NONVIOLENT STUFF, EXCERPT

Citizenship has remained illusive and elusive to many black people. Many have sought "civil rights," to test the accessibility of citizenship. "Citizenship" had been deemed to be for "whites," exclusively; "white" means not black. "Black" meant the antithesis of "white" in all material things . It meant descended from the imported African descendants. It meant oppression; being innately inferior indeed to white supremacy in anything of value, however small! Blacks were purposefully denied citizenship as a gravamen, a tenet, of the United States Constitution. They were deemed to be chattel , equivalent to livestock, inhuman. Blacks were deemed 3/5s of a man in Article I, sec.2. Article IV denied any slave escaping to a free state, the benefit of any law in that state freeing them ; instead, the fugitive was to be offered up to its alleged owner. It required their capture and return. This fact was reinforced as early as 1842, by the United States Supreme Court to black people, in "Prigg v. Pennsylvania," by myriad assorted contrivances and means. In Prigg, a Maryland slave catcher had violated Pennsylvania laws, against such, when he and others entered, captured and returned a black woman to Maryland, whence she earlier had escaped. He was prosecuted under Pennsylvania state law and was convicted of violating its laws. But the Supreme Court freed Prigg based on its federal laws. Chief Justice Roger Taney, of Dred Scott infamy, did not author the "Prigg" decision. But Taney freed Prigg, along with the majority, in the first case to address blacks' status, directly, on high . https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prigg_v._Pennsylvania As the 1840s-1860 witnessed the Underground Railroad, 1940-1960 evidenced its overground siblings. Mass migrations were flights from oppression, from killings still being waged, vengefully, by terroristic whites, who escaped prosecution! "All around the state, the pace of deadly violence steadily increased as the councils grew . In Belzoni, the county seat of Humphrey's County, Reverend George Lee and Gus Counts, a grocer , organized an NAACP branch in 1954. Its membership grew rapidly . The following year, just a few days before the anniversary of the Supreme Court 's 'Brown' decision , Lee was driving home from an RCNL meeting. A car pulled up beside him and someone inside shot him to death . Sheriff Ike Skelton suggested that Lee somehow lost control of his car and that the lead pellets found in what was left of his jaw might be teeth fillings. As the "Jackson Clarion-Ledger," Mississippi's only daily newspaper , headlined Lee's murder: 'Negro Leader Dies in Odd Accident.' Six months later, Counts barely escaped death when a car pulled in front of his grocery store and the occupants opened fire . Bullets hit Counts in the left arm and stomach . Shortly thereafter, he left the state for Chicago. "With all the levers of power in white hands, and with stepped-up anti -black terrorism being encouraged by the state governments and largely ignored by the federal government, civil rights advancement has essentially come to a halt in the Deep South. Black voter registration which had been showing modest increases in the first half of the decade, declined sharply in the second half as white intimidation intensified. In 1955, before Counts was driven out of Belzoni, a Citizens Council member showed him a list of ninety -five black registered voters and told him that everyone on the list who failed to remove his or her name from the voter lists would be fired... "Counts was by no means the only black leader to flee Mississippi ...." P. 135, "I Wasn't Being Nonviolent," THIS NONVIOLENT STUFF 'LL GET YOU KILLED: HOW GUNS MADE THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT POSSIBLE, by Charles E. Cobb, Jr. (2016) Perhaps nice legal distinctions and definitions between citizenship and civil rights are meaningless where blacks' lives are concerned, given the resolute legal indifference by which black people have been, and are now being regarded by state governments' white police power whose purveyors of death to them, are justified by the Supreme Court.

GLASNOST GAMBIT ACCEPTED

GLASNOST GAMBIT ACCEPTED To overthrow the United States of America, nothing could be more expedient than to elect a retarded white racist billionaire like Donald John Trump in 2016 as President. To the extent that the Russians exploited natural fissures in the bedrock of American history, they cannot be blamed for capitalizing upon an "opening" offered by the end of Obama's black era and the feminist aspirations of Hillary, Mr. Vladimir Putin's political enemy. So, in the spirit of 'glasnost,' opening, Russia moved in with its "Check!" Its disinformation campaigns also known as 'fake news' helped to elect white supremacists' Republican candidate Donald Trump by perfidy, money and lies! Salutations are due to Russia's President, Vladimir Putin, a/k/a, "Rasputin," for his cagey, political assiduity, perspicuity, effected in his shrewdly gamboled geopolitical gambit, electing the duped Trump!

