Both concerned parents and activists who have no children have been flooding school board meetings across the country yelling and threatening each other over critical race theory.
The question is, should we be teaching our children American History starting with our Founding Fathers and the American Revolution when we won our liberty from the British in 1776, or should we teach our children that our country was originally built on the unpaid labor and bones of slaves since the first slaves were shipped over in 1619 with the first colonists?
Many historians view the 1830’s when the abolitionist movement was born in America, not 1619, and not 1776, as the key period in American history that truly started the long drive towards civil rights for blacks, starting with the abolition of slavery, then the emancipation of slaves at the end of the Civil War, and the granting and restoration of civil rights in America.
We will also discuss:
• The slave autobiography of Frederick Douglass.
• The stories about the murder and lynching of blacks in the book, The 1619 Project.
• The first lynching documented by the brave black journalist, Ida B Wells.
The YouTube video, after 12/17/2021: https://youtu.be/JRdnB0lqN5o
Please support our channel, if you wish to purchase these Amazon books we receive a small affiliate commission:
The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, by Nikole Hannah-Jones, The New York Times Magazine
https://amzn.to/3H1XqmY
Beloved, by Toni Morrison
https://amzn.to/31tFe5d
We will explore many ways teachers can try to discuss both sides of civil rights, and the academic and common definitions of Critical Race Theory, including the definition by Fox News.
Both concerned parents and activists who have no children have been flooding school board meetings across the country yelling and threatening each other over critical race theory and how our teachers teach our children American History. What should we teach our students about slavery, abolition, the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Jim Crow Redemptionist era and the Civil Rights movement? Do we teach our white children that Black Lives Really Do Matter?
We will also discuss:
• Brief history of the anti-lynching bill that failed to pass during World War II.
• The Lost Cause Southern Mythology of the Civil War and Reconstruction.
• The competing views of civil rights history by the Dunning School and WEB Dubois in his book, Black Reconstruction.
• Racial tropes documented by the movie, Birth of a Nation.
• Types of slaves in the ancient and modern world, and in the movie, Gone With the Wind.
• The tension between the conciliatory and accommodating approach of Booker T Washington and the more aggressive activist approach of WEB Dubois.
• Thomas Sowell’s observations of Booker T Washington and WEB Dubois.
• History of American Evangelicals and Civil Rights.
• Practically speaking, Critical Race Theory is about the eternally competing approaches of Booker T Washington and WEB Dubois.
See our YouTube video after 12/15/2021: https://youtu.be/lAa_jqL3S7I
Please support our channel, if you wish to purchase these Amazon books we receive a small affiliate commission:
Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, by Eric Foner
https://amzn.to/3EO6WIH
No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II, by Doris Kearns Goodwin
https://amzn.to/3opqQnY
Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880, by WEB Dubois
https://amzn.to/3rZHpH0
The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, by Nikole Hannah-Jones, The New York Times Magazine
https://amzn.to/3H1XqmY
The South may have lost the Civil War, but they won the culture war. The South was able to convince many of the Lost Cause myth, that somehow the Southern causes was a noble cause, that the Civil War was not fought over the issue of slavery, that the Civil War was fought over state’s rights, and that Southerners were benevolent masters whose slaves accepted their lot in life happily. Furthermore, the history of Reconstruction where blacks gained civil liberties and voting rights equal to whites was seen as a dark time in American history, that blacks showed themselves to be totally incapable of citizenship, utterly incapable to hold public office, manipulated by corrupt Yankee carpetbaggers and traitorous Southern scalawags.
One of the first historians to challenge this view was WEB Dubois. His history, Black Reconstruction, argued that blacks were able to make great strides during Reconstruction, and that Reconstruction was a bright, promising era for democracy. Although Reconstruction faced daunting problems, great strides were made in race relations, education, public health, and in establishing fair and just governments across the South, in spite of the rising racial violence caused by the KKK and similar groups, often aided by Southern sheriffs. These gains were reversed by the Redemptionists after the end of Reconstruction, robbing the blacks of their voting rights, allowing the South to build the Jim Crow system of racial violence and discrimination and subjugation that would last until the Civil Rights era.
Please view our blog on WEB Dubois:
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/refuting-the-lost-cause-black-reconstruction-by-web-dubois/
Please support our channel, purchase from Amazon, we receive affiliate commission:
Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880, by WEB Dubois
https://amzn.to/3rZHpH0
Please support our efforts, be a patron, at:
https://www.patreon.com/seekingvirtueandwisdom
Patrons can participate in online Zoom discussions of draft presentations we prepare for future YouTube videos.
Script for YouTube video for: WEB Dubois: The Souls of Black Folk, Personal Essays From Reconstruction Era
WEB Dubois was raised in Massachusetts and never suffered mildly racist attitudes until he attended public school. He innocently gave a valentine to a white girl and the shocked response really astounded him. He first encountered the virulent racism of the Deep South when he attended the black Fisk University in Tennessee and the Jim Crows system of suppression of black voting, bigotry, and lynchings, which peaks in the years of his schooling. WEB Dubois, why does being black mean being a problem to solve?
When he graduated from Fisk University he worked two years at a small schoolhouse earning a pittance for his pay. He could not afford a horse, so after he graduated he started walking through village after village asking if they needed teacher, and kept getting the answer, We don’t need a teacher here. Then he came to a ramshackle house where a black girl named Josie Dowell excitedly told him the village was looking for a teacher for a new school. He visited the commissioner’s house, showing his teaching certificate, and not only was he hired on the spot, he was sort-of invited to dinner. The whites ate first, then he was served, he ate alone.
We will discuss his essays on:
• His agreements and disagreements with Booker T Washington on how blacks should seek their civil rights.
• His experiences as a young teacher in the post Civil War Reconstruction South.
• His experiences as a young father with his firstborn son.
• The educational opportunities at black schools and colleges.
We also discuss:
• Black colleges such as Tuskegee Institute, Fisk University, and Howard University
• Life during the Reconstruction and Jim Crow Redemption Eras, when the KKK ruled the nights, and the lasting legacy of slavery.
• Booker T Washington and his speech given at the Atlanta Exposition of 1895, aka the Cotton Exposition. His speech was named the Atlanta Compromise.
• Thomas Sowell’s essay on Booker T Washington and WEB Dubois.
• WBS Dubois famous question: Why does being black mean being a problem to solve? Why must blacks have a double-consciousness, being black in a white society?
• Top Tenth black leader movement.
You can purchase Souls of Black Folk from Amazon at: https://amzn.to/2UUjFY9
Booker T Washington’s autobiography, Up From Slavery, offers an interesting glimpse in what it was like to be born a slave, live through the tumultuous Civil War era, and as a young man to experience the consequences blacks faced with the end of Reconstruction when the Ku Klux Klan night-riders enslaved the former black slaves anew through terror by lynching them, burning their bodies and their farm and their churches, suppressing them and denying them justice, even denying them the ability to defend themselves in daylight through the courts.
