"FEWEST OF ALL PEOPLE"

My church in Butler, Missouri, in 2008, had only 3 official members, a 300% increase over what it was in 1995, when I was sent there to pastor to but 1 member, "Mother" Helen Cooper, now deceased. We did have about 12 regular non-members who came to worship the 2 Sundays per month that I preached there, and who fully participated in giving and all related church labors. But the Spirit of the Lord moved on that tiny, Brooks Chapel A.M.E. Church in a very mighty way. That divine movement is best epitomized in a mounted, bronze, statuary model of a black, Civil War-era, soldier on the Bates County Courthouse grounds. We raised the money for the statue, hired the sculptor, secured the ground, and dedicated the statue in 2008, in a large public gathering featuring U,S. Congressmen, state Senators, bands, floats, prayers and praise, and 1st Kansas Colored re-enactors from Oklahoma. This was done through our church's Amen Society, to honor the six former slave soldiers and one Cherokee Indian, who all fell for freedom in battle. Their valorous memories were not only unconsecrated, locally, but were long forgotten,if ever known, by local residents. Those gallant pre-United States Colored Troops, (U..S.C.T) were members of the "1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry". They died heroically October 29, 1862, in the Battle of Island Mound, in which they defeated a mounted unit of about 400 Confederate irregulars who were at least twice their number. The 1st Kansas Colored infantry whipped them on their feet! They were the first black unit to fight in the Civil War. Their widely publicized victory surely further encouraged President Abraham Lincoln to issue his "Emancipation Proclamation" on January 1, 1863, as a "military necessity," which enabled the general enrollment of black troops, and the liberation of slaves. in parts of Confederate states, but not in Missouri, a so-called "border state," like Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware. Henceforth, I shall equate always Deuteronomy 7:7 with Brooks Chapel A.M.E. Church, and the Amen Society, who, although small, were and are mighty in spirit, faith, and works, as stated in the scripture. Cudos to Rev. Harold Coleman for the scriptural reference, which inspired this holy post. Amen! Deuteronomy 7:7 King James Version (KJV) 7 The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people: King James Version (KJV)

TRUTH IS TRUTH

Truth is truth. No matter who affirms or denies it. Truth sustains itself, being reified in nature.

THE NEW NEGRO, ALAIN LEROY LOCKE

"THE NEW NEGRO" Dr. Alain LeRoy Locke , the first African American Rhodes Scholar, wrote an essay in 1925, entitled "The New Negro." I read it for the first time last night in the book he edited: THE NEW NEGRO AN INTERPRETATION (1925, 2015). I had not previously read this essay, although I had attended Howard University, for seven years, where Locke taught for 40 years, and I had taken classes in Locke Hall that was named for him, in his honor. I encourage each of you to read it, the essay, at least, if not the book. My first annotation to the text of his essay came upon reading the following: "And finally, with the Negro rapidly in process of class differentiation, if it ever was warrantable to regard and treat the Negro 'en masse' it is becoming with every day less possible, more unjust and ridiculous. "In the very process of being transplanted, the Negro is becoming transformed. "The tide of Negro migration, northward and city-ward, is not only to be fully explained as a blind flood started by the demands of the war industry coupled with the shutting off of foreign migration, or the pressure of poor crops coupled with increased social terrorism in certain sections of the South and Southwest . Neither labor demand, the boll-weevil nor the Ku Klux Klan is a basic factor, however contributory any or all of them may have been. The wash and the rush of this human tide on the beach line of the northern city centers is to be explained primarily in terms of a new vision of opportunity, of social and economic freedom, of a spirit to seize, even in the face of an extortionate and heavy toll, a chance for improvement of the conditions. With each successive wave of it, the movement of the Negro becomes more and more a mass movement toward the larger and the more democratic chance--in the Negro's case a deliberate flight not only from countryside to city, but from medieval America to modern ." P.5-6. Being myself a beneficiary of that "deliberate flight" from South to North in search of "social and economic freedom," through my parents, who migrated from Mississippi to Missouri in 1955, Locke's explanation comports with my parents' many declarations! Yet, as I continued to read on, I noticed that Locke seemingly was avoiding any mention of Marcus Mosiah Garvey, or of Garvey's great idol and mentor, Dr. Booker T. Washington of Tuskegee , except by indirection and veiled allusions. Consequently, I was fully prepared to dismiss Alain Locke as a useful commentator, until I read the following redemptive conclusions: "The pulse of the Negro world has begun to beat in Harlem. A Negro newspaper carrying news material in English, French and Spanish, gathered from all quarters of America, the West Indies, and Africa has maintained itself in Harlem for over five years. Two important magazines, both edited from New York, maintain their news and circulation consistently on a cosmopolitan scale. Under American auspices, three pan -African congresses have been held abroad for the discussion of common interests, colonial questions and and the future of cooperative development of Africa. In terns of the race question as a world problem, the Negro mind has leapt, so to speak , upon the parapets of prejudice and extended its cramped horizons. In so doing it has linked up with the growing consciousness of the dark-peoples and is gradually learning their common interests... "Garveyism may be a transient , if spectacular, phenomenon, but the possible role of the American Negro in the future development of Africa is one of the most constructive and universality helpful missions that any modern people can lay claim to." P.14-15. I salute Howard's Dr. Alain Locke's perspicacity and faith expressions! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_LeRoy_Locke