WHEN DID THE CIVIL WAR END?

WHEN DID THE CIVIL WAR END? We normally suppose that the Civil ended on April 9, 1865, because Robert E Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia on that date. But Abraham Lincoln was killed five days later on April 14, 1865, and CSA President Jefferson Davis was caught later than that, in Georgia , trying to escape, disguised as a woman . In Texas conflicts flared at least until June-19, 1865, now remembered there as "Juneteenth." Several years ago our Lorenzo J. Green historical society in KC held lectures in Missouri and Kansas on this very question: "When Did the Civil War End?" The four answer-options as I recall were: 0. With the passage of the 13, 14, 15th Amendments to the United States Constitution; 0. With the passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1963 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965; 0. With the election of Barack Obama as U. S. President; 0. The Civil War has not ended. Please select one number for your answer. Thanks !

COLLOQUY AMONG FRIENDS

COLLOQUY AMONG FRIENDS: Says Lloyd Monroe "I once believed that racism was the product of the “untutored.” If racism was a learned response, the result of being taught bigotry and prejudice, it could be unlearned, right? Yet, I now see how wrong I was. Truth and facts don’t matter to racists. You see, the sickness is not due to the mind; rather it is a sickness of the heart. In the Age of Trump, when facts no longer matter to those who wallow in their ignorance, you cannot teach people not to hate, as racism is not simply mental illness, but it is the consequence of depraved hearts." I replied: Teach my brother! Profound ! But, can the depraved heart be converted, palliated, remediated? If so how? He responded: "With God all things are possible. Only God can truly change hearts." I retorted: Amen 🙏 That would seem to affirm that our sojourn on this continent was itself an act of God. He rejoined : "Genesis 50:20"

AFRICAN AMERICANS ADVANCE

AFRICAN AMERICANS ADVANCE   The advances that we blacks in the Americas have gained were those for which we and our forebears had lived, hoped, worked, fought, built, bled, died, revived, prayed, loved, preached, talked, reproduced, over the years, through our tears, fears . Our struggles yet continue in the Americas, but our end is in sight. First in St. Dominique in Haiti, our mettle was shown as under able leaders we shocked the planters, the French, the British, the Spanish in successive military victories, in turn . Our Haitian victories spurred the supposedly invincible Napoleon to sell his "Louisiana Territory" and the City and Port of New Orleans to the United States of America for a pittance, roughly 3 cents an acre. Meanwhile in America itself, Haiti's victories had heightened the hopes, aspirations, ambitions of fellow slaves and marginal freedmen and women to lived on, to love on, to work harder, to fight longer, to build stronger, to bleed and die bravely, knowing that our flagging spirits would revive in our offspring, kin, and friends. So we prayed, we loved, we preached, we we talked, we reproduced; we cried, feared, persevered, until God again refreshed our thrust with a new crew of capable moral leaders: be they teachers, lawyers, workers, preachers, students, freedom fighters, even a few politicians who fought for us when we knew not our own strength, power , influence over those who were formerly our masters, oppressors, now "friends." So the symbolism of the 2-terms served by United States of America President Barack Obama ranks with the military triumphs of Toussaint L'Overture, and Dessalines of Haiti. Our struggles yet continue in the Americas, but our end is in sight.

STRAIN IS PAIN

STRAIN IS PAIN Mental strain can kill any man as quickly, as surely as physical strain, whether that man is named Charles Hamilton Houston or John Henry. Strain is pain, mental or physical.