Booker T Washington gives us a fascinating look into another world in another time, he goes from being an illiterate slave to running a major college, fund raising and socializing with the most powerful and wealth businessmen and philanthropists of his day.
Please also read our other blogs on civil rights and the Civil War and Reconstruction, which also include the videos from Yale lecture series mentioned in the video. These blogs have the links for the Yale lectures and also class notes and transcripts:
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/category/civil-rights/
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/category/civil-war-and-reconstruction/
We also refer to writings of Epictetus, who was a former slave of a former slave, in this video:
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/epictetus-discourses-blog-1/
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/epictetus-discourses-blog-2/
And the blogs for both Epictetus and Rufus:
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/category/epictetus-and-rufus/
Please support our channel when purchasing these books from Amazon:
Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery and The Life of Frederick Douglass
https://amzn.to/3ja2ITo
Are the Qanon beliefs compatible with Christianity?
Does Qanon Lie? Does Qanon slander?
What is QAnon? Wikipedia explains it best: “QAnon is a far-right conspiracy theory that alleges that a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles is running a global child sex-trafficking ring and plotting against President Donald Trump, who is battling against the cabal. Q of QAnon has accused many liberal Hollywood actors, Democratic politicians, and high-ranking officials of being members of the cabal. Q also claimed that Trump feigned conspiracy with Russians to enlist Robert Mueller to join him in exposing the sex-trafficking ring and preventing a coup d’état by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and George Soros.”
We discuss QAnon, conspiracy theories, secret societies, and internet slanders, and how they relate to:
• Fox News and right-wing media.
• Jeffrey Epstein sexual abuse case.
• Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
• The Big Lie and the Capitol Riots.
• The Lost Cause, miseducating our children about slavery and Jim Crow discrimination.
• Black lives matter, and how blacks fear rogue white policemen.
• George Soros and anti-Semitic tropes.
We review what these sources say about QAnon:
• Pope Francis in his declaration, Gaudete et Exsultate.
• Christianity Today magazine.
• America magazine, published by the Jesuits.
• US News and World Report.
• Atlantic Magazine.
• Secret Society history lectures, Wondrium, or Great Courses Plus.
We will explore many ways teachers can try to discuss both sides of civil rights, and the academic and common definitions of Critical Race Theory, including the definition by Fox News.
Both concerned parents and activists who have no children have been flooding school board meetings across the country yelling and threatening each other over critical race theory and how our teachers teach our children American History. What should we teach our students about slavery, abolition, the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Jim Crow Redemptionist era and the Civil Rights movement? Do we teach our white children that Black Lives Really Do Matter?
We will also discuss:
• Brief history of the anti-lynching bill that failed to pass during World War II.
• The Lost Cause Southern Mythology of the Civil War and Reconstruction.
• The competing views of civil rights history by the Dunning School and WEB Dubois in his book, Black Reconstruction.
• Racial tropes documented by the movie, Birth of a Nation.
• Types of slaves in the ancient and modern world, and in the movie, Gone With the Wind.
• The tension between the conciliatory and accommodating approach of Booker T Washington and the more aggressive activist approach of WEB Dubois.
• Thomas Sowell’s observations of Booker T Washington and WEB Dubois.
• History of American Evangelicals and Civil Rights.
• Practically speaking, Critical Race Theory is about the eternally competing approaches of Booker T Washington and WEB Dubois.
See our YouTube video after 12/15/2021: https://youtu.be/lAa_jqL3S7I
Please support our channel, if you wish to purchase these Amazon books we receive a small affiliate commission:
Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, by Eric Foner
https://amzn.to/3EO6WIH
No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II, by Doris Kearns Goodwin
https://amzn.to/3opqQnY
Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880, by WEB Dubois
https://amzn.to/3rZHpH0
The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, by Nikole Hannah-Jones, The New York Times Magazine
https://amzn.to/3H1XqmY
The South may have lost the Civil War, but they won the culture war. The South was able to convince many of the Lost Cause myth, that somehow the Southern causes was a noble cause, that the Civil War was not fought over the issue of slavery, that the Civil War was fought over state’s rights, and that Southerners were benevolent masters whose slaves accepted their lot in life happily. Furthermore, the history of Reconstruction where blacks gained civil liberties and voting rights equal to whites was seen as a dark time in American history, that blacks showed themselves to be totally incapable of citizenship, utterly incapable to hold public office, manipulated by corrupt Yankee carpetbaggers and traitorous Southern scalawags.
One of the first historians to challenge this view was WEB Dubois. His history, Black Reconstruction, argued that blacks were able to make great strides during Reconstruction, and that Reconstruction was a bright, promising era for democracy. Although Reconstruction faced daunting problems, great strides were made in race relations, education, public health, and in establishing fair and just governments across the South, in spite of the rising racial violence caused by the KKK and similar groups, often aided by Southern sheriffs. These gains were reversed by the Redemptionists after the end of Reconstruction, robbing the blacks of their voting rights, allowing the South to build the Jim Crow system of racial violence and discrimination and subjugation that would last until the Civil Rights era.
Please view our blog on WEB Dubois:
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/refuting-the-lost-cause-black-reconstruction-by-web-dubois/
Please support our channel, purchase from Amazon, we receive affiliate commission:
Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880, by WEB Dubois
https://amzn.to/3rZHpH0
Please support our efforts, be a patron, at:
https://www.patreon.com/seekingvirtueandwisdom
Patrons can participate in online Zoom discussions of draft presentations we prepare for future YouTube videos.
Script for YouTube video for: WEB Dubois: The Souls of Black Folk, Personal Essays From Reconstruction Era
WEB Dubois was raised in Massachusetts and never suffered mildly racist attitudes until he attended public school. He innocently gave a valentine to a white girl and the shocked response really astounded him. He first encountered the virulent racism of the Deep South when he attended the black Fisk University in Tennessee and the Jim Crows system of suppression of black voting, bigotry, and lynchings, which peaks in the years of his schooling. WEB Dubois, why does being black mean being a problem to solve?
When he graduated from Fisk University he worked two years at a small schoolhouse earning a pittance for his pay. He could not afford a horse, so after he graduated he started walking through village after village asking if they needed teacher, and kept getting the answer, We don’t need a teacher here. Then he came to a ramshackle house where a black girl named Josie Dowell excitedly told him the village was looking for a teacher for a new school. He visited the commissioner’s house, showing his teaching certificate, and not only was he hired on the spot, he was sort-of invited to dinner. The whites ate first, then he was served, he ate alone.
We will discuss his essays on:
• His agreements and disagreements with Booker T Washington on how blacks should seek their civil rights.
• His experiences as a young teacher in the post Civil War Reconstruction South.
• His experiences as a young father with his firstborn son.
• The educational opportunities at black schools and colleges.
We also discuss:
• Black colleges such as Tuskegee Institute, Fisk University, and Howard University
• Life during the Reconstruction and Jim Crow Redemption Eras, when the KKK ruled the nights, and the lasting legacy of slavery.
