GREAT HEART WARM SPIRIT

GREAT HEART, WARM SPIRIT Late Missouri State Senator, Hon. Harold S. Caskey, did the Amen Society of Butler, Bates County, a tremendous favor in 2008, when he corralled the last $11,000 in donations from local businesses needed to allow completing the purchase and installation of our United States Colored Troops (USCT) memorial statue that now sits on the Courthouse lawn in Butler. We members of the Amen Society, a scion of the now-defunct Brooks Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church, (AME), in Butler, had launched an effort to raise the funds needed to commission erection and dedication of a statue honoring the First Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry. They had fought (and won) the “Battle of Island Mound,” outside Butler, October 28-29, 1862, defeating a band of Confederate cavalry guerrillas that was twice their size! We launched our memorial fundraising effort in 1999 to commemorate the now-forgotten , too-long-unacknowledged, memory of those fallen soldiers: black free men, escaped slaves, and a Cherokee Indian from Oklahoma, who had fought and died heroically in the first battle of the American Civil War (our “Freedom War”) that black men unofficially fought. Prior to it, black men had not been allowed to fight for their people’s freedom in what was then regarded as a “white man’s war .” I had read LIKE MEN OF WAR : BLACK TROOPS IN THE CIVIL WAR, 1862-1865 (1998) by Andre Noah Trudeau while I was then the pastor of Brooks Chapel AME Church. None of our church members nor any attendees of our small, 3-member congregation, located 60 miles south of Kansas City, had ever heard of the battle, much less of the fallen volunteer-soldiers. We resolved as a congregation to rectify that horrendous historical situation! To consecrate, to console, the desolate remains of those nameless fighting men! Thus, we formed the Amen Society to popularize our memorialization efforts in the local community and more broadly. After garnering $19,000 from a period beginning in 1999, our spirits had sagged, as had our fundraising. It was then that we began sniping at each other out of frustration at our stalled project. By now, in 2008, our first local president, and church pianist, Mrs.Elmora Burton was dead , and I was away from Butler, now pastoring a church in St. Joseph, Missouri. But, I had to come back for a pep rally and for a prayer meeting to assure the Amen Society that God did not bring us thus far to leave us! To hold on faithfully to God! Then came an unexpected blessing! Late Sen. Harold Caskey called our church and Amen Society treasurer, Mrs. Mildred Wright, to ask how much we needed to finish completing our memorial statue ? Mrs. Wright told him that we still needed $11,000 to complete paying our sculptor, Joel Randal of Muskogee , Oklahoma, and to pay for having our statue mounted. Senator Caskey replied “You’ll have the money this afternoon !” He then solicited and received $1,000 from eleven local businesses which he gave to Millie! She paid Joel Randal, our patient, gifted sculptor, who completed our statue! Transported and supervised mounting ! We dedicated it on October 2008 in a public ceremony with a parade, speakers, food. I was among the speakers. During my brief remarks I told the outdoors, seated audience that the work needed to realize that honorable day’s unveiling was attributable to many people, some wishing to remain anonymous . “But one critically important person is now sitting behind me on the dais. If I were to fall over backwards, I would fall directly into his lap!” I said. Senator Harold Caskey, a blind man, was seated directly behind me, and seated beside smiling Congressman Emmanuel Cleaver, who applauded! Sen. Harold Caskey nodded and smiled enthusiastically! Great man! God bless his memory as well as our colored soldiers’! Amen!

RACE MATTERS

RACE MATTERS IF BLACK LIVES DO NOT