"Annoying or not interesting" was what one Trump supporter called a post that I made today, "Pick Your Poison! Vote!" Now, mind you, both of these critics were on a Civil War website. Nothing could be more relevant to voting than the Civil War and its pervasive influence today!
Just thought I would mention this.
Detached and isolated is how many people view the present, in a vain attempt to ignore their past. Bully for these folks. But it's silly for me!
Music emotes.
Music mesmerizes.
Music systematizes, valorizes, hypnotizes, anesthetizes, relieves .
Mysterious, visceral, majestic, ethereal, music defies definition. Music encodes tradition. Stokes ambition. Saturates religion.
Music emotes.
Oracular , vernacular , spectacular , music 🎶 is all these things and more. Music feels, heals, thrills, congeals, chills, deals, anneals.
Music emotes.
Transformation, incarnation, graduation, education, music inspires, elevates, insinuates, all sectors of society on earth, from the low to the high , all colors, all creeds.
Music emotes.
WHY DID GOD MAKE MAN ?
Why did God make man?
Why did God make anything?
Why was mankind made, a composite: male/female? Carnal, in part; spiritual, in part; intellectual, in part. Why ask "why"?
These questions I ask myself as I read, "The Promises," in ON FIRST PRINCIPLES (2013) by Origen, the 3rd century African Christian sage and theologian, who wrote:
"As, then, in those arts, which are accomplished by manual labor, the design, the why or how or for what uses a thing is made, lies in the mind, but its practical efficacy is unfolded through the help of the work of our hands, so we must believe that in regards to God's works, which have been made by him, their design and meaning remain a secret. Now when our eye sees the works of the craftsmen, if it observes an article which has been made with unusual skill, immediately the mind burns to discover what sort it is and how and for what uses it was made. Much more, and beyond all comparison, does the mind burn with unspeakable longing to learn the design of those things which we perceive to have been made by God. This longing, this love, we believe, has undoubtedly been implanted in us by God; and as the eye naturally demands light and vision and the body by its nature desires food and drink, so our mind cherishes a natural and appropriate longing to know God's truth and to learn the causes of things."
P.186-187
ED Hutchison
4 hrs
1875-11-02
*On this date in 1875, The Mississippi Plan went into effect. Their state government was trying to prevent Black political participation using this Strategy.
The Plan was devised by the Democratic Party to violently overthrow the Republican Party by organized violence in order to redeem the state of Mississippi. The Mississippi Plan was also adopted by Democrats in South Carolina and Louisiana.
Following the end of the American Civil War, Blacks found themselves emancipated from the bonds of slavery, and, with the passing of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1870, were allowed to vote. The consequences of this were far-reaching and almost immediate. Blacks flooded the polls, and in Mississippi's 1874 election the Republican Party carried a 30,000 majority in what had been, in pre-Civil War years, a Democrat stronghold.
Despite the Republican victory and the election of Blacks to many offices including ten of thirty-six seats in the state legislature, the tragic precedent for the Mississippi Plan had already been set in the city of Vicksburg. There, the White Man's party sent armed patrols to prevent blacks from voting and succeeded in defeating all Republican city officials in August. By December the emboldened party forced the Black sheriff to flee to the state capitol. Blacks who rallied to the city to aid the sheriff also had to flee against superior force. Over the next few days, armed gangs may have murdered up to 300 Blacks in the city's vicinity. President Ulysses S. Grant sent a company of troops to the city in January to quell the violence and allow the sheriff's safe return.
In 1875, under the Mississippi Plan of Southern Democrats, a political dual-pronged battle to reverse the otherwise dominant Republican trend was waged. The first step was to "persuade" the 10 to 15 percent of white voters still calling themselves Republicans to switch to the Democratic party. A combined fear of social, political and economic ostracism convinced carpetbaggers to switch parties or flee the state.
The second step of the Mississippi Plan was intimidation of the Black populace who had so recently been granted their voting rights. While economic coercion against black sharecroppers was employed to some limited success, it was violence that played the largest part in intimidation. Groups of Democrats, called "rifle clubs," frequently provoked riots at Republican rallies, shooting down dozens of blacks in the ensuing conflict.
Although there was a call for federal troops to curb the violence, this time it went unanswered by President Grant, for fear that, in doing so, he would be accused of "bayonet rule"--which he believed would undoubtedly be exploited by Democrats to carry Ohio in that year's state elections. Ultimately, the violence went unchecked and the plan worked just as it had been intended: During Mississippi's 1875 election, five counties with large black majorities polled 12, 7, 4, 2, and 0 votes, respectively. Indeed, what had been a Republican victory of a 30,000 votes in 1874 became a Democrat majority of 30,000 in 1875.
Reference:
Library of Congress
101 Independence Avenue S.E.
Washington D.C. 20540
NON-DELEGABLE DUTIES
Some duties are non-delegable.
No one can do them, but you, for you. Nor must you expect them to.
Each one is responsible for itself, as it is responsible to itself, first.
Only after you have satisfied your own family 'a needs can you share.
Taking care of one's own family, first, is a non-delegable duty. It requires no defense, means no offense, is plain common sense!
"My own observation has convinced me, for example, that in those states where the leaders of the Negro have been encouraged to turn their attention to politics the masses of the people have not made the same progress that they have made in those other states where the leaders, because of racial prejudice or for other reasons, have been compelled to seek their own salvation in educating and building up, in moral and material directions, the lowly members of their own people.
"I do not wish to make comparisons, but I think I can safely say, by way of illustration, that in no other part of the United States have the masses of Negroes been more completely deprived of political privileges than in the state of Mississippi, and yet there is, at the same time, scarcely any part of the country in which the masses of the people have built more schools and churches, or where they have gained a more solid foothold on the soil and in the industries of the state.
"In calling attention to this fact, I do not intend to offer an excuse for depriving any members of my race of the privileges to which the law entitles them. I merely wish to emphasize the fact that there is hope for them in other and more fundamental directions than ordinary party politics. More especially I wish to emphasize one fact--namely, that for the Negroes, as for other peoples who are struggling to get on their feet, success comes to those who learn to take advantage of their disadvantages and make their difficulties their opportunities. This is what the Poles in Germany, to a greater extent than any of the other oppressed nationalities in Europe, seem to have done."
P. 294-295, "A Russian Border Village," THE MAN FARTHEST DOWN: A RECORD OF OBSERVATION AND STUDY IN EUROPE by Booker T. Washington and Robert E. Park (1912)