• Booker T Washington and his speech given at the Atlanta Exposition of 1895, aka the Cotton Exposition. His speech was named the Atlanta Compromise.
• Thomas Sowell’s essay on Booker T Washington and WEB Dubois.
• WBS Dubois famous question: Why does being black mean being a problem to solve? Why must blacks have a double-consciousness, being black in a white society?
• Top Tenth black leader movement.
You can purchase Souls of Black Folk from Amazon at: https://amzn.to/2UUjFY9
Booker T Washington’s autobiography, Up From Slavery, offers an interesting glimpse in what it was like to be born a slave, live through the tumultuous Civil War era, and as a young man to experience the consequences blacks faced with the end of Reconstruction when the Ku Klux Klan night-riders enslaved the former black slaves anew through terror by lynching them, burning their bodies and their farm and their churches, suppressing them and denying them justice, even denying them the ability to defend themselves in daylight through the courts.
Booker T Washington gives us a fascinating look into another world in another time, he goes from being an illiterate slave to running a major college, fund raising and socializing with the most powerful and wealth businessmen and philanthropists of his day.
Please also read our other blogs on civil rights and the Civil War and Reconstruction, which also include the videos from Yale lecture series mentioned in the video. These blogs have the links for the Yale lectures and also class notes and transcripts:
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/category/civil-rights/
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/category/civil-war-and-reconstruction/
We also refer to writings of Epictetus, who was a former slave of a former slave, in this video:
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/epictetus-discourses-blog-1/
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/epictetus-discourses-blog-2/
And the blogs for both Epictetus and Rufus:
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/category/epictetus-and-rufus/
Please support our channel when purchasing these books from Amazon:
Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery and The Life of Frederick Douglass
https://amzn.to/3ja2ITo
Are the Qanon beliefs compatible with Christianity?
Does Qanon Lie? Does Qanon slander?
What is QAnon? Wikipedia explains it best: “QAnon is a far-right conspiracy theory that alleges that a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles is running a global child sex-trafficking ring and plotting against President Donald Trump, who is battling against the cabal. Q of QAnon has accused many liberal Hollywood actors, Democratic politicians, and high-ranking officials of being members of the cabal. Q also claimed that Trump feigned conspiracy with Russians to enlist Robert Mueller to join him in exposing the sex-trafficking ring and preventing a coup d’état by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and George Soros.”
We discuss QAnon, conspiracy theories, secret societies, and internet slanders, and how they relate to:
• Fox News and right-wing media.
• Jeffrey Epstein sexual abuse case.
• Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
• The Big Lie and the Capitol Riots.
• The Lost Cause, miseducating our children about slavery and Jim Crow discrimination.
• Black lives matter, and how blacks fear rogue white policemen.
• George Soros and anti-Semitic tropes.
We review what these sources say about QAnon:
• Pope Francis in his declaration, Gaudete et Exsultate.
• Christianity Today magazine.
• America magazine, published by the Jesuits.
• US News and World Report.
• Atlantic Magazine.
• Secret Society history lectures, Wondrium, or Great Courses Plus.
What is most remarkable about the biography of Father Augustine Tolton, “From Slave to Priest,” is how many Catholic clergy, including priests, nuns, and bishops, both American and Roman, both in those years after the Civil War and during Reconstruction, were eager to help this barely literate former black slave gain a clerical education and encourage and enable him to study for the priesthood.
After escaping slavery, Augustine Tolton became literate in four languages, English, German, Latin, and Greek. After studying for the priesthood for many years and gaining many letters of recommendations from his priests, he was accepted at the Franciscan seminary in Rome, since no seminary in America would accept blacks who wished to study for the priesthood.
After he was ordained, his biographer tells us, “Father Tolton made the daily rounds of his parish, stepping over the uneven brick pavements and cobbled sidewalks or climbing steep rickety stairs. All too often he was horrified by the squalor, the ravages of poverty and disease, the prevalence of dissipation and vice. Many of his people were ex-slaves and totally illiterate; others suffered just as severely from moral deprivation.”
“Day after day Father Tolton was seen coming in or out of the shacks, the rat-infested hovels and tenement houses. He listened compassionately to complaints of unemployment, desertion, injustice, depravity. Father Tolton knew how to bring hope and comfort to the sick and dying; he knew how to mitigate human suffering and sorrow because he himself had experienced the lash of the slave driver as well as the lash of the white man’s tongue.”
YouTube Video: https://youtu.be/dZbzWJkAf5k
Our blog on Father Tolton:
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/father-augustine-tolton-from-slave-to-priest/
Please support our channel when purchasing these books from Amazon:
From Slave to Priest: The Inspirational Story of Father Augustine Tolton, by Caroline Hemesath
https://amzn.to/3je7rmW
Based on the extraordinary life of National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich�s� grandfather who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C., this powerful novel explores themes of love and death with lightness and gravity and unfolds with the elegant prose, sly humor, and depth of feeling of a master craftsman.Thomas Wazhashk is the night watchman at the jewel bearing plant, the first factory located near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. He is also a Chippewa Council member who is trying to understand the consequences of a new �emancipation� bill on its way to the floor of the United States Congress. It is 1953 and he and the other council members know the bill isn�t about freedom; Congress is fed up with Indians. The bill is a �termination� that threatens the rights of Native Americans to their land and their very identity. How can the government abandon treaties made in good faith with Native Americans �for as long as the grasses shall grow, and the rivers run�?Since graduating high school, Pixie Paranteau has insisted that everyone call her Patrice. Unlike most of the girls on the reservation, Patrice, the class valedictorian, has no desire to wear herself down with a husband and kids. She makes jewel bearings at the plant, a job that barely pays her enough to support her mother and brother. Patrice�s shameful alcoholic father returns home sporadically to terrorize his wife and children and bully her for money. But Patrice needs every penny to follow her beloved older sister, Vera, who moved to the big city of Minneapolis. Vera may have disappeared; she hasn�t been in touch in months, and is rumored to have had a baby. Determined to find Vera and her child, Patrice makes a fateful trip to Minnesota that introduces her to unexpected forms of exploitation and violence, and endangers her life.Thomas and Patrice live in this impoverished reservation community along with young Chippewa boxer Wood Mountain and his mother Juggie Blue, her niece and Patrice�s best friend Valentine, and Stack Barnes, the white high school math teacher and boxing coach who is hopelessly in love with Patrice.In the Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich creates a fictional world populated with memorable characters who are forced to grapple with the worst and best impulses of human nature. Illuminating the loves and lives, the desires and ambitions of these characters with compassion, wit, and intelligence, The Night Watchman is a majestic work of fiction from this revered cultural treasure. .
THE BIRMINGHAM CAMPAIGN: A TURNING POINT FOR CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE USATibAct
In 1963, Birmingham, Alabama, USA was
“the most segregated city in the South”
with strictly enforced separation of black
people and white people in public spaces.
