#National War Memorial by Vernon March

[rabbitcruiser]

Cessation of hostilities was achieved in the Korean War when the United States, China, and North Korea sign an armistice agreement on July 27, 1953. Syngman Rhee, President of South Korea, refused to sign but pledged to observe the armistice. 

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A bronze portrait bust of George V by Sydney March, 1911.

The King Emperor is portrayed in his coronation year of 1911 and is shown wearing the robes and insignia of the Order of the Garter, the insignia of the Royal Victorian Order and of the Order of St John of Jerusalem. Signed and dated 1911.Sydney March (1876–1968) was the second of nine children, eight of whom became artists. The March family established their own sculpture studio at Goddendene, Kent, in 1901. Sydney also worked with the art founders Elkington, and was responsible for royal portraits, including Queen Victoria, Queen Alexandra and George V, and for producing figures, busts and statues of leading figures of the day.  In the early 1920‘s the March studio was honoured with a visit by members of the Royal Family. Sydney’s public works include statues of Colonel Bevington (Tooley Street, London Bridge, 1911) and Lord Kitchener (Calcutta, 1914; Khartoum, 1921, removed to Royal School of Military Engineering, Chatham, 1958). Among his portrait busts were Cecil Rhodes, Sir John French. March also executed a number of war memorials including Bromley Parish Church (1921) and the United Empire Loyalists Memorial (Hamilton, Ontario, 1929). Following the death of Vernon March in 1930, Sydney and his siblings completed the Canadian National War Memorial at Ottawa.

[huangyujing]

Farewell to 2021 Part 1

Ripped open by the U.S. Capitol rioters, 2021 began its agonizing first one-third without covid-19 vaccines. My gaze on a pandemic-ridden world as a photojournalist, for a period of time, was brushed with fear as a human being.

In suppressing the anxiety of betraying the role of a neutral observer, I gradually came to recognize the value of my own experience as a part of collective memory; one that was shared globally during this unusual era.

Whether it’s first person or third person point of view, I tried to frame the world with honesty, recreating a moment that was seen, or felt.

Below, my firsthand experiences in 2021 in chronological order:

- A surreal Washington, D.C. that resembled a dystopian film with fences all around Capitol Hill.

Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument at dawn from Mount Vernon Trail across the Potomac River, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2021, in Washington. The National Mall, which included the two mentioned landmarks, were surrounded by barriers and fencing, a security measure to prevent extremist activities after the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection.

A Secret Service agent closes the gate with the National Guard behind him on 17th street near the White House, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2021, in Washington. The heavy security was a precaution against possible violent attack similar to Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection. Some fences and checkpoints remained throughout the city until July, 2021.

- A rally in which Asian Americans stood in solidarity across the United States to denounce anti-Asian hate crimes.

Lan Luu, 76, an immigrant from Vietnam who has resided in the United States for 22 years, steps down the stage as others reaching out their arms to assist her at Unity Against Hate rally at Freedom Plaza, Saturday, May 15, 2021, in Washington. Sponsored by 86 Asian organizations nationwide, the event was held across the United States during Asian American Pacific Islander Month. The Speakers, including Rep. Kai Kahele, D-Hawaii, Former Rep. Mike Honda, D-Ca., State Senator Clarence Lam, D-Md., and Bakhshish Singh Sandhu, the president of a local Sikh organization in D.C., Council of Khalistan, stood in solidarity, calling for an end to hate crimes against AAPI and all the other communities.

- A demonstration on Palestinians’ Nakba day that brought hundreds of diverse protesters to Washington, D.C.

“Free, free, Palestine,” chanted hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters who marched from the Washington Monument to the U.S. Capitol in the afternoon on May 15, 2021. Hours before the protest, Israel bombed a Gaza media tower that housed Al Jazeera and the Associated Press offices, along with some residential apartments.

It was the 73rd anniversary of the Nakba Day. As the Zionists established the state of Israel in 1948, more than 700,000 Palestinian people were expelled as a result of Israel’s war of independence. Conflict between the two nations has been going on since.

Left: The woman in keffiyeh waves a Palestinian flag while marching toward the U.S. Capitol, Saturday, May 15, 2021, in Washington. The head scarf, known as keffiyeh, as well as the flag, symbolize the Palestinian nationalism. Both are widely seen in the protest.

Right: A group of Muslim men pray next to a prop tank in front of the U.S. Capitol, Saturday, May 15, 2021, in Washington.

- The first celebration of Juneteenth as a U.S.A. national holiday.

On a largely bipartisan basis of 415-14, the U.S. House of Representatives passed The Juneteenth National Independence Day Act on Wednesday, June, 16, 2021. The bill was signed by President Biden on the following day, officially making Juneteenth a national holiday.

D.C. welcomed the newly recognized federal holiday with a series of activities; one of which being musical events. At Black Lives Matter Plaza on Juneteenth, a group of joyful revelers danced with Go-Go music performed by D.C. local bands. Later that afternoon, they would march down 16th Street to their destination at the intersection of 14th and U Street – a historic site critical to African American culture - where black Washingtonians gathered after learning of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination in April of 1968.

Juneteenth is also known as Emancipation Day, which originated in Texas in 1866. Issued by President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War in 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation had a late arrival of two years in the geographically isolated Galveston, Texas.

As time goes by, the commemoration continues to speak to a changing society in which racial inequality persists. As cheerful as the atmosphere was at Black Lives Matter Plaza, slogans that reiterate the advocacy of racial justice still could be easily spotted on signs or shirts.

“Stop over policing our communities,” read the poster printed in bright colors with cartoonish font on the Go-Go music truck.

Left: Cole Nic, one of the vocalists of the N2L Band, gestures during the performance at Black Lives Matter Plaza on Juneteenth, Saturday, Jun. 19, 2021, in Washington. The performance was a part of The Million Moe March, which is led by the organization Long Live Go-Go. Using Go-Go music as a force, their mission is to protest against gentrification and police brutality.

Right: A group of revelers dance to Go-Go music at Black Lives Matter Plaza on Juneteenth, Jun. 19, 2021, in Washington. The red, black, and green flag draped around the shoulder of the person in the center, is the Pan-African flag that represents people of the African Diaspora to symbolize black freedom.

To be continued...

© 2021 Photography by Yu-jing Huang. All rights reserved.

[ucflibrary]

How do we define American history? Who decides what information is important to study and remember? Do we only look at the ‘good’ or lionize notable figures by placing them on pedestals and forgetting they were only human? Or do we do the hard work of studying primary sources and reading about all the facets of historic American figures? Do we learn about past mistakes and hidden horrors so we can prevent them from happening in the future?

As an academic library, UCF Libraries is committed to not only teaching our community how to do their own research and providing scholarly resources but to broadening our own horizons and looking critically at our national past. After all, America is us, the people who live, work, dream, hope and endure on these shores. It is shaped by our ideals and grows as her people do into the future we want for ourselves and future generations. The American dream is not static; it is what we want it to be.

The more informed and engaged we all are as citizens, the better our country becomes. To help with being informed, UCF Libraries has suggested 16 books on American History. Keep reading below to see the full list, descriptions, and catalog links for the featured titles on American History suggested by UCF Library employees.

For members of the Knight community looking for ways to get involved are many options available:

Volunteer in local communities. VolunteerUCF can help you connect with an organization.

Join a student group to make a difference here at UCF. The Office of Student Involvement has a list of almost 800 student organizations that can meet any interest.

Connect with your federal, state, and local representatives. You can let them know your opinions on pending legislation, volunteer, or even thank them if you think they’re doing a good job. Don’t know who your legislators are? Check out this list at USA.gov.

Most importantly, if you haven’t done so already, register to vote. If you have voted in previous elections, confirm you are still registered. Find details for how to register in your home state at Vote.gov.