DANCING HARLEM'S RENAISSANCE BLUES

DANCING HARLEM'S RENAISSANCE BLUES Africans dance. King David danced. Salome danced for John. Bojangles danced. Dunham danced. Dance is the metronome of a people. Dance embodies the rhythm of its people . Taking away dance takes away tacit communications linkages that bind a people. Learning yesterday, October 31, 2017, that the City of New York had finally repealed a 91-year old law, precluding dancing in "cabarets" where food and liquor were served, I was shocked to learn of the existence of such an absurdly insidious law! https://www.google.com/amp/s/pitchfork.com/news/new-york-city-council-votes-to-repeal-anti-dancing-cabaret-law/amp/ "When Harlem was in Vogue," it was all about music, dance, white folks swarming uptown to immerse in black culture in Harlem: to dance with, to mate with, to patronize, to mimic the amazing energy of that era's juggernaut. Harlem was the heart of the "Harlem Renaissance." That cultural revolution is now broadly misunderstood, is now naively misinterpreted, as being one limited to poets, novelists, painters, sculptors. A Negro outpouring of arts and culture, that consisted of music, dance, literature, plays, fashion, black consciousness, art, it was. But, it was also much much more: both pervasive and Pan-African! Just as quickly, it seems in retrospect, those ever-viperous, racist outliers and their lawyers, downtown, caught the "A-Train;" moved uptown to Harlem to destroy this Negro renaissance's extraordinary, cultural resurgence. Dancing was one of its victims! Down went the "Lindy Hop!" an others that fabled, sensual pairing of twirling, whirling, male and female rhythmical athletes,who were clad in stylized attire that was fashionable and fantastic! Around this time, "the numbers," or "policy," that black self-help economic recycling engine that had raised millions of dollars from black patrons, inside of the black community for home mortgages, tuition payments, car notes, rent, groceries, business ventures, everyday needs, was mislabeled as a so-called "racket" by crooked New York politicians, who coveted its cream, wealth! This financial wheel of the Harlem Renaissance was broken up. And its principal founder, Caspar Holstein, a mathematically -minded, former black elevator operator, from the Danish West Indies, who had studied the New York Stock Exchange, and who had found their his latent algorithm, upon which he assiduously based a number's "hit," was jailed and then deported. Holstein's financial empire, which at one time employed hundreds in Harlem, was then taken over by some infamously murderous mafiosi figures. These terrorists bombed black numbers bankers. They killed the numbers runners. They took over the numbers. They rigged the game, making it pay less than the predictable, 600-1, as before. They paid off police, politicians, judges, in turn. Around the same time in the 1920's, that "unlicensed" cabaret dancing was being outlawed in New York City, and that the "numbers" "racket" was being handed over to terrorist mafia figures, by secret agreements between them, prosecutors, police, the numbers were also legislatively later made to be illegal there in the state. ( It now is called "The Lottery" and operates all over America). At this time, too, the renown founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey of St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica, was being prosecuted for alleged mail/securities fraud by the federal government. The documentary evidence against Marcus Garvey consisted of a single empty post-marked envelope that contained nothing. Yet, the U. S. Department of Justice was able to "convict" this exalted global leader of tens of millions of black people of mail fraud. Garvey had been trying to raise money for the Black Star Ship Line from among UNIA members, to return to Africa, and away from white American racism in America, Cuba, Central America, elsewhere. What kind of people would prevent, would sabotage attempts of others, from doing for themselves;, then, thereafter having disabled that person or group, by laws, regulations, selective enforcement of police, mafia, or prosecutions; then, turn right around to belittle them, to mock them, to lampoon them, and others like them, for not having been able to do for themselves? Surely only a perverse people, an oppressive people would behave in such a way! Now it is clear to me, at least, why Louise Meriweather's profound sociological book yet eerily resonates. DADDY WAS A NUMBERS RUNNER (1986, 2002) is her semi-autobiographical faux-novel about Harlem in the 1930s, after the cabaret dances, after the "numbers," and after the UNIA were all nearly-gone! It is also clearer to me, why, when I first ventured to Harlem, New York in Spring 1970, as a Howard University freshman, Harlem looked so poorly, so depressed, so abandoned, raw and dispirited, I was disappointed in its fallen state. Walking down Lennox Avenue after alighting from our chartered bus, one enterprising Harlem brother tried to sell me, to sell us, a refrigerator on the street! I laughed aloud! Is this Harlem I wondered? Yes! Still Harlem it is. It was still "cool," too, somehow, anyway, even after its rhythm was gone, even after its "numbers" money was gone, even after the UNIA's presence was gone! Bare, but still, there, was Harlem!