The Civil Rights Movement had lost some
momentum and was in need of a victory,
so Fred Shuttlesworth’s local Alabama
Christian Movement for Human Rights
invited Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to col-
laborate in “The Birmingham Campaign”
or “Project C.” The “C” stood for con-
frontation: sustained, nonviolent action
to demand desegregation and equal employment opportunities for black residents
of Birmingham.
Film Question re:The Revenant, Bridge of Spies, Gran Torino and The MartianSigmond Cromwell
As a religious instruction teacher, if a parent asked you to explain why any of the four films (The Revenant, Bridge of Spies, Gran Torino and The Martian) might or might not be a good film for their youngsters to see, what would you advise and why?
5. Gone with the Wind The Invisibility ofRacism in Americ.docxalinainglis
5. "Gone with the Wind": The Invisibility of
Racism in American History Textbooks
When was the country we now know as the United States first settled? Ifwe forget the lesson of the last chapter for the moment—that Native
Americans settled—the best answer might be 1526. In the summer of that year,
five hundred Spaniards and one hundred black slaves founded a town neat the
mouth of the Pee Dee River in present-day South Carolina. Disease and disputes
with nearby Indians caused many deaths in the early months of the settlement.
In November the slaves rebelled, killed some of their masters, and escaped to
the Indians, By then only 150 Spaniards survived; they retreated to Haiti. The
ex-slaves remained behind and probably merged with nearby Indian nations.5
This is cocktail-party trivia, I suppose. American history textbooks cannot
be faulted for not mentioning that the first non-Native settlers in the United
States were black. Educationally, however, the incident has its uses. It shows that
Africans (is it too early to call them African Americans?) rebelled against slavery
from the first. It points to the important subject of three-way race relations—
Indian-African-European—which most textbooks completely omit. It teaches
that slavery cannot readily survive without secure borders. And, symbolically, it
illusttates that African Americans, and the attendant subject of black-white race
relations, were part of American history from the first European attempts to
settle.
Perhaps the most pervasive theme in our history is the domination of
black America by white America. Race is the sharpest and deepest division in
American life. Issues of black-white relations propelled the Whig Party to col-
lapse, prompted the formation of the Republican Party, and caused the Democ-
ratic Party to label itself the "white man's party" for almost a century. The first
time Congress ever overrode a presidential veto was for the 1866 Civil Rights
Act, passed by Republicans over the wishes of Andrew Johnson. Senators
mounted the longest filibuster in U.S. history, more than 534 hours, to oppose
the 1964 Civil Rights bill. Thomas Byrne Edsall has shown how race prompted
the sweeping political realignment of 1964-72, in which the white South went
131
from a Democratic bastion to a Republican stronghold.6 Race still affects poli-
tics, as evidenced by the notorious Willie Horton commercial used by George
Bush in the 1988 presidential campaign and the more recent candidacies of the
Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, Race riots continue to shake urban centers
from Miami to Los Angeles.
Almost no genre of our popular culture goes untouched by race. From the
1850s through the 1930s, except during the Civil War and Reconstruction,
minstrel shows, which derived in a perverse way from plantation slavery, were
the dominant form of popular entertainment in America. During most of that
period Uncle Tom's Cabin was our longest-running play, mounted in thousands of
productions. Am.
What is most remarkable about the biography of Father Augustine Tolton, “From Slave to Priest,” is how many Catholic clergy, including priests, nuns, and bishops, both American and Roman, both in those years after the Civil War and during Reconstruction, were eager to help this barely literate former black slave gain a clerical education and encourage and enable him to study for the priesthood.
After escaping slavery, Augustine Tolton became literate in four languages, English, German, Latin, and Greek. After studying for the priesthood for many years and gaining many letters of recommendations from his priests, he was accepted at the Franciscan seminary in Rome, since no seminary in America would accept blacks who wished to study for the priesthood.
After he was ordained, his biographer tells us, “Father Tolton made the daily rounds of his parish, stepping over the uneven brick pavements and cobbled sidewalks or climbing steep rickety stairs. All too often he was horrified by the squalor, the ravages of poverty and disease, the prevalence of dissipation and vice. Many of his people were ex-slaves and totally illiterate; others suffered just as severely from moral deprivation.”
“Day after day Father Tolton was seen coming in or out of the shacks, the rat-infested hovels and tenement houses. He listened compassionately to complaints of unemployment, desertion, injustice, depravity. Father Tolton knew how to bring hope and comfort to the sick and dying; he knew how to mitigate human suffering and sorrow because he himself had experienced the lash of the slave driver as well as the lash of the white man’s tongue.”
YouTube Video: https://youtu.be/dZbzWJkAf5k
Our blog on Father Tolton:
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/father-augustine-tolton-from-slave-to-priest/
Please support our channel when purchasing these books from Amazon:
From Slave to Priest: The Inspirational Story of Father Augustine Tolton, by Caroline Hemesath
https://amzn.to/3je7rmW
Based on the extraordinary life of National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich�s� grandfather who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C., this powerful novel explores themes of love and death with lightness and gravity and unfolds with the elegant prose, sly humor, and depth of feeling of a master craftsman.Thomas Wazhashk is the night watchman at the jewel bearing plant, the first factory located near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. He is also a Chippewa Council member who is trying to understand the consequences of a new �emancipation� bill on its way to the floor of the United States Congress. It is 1953 and he and the other council members know the bill isn�t about freedom; Congress is fed up with Indians. The bill is a �termination� that threatens the rights of Native Americans to their land and their very identity. How can the government abandon treaties made in good faith with Native Americans �for as long as the grasses shall grow, and the rivers run�?Since graduating high school, Pixie Paranteau has insisted that everyone call her Patrice. Unlike most of the girls on the reservation, Patrice, the class valedictorian, has no desire to wear herself down with a husband and kids. She makes jewel bearings at the plant, a job that barely pays her enough to support her mother and brother. Patrice�s shameful alcoholic father returns home sporadically to terrorize his wife and children and bully her for money. But Patrice needs every penny to follow her beloved older sister, Vera, who moved to the big city of Minneapolis. Vera may have disappeared; she hasn�t been in touch in months, and is rumored to have had a baby. Determined to find Vera and her child, Patrice makes a fateful trip to Minnesota that introduces her to unexpected forms of exploitation and violence, and endangers her life.Thomas and Patrice live in this impoverished reservation community along with young Chippewa boxer Wood Mountain and his mother Juggie Blue, her niece and Patrice�s best friend Valentine, and Stack Barnes, the white high school math teacher and boxing coach who is hopelessly in love with Patrice.In the Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich creates a fictional world populated with memorable characters who are forced to grapple with the worst and best impulses of human nature. Illuminating the loves and lives, the desires and ambitions of these characters with compassion, wit, and intelligence, The Night Watchman is a majestic work of fiction from this revered cultural treasure. .