A Crisis of Peace: George Washington, the Newburgh Conspiracy, and the fate of the American Revolution by David Head On March 15, 1783, General George Washington addressed a group of angry officers in an effort to rescue the American Revolution from mutiny at the highest level; the Newburgh Affair, a mysterious event in which Continental Army officers, disgruntled by a lack of pay and pensions, may have collaborated with nationalist-minded politicians such as Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and Robert Morris to pressure Congress and the states to approve new taxes and strengthen the central government. Fearing what his men might do with their passions inflamed, Washington averted the crisis, but with the nation's problems persisting, the officers ultimately left the army disappointed, their low opinion of their civilian countrymen confirmed. Head provides a fresh look at the end of the American Revolution while speaking to issues that concern us still: the fragility of civil-military relations, how even victorious wars end ambiguously, and what veterans and civilians owe each other. Suggested by Cindy Dancel, Research & Information Services

Craft: an American history by Glenn Adamson Adamson shows that craft has long been implicated in debates around equality, education, and class. Artisanship has often been a site of resistance for oppressed people, such as enslaved African-Americans whose skilled labor might confer hard-won agency under bondage, or the Native American makers who adapted traditional arts into statements of modernity. Theirs are among the array of memorable portraits of Americans both celebrated and unfamiliar in this richly peopled book. As Adamson argues, these artisans' stories speak to our collective striving toward a more perfect union. From the beginning, America had to be-and still remains to be-crafted. Suggested by Megan Haught, Student Learning & Engagement/Research & Information Services

Fever, 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson In 1793 Philadelphia, sixteen-year-old Matilda Cook, separated from her sick mother, learns about perseverance and self-reliance when she is forced to cope with the horrors of a yellow fever epidemic. Includes discussion questions and related activities. Suggested by Peggy Nuhn, Connect Libraries

Fire in the Lake: the Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam by Frances FitzGerald Originally published in 1972, this was the first history of Vietnam written by an American and won the Pulitzer Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and the National Book Award. With a clarity and insight unrivaled by any author before it or since, Frances FitzGerald illustrates how America utterly and tragically misinterpreted the realities of Vietnam. Suggested by Sophia Sahr, Student Learning & Engagement

Hard Times: an oral history of the Great Depression by Studs Terkel In this “invaluable record” of one of the most dramatic periods in modern American history, Studs Terkel recaptures the Great Depression of the 1930s in all its complexity. Featuring a mosaic of memories from politicians, businessmen, artists, striking workers, and Okies, from those who were just kids to those who remember losing a fortune, this work is not only a gold mine of information but a fascinating interplay of memory and fact, revealing how the 1929 stock market crash and its repercussions radically changed the lives of a generation.

Suggested by Sophia Sahr, Student Learning & Engagement

John Washington's Civil War: a slave narrative edited by Crandall Shifflett In 1872, just seven years after his emancipation, a thirty-four-year-old former slave named John Washington penned the story of his life, calling it "Memorys of the Past." One hundred and twenty years later, historian Crandall Shifflett stumbled upon Washington's forgotten manuscript at the Library of Congress. Shifflett presents this remarkable slave narrative in its entirety, with detailed annotations on the mundane and life-changing events that Washington witnessed and recorded. Suggested by Cindy Dancel, Research & Information Services

Katrina: a history, 1915-2015 by Andy Horowitz The Katrina disaster was not a weather event of summer 2005. It was a disaster a century in the making, a product of lessons learned from previous floods, corporate and government decision making, and the political economy of the United States at large. New Orleans's history is America's history, and Katrina represents America's possible future. Suggested by Richard Harrison, Research & Information Services

Killers of the Flower Moon: the Osage murders and the birth of the FBI by David Grann Presents a true account of the early twentieth-century murders of dozens of wealthy Osage and law-enforcement officials, citing the contributions and missteps of a fledgling FBI that eventually uncovered one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history. Suggested by Sandy Avila, Research & Information Services

Lies Across America: what our historic sites get wrong by James W. Loewen Loewen looks at more than one hundred sites where history is told on the landscape, including historical markers, monuments, outdoor museums, historic houses, forts, and ships. Loewen uses his investigation of these public versions of history, often literally written in stone, to correct historical interpretations that are profoundly wrong, to tell neglected but important stories about the American past, and, most importantly, to raise questions about what we as a nation choose to commemorate and how. Suggested by Richard Harrison, Research & Information Services

Never Caught: the Washingtons’ relentless pursuit of their runaway slave, Ona Judge by Erica Armstrong Dunbar When George and Martha Washington moved from their beloved Mount Vernon in Virginia to Philadelphia, then the seat of the nation's capital, they took nine enslaved people with them. Slavery, in Philadelphia at least, was looked down upon. There was even a law requiring slaveholders to free their slaves after six months. Yet George Washington thought he could outwit and circumvent the law by sending his slaves south every six months, thereby resetting the clock. Among the slaves to figure out this subterfuge was Ona Judge, Martha Washington's chief attendant. And, risking everything she knew, leaving behind everyone she loved and had known her entire life, she fled. Here, then, is the story not only of the powerful lure of freedom but also of George Washington's determination to recapture his property by whatever means necessary. Suggested by Cindy Dancel, Research & Information Services

Team of Rivals: the political genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin This multiple biography is centered on Lincoln's mastery of men and how it shaped the most significant presidency in the nation's history. Goodwin illuminates Lincoln's political genius, as the one-term congressman rises from obscurity to prevail over three gifted rivals to become president. When Lincoln emerged as the victor at the Republican National Convention, his rivals were dismayed. That Lincoln succeeded, Goodwin demonstrates, was because of his extraordinary ability to put himself in the place of other men, to experience what they were feeling, to understand their motives and desires. It was this that enabled Lincoln to bring his disgruntled opponents together, create the most unusual cabinet in history, and marshal their talents to the task of preserving the Union. Suggested by Peggy Nuhn, Connect Libraries

The 5th Little Girl: soul survivor of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing (the Sarah Collins Rudolph story) by Tracy Snipe (in conversation with Sarah Collins Rudolph) Once described by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as "one of the most tragic and vicious crimes ever perpetrated against humanity," the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Alabama, instantly killed Addie Mae Collins, Carol Denise McNair, Carole Rosamond Robinson, and Cynthia Dionne Morris Wesley on September 15, 1963. This egregious act of domestic terrorism reverberated worldwide. Orchestrated by white supremacists, the blast left twelve-year-old Sarah Collins temporarily blind. In this intimate first-hand account, Sarah imparts her views on topics such as the 50th year commemoration, restitution, and racial terrorism. In the backdrop of a national reckoning and global protests, underscored by the deadly violence at Mother Emanuel in Charleston, SC, and tragedies in Charlottesville, VA, and Pittsburgh, PA, Sarah's unflinching testimony about the '63 Birmingham church bombing is illuminating. Suggested by Megan Haught, Student Learning & Engagement/Research & Information Services

The Black Church: this is our story, this is our song by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. For the young Henry Louis Gates, Jr., growing up in a small, residentially segregated West Virginia town, the church was a center of gravity--an intimate place where voices rose up in song and neighbors gathered to celebrate life's blessings and offer comfort amid its trials and tribulations. In this tender and expansive reckoning with the meaning of the Black Church in America, Gates takes us on a journey spanning more than five centuries, from the intersection of Christianity and the transatlantic slave trade to today's political landscape. Suggested by Megan Haught, Student Learning & Engagement/Research & Information Services

The Other Slavery: the uncovered story of Indian enslavement in America by Andres Resendez Since the time of Columbus, Indian slavery was illegal in much of the American continent. Yet Reséndez shows it was practiced for centuries as an open secret: there was no abolitionist movement to protect the tens of thousands of natives who were kidnapped and enslaved by the conquistadors, forced to work in the silver mines, or made to serve as domestics for Mormon settlers and rich Anglos. New evidence sheds light too on Indian enslavement of other Indians as Reséndez reveals nothing less than a key missing piece of American history. Suggested by Richard Harrison, Research & Information Services

