does not respect our history nor our laws and constitution & adheres to the old lying paradigm of white is right! The German immigrant-descendants’ spawn like Donald John Trump is our President . Before him, there was the specter of German POW’s seating and eating in first class , while black troops were assigned to troops baggage cars in World War I and in World War II! None have proven as trustworthy as have we African Americans to America. Not has any Americans be so abused! And as earlier leaders like those above have also presciently prophesied, if we are to be saved from our perfidy, yet again, it will take the faithful acumen of African Americans to do heavy lifting!

PHENOMENAL NANNIE HELEN BURROUGHS

PHENOMENAL NANNIE! “To speak about Nannie Helen Burroughs as a theologian is to raise questions about the ways in which she thought about God, Christian life, society, and the church. In extending the discourse on Burroughs from a social history analysis to an intellectual history analysis , my goal is to provide a broad overview of Burroughs’s religious thought and demonstrate the way in which Christian theology served as the dominant infrastructure through which she articulated every other major idea in her life... “Throughout her life, Burroughs upheld the ‘holy grail’ of finer womanhood. Her ideals of pious , clean, and godly Christian womanhood reflected the nineteenth century emphasis on ‘true womanhood.’ The cult of true womanhood was the prevailing ideology of the time, tying a woman’s virtue to piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. Central to the cult of true womanhood was the home and the pews, while the sphere of manhood was the public arena, politics, and the pulpit.... According to Anna Julia Cooper, these separate spheres gave symmetry to society: ‘There is a feminine as well as a masculine side to truth ; that these are related not as inferior and superior, not as better and worse , not as weaker and stronger, but as complements... in one necessary and symmetric whole.’... “As Chanta Haywood notes, early black religious women such as Jarena Lee, Julia Foote, Maria Stewart, and Frances Gaudet legitimated their right to public work (or the male sphere) by taking cues from Biblical passages, particularly Joel 2:28-29: ‘I shall pour out my spirit on all mankind: your sons and your daughters will prophecy...I shall pour out my spirit in those days even on slaves and slave-girls.’ Like her foremothers in the faith , Burroughs interpreted Christianity as empowerment for service. She validated her right to the public sphere by drawing upon the example of biblical men and women...Nannie knew her voice belonged to God and she considered her ideas to be divinely inspired. With this awareness she burst upon the public scene in 1900 as ‘prophesying daughter ‘ in the prophetic tradition of John the Baptist. Hers was a female voice crying in the wilderness ... Burroughs saw herself as a prophet of uplift, an evangelist to her race, challenging black people to forsake the sacrilege of unbelief in God’s plan and to live out righteousness.” P. xxvii-xxix. “In her 1927 article ‘With All Thy Getting,” Burroughs wrote: “‘The Negro must not , therefore , contribute to [America’s] doom, but must ransom her...The Negro...has gifts of greater value. The most valuable contribution which he can make to American civilization must be made out of his spiritual endowment. He must do it in self-defense and in defense of America. She needs it. Without it she will never dispense justice and will be consumed by her own folly and wrath. The Negro has saved America physically several times. He must make a larger contribution to her spiritual salvation. Who knows but that the divine purpose for bringing him into this country was that , in due time , he might make just such a contribution .’” P. xxxi. “Burroughs’s framing of African Americans as the ‘valuable byproducts’ of slavery reflects not only how she optimistically interpreted the African American experience but also how she 1) conceptualized black suffering as a theodicean saga that sought to make sense of the evil committed against the race; and 2) achieved an axiological renovation of history by reclaiming the corporate negative experience of enslavement and handing it back to black folks as a positive resource from which to draw cultural and spiritual value. She wrote: ‘That’s why Negroes can hold up their heads and ‘strut’ in rags, that’s why their songs begin in trouble and end in hallelujahs. The Negro has a future in America. He feels it in his bones. Burroughs spiritualized the African American historical experience by transforming a history of suffering into an evangelical narrative of hope... P.xxxiii. “Burroughs was realistic enough to admit that a large percent of any race belongs to the laboring class. As she understood it , even if history assigned blacks to the bottom , this position was only temporary until such a time as they lifted themselves up through dignified labor. ‘We must realize,’ she maintained, ‘that we have to begin at the bottom; that if we would develop a full grown race we would begin low...The black race is God’s race and I believe whatever we ask He will give us.’ Burroughs did not consider the bottom to be a position of defeat, rather she saw it as platform for opportunity. She was deeply critical of ‘educated parasites and satisfied mendicants’ who sought what she called ‘ready-made jobs’. She believed that black people should put their ‘brains to work ,’ and call on ‘courage , industry , ingenuity, initiative, dogged determination ... and put up a fight for life .’ ... P. xxxv-xxxvi. “According to Burroughs, ‘Negro philosophy ‘ was precisely the set of values that allowed black people to thrive despite the assaults upon their humanity. What were these cultural values? Burroughs listed them as the ability to ‘forgive and forget’, ‘wear the world as a loose garment,’ ‘smile and grin; giggle and laugh and sing amidst our greatest tragedies ,’ and have the capacity for misery and happiness.’..The collective dignity of black people could never be nullified as long as these cultural values were sustained... “Burroughs’s formerly enslaved grandmother, Maria Poindexter, ...from whom Burroughs absorbed the folk wisdom of her people...reflects the kind of ‘world’ valuing and dignified self-evaluation that was present among black people even during enslavement. Poindexter told her granddaughter: “‘Yes, honey , I was in slavery, but I wasn’t no slave. I was just in it, that’s all. They never made me hold my head down and there was a whole parcel of Negroes just like me; we just couldn’t be broke . We obeyed our masters and mistresses and did our work, but we kept on saying ‘deliverance will come.’ We ain’t no hung-down-head race; we are poor but proud.’.. P. xxxviii-xxxix. “As Alana Murray notes, DuBois and Carter G. Woodson worked in collaboration with Burroughs and [Anna] Cooper to ‘create an alternative black curriculum that would support the the intellectual growth of African American children. As the principal of a school that primarily drew its financial support from the black community, Burroughs ‘had the freedom to implement a school vision that used black history to support and develop the identity of African American girls without fear of reprisals . The efforts, though, to endow black children with historical awareness earned Burroughs and others the attention of the Military Intelligence Division (MID), a branch of the U. S. Army and a precursor of the Central Intelligence Agency. In 1917, the MID ‘considered the study of black history potentially anti-American ‘ and began monitoring the executive council of the ASNLH and the organization’s ‘Journal of Negro History .’ P. xlii. “Introduction, God Will Give Us Credit for Trying,” NANNIE HELEN BURROUGHS edited and annotated by Dr. Kelisha B. Graves (2019)