THE BIRMINGHAM CAMPAIGN: A TURNING POINT FOR CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE USATibAct
In 1963, Birmingham, Alabama, USA was
“the most segregated city in the South”
with strictly enforced separation of black
people and white people in public spaces.
The Civil Rights Movement had lost some
momentum and was in need of a victory,
so Fred Shuttlesworth’s local Alabama
Christian Movement for Human Rights
invited Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to col-
laborate in “The Birmingham Campaign”
or “Project C.” The “C” stood for con-
frontation: sustained, nonviolent action
to demand desegregation and equal employment opportunities for black residents
of Birmingham.
Film Question re:The Revenant, Bridge of Spies, Gran Torino and The MartianSigmond Cromwell
As a religious instruction teacher, if a parent asked you to explain why any of the four films (The Revenant, Bridge of Spies, Gran Torino and The Martian) might or might not be a good film for their youngsters to see, what would you advise and why?
5. Gone with the Wind The Invisibility ofRacism in Americ.docxalinainglis
5. "Gone with the Wind": The Invisibility of
Racism in American History Textbooks
When was the country we now know as the United States first settled? Ifwe forget the lesson of the last chapter for the moment—that Native
Americans settled—the best answer might be 1526. In the summer of that year,
five hundred Spaniards and one hundred black slaves founded a town neat the
mouth of the Pee Dee River in present-day South Carolina. Disease and disputes
with nearby Indians caused many deaths in the early months of the settlement.
In November the slaves rebelled, killed some of their masters, and escaped to
the Indians, By then only 150 Spaniards survived; they retreated to Haiti. The
ex-slaves remained behind and probably merged with nearby Indian nations.5
This is cocktail-party trivia, I suppose. American history textbooks cannot
be faulted for not mentioning that the first non-Native settlers in the United
States were black. Educationally, however, the incident has its uses. It shows that
Africans (is it too early to call them African Americans?) rebelled against slavery
from the first. It points to the important subject of three-way race relations—
Indian-African-European—which most textbooks completely omit. It teaches
that slavery cannot readily survive without secure borders. And, symbolically, it
illusttates that African Americans, and the attendant subject of black-white race
relations, were part of American history from the first European attempts to
settle.
Perhaps the most pervasive theme in our history is the domination of
black America by white America. Race is the sharpest and deepest division in
American life. Issues of black-white relations propelled the Whig Party to col-
lapse, prompted the formation of the Republican Party, and caused the Democ-
ratic Party to label itself the "white man's party" for almost a century. The first
time Congress ever overrode a presidential veto was for the 1866 Civil Rights
Act, passed by Republicans over the wishes of Andrew Johnson. Senators
mounted the longest filibuster in U.S. history, more than 534 hours, to oppose
the 1964 Civil Rights bill. Thomas Byrne Edsall has shown how race prompted
the sweeping political realignment of 1964-72, in which the white South went
131
from a Democratic bastion to a Republican stronghold.6 Race still affects poli-
tics, as evidenced by the notorious Willie Horton commercial used by George
Bush in the 1988 presidential campaign and the more recent candidacies of the
Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, Race riots continue to shake urban centers
from Miami to Los Angeles.
Almost no genre of our popular culture goes untouched by race. From the
1850s through the 1930s, except during the Civil War and Reconstruction,
minstrel shows, which derived in a perverse way from plantation slavery, were
the dominant form of popular entertainment in America. During most of that
period Uncle Tom's Cabin was our longest-running play, mounted in thousands of
productions. Am.
2024.06.01 Introducing a competency framework for languag learning materials ...Sandy Millin
http://sandymillin.wordpress.com/iateflwebinar2024
Published classroom materials form the basis of syllabuses, drive teacher professional development, and have a potentially huge influence on learners, teachers and education systems. All teachers also create their own materials, whether a few sentences on a blackboard, a highly-structured fully-realised online course, or anything in between. Despite this, the knowledge and skills needed to create effective language learning materials are rarely part of teacher training, and are mostly learnt by trial and error.
Knowledge and skills frameworks, generally called competency frameworks, for ELT teachers, trainers and managers have existed for a few years now. However, until I created one for my MA dissertation, there wasn’t one drawing together what we need to know and do to be able to effectively produce language learning materials.
This webinar will introduce you to my framework, highlighting the key competencies I identified from my research. It will also show how anybody involved in language teaching (any language, not just English!), teacher training, managing schools or developing language learning materials can benefit from using the framework.
Palestine last event orientationfvgnh .pptxRaedMohamed3
An EFL lesson about the current events in Palestine. It is intended to be for intermediate students who wish to increase their listening skills through a short lesson in power point.
Embracing GenAI - A Strategic ImperativePeter Windle
Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies such as Generative AI, Image Generators and Large Language Models have had a dramatic impact on teaching, learning and assessment over the past 18 months. The most immediate threat AI posed was to Academic Integrity with Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) focusing their efforts on combating the use of GenAI in assessment. Guidelines were developed for staff and students, policies put in place too. Innovative educators have forged paths in the use of Generative AI for teaching, learning and assessments leading to pockets of transformation springing up across HEIs, often with little or no top-down guidance, support or direction.
This Gasta posits a strategic approach to integrating AI into HEIs to prepare staff, students and the curriculum for an evolving world and workplace. We will highlight the advantages of working with these technologies beyond the realm of teaching, learning and assessment by considering prompt engineering skills, industry impact, curriculum changes, and the need for staff upskilling. In contrast, not engaging strategically with Generative AI poses risks, including falling behind peers, missed opportunities and failing to ensure our graduates remain employable. The rapid evolution of AI technologies necessitates a proactive and strategic approach if we are to remain relevant.
The French Revolution, which began in 1789, was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France. It marked the decline of absolute monarchies, the rise of secular and democratic republics, and the eventual rise of Napoleon Bonaparte. This revolutionary period is crucial in understanding the transition from feudalism to modernity in Europe.
For more information, visit-www.vavaclasses.com
Acetabularia Information For Class 9 .docxvaibhavrinwa19
Acetabularia acetabulum is a single-celled green alga that in its vegetative state is morphologically differentiated into a basal rhizoid and an axially elongated stalk, which bears whorls of branching hairs. The single diploid nucleus resides in the rhizoid.
Synthetic Fiber Construction in lab .pptxPavel ( NSTU)
Synthetic fiber production is a fascinating and complex field that blends chemistry, engineering, and environmental science. By understanding these aspects, students can gain a comprehensive view of synthetic fiber production, its impact on society and the environment, and the potential for future innovations. Synthetic fibers play a crucial role in modern society, impacting various aspects of daily life, industry, and the environment. ynthetic fibers are integral to modern life, offering a range of benefits from cost-effectiveness and versatility to innovative applications and performance characteristics. While they pose environmental challenges, ongoing research and development aim to create more sustainable and eco-friendly alternatives. Understanding the importance of synthetic fibers helps in appreciating their role in the economy, industry, and daily life, while also emphasizing the need for sustainable practices and innovation.