These Truths: a history of the United States by Jill Lepore In the most ambitious one-volume American history in decades, Lepore offers a magisterial account of the origins and rise of a divided nation, an urgently needed reckoning with the beauty and tragedy of American history. Written in elegiac prose, Lepore's groundbreaking investigation places truth itself--a devotion to facts, proof, and evidence--at the center of the nation's history. The American experiment rests on three ideas--'these truths, ' Jefferson called them--political equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of the people. And it rests, too, on a fearless dedication to inquiry, Lepore argues, because self-government depends on it. But has the nation, and democracy itself, delivered on that promise? Suggested by Sandy Avila, Research & Information Services

Witnessing America: the Library of Congress book of firsthand accounts of life in America, 1600-1900 edited by Noel Rae Presents a portrait of America's social and cultural history between 1600 and 1900, told through letters, diaries, memoirs, tracts, and other articles and first-hand accounts found in the collections of the Library of Congress. Suggested by Peggy Nuhn, Connect Libraries

[1962dude420-blog]

Today we remember the passing of Eubie Blake who died February 12, 1983 in Brooklyn, New York

James Hubert "Eubie" Blake, was an American composer, lyricist, and pianist of ragtime, jazz, and popular music. In 1921, he and his long-time collaborator Noble Sissle wrote Shuffle Along, one of the first Broadway musicals to be written and directed by African Americans. Blake's compositions included such hits as "Bandana Days", "Charleston Rag", "Love Will Find a Way", "Memories of You" and "I'm Just Wild About Harry". The 1978 Broadway musical Eubie! showcased his works.

Eubie Blake was born February 7, 1887, at 319 Forrest Street, in Baltimore, Maryland. Of the many children born to former slaves Emily "Emma" Johnstone and John Sumner Blake, he was the only one to survive childhood. John Sumner Blake was a stevedore on the Baltimore Docks.

Blake claimed in later life to have been born in 1883, but records published beginning in 2003—U.S. Census, military, and Social Security records and Blake's passport application and passport—uniformly give his birth year as 1887.

Blake's musical training began when he was four or five years old. While out shopping with his mother, he wandered into a music store, climbed on the bench of an organ, and started "foolin’ around". When his mother found him, the store manager said to her, "The child is a genius! It would be criminal to deprive him of the chance to make use of such a sublime, God-given talent." The Blakes purchased a pump organ for US$75.00, making payments of 25 cents a week. When Blake was seven, he received music lessons from a neighbor, Margaret Marshall, an organist for the Methodist church. At age 15, without his parents' knowledge, he began playing piano at Aggie Shelton's Baltimore bordello. Blake got his first big break in the music business in 1907, when the world champion boxer Joe Gans hired him to play the piano at Gans's Goldfield Hotel, the first "black and tan club" in Baltimore. Blake played at the Goldfield during the winters from 1907–1914, spending his summers playing clubs in Atlantic City. During this period, he also studied composition in Baltimore with Llewellyn Wilson.

According to Blake, he also worked the medicine show circuit and was employed by a Quaker doctor. He played a Melodeon strapped to the back of the medicine wagon. Blake stayed with the show only two weeks, however, because the doctor's religion didn't allow the serving of Sunday dinner.

Blake said he composed the melody of the "Charleston Rag" in 1899, when he would have been only 12 years old. It was not committed to paper, however, until 1915, when he learned to write musical notation.

In 1912, Blake began playing in vaudeville with James Reese Europe's Society Orchestra, which accompanied Vernon and Irene Castle's ballroom dance act. The band played ragtime music, which was still quite popular. Shortly after World War I, Blake joined forces with the performer Noble Sissle to form a vaudeville musical act, the Dixie Duo. After vaudeville, the pair began work on a musical revue, Shuffle Along, which incorporated songs they had written, and had a book written by F. E. Miller and Aubrey Lyles. When it premiered in June 1921, Shuffle Along became the first hit musical on Broadway written by and about African-Americans. The musical also introduced hit songs such as "I'm Just Wild About Harry" and "Love Will Find a Way." Rudolf Fisher insisted that Shuffle Along "had ruined his favorite places of African-American sociability in Harlem" due to the influx of white patrons. The reliance on "stereotypical black stage humor" and "the primitivist conventions of cabaret," in the words of Thomas Brothers, made the show a hit, running for 504 performances with 3 years of national tours.

Blake made his first recordings in 1917, for the Pathé record label and for Ampico piano rolls. In the 1920s he recorded for the Victor and Emerson labels among others.

In 1923, Blake made three films for Lee de Forest in de Forest's Phonofilm sound-on-film process: Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake, featuring their song "Affectionate Dan"; Sissle and Blake Sing Snappy Songs, featuring "Sons of Old Black Joe" and "My Swanee Home"; and Eubie Blake Plays His Fantasy on Swanee River, featuring Blake performing his "Fantasy on Swanee River". These films are preserved in the Maurice Zouary film collection in the Library of Congress collection. He also appeared in Warner Brothers' 1932 short film Pie, Pie Blackbird with the Nicholas Brothers, Nina Mae McKinney, and Noble Sissle. That same year he and his orchestra provided as well most of the music for the film Harlem Is Heaven.

In July 1910, Blake married Avis Elizabeth Cecelia Lee, proposing to her in a chauffeur-driven car he hired. Blake and Lee met around 1895, when both attended Primary School No. 2, at 200 East Street in Baltimore. In 1910, Blake brought his newlywed to Atlantic City, New Jersey, where he had already found employment at the Boathouse nightclub.

In 1938, Avis was diagnosed with tuberculosis. She died later that year, at the age of 58. Of his loss, Blake said, "In my life I never knew what it was to be alone. At first when Avis got sick, I thought she just had a cold, but when time passed and she didn’t get better, I made her go to a doctor and we found out she had TB … I suppose I knew from when we found out she had the TB, I understood that it was just a matter of time."

While serving as bandleader with the USO during World War II, he met Marion Grant Tyler, the widow of the violinist Willy Tyler. Blake and Tyler married in 1945. She was a performer and a businesswoman and became his valued business manager until her death in 1982. In 1946, Blake retired from performing and enrolled in New York University, where he studied the Schillinger System of music composition, graduating in two and a half years. He spent the next two decades using the Schillinger System to transcribe songs that he had memorized but had never written down.

In the 1970s and 1980s, public interest in Blake's music rekindled following the release of his 1969 retrospective album, The 86 Years of Eubie Blake.

Blake was a frequent guest of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and Merv Griffin. He was featured by leading conductors, such as Leonard Bernstein and Arthur Fiedler. In 1977 he played Will Williams in the Jeremy Kagan biographical film Scott Joplin. By 1975, he had been awarded honorary doctorates from Rutgers, the New England Conservatory, the University of Maryland, Morgan State University, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn College, and Dartmouth. On October 9, 1981, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded by President Ronald Reagan.

Eubie!, a revue featuring the music of Blake, with lyrics by Noble Sissle, Andy Razaf, Johnny Brandon, F. E. Miller, and Jim Europe, opened on Broadway in 1978. The show was a hit at the Ambassador Theatre, where it ran for 439 performances. The production received three nominations for Tony Awards, including one for Blake's score. The show was filmed in 1981 with the original cast members, including Lesley Dockery, Gregory Hines and Maurice Hines. Blake performed with Gregory Hines on the television program Saturday Night Live on March 10, 1979.

Blake continued to play and record until his death, on February 12, 1983, in Brooklyn, five days after events celebrating his purported 100th birthday(which was actually his 96th birthday).

He was interred in Cypress Hills Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. His headstone, engraved with the musical notation of "I'm Just Wild About Harry", was commissioned by the African Atlantic Genealogical Society. The bronze sculpture of Blake's bespectacled face was created by David Byer-Tyre, curator and director of the African American Museum and Center for Education and Applied Arts, in Hempstead, New York. The original inscription indicated his correct year of birth, but individuals close to him insisted that Blake be indulged and paid to have the inscription changed.