BOOMERANG

The issue with many black youth and adults in the United States of America, at least , is not merely penological nor sociological, but it is philosophical, theological ; hence it is cosmological. Meaning this: Blacks’ self-conceptions are impinged, unhinged, from the flow of nature that is their heritage , pedigree, pericope. A resultant lack of self-actualization is thus a consequence for far too many. Breaking it all the way down, it is this: One must have at least a divine goal an imperishable pole to tether one’s soul. One produces two; which produces a plane, which enables the geometry to qualify, quantify, parts to part to whole. Still don’t get it? Know that you are gods and that all of you are children of the most high God; but you shall fall like princes and die like men. Behold!

THE WORLD AND AFRICA

“Of the origin of the Negro race or other human races, we know nothing . But we do know that human beings inhabited Africa during the Pleistocene period, which may have been a half million years ago.” P. 86, THE WORLD AND AFRICA by W. E. B. DuBois (1946, 1987)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene?fbclid=IwAR3ddvsbkeWKbQXW5TL8DyuqL-pwcnDru1_oQSYz1XgDaI0hPrk4688QhHQ

RUFUS PERRY, ESQ @ PYTHAGORAS

“It is to Pythagoras that we are indebted for the term ‘Philosopher’. Being asked the art in which he most excelled, he replied that he did not claim to be a master of any art, but was a ‘Philosopher’, that is a ‘lover of wisdom.’ “Leontius of Peloponnesus was the questioner and did not understand the term ‘Philosopher’. Pythagoras to inform his friend more fully observed: ‘This life may be compared to the Olympic Games: for in this assembly some seek glory and the crowns; some by the purchase or the sale of merchandise seek gain ; others , more noble than either , go there neither for gain or for applause, but solely to enjoy this wonderful spectacle, and to see and know all that passes. We, in the same manner, quit our country, which is Heaven, and come into the world, which is an assembly where many work for profit, many for gain, and where there are but few, who, despising avarice and vanity, study nature. It is these last whom I call Philosophers; for as there is nothing more noble than to be a spectator without any personal interest , so in this life, the contemplation and knowledge of nature are infinitely more honorable than any other application. “He taught that ‘Number’ was the actuating force of nature; that God was ‘unity’, the universal mind—, in all things, the source of all life, and the intrinsic cause of all motion. “The ‘Divine Mind’ was the primary unit from which all human minds sprang, and to which they are related as units of a lower order. That is, the human soul is a fractional unit of the divine soul, that pervades nature .” P.7-8, SKETCH OF PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEMS by Rufus L. M. H. Perry, Esq. (1918)

EVIL FRONTALLY

Surely, there is one devil who glories in evil; who very openly, unashamedly, merrily, delights, in evil. Given the global extent of evil one such devil has to be, evil frontally for all to see; not hiding behind virtues, robes, vestment, sophistry, philosophy!

INFINITY'S DEWS AND DUSTS

Infinity’s dews and dusts cover us, as we are born. We have come from far. As bees carry pollen from plant to plant, pollinating , being pollinated, so too do we with dews and dusts. We have come from far. We are part of an infinite order that we call life. All that exists is life in life; each in its own space-time. These infinite divine parts are parts, cosmic diverse parts, of life’s divine mystery with whom we are blessed to share unique sovereignty with all. We have come from far. Each to its own, with its own , for all.

800 EMANCIPATED SLAVES?

I was surprised to read that the repulsed British had removed “almost 800 enslaved persons” from New Orleans, after they were defeated by Andrew Jackson and his gumbo army of whites, blacks, (slave and free) Creek Indians on January 25, 1815. Of course, I already knew that Andrew Jackson had reneged in his promise, had lied that he was going to free the slaves who fought, and to give them the same benefits that would be given to the white Tennessee and Kentucky soldiers who fought , if the American side won. He did nothing, except return them to slavery . But Edward E. Baptist in THE HALF HAS NEVER BEEN TOLD (2016), states: “By 8 a.m. it was all over. Two thousand British soldiers lay as casualties on the Chalmette plain, of whom at least 300 were dead. The Americans lost a mere thirteen killed. Still, Jackson wisely refused his subordinates’ pleas for him to pursue the retreating British army, which still held 2,000 trained men in reserve. Instead, he let the enemy pack their bags. On January 25, the invaders departed, taking with them almost 800 enslaved people who had, in effect, emancipated themselves.” P.71 Baptist cites no source for his “emancipation” assertion. I had not previously read it. So, I looked for it online and found nothing like it! But, if it is nevertheless true, the emancipated slaves with the British, somewhat compensates for the 200 slaves who were killed after the unsuccessful revolt of 1811 starting at the “Deslondes” plantation. It was true that many of the slaves’ heads were placed atop pikes, along the 15 mile route to New Orleans on the German Coast, as gory trophies to white supremacy .