Instructions for Submissions thorugh G- Classroom.pptxJheel Barad
This presentation provides a briefing on how to upload submissions and documents in Google Classroom. It was prepared as part of an orientation for new Sainik School in-service teacher trainees. As a training officer, my goal is to ensure that you are comfortable and proficient with this essential tool for managing assignments and fostering student engagement.
Welcome to TechSoup New Member Orientation and Q&A (May 2024).pdfTechSoup
In this webinar you will learn how your organization can access TechSoup's wide variety of product discount and donation programs. From hardware to software, we'll give you a tour of the tools available to help your nonprofit with productivity, collaboration, financial management, donor tracking, security, and more.
Biological screening of herbal drugs: Introduction and Need for
Phyto-Pharmacological Screening, New Strategies for evaluating
Natural Products, In vitro evaluation techniques for Antioxidants, Antimicrobial and Anticancer drugs. In vivo evaluation techniques
for Anti-inflammatory, Antiulcer, Anticancer, Wound healing, Antidiabetic, Hepatoprotective, Cardio protective, Diuretics and
Antifertility, Toxicity studies as per OECD guidelines
Critical Race Theory, Reviewing the Books, the 1619 Project, and Beloved
1.
2. Today we will learn and reflect on Critical Race Theory and how this is
reflected in two books associated with this controversy, the 1619 Project
book, and also the controversial book by the African American author,
Toni Morrison, Beloved.
Both concerned parents and activists who have no children have been
flooding school board meetings across the country yelling and
threatening each other over critical race theory. The question is, should
we be teaching our children American History starting with our Founding
Fathers and the American Revolution when we won our liberty from the
British in 1776, or should we teach our children that our country was
originally built on the unpaid labor and bones of slaves since the first
slaves were shipped over in 1619 with the first colonists?
3. One of my projects for this channel is to educate my fellow white Christians on
why a proper understanding of civil rights is so critical to truly loving our black
neighbors, that black lives really do matter, and how black lives matter is more of a
concept and not some powerful shadowy communist movement.
At the end of our talk, we will discuss the sources used for this video, and my blogs
that also cover this topic. Please, we welcome interesting questions in the
comments. Let us learn and reflect together!
5. Many white protestors at School Board meetings really have a poor sense
of American History in general and Civil Rights history in particular, simply
because this history has only started to emphasize the civil rights long
after the civil rights sruggles in the Sixties.
This is a continuation of another video on suggestions on how teachers
can teach both sides of critical race theory. We spit the topic into two
videos.
6.
7. Topics discussed:
Critical Race Theory: Definitions
Lost Cause and Dunning School Interpretation
Racist tropes in the Birth of a Nation
Slavery in ancient and modern worlds
Civil War History and Black Reconstruction
Jim Crow, KKK, and Redemptionist Era
Booker T Washington v WEB Dubois
American Evangelicals and Civil Rights
8. How did slavery start in 1619? With pirates, and pirates play a big part in
the history of slavery back to ancient times, pirates often raided coastal
areas to enslave their victims. These pirates stole several dozen slaves
from a slaver ship and resold them to the colonists in Jamestown.
10. At this point let us step back and get a broad-brush review of American
History, as many historians view the 1830’s, not 1619, and not 1776, as
the key period in American history that truly started the long drive
towards civil rights for blacks, starting with the abolition of slavery, then
the emancipation of slaves at the end of the Civil War, and the granting
and restoration of civil rights in America.
11. 1619 – 1776: Colonization: Indentured servants
replaced by slaves on large Southern plantations.
1787: Compromises of Constitutional Convention:
International slave trade abolished in 1808, slaves
3/5’s of a person, fugitive slave laws, Founding
Fathers thought slavery would soon wither away.
1793: Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, this
helped rejuvenate the slave economy.
Declaration of
Independence
(1819), by John
Trumbull.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Declaration_of_Independence_(1819),_by_John_Trumbull.jpg
12. Battle of Spottsylvania, Kurz & Allison Art Publishers, 1888
1830’s: Abolitionists agitate for end of slavery in England/US.
1850’s: Free Labor movement sought to abolish the unfair
competition between free white yeomen and slaves in the territories.
1861-1865: Black runaway slaves were a key factor in the Northern
victory in the Civil War.
1865-1877: Presidential and Radical Reconstruction.
1877-1960’s: Redemptionist or Jim Crow era of discrimination.
1900’s: Invention of mechanical harvesters, less need for slave labor.
1965: Passage of Civil Rights Act, Second Civil Rights Movement.
13. REVIEWING BELOVED, BY TONI MORRISON
During our discussion group I pointed out my opinion that Beloved would likely
turn off old white Christian men like me, that it was not helpful, and the black
ladies in the group mentioned that Toni Morrison was mainly speaking to other
black women, helping them deal with the psychological struggles in understanding
their past and coping with trying to thrive and survive in a country where many
whites were not sympathetic with the Black Lives Matter movement, and again
notice, this is much more a movement than an organization, and BLM is not
synonymous with communism, that assertion is slanderous and is a bald-faced lie.
Toni Morrison was born in 1931, the math states that in her twenties she lived in
the Jim Crow era, a dark time for blacks to live, her negative personal experiences
living under Jim Crow affected the message she would tell.
14. “124 was spiteful. Full of a baby’s venom. The
women in the hour knew it and so did the
children. For years each put up with the spite in
his own way, but by 1873 Sethe and her
daughter Denver were its only victims. The
grandmother, Baby Suggs, was dead, and the
sons, Howards and Buglar, had run away by the
time they were thirteen years old – as soon as
merely looking in a mirror shattered it (that
was the signal for Buglar); as soon as two tiny
hand prints appeared in the cake (that was it
for Howard). Neither boy waited to see more;
another kettleful of chickpeas smoking in a
heap on the floor; soda crackers crumbled and
strewn in a line next to the doorway.”
Now let us read the opening sentences of Beloved:
Keep in mind, the intended audience is other black women
struggling to come to terms with both past and present:
15. These traumatic ramblings go on for much of the book. After the first chapter I was
able to pick up on some clues on what was happening, but after a few dozen
pages, I was forced to ask Dr Wikipedia for a synopsis.
IMHO, books should really be written so you can read them without asking for help
from Dr Wikipedia or an English teachers looking over your shoulder telling you
what you should think about the book. Beloved is a book for woke English
teachers. WOKE is here defined as any English teacher who forces her students to
read Lord of the Flies every year so she doesn’t have to read any new books
herself.
And Dr Wikipedia also says there are other people who do not like this book. The
other books in this trilogy read much the same way, says Dr Wikipedia.
So we will allow Dr Wikipedia to summarize the plot:
16. Beloved is inspired by an event that
actually happened: a slave escaped and
fled to the free state of Ohio in 1856.