[slippinmickeys]

Currahee

Her bathroom smells of verbena and linen with a very slight hint of mildew underlying all, about which she cannot bring herself to care. She used to light candles and listen to music when she bathed, but those days are past. The tub thunders to full behind her, adding a tidal brine to the air.

Mulder’s bathroom smells like toothpaste and Pert, and has a red rubber duckie with devil horns perched on the back of the toilet. She looks at it whenever she is in there, wonders if it ever floats with him in the tub. She has considered getting him an angelic duckie to balance the space, to tip the scales of his life a bit more towards the light.  

Earlier in the day, she had stumbled while writing the word “success” in a report. No matter how many times spell check ran clean, the word did not look right on the screen. She’s reminded of that off-putting moment as she stares at her own reflection, dark smudges under her eyes and her fingers bare, loneliness writ large.

The temperature of the water in the tub behind her is almost volcanic, a light steam rising from it in the cool air of the bathroom. She gives herself one more look in the mirror before she steps into it.  

She knows she is pretty, she isn’t so humble that she won’t admit it. But she is also short, dissentient—a redheaded iconoclast in a world populated by leggy brunettes easily impressed by Mulder’s handsome nous. She’s been making a fool of herself over him for years and she isn’t even his type.

She sinks her head under the water of the bath in fit of petulant ennui.

She wonders if she appears as spinsterish as she feels, if the checkout clerk views her meager dinner-for-one groceries and thinks how sad. Mulder may be ever present in every other stratum of her life, but her cupboards are all Dana Scully; slight, a little wanting, there but for her.

She shaves her legs with precision and care--as she approaches all things--but wonders what for, exactly. It is March, the month after her birth, and still pretty cold--she will likely not be wearing skirts. She supposes she shaves for herself.

After 30 minutes, the water begins to cool, the wind outside the bathroom window pushing branches into it, a dull clawing sound in the humid air. There is a spot of shaving foam drifting dreamily along the surface of the water and it finally glides into the top of her knee, clinging there.

Sometimes she thinks of her heart as a Christmas tree. At one point it had been bright, cheerful, full of hope and spirit. But time had worn it down, turned it brittle. She was afraid if she were to let someone touch it, it would fall to pieces in their hands.

She finally drains the bath and steps out, feeling slippery and oversaturated. Her bones feel like they weigh twice what they did when she got in.

XxXxXxXxXxX

He thinks of the gold-plated records on Voyager, afield in the endless vacuum of space, a blueprint of life on earth. It passed beyond the orbit of Pluto in 1990. It will be 40,000 years before it even approaches another planetary system. It is the culmination of humanity, and no bigger than a small car.

If you packed everything that mattered from his life into a vessel, it would be five feet and two inches of clomping skepticism, with a face that could send men to war and a sheath of carrot hair.

She wielded knives that sliced flesh from bone and dipped her head when she received a compliment. He’d long ago memorized the way her lips looked when she said his name.

As if the universe were listening to his thoughts, came, “Mulder.”

He shook his head from where he stood in the doorway of the morgue, and looked to her.

She pulled her mask down off her face and removed her protective goggles. She looked tired, worn out. She shook her head at him.

“Nothing,” she said, “absolutely no trace evidence whatsoever.”

He believed her. If there had been anything there, she would have found it.

He moved into the room and stood next to her, looking at the body, neatly sewn back up; her sutures straight and tidy--one last act of respect she could pay the dead.

He sighed, leaned on the cold examination table and then thought better of it, absently wiping his hands on the outside of his coat. She made a move to go around him.

“Excuse me,” she said, not impatiently, and he tried to get out of the way but bumped into her when she passed.

Mulder felt like a giant next to her, with his clomping feet and hulking frame. He was all elbows and knees and felt like he was taking up all the oxygen in the room.

A clutch of something like guilt squeezed his heart. Like sorrow.

You weren’t supposed to fall in love with your partner. She was out of bounds, forbidden fruit, impermissible. She wasn’t supposed to become so big a part of your life that you needed her like air.

Scully was scrupulous, a rule-follower—not like Mulder, the rebel in the basement. She always went the speed limit and picked up litter. She’d pulled his ass out of the fire more times than he could count. You weren’t supposed to fall in love with your partner, and Scully always followed the rules.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said, and she nodded, snapped off the latex.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Something compelled her out into the world that evening after she’d gotten home and showered the morgue off of her.

Once out of her front door, she was hit with the sweet smell of spring--daffodils coming to life in window boxes, chattering squirrels peeking out of trees. She felt a call to the river.

Georgetown didn’t have a Metro stop, so she got in her car, let it pull her toward the Potomac. Once across, she was in Virginia, and it was enough to know that he was there, too.

Past National Airport, she pulled into a parking lot filled with trucks and SUVs attached to empty boat trailers. There were sailboats bobbing in the inlet, people jogging, pushing strollers, rollerblading down the Mount Vernon trail. She joined them and walked and walked.

She found herself in Alexandria and let the pull of him carry her into the city. She stopped for dinner and a glass of wine on Duke Street, and she allowed herself to relax, sink into the chair, watch the people walking past just to see them--something she had not done in years. She saw a woman who looked like Melissa and remembered why.

She thought of her sister; of this world, but not in it, living on only in memory, in the hint of perfume on an old sweater, in the auburn curls of a stranger walking by.

After dinner, she went looking for quiet and found it in a cemetery nearby, some of the graves there older than the country itself. She sat on a bench as the sun went down. Despite the dusk, all around her, the city was coming to life. DC was shaking off its torpor and she felt like she was coming out of hibernation, herself. There was a moment where she thought of all the people who have ever lived—and died—were ever underfoot. The space above the ground is for the living, and she needed to start doing more of it.

She turned toward Hegal Place.

XxXxXxXxXxX

He was thinking about her, as he laid on his couch, unable to sleep. He was usually thinking about her.

A quick one-two knock came at his door, and when he opened it,  she was there, as if thought could call a person across space and time.

“Scully,” he said with surprise, and opened the door wider. “Come in.”

“It’s late,” she said, as if she wasn’t the one that walked all the way to his apartment at 11:00pm.

“Come in,” he said, again.

XxXxXxXxXxX

She ducked under his arm, into the dark enclave of his apartment. It smelled like leather and fish tank and him.

She plopped on the couch, kicked off her shoes. The leather was still warm from his body heat.

“Everything all right?” he asked, lowering himself onto the other end of the couch.

She gave him a long look, considering.

“I don’t know,” she said, “is it?”

He stayed quiet, waiting for her to elaborate.

“Mulder, are you happy?” she asked him.

He raised a shoulder. “Sure,” he said.

“I believe you’re content,” she said, “but are you happy?”

“Are you?”

“No.”

He sighed, leaned back. She knew he took it as a personal affront.

“You want out,” he said.

“No,” she said, “that’s not what I’m saying at all.”

“What are you saying?”

She closed her eyes. She wasn’t even sure if she knew.

“I want… “ she started, looked at him, “I want more than a career. I want to live.”

She looked to his hands in his lap, at the finger the terrorists broke, his left pinkie, noticed how the knuckles in it were bigger and knobbier with calcified healing. Right next to his ring finger, she thought.

“Is that… do you…” he struggled, but at least he was trying to understand, she thought. “Does that mean you want to go skydiving or something?”

Her head fell back against the back of the couch. Why were they like this?

“I want a life, Mulder,” she said, “I want someone to come home to.”

“I understand,” he said, and she saw something pass over his face. “I want that for you, too.”

To hell with it.

“For God’s sake, Mulder, I want you.”

Contrary to her every expectation, Mulder stood from the couch and walked out of the room without a word.