THE NEW NEGRO

"There is, of course, a warrantably comfortable feeling in being on the right side of the country's professed ideals. We realize that we cannot be undone without America's undoing . It is within the great gamut of this attitude that the thinking Negro faces America, but with variations of mood that are if anything more significant than the attitude itself. Sometimes we have it taken with the defiant ironic challenge of [Claude] McKay: "'Mine is the future grinding down to today Like a great landslip moving to the sea, Bearing its freight of debris far away Where the green hungry waters restlessly Heave mammoth pyramids, and break and roar Their eerie challenge to the crumbling shore.' "Sometimes, perhaps more frequently as yet, it is taken in the fervent and almost filial appeal and counsel of [James] Weldon Johnson 's: "'O Southland, dear Southland! Then why do you still cling To the idle age and musty page, To a dead and useless thing?' "But between defiance and appeal, midway almost between cynicism and hope, the prevailing mind stands in the mood of the same author's 'To America ', an attitude of sober query and stoical challenge : "'How would you have us, as we are? Or sinking 'neath the load we bear , Our eyes fixed forward on a star, Or gazing empty at despair? 'Rising or falling? Men or things? With dragging steps or footsteps fleet? Strong, willing sinews in your wings, Or tightening chains about your feet?' "More and more, however, an intelligent realization of the great discrepancy between the American social creed and the American social practice forces upon the Negro the taking of the moral advantage that is his. Only the steadying and sobering effect of a truly characteristic greatness of spirit prevents the rapid rise of a definite cynicism and counter-hate and a defiant superiority feeling. Human as this reaction would be, a majority still deprecate its advent, and would gladly see it forestalled by the speedy amelioration of its causes . We wish our race pride to be a healthier, more positive achievement than a feeling based on a realization of the shortcomings of others." P.12-13, "The New Negro," THE NEW NEGRO AN INTERPRETATION, by Dr. Alain LeRoy Locke (1925, 2015)