She was subject to capture in
accordance with the Fugitive Slave Act
of 1850; when U.S. marshals burst into
the cabin where Garner and her
husband had barricaded themselves,
she was attempting to kill her children,
and had already killed her two-year-old
daughter, to spare them from being
returned to slavery.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beloved_(novel)
17. Now we know the reason for these traumatic ramblings, her life experiences are so
devastating that this ex-slave mother exists in a state of perpetual mental
breakdown, like she is psychotic.
By the way, there is precedent for this action. Soon after the time of Christ the
Jews revolted against the Romans, their last redoubt was the fortress Herod built
in the desert, Masada. The Romans built massive siegeworks that exist up to the
present day to storm the citadel, it was common practice in the ancient world,
when you captured a hostile enemy city, to massacre the men and enslave the
women and children, and they could select concubines from among the women
and girls. To save their family from slavery under pagan masters, the Jewish
defenders at Masada first slew their women and children, then the men all
committed suicide.
19. PLOT SUMMARY
Beloved begins in 1873 with Sethe, a formerly
enslaved woman, and her 18-year-old daughter
Denver, who live at 124 Bluestone Road. The site
has been haunted for years by what they believe
is the ghost of Sethe's eldest daughter. Sethe's
sons, Howard and Buglar, ran away from home by
the age of 13, due to the ghost.
One day, Paul D, one of the enslaved men from
Sweet Home, the plantation where Sethe, Halle,
Baby Suggs, and several others were once
enslaved, arrives at Sethe's home. He forces out
the spirit, and persuades them to leave the house
together for the first time in years for a carnival.
Upon returning home, they find a young woman
sitting in front of the house who calls herself
Beloved. Beloved appears to be a ghost of the
baby who was killed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beloved_(novel)
20. Another personal criticism of Beloved is that it actually understates the brutality of slavery.
Beloved is also an extreme example of the Kramer problem. If you remember, Kramer lived in the
same apartment as Jerry Seinfeld, and Kramer never worked, evidently was not living off an
inheritance, and his only life skill was his dramatic entrances into Jerry’s apartment, like how could
he afford to pay the rent on a New York City apartment?
After the Civil War, our ex-slave mother Sethe and her large family lived in this apparently large
house in Ohio, she doesn’t have a job, how did she make rent? She somehow is living in this same
haunted house, she is too traumatized to make rent, but her family is left alone, how can that be?
Reality would be even more cruel than the book. Her baby was not her baby, her baby belonged
to her master, her baby was her master’s property, and when she killed her baby, she was
destroying her master’s property. When she was returned to her master, she would have been
severely beaten, probably beaten to death. In general, when people are down, they are not left
alone, they are continuously hounded until they are utterly and completely ruined.
21. PLOT SUMMARY, continued
Paul D begins to feel increasingly
uncomfortable in the house and
that he is being driven out. One
night, Paul D is cornered by
Beloved, who demands sex. While
they have sex, his mind is filled with
horrific memories from his past.
Paul D tries to tell Sethe about it,
but cannot. Instead, he says that he
wants her pregnant. Etc.
22. Now I totally get why the sex is so casual, slavery robbed women of their agency, their privacy,
their free will, if the master wanted to force himself on his slave, she was his property, he could do
with her as he wished.
I would like to point out that sexual assault and concubines is a problem in all systems of slavery in
both the ancient and modern worlds, and we have a video that explores this concept, how the
Iliad itself was about the trading of concubines between men where the women could never just
say NO, and how the Old Testament laws exhorted the Jewish soldiers to treat their concubines
with kindness, as they are truly their Jewish wives.
The author is expressing how the morals of slaves who are treated like breeding livestock can be
debased, but many white Christians trying to read this book who are not black, who are not in
tune with the ugly history of slavery, they are just going to be offended by the casual sex, and this
detracts from the main message.
Finally, we have the odd plot line of casting this as a ghost story, where the soul of the murdered
infant slave girl is resurrected in a mysterious character in the book. This is also not a Christian
theme, and also detracts from the main message.
24. Beloved is a despairing novel, though the characters in the story do reconcile
themselves somewhat to their fate. Much more inspiring are the slave biographies
we have reviewed, and you may object that these are the small minority of ex-
slaves who were able to rise above their condition. Beloved, in contrast, is about
the bottom tenth of slaves who were eternally traumatized by the years they spent
in slavery. However, inspiring stories inspire all of us to improve our lives, but
despairing stories are just plain depressing.
Should Beloved be banned from school libraries? Absolutely not, children watch
movies that are worse than this, and if you ban this book, the right wing-nuts will
want to ban every other book that conflicts with the Lost Cause narrative.
However, I just do not see how this book Beloved will influence any white readers
to greater compassion for their black neighbors. IMHO, the slave autobiography of
Frederick Douglass would compel greater compassion, these are some slides from
this video:
26. Frederick Douglass tells us, “my father was a
white man. . . The opinion was whispered that
my master was my father, but of the
correctness of this opinion I know nothing. . .
My mother and I were separated when I was
but an infant, before I knew her as my
mother. It is a common custom in Maryland
to part children from their mothers at an early
age.” Often these involuntary orphans would
be raised by “an old slave woman, too old for
field labor.” These slaveowners would be as
quick to separate slave children from their
parents as people give away puppies from
their pet dog’s litter.
Last Time he saw his Mother
27. Many masters bred slaves just like they bred cows or horses, they
paired their slaves up, often forcing them to breed. Young slaves
from coastal plantations were often sold to the more prosperous
black belt plantations in the Deep South, AL GA MS, breaking up
many slave families.
28. Plantation, Beaufort, Port
Royal Island, SC, 1862
Frederick notes that when
the master caters to his
“own lusts, this makes
gratification of their
wicked desires profitable
as well as pleasurable; for
by this cunning
engagement, the
slaveholder, in cases not a
few, sustains to his slaves
the double relation of
master and father.” These
slave concubines were
often a “constant offense
to their mistress,” she likes
to see them suffer under
the lash, and often sells
them off to be rid of them.
29. Frederick Douglass remembers,
“I have said my master found
religious sanction for his cruelty.
As an example, I will state one
of many facts going to prove the
charge. I have seen him tie up
this lame young woman and
whip her with a heavy cowskin
upon her naked shoulders,
causing the warm red blood to
drip; and, in justification of the
bloody deed, he would quote
this passage of Scripture: ‘He
that knoweth his master’s will,
and doeth it not, shall be
beaten with many stripes.’
Whipping Old Barney
30. We have another interesting video of a former illiterate slave,
Father Tolton, who was the first former slave to be ordained a
priest. He was illiterate when his family escaped to freedom
during the Civil War, but he became literate not only in English
but also German, Latin, and Greek, and attended seminary in
Rome.
32. Unlike Beloved, the 1619 Project Book should increase the
compassion of any white person who reads it with an open mind.
The subtitle of the book should be, Ordinary Lives of Black
People in America for the last hundred years.