Oddly, it didn’t bother or scare her. She wondered if he were trying to compose himself so he could let her down gently? Either way, she was no longer afraid.

After about a minute, she stood and went to look for him. He was not in the kitchen, nor his bedroom.

“Scully,” her name from behind her, close behind her, startled her, awoke something low in her belly. His whisper sounded like the night.

“Mulder,” she said, sharp and quick, and she was about to turn toward him when he stopped her--stepped right into her, his chest into her back. She could feel his breath puffing into her hair.

XxXxXxXxXxX

He tumbled into his bathroom and drew a deep breath. He tried to think of a way to give her an out. Deep down, he knew that a part of him was convinced that his love was a weapon that could only hurt people, but he is selfish and so far he has always been able to save her.

If she wanted him--wanted this, he was powerless to deny her.

She was standing in the doorway of his bedroom, doubtless looking for where he’d disappeared to. He approached her on silent feet. Whispered her name.

He startled her, he could tell, so he stepped up close, could feel her sharp intake of breath. After a moment, she turned to him, but didn’t step back. She looked up, a question in her eyes.

“Do you know the story of the 101st Airborne?” his voice was less than a whisper.

She quirked a grin. He knew she would.

He reached out and grabbed her face with both hands, ran his lips over hers, softer than butterfly wings. Rested his forehead against hers.

“Geronimo,” he said.

She gave a small laugh and he thought he could hear the shadow of relief in it.

Her hair shone like an old penny in the dusky glow of the street lamps outside his window.

She nodded at him, he nodded back.

Slowly, so slowly, he lowered his face until his lips met hers and pressed into them. She pressed back. Give, take. Everything they had ever been to each other and everything they ever would.

Geronimo.

[afterlifeoftheparty]

tag meme: list 3-5 snippets of literature/media that live in your head rent-free to the point where you have them memorized; write them down from memory, no cheating allowed!

tagged by @joeshardy literally forever ago NDHDJSJ but finally here we go under a read more in case they get long

and idk who's been tagged but i'll tag @sunsetcurvephantoms @poedamron @cinemetography @girlbosskakashi @gaycinema @jugheadology and anybody else who wants to do this!!

1. “you know, i had this stupid idea. that after graduation instead of going to college, we’d both move to new york. you were this writer. and i’d be this musician, and we’d both live in, like, the east village or something. just doing our thing.” “pretty sure the east village doesn’t exist anymore. where are betty and veronica in this scenario?” “they’re roommates at park avenue.” (riverdale 2x07, chapter twenty: tales from the darkside)

2. “hey! if any of you are looking for any last minute gift ideas for me, i have one. i’d like frank shirley, my boss, right here tonight. i want him brought from his happy holiday slumber over there on melody lane with all the other rich people and i want him brought right here, with a big ribbon on his head! and i want to look him straight in the eye, and i wanna tell him what a cheap, lying, no good, rotten, four-flushing, low life, snake licking, dirt eating, inbred, overstuffed, ignorant, blood-sucking, dog-kissing, brainless, dickless, hopeless, heartless, fat-ass, bug-eyed, stiff-legged, spotty-lipped, worm-headed sack of monkey shit he is! hallelujah! holy shit! where’s the tylenol?” (national lampoon’s christmas vacation)

3. “saturday, march 24th, 1984. shermer high school, shermer, illinois, 60062. dear mr. vernon, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. what we did was wrong. but we think you’re crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. what do you care? you see us as you want to see us - in the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions. you see us as a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal. correct? that’s the way we saw each other at seven o clock this morning. we were brainwashed.” (the breakfast club)

4. “this was what was wrong with me. all this time i had been trying to figure out the secrets of the universe, the secrets of my own body, of my own heart. all of the answers had always been so close and yet i had always fought them without even knowing it. from the minute i’d met dante, i had fallen in love with him. i just didn’t let myself know it, think it, feel it. my father was right. and it was true what my mother had said. we all fight our own private wars.” (aristotle and dante discover the secrets of the universe, by benjamin alire sáenz)

5. “i think there’s a bit of a misconception here.” “okay.” “caleb and i have a very special relationship. it is that of a parent and a child. but i am the parent. you do understand that, correct? i protect him. he’s my boy, and i keep him safe. i want him to thrive and get better and better and more powerful and stronger, because he can achieve great things. when i found him, he was nothing. he was a scared little boy in the corner of a jail cell. and as we have gotten more comfortable, he has gotten more comfortable and come out of his shell. it’s my job to protect him, because i love him, and i am his protector. not because he protects me.” (critical role, campaign 2 episode 13: lost & found)

[berniesrevolution]

THE ATLANTIC

Woe to you, because you build tombs for the prophets, and it was your ancestors who killed them.” Jesus’s rebuke to the Pharisees descended upon me on a cold January morning in 2017, in West Potomac Park in Washington, D.C. On that Monday, the national holiday dedicated to the man at whose memorial I stood, the capital bustled in anticipation of a more pressing political event. That’s why I was at the park, pondering this granite stone of hope, carved out of a mountain of despair. The memorial to Martin Luther King Jr. cast its shadow over me, its presence just as conflicted as those tombs.

As sure as Jesus’s words proved prescient about the adoption of Christianity in the empire that killed him, so too the modern-day legend of King writes itself in real time. In the official story told to children, King’s assassination is the transformational tragedy in a victorious struggle to overcome. But in the true accounting, his assassination was one of a host of reactionary assaults by a country against a revolution. And those assaults were astonishingly successful.

Revisiting those assaults requires a walk through the pandemonium of the last years of King’s life. There is perhaps no better Virgil for this task than James Baldwin, a man with close friends in every ideological corner of the civil-rights movement. Among them, his prophetic spirit found kinship with King—“young Martin,” Baldwin called him—whom he first met in 1957 in Atlanta.

Baldwin understood viscerally the course that King had to travel. He predicted “the dangerous road before Martin Luther King” in a 1961 article for Harpers magazine, adding that King “has incurred … the grave responsibility of continuing to lead in the path he has encouraged so many people to follow.” Baldwin noted in the essay that King intended to lead a movement by incorporating the struggles of his constituents into the very fiber of his being, becoming in a religious sense the avatar of a people’s plight. “How he will do this I do not know,” Baldwin continued, “but I do not see how he can possibly avoid a break, at last, with the habits and attitudes, stratagems and fears of the past.”

After the Voting Rights Act was passed, in 1965, the revolution’s center of gravity shifted north, along with the stragglers of the Great Migration—toward de facto as opposed to de jure racism. Baldwin’s frequent premonitions of unrest in the streets began to come true. In his 1966 essay, “A Report From Occupied Territory,” he discussed the “powder keg” of poverty, joblessness, and discrimination in urban ghettos and warned that it “may blow up; it will be a miracle if it doesn’t.” King, by then, had sensed the same trouble brewing in the slums as Baldwin had. In his 1966 campaign against segregated housing in Chicago, which moved his strategy of nonviolent protest from the South to the North, he tried to wield his activism machine against the social and economic troubles that Baldwin described. He was repaid with violent counterprotests.

King spoke of a “white backlash”—a term he helped popularize—to his movement. But in retrospect, the strength of the reaction he predicted and endured often receives short shrift. The support of white moderates who recoiled at images of Negro children sprayed by hoses and attacked by dogs was instrumental in passing laws that ended legal segregation and protected voting rights. But by 1966, it had become clear that many of these whites chafed against further activism and greater demands for equality. They viewed the Voting Rights Act as a final concession; King saw it as a start. According to Gallup polls, King’s popularity waned in the coda years of his life; his unfavorability rating reached 63 percent in 1966. At the same time, public opinion turned firmly against the civil-rights movement.