SOLICITATION

SOLICITATION TO SEEK TRUTH Unraveling our millennium years old, recondite, mystery of black history, is a gargantuan, multigenerational, task, undertaking, befitting sages, pages, scholars, dollars, teachers, preachers, babies, elders, teens, adults, able, disabled: blind, deaf, dumb; in short, everyone that has breath! who desires to see all of the black historical truths revealed, made real, from beneath layers upon layers of lacquered lies, in which many are buried among the stuff of other-than-black peoples. One can be dissuaded easily from even trying due to enormity of the work required. But for people with a mind to work, no task is too big. These people with a mind to work are those being solicited in this appeal. They know who they are; or will surely make self-discovery in due time: for now is the time for seeking the truth of black history! That truth shall make you free. Its lack, its loss, caused your relapse ! Where do you start? What do you do? Start within yourself; upon one attaining empowering clarity there, spread without into your context, environment: family, work, school, community, fraternities, sororities, churches, lodges, businesses, recreation , stores, shops, clubs, bars, taverns, restaurants; spread your powerful black historical detective inquiries and researches wherever you are and wherever you go. Be woke! Be open! Be seeking: be willing to learn, to teach, to help!

VERY GOOD REPORT!

A VERY GOOD REPORT! Brother Harold Coleman called me yesterday, 12/12/2018, to report on his hospital visit to see our first cousin, Reverlea Coleman, of St. Louis, who is recovering from open heart surgery. This report is all the more remarkable, because brother Harold just had his big toe removed surgically recently for a troubling diabetic condition. Yet, he thought it not robbery to cast aside himself for her sake and the gospel's sake! Brother Harold is a preacher of the gospel, CME. So is brother Edwin Coleman, our baby brother, who had arrived at Revvie's room, even before Harold, to the delight and surprise of Revvie and hospital staff. "Who is this handsome man sitting at the foot of my bed, " Revvie reportedly gushed upon seeing Edwin, early in the morning! Obviously I was not there. But via Rev. Harold Coleman, the Holy Ghost got loose! And I was crying, laughing, shouting for joy because of my brother's phone call and very good report about Rev. Edwin Coleman and about our beloved cousin, Reverlea Coleman! Glory to God in the highest amen! Amen! Of course being an AME preacher myself, I dare not let this moment, this experience, this report pass, without giving homage to the One who has and does deliver me from all kinds of perils, plots, sickness! I love good reports. I love my family! I love the Lord. He heard my cry! https://www.google.com/…/%3fsearch=Philippians%2b4:8&versio…

"FREEDOM"

A DEFINITION OF "FREEDOM" Constitutional rights are personal, individual, in application. So the U.S. Supreme Court held in the 1935 case Murray v. Maryland, prosecuted by Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall. The Supreme Court decreed that the black plaintiff was to remain as a student at the all-white University of Maryland School of Law, due to the State of Maryland having failed to make available to him a separate but equal law school, as Plessy v Ferguson (1896) had mandated. The Court held similarly in Gaines v. Canada (1939). As in Maryland, the State of Missouri had failed to make available to Lloyd Gaines of St. Louis a separate but equal law school to the University of Missouri to which he was denied admission due to his race, African American. Here, too, Lloyd Gaines' personal, individual constitutional rights had been abridged in violation of law. We are accustomed to think of our rights as corporate or group rights, and as not personal or individual. This piquant point occurred to me when reading the wonderful legal discursive, ROOT AND BRANCH: CHARLES HAMILTON HOUSTON, THURGOOD MARSHALL AND THE STRUGGLE TO END SEGREGATION, by Rawle James, Jr. (2010). I read it, after having read a memorable quote in UNCLE TOM'S CABIN by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1852), that defines "rights" as "freedom," through a character in her classic. That quote reads: "What is freedom to a nation but freedom to the individuals in it? What is freedom to that young man who sits there with his arms folded across his broad chest , the tint of African blood in his cheek, its dark fires in his eye--what is freedom to George Harris? To your fathers, freedom was the right of a nation to be a nation. To him, it is the right of a man to be a man and not a brute; the right to call the wife of his bosom his wife, and to protect her from lawless violence; the right to protect and educate his child; the right to have a home of his own, a religion of his own, a character of his own, unsubject to the will of another." P.356. (1852, 1987) Constitutional rights are freedom, are personal freedom, your and my freedom, to be who we are; doing what we can or want to make life better for ourselves and our family.