We will review the chapter in the 1619 Project titled Inheritance with
some remarkable stories about the persecutions and assassinations of
ordinary blacks who tried to be successful, too uppity, in the Deep South
not so long ago, in the post-World War II era of prosperity. Unlike
Beloved, it shows how blacks were kicked when they were down with
ever greater cruelty. If you are white, the next time you are tempted to
accuse blacks of being shiftless, lazy, or unenterprising, these stories
should give you pause, as they reveal what happened to blacks who
were too successful and too uppity in the Deep South.
33. This is a story of Elmore Bolling in Lowndesboro, Alabama.
Elmore had a large family, seven children who helped in the
family business, “a large house, a general store, a delivery
service, a catering company, and a gas station.” “At his
peak, Elmore employed as many as forty people, all black
like him.” He likely had forty thousand in savings, his total
assets in today’s dollars may have been half a million
dollars, mostly money that he earned.
Grant-Valkaria, Florida: Jorgensen's General Store
34. Elmore only rented his property, he never owned it. His father
and grandfather had owned a farm on which they ran cattle.
After they became successful, a white neighbor claimed the
land was his, and just stole it from them, for blacks had no
access to the legal system whatsoever in the state of Alabama.
35. “But it was the expansion of his little general store
that changed his fortunes. Elmore and his wife Bertha
Mae started doing Friday night fish fries, serving
Sunday dinners, and selling ice-cream to the after-
church crowd, a delicacy where most folks didn’t have
electricity.” “They grew their business by adding a one-
pump gas station out front. Elmore got the idea to sell
gas after a white-owned station nearby refused to
serve him. At the Bolling’s pump, black drivers would
have a safe, reliable place to fill up.”
36. “Not long after, the Bollings
and every black man,
woman, and child in the
county would learn the
cost of daring to be too
successful, too free. On a
mild December day in 1947
a deputy sheriff came to
Elmore’s store while his
twelve-year son, Willie D,
was working and asked
where his father was.” His
father was running errands,
and when he returned to
the store, some cars were
following him.
37. “As Elmore got out of
his truck, two white
men confronted him.
It seemed that in
buying a pump and
selling gas, Elmore
had stepped over
some invisible line.
Gun fire rang out. The
white men shot
Elmore seven times.
His wife and three of
his children heard the
terrifying sounds and
rushed from the store
to find him lying dead
in a ditch.”
38. Why would these white men be so brazen that they would murder a black man in
broad daylight making no effort to conceal their identities in front of his wife and
children? The deputy sheriff was involved, there was no justice for blacks in Jim
Crow Alabama. When blacks called in crimes, often they, the victim, were arrested,
for causing trouble. Plus, in the Deep South during slavery, blacks were seen as
subhuman, like talking livestock. You would think nothing of butchering a cow in
sight of its calf, many white people would reason, why would this matter for blacks?
This is not a unique story. The first lynching documented by the incredibly brave
black journalist, Ida B Wells, was a lynching of a black storeowner who dared to
compete with a white storeowner. The accusation was that he molested some white
woman, that was usually the accusation, when there was an accusation, but success
in competing against white people was the reason why he was seen as being way
too uppity and in need of lynching. We want to do a video on Ida B Wells in 2022.
40. Unlike the blacks in Beloved, now the
whites persecuted the members of the
black family even more intensely after the
murder of Elmore. The youngest daughter
Josephine remembers, “Within a year of
Elmore Bolling’s murder, nearly all of the
family’s wealth was gone. White creditors
and whites posing as creditors took the
money the family made from the sale of
their trucks and cattle. Other whites simply
claimed they were owed money. Bertha
Mae feared what would happen if she didn’t
pay them.” The family lost everything. They
lost their inheritance. They lost their home;
they were later forced to flee the county in
the dark of night to save their own skins.
41. A cotton plantation on the Mississippi, 1884
The youngest daughter Josephine remembers, “My father’s murder actually
killed aspirations for black people. Everyone had to go back working for
plantation owners. No one wanted to take over the business.” Not his
brothers, one brother said of the business, “No, that is what got Elmore killed.”
42. Young Josephine was the least traumatized because she was so young,
she was the only child who attended college, and she became a teacher,
one of the few safe occupations open to blacks in those days. Even
though Elmore had encouraged all his children to get an education, all
the other children eventually dropped out of school, taking safe,
unsuccessful, menial jobs to eke out a living. Josephine tells the sad tale
of how this traumatic afternoon ruined the lives of several generations
by telling their sad tale of woes faced by many black families: money
problems, marital problems, drinking problems, mental problems which
landed Willie D, the son who helped his father and watched him die in
the ditch, in a psychiatric facility.
44. The suppressed memories
Willie D locked up in his soul
bubbled up when talking to
his sister Josephine one day.
He remembered “the white
men who came to the store
looking for his father. The
terror he felt. The sounds of
gunfire. His father’s dead
body. He had even tried to
peel the boots off his father’s
feet because he would not be
able to get to heaven with his
boots on.”
A group of white men pose for a 1919 photograph as they stand over
the black victim Will Brown who had been lynched and his body
mutilated and burned during the Omaha race riot of 1919
45. There is an even worse story in this chapter about a
prosperous black farmer was “was getting too damned
prosperous and biggity for a nigger.”
This is the story of how the problem of black prosperity
was dealt with. A black man had the temerity to
become a successful farmer on a 140 acre farm. “Days
later, when the black man and four of his children went
into town, a marshal served him a warrant for
trespassing. The marshal then attacked the black man,
pistol-whipping him to the ground. A group of white
men jumped in and began to choke and beat him. As
his daughters rushed to help their father, a man kicked
one of them in the gut. The family was overpowered
by the mob and dragged to jail. Three of the man’s
daughters were charged with resisting arrest, and his
son was falsely accused of carrying a pistol.”
46. The mob that night shot
up his house, waking his
wife and other children.
In the next few days
their stolen crops were
sold underneath them.
The family fled. “They
never returned, they
had been warned if they
returned, they would be
lynched. The father was
sentenced to twelve
months on a chain gang
and fined $250. The
daughters were fined
$50 each, the son was
fined $100.”
47. Since many of my family and friends live in Florida, I just want to mention
there was a riot where whites burned down the negro homes and
businesses in Rosewood, Florida in 1923, and all the town blacks fled
with the clothes on their backs, with no justice served, with no financial
rewards for the homes and property lost.
48. Remains of Sarah Carrier's house in Rosewood, Florida, Levy County, 1923, and another burning cabin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosewood_massacre
49. SOURCES: One primary source is this newly published edition of the
1619 project. You can tell from the chapter titles that each chapter
covers a different topic, it reminds me of the Ordinary Lives in
the Ancient World books I have read before.
50.
51.
52. Futher discussing Toni Morrison’s Beloved, and I might add that part of
my dislike for the book is the same reason that I could not watch Clint
Eastwood’s movie on the lady prize fighter, Million Dollar Baby, reading
a book that is primarily about personal trauma is just not something I
enjoy.