As moderates abandoned him, King also faced a resurgence of the more virulent elements of white supremacy. The Klan firebombed the Forrest County, Mississippi, NAACP leader Vernon Dahmer to death in January 1966, and Klan night riders were suspected in the murder of the activist Clarence Triggs in Bogalusa, Louisiana, later that year. The Klan was joined by newer organizations across the United States that became emboldened in the late 1960s. The National States’ Rights Party, for one, incited a violent riot in Baltimore and spread its organizing arms beyond the South. The visibility of the American Nazi Party increased after the Voting Rights Act was passed, until its leader, George Lincoln Rockwell, was assassinated, in 1967. At King’s Chicago marches, the counterprotesters wore not the familiar hoods of Klansmen but the swastika patches of Nazis.

By 1967, resistance to further change among the white majority had ossified, and the Negro powder keg that Baldwin had mentioned had blown up—and then some. The youth and student movements that King had at times managed to corral were starting to oppose his church-based Southern Christian Leadership Conference. They gravitated toward the Black Power movement, black nationalism, and violent tactics. That year, the “long hot summer” brought death and destruction in Detroit and riots in at least six other major cities. An article that summer by the legendary journalist Ethel Payne in the black-owned Chicago Defender described King’s “race against time to defuse the ticking bombs of impatience in the big cities.” Two months later, King told the same newspaper, “All the signs of our time indicate that this is a dark hour in the life of America.”

At least 40 people were killed and more than 3,000 were injured in the gravest unrest in America since the Civil War.

The Kerner Commission, established by President Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration to investigate the causes of the 1967 unrest, said plainly that racism was a major factor. Its 1968 report, authored by the commissioners, who were firmly rooted in mainstream racial politics, concluded, “Our Nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.” But Gallup polls showed that a majority of Americans disbelieved that conclusion, and Johnson largely ignored the report in future policy making. The false tale of victory had sprung to life. White backlash and Johnson’s rift with civil-rights leaders who wanted to push further than he did slowed the White House’s efforts.

(Continue Reading)

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 9.11

9 – Battle of the Teutoburg Forest ends, where the Roman Empire suffers the greatest defeat of its history and the Rhine being established as the border between the Empire and the so-called barbarians for the next four hundred years. 1185 – Isaac II Angelos kills Stephen Hagiochristophorites and then appeals to the people, resulting in the revolt that deposes Andronikos I Komnenos and places Isaac on the throne of the Byzantine Empire. 1226 – The first recorded instance of the Catholic practice of perpetual Eucharistic adoration formally begins in Avignon, France. 1297 – Battle of Stirling Bridge: Scots jointly led by William Wallace and Andrew Moray defeat the English. 1390 – Lithuanian Civil War (1389–92): The Teutonic Knights begin a five-week siege of Vilnius. 1541 – Santiago, Chile, is besieged by indigenous warriors, led by Michimalonco, to free eight indigenous chiefs held captive by the Spaniards. However, the Spaniards decapitated them and rolled their heads on the main square, horrifying the indigenous warriors, and subsequently ending the attack. 1565 – Ottoman forces retreat from Malta ending the Great Siege of Malta. 1609 – Henry Hudson arrives on Manhattan Island and meets the indigenous people living there. 1649 – Siege of Drogheda ends: Oliver Cromwell's Parliamentarian troops take the town and execute its garrison. 1683 – Battle of Vienna: Coalition forces, including the famous winged Hussars, led by Polish King John III Sobieski lift the siege laid by Ottoman forces. 1697 – Battle of Zenta: a major engagement in the Great Turkish War (1683–1699) and one of the most decisive defeats in Ottoman history. 1708 – Charles XII of Sweden stops his march to conquer Moscow outside Smolensk, marking the turning point in the Great Northern War. The army is defeated nine months later in the Battle of Poltava, and the Swedish Empire ceases to be a major power. 1709 – Battle of Malplaquet: Great Britain, Netherlands, and Austria fight against France. 1714 – Siege of Barcelona: Barcelona, capital city of Catalonia, surrenders to Spanish and French Bourbon armies in the War of the Spanish Succession. 1758 – Battle of Saint Cast: France repels British invasion during the Seven Years' War. 1775 – Benedict Arnold's expedition to Quebec leaves Cambridge, Massachusetts. 1776 – British–American peace conference on Staten Island fails to stop nascent American Revolutionary War. 1777 – American Revolutionary War: Battle of Brandywine: The British celebrate a major victory in Chester County, Pennsylvania. 1780 – American Revolutionary War: Sugarloaf Massacre: A small detachment of militia from Northampton County are attacked by Native Americans and Loyalists near Little Nescopeck Creek. 1786 – The beginning of the Annapolis Convention. 1789 – Alexander Hamilton is appointed the first United States Secretary of the Treasury. 1792 – The Hope Diamond is stolen along with other French crown jewels when six men break into the house where they are stored. 1800 – The Maltese National Congress Battalions are disbanded by British Civil Commissioner Alexander Ball. 1802 – France annexes the Kingdom of Piedmont. 1803 – Battle of Delhi, during the Second Anglo-Maratha War, between British troops under General Lake, and Marathas of Scindia's army under General Louis Bourquin. 1813 – War of 1812: British troops arrive in Mount Vernon and prepare to march to and invade Washington, D.C. 1814 – War of 1812: The climax of the Battle of Plattsburgh, a major United States victory in the war. 1826 – Captain William Morgan, an ex-freemason is arrested in Batavia, New York for debt after declaring that he would publish The Mysteries of Free Masonry, a book against Freemasonry. This sets into motion the events that led to his mysterious disappearance. 1829 – An expedition led by Isidro Barradas at Tampico, sent by the Spanish crown to retake Mexico, surrenders at the Battle of Tampico, marking the effective end of Mexico's campaign for independence. 1830 – Anti-Masonic Party convention; one of the first American political party conventions. 1836 – The Riograndense Republic is proclaimed by rebels after defeating Empire of Brazil's troops in the Battle of Seival, during the Ragamuffin War. 1851 – Christiana Resistance: Escaped slaves led by William Parker fight off and kill a slave owner who, with a federal marshal and an armed party, sought to seize three of his former slaves in Christiana, Pennsylvania, thereby creating a cause célèbre between slavery proponents and abolitionists. 1852 – Outbreak of Revolution of September 11 resulting in the State of Buenos Aires declaring independence as a Republic. 1857 – The Mountain Meadows massacre: Mormon settlers and Paiutes massacre 120 pioneers at Mountain Meadows, Utah. 1881 – In the Swiss state of Glarus, a rockslide buries parts of the village of Elm, destroying 83 buildings and killing 115 people. 1897 – After months of pursuit, generals of Menelik II of Ethiopia capture Gaki Sherocho, the last king of the Kaffa. 1903 – The first race at the Milwaukee Mile in West Allis, Wisconsin is held. It is the oldest major speedway in the world. 1905 – The Ninth Avenue derailment occurs in New York City, killing 13. 1914 – World War I: Australia invades German New Guinea, defeating a German contingent at the Battle of Bita Paka. 1914 – The Second Period of Russification: The teaching of the Russian language and Russian history in Finnish schools was ordered to be considerably increased as part of the forced Russification program in Finland run by Tsar Nicholas II. 1916 – The Quebec Bridge's central span collapses, killing 11 men. The bridge previously collapsed completely on August 29, 1907. 1919 – United States Marine Corps invades Honduras. 1921 – Nahalal, the first moshav in Palestine, is settled as part of a Zionist plan of creating a Jewish state, later to be Israel. 1922 – The Treaty of Kars is ratified in Yerevan, Armenia. 1941 – Construction begins on The Pentagon. 1941 – Charles Lindbergh's Des Moines Speech accusing the British, Jews and FDR's administration of pressing for war with Germany. 1943 – World War II: German troops occupy Corsica and Kosovo-Metohija ending the Italian occupation of Corsica. 1944 – World War II: The Western Allied invasion of Germany begins near the city of Aachen. 1944 – World War II: RAF bombing raid on Darmstadt and the following firestorm kill 11,500. 1945 – World War II: Australian 9th Division forces liberate the Japanese-run Batu Lintang camp, a POW and civilian internment camp on the island of Borneo. 1954 – Hurricane Edna hits New England (United States) as a Category 2 hurricane, causing significant damage and 29 deaths. 1961 – Hurricane Carla strikes the Texas coast as a Category 4 hurricane, the second strongest storm ever to hit the state. 1965 – Indo-Pakistani War: The Indian Army captures the town of Burki, just southeast of Lahore. 1967 – China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) launched an attack on Indian posts at Nathu La, Sikkim, India, which resulted in military clashes. 1968 – Air France Flight 1611 crashes off Nice, France, killing 89 passengers and six crew. 1970 – The Dawson's Field hijackers release 88 of their hostages. The remaining hostages, mostly Jews and Israeli citizens, are held until September 25. 1971 – The Egyptian Constitution becomes official. 1972 – The San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit system begins passenger service. 1973 – A coup in Chile, headed by General Augusto Pinochet, topples the democratically elected president Salvador Allende. Pinochet exercises dictatorial power until ousted in a referendum in 1988, staying in power until 1990. 1973 – JAT Airways Flight 769 crashes into the Maganik mountain range while on approach to Titograd Airport, killing 35 passengers and six crew. 1974 – Eastern Air Lines Flight 212 crashes in Charlotte, North Carolina, killing 69 passengers and two crew. 1976 – A bomb planted by a Croatian terrorist, Zvonko Bušić, is found at New York's Grand Central Terminal; one NYPD officer is killed trying to defuse it. 1980 – A new constitution of Chile is established under the influence of then Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, which is subject to controversy in Chile today. 1982 – The international forces that were guaranteeing the safety of Palestinian refugees following Israel's 1982 Invasion of Lebanon leave Beirut. Five days later, several thousand refugees are massacred in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps by Phalange forces. 1989 – Hungary announces that the East German refugees who had been housed in temporary camps were free to leave for West Germany. 1991 – Continental Express Flight 2574 crashes in Colorado County, Texas, near Eagle Lake, killing 11 passengers and three crew. 1992 – Hurricane Iniki, one of the most damaging hurricanes in United States history, devastates the Hawaiian Islands of Kauai and Oahu. 1997 – NASA's Mars Global Surveyor reaches Mars. 1997 – After a nationwide referendum, Scotland votes to establish a devolved parliament within the United Kingdom. 2001 – The September 11 attacks, a series of coordinated terrorist attacks killing 2,977 people using four aircraft hijacked by 19 members of al-Qaeda. Two aircraft crash into the World Trade Center in New York City, a third crashes into The Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, and a fourth into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. 2007 – Russia tests the largest conventional weapon ever, the Father of All Bombs. 2008 – A major Channel Tunnel fire breaks out on a freight train, resulting in the closure of part of the tunnel for six months. 2011 – The National September 11 Memorial & Museum opens on the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. 2012 – A total of 315 people are killed in two garment factory fires in Pakistan. 2012 – The U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya is attacked, resulting in four deaths. 2015 – A crane collapses onto the Masjid al-Haram mosque in Saudi Arabia, killing 111 people and injuring 394 others.

[orbemnews]

Tulsa veteran promotes justice while serving those in need: 'That could be any of us' Through Vernon AME Church, Fred Freeman has helped feed thousands during the pandemic. Freeman is the music minister/treasurer at Vernon, and a Vietnam veteran. Fred Freeman prepares corn for the food ministry he leads on March 10, 2021 in Tulsa, OK. Freeman is the music minister/treasurer at Vernon AME Church, and the volunteer leader behind the church food ministry that has fed thousands during the pandemic. He’s also a decorated Vietnam veteran who received a Bronze Star for meritorious service. On March 10, Fred Freeman volunteers for the food ministry he leads through Vernon AME Church. He’s also Vernon’s music minister and treasurer. What a given day’s lunch menu is going to look like, Fred Freeman usually doesn’t know in advance. But, so far, it’s never failed to come to him. “Most days, it’s whatever the Holy Spirit puts on my heart,” said the volunteer cook. Fred Freeman prepares to-go plates for the food ministry he leads through Vernon AME Church. He’s also Vernon’s music minister and treasurer, as well as a decorated Vietnam veteran. Michael Noble Jr., Tulsa World One of the leaders behind a Vernon AME Church food ministry that has served almost 300,000 free meals since last spring, Freeman followed that spiritual prompting one day last week in preparing barbecue meatballs and a side of corn on the cob. “I might do wings tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll see.” The church, which has received donations from far and wide to keep up the daily meal program, began the effort in 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. At its peak, more than 100 people were coming by each day to pick up lunches, church leaders said. Breakfast is also served on certain days. For Freeman, who is also Vernon’s music minister and treasurer, it’s been a daily reminder to count his blessings. He hasn’t had to face the same hardships others have during the pandemic. But the idea of surviving one day at a time — like so many have to do — is at least something that Freeman is familiar with. It’s how he made it through Vietnam, he said. A former Army sergeant, Freeman was just 20 years old in 1969 when he was sent overseas. He served a year in the war and was awarded a Bronze Star for meritorious service. “Early on, I developed the mindset that I was going to do what I needed to do so I could get back home,” Freeman said. “When I think back now, though, I think there was a part of me that always thought that wasn’t going to happen.” ‘This is real’ A native of St. Louis, where he graduated from high school, Freeman was in college when he was drafted. From there, he was trained in communications and assigned to the 13th Signal Battalion, 1st Cavalry Division. Fred Freeman served in Vietnam and earned a Bronze Star for meritorious service. A former Army sergeant, Freeman was just 20 years old in 1969 when he was sent overseas.  Michael Noble Jr., Tulsa World Freeman’s baptism into warfare would come just days after arriving in Vietnam, when he experienced his first rocket attack. “I’ll never forget it. It was Easter Sunday morning — about 6 in the morning,” he said. “We already realized that at any moment our lives could be taken. But that (attack) brought it home. “I thought, ‘OK, this is real. I could be gone at any time.’” Freeman’s main job was to travel to Army units out in the field and set up their communications so they could to talk to headquarters. For the task, he’d bring along a small team of three or four soldiers. “We’d take our equipment with us and have to build our own bunkers. Then we’d set up their communications. The job usually took about a week or two.” Serving units in the field sometimes meant facing the same dangers they did. Freeman recalls one night when word came that Viet Cong guerrillas were about to overrun their site. “We had just gotten our bunker finished,” he said, adding that the news sent everyone scrambling. “Everyone was up. Everyone had to go on guard duty. There were Cobra helicopters in the air, scanning the area with their lights. It was scary.” Thankfully, the attack did not materialize. It was about six months into his yearlong tour, Freeman said, that he first felt the war’s cost personally. While in basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, he had made a friend named Darnell Harvey. Harvey was from Chicago. They ended up in different units, but the men stayed in touch. Freeman still remembers the shock he felt upon learning Harvey had been killed in action. “He was point man on a patrol when he was shot by the Viet Cong,” he said. “It was a blow,” Freeman added. “He was such a good guy.” Through Vernon AME Church, Fred Freeman has helped feed thousands during the pandemic. Michael Noble Jr., Tulsa World Today, Harvey’s name is among the thousands engraved on the nation’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Freeman has never visited the memorial wall or the smaller touring version, he said. He’s been hesitant to — afraid that he might recognize other names. However, recently he made up his mind the time has come. “I think it might be good for me to go,” he said. “It’s on my list for when things open up again and we can travel.” ‘Always a better way’ One of Freeman’s side roles in Vietnam was serving on what was called a “racial contact team.” Consisting of him and three white soldiers in his company, the team was supposed to be the first point of contact for any race-related complaints. The idea was to “not let things blow up,” Freeman said. “To see what the real problem is and try to peacefully work through it.” The unit never had any problems, he said. “I think we were just too focused on staying alive.” But the principles and techniques he learned have stayed with him. Fred Freeman prepares for the food ministry he leads on March 10, 2021 in Tulsa, OK. Freeman is the music minister/treasurer at Vernon AME Church, and the volunteer leader behind the church food ministry that has fed thousands during the pandemic. He’s also a decorated Vietnam veteran who received a Bronze Star for meritorious service. Michael Noble Jr., Tulsa World A member at Vernon for almost 50 years — since 1973 when he moved to Tulsa — Freeman has embraced the church’s mission of racial justice through nonviolence. In that, he’s often stood alongside the Rev. Robert Turner, Vernon’s pastor and a leading voice on race-related issues in Tulsa, including police reform and reparations for the 1921 Race Massacre. “You don’t have to be violent. There are other ways to get the message out and effect change,” Freeman said. “That’s the kind of philosophy I try to instill in folks I come in contact with — that there’s always a better way.” He’s similarly thoughtful about the church’s food ministry. “The people that come to us in need — that could be any of us, you know,” Freeman said. “I’m just thrilled that this church is able to provide for them. I’m grateful that our pastor had the vision to ask if we could do it.” The church started out using its own funds, Freeman said, before word spread and donations began pouring in from the community and around the country. “I know it’s what God wanted us to do,” he said. “Because he’s providing a way for us to do it.” On March 10, Fred Freeman volunteers for the food ministry he leads through Vernon AME Church. He’s also Vernon’s music minister and treasurer, as well as a decorated Vietnam veteran. Michael Noble Jr., Tulsa World However long the need continues and the church can help meet it, Freeman plans to be in the middle of the effort. He’s at a time in life where he can focus fully on what’s become a twofold mission: serving those in need while promoting justice for all. “I think that’s why the Lord has kept me here for these almost 73 years,” Freeman said. Through Vernon AME Church, Fred Freeman has helped feed thousands during the pandemic. Michael Noble Jr., Tulsa World tim.stanley@tulsaworld.com Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Source link Orbem News #Bunker #Christianity #church #country #darnellharvey #Food #fredfreeman #full-longform #Justice #leonardwood #meatball #military #Promotes #robertturner #serving #soldier #Task #Tulsa #vernonamechurch #veteran #vietcong #Vietnam #war #weaponry

[rabbitcruiser]

Remembrance Day

Remembrance Day (sometimes known informally as Poppy Day) is a memorial day observed in Commonwealth of Nations member states since the end of the First World War to remember the members of their armed forces who have died in the line of duty. Following a tradition inaugurated by King George V in 1919, the day is also marked by war remembrances in many non-Commonwealth countries. Remembrance Day is observed on 11 November in most countries to recall the end of hostilities of World War I on that date in 1918. Hostilities formally ended “at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month”, in accordance with the armistice signed by representatives of Germany and the Entente between 5:12 and 5:20 that morning. (“At the 11th hour” refers to the passing of the 11th hour, or 11:00 am.) The First World War officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on 28 June 1919.

The memorial evolved out of Armistice Day, which continues to be marked on the same date. The initial Armistice Day was observed at Buckingham Palace, commencing with King George V hosting a “Banquet in Honour of the President of the French Republic” during the evening hours of 10 November 1919. The first official Armistice Day was subsequently held on the grounds of Buckingham Palace the following morning.

The red remembrance poppy has become a familiar emblem of Remembrance Day due to the poem “In Flanders Fields” written by Canadian physician Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae. After reading the poem, Moina Michael, a professor at the University of Georgia, wrote the poem, “We Shall Keep the Faith,” and swore to wear a red poppy on the anniversary. The custom spread to Europe and the countries of the British Empire and Commonwealth within three years. Madame Anne E. Guerin tirelessly promoted the practice in Europe and the British Empire. In the UK Major George Howson fostered the cause with the support of General Haig. Poppies were worn for the first time at the 1921 anniversary ceremony. At first real poppies were worn. These poppies bloomed across some of the worst battlefields of Flanders in World War I; their brilliant red colour became a symbol for the blood spilled in the war.

Source

[ruminativerabbi]

Men on Horses

Readers of these weekly letters know that one of the topics that I find the most challenging is the question of whether or not people can reasonably be expected personally to rise up over the prevailing morality of their own day.

At least in retrospect, the question sometimes seems relatively inconsequential. Do I really need to feel guilty now, after all these years, for having enjoyed going to movies as a boy that depicted Indians as bloodthirsty savages bent mostly on killing innocent white people who merely wanted to farm their own homesteads in peace? Was the eight-year-old me supposed to have noted that the land on which the settlers wished so ardently to live in peace had mostly been stolen from the native peoples of North America? Or wondered if the religions of native Americans were in real life as silly-looking and -sounding as they were invariably depicted as being on the screen? Or why the Indians were almost invariably depicted as being unable to communicate other than in the kind of broken English in which the only first-person pronoun in use was “me” and all verbs were declined with the enclitic suffix “um”? Me wantum wampum!

I would like to write about two events that occurred last week and ask in their regard a similar set of questions.

The first is the announcement by the American Museum of Natural History that it is going to remove a statue of our twenty-sixth president, Theodore Roosevelt, on horseback that has been in place on Central Park West since 1940 and in which Roosevelt is flanked by an African man on one side and a Native American man on the other. And the other was the unsuccessful effort of demonstrators in Lafayette Park in Washington, D.C., to tear down a statue of Andrew Jackson, our seventh president. The comparison both does and doesn’t work, because their stories are somehow similar and dissimilar at the same time. In some ways, Andrew Jackson and Theodore Roosevelt were entirely different types who left behind entirely different legacies. But they also did have some important things in common. Both are generally remembered as “strong” presidents, as national leaders who got things done. Both were war heroes, Roosevelt actually having resigned his cushy Washington job as Assistant Secretary of the Navy to form the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry Regiment (known then and still as the “Rough Riders”) and then to fight personally as its leader in Cuba during the Spanish-American War of 1898, and Andrew Jackson, of course, being remembered as the hero of the Battle of New Orleans that basically wrapped up the War of 1812 (or would have done so had the war not actually been over by the time the battle was joined) and conclusively ended any British effort to play a military role in North America. And both harbored extremely negative attitudes towards non-white people.

History has been relatively kind to both of them. Jackson’s face looks up at us daily from the twenty-dollar bill. Roosevelt seems only slightly the odd man out on Mount Rushmore, where he looks out across the Black Hills of South Dakota alongside George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln. So why then has their stock fallen so precipitously and so quickly? Is that loss of stature something to be applauded or regretted? Or, to ask the same question differently, are we being reasonable or unreasonable to base our opinion of men from one or two centuries in the past on whether or not they were able to step away from societal attitudes that they shared with countless other individuals of their day?

Let’s start with Jackson. That he was what modern Americans would call a racist goes almost without saying. He owned slaves personally, a fact so deeply embedded in his biography that the website of his plantation in Davidson County, Tennessee, called “The Hermitage,” presents visitors with a long, complicated apologia regarding the role Jackson’s slaves—by the time of his death, numbering about 150—played in the running of the place. (To take a look, click here.) And that detail frames the question I wish to ask in his regard. Of our first twelve presidents, only John Adams and John Quincy Adams never owned slaves. More to the point, perhaps, every single pre-Civil-War president of the United States who came from the South owned slaves. To people like ourselves to whom the idea of owning slaves is beyond abhorrent, it feels reasonable to ask how these people could possibly not have felt the same way. And yet…they appear not to have. And that list of slave-owning presidents includes the founders of our nation: George Washington (there were 317 slaves at Mount Vernon, 123 who were personally owned by Washington and emancipated upon his death and the rest part of his wife’s estate), Thomas Jefferson (who, after writing in the Declaration of Independence in 1776 that he thought it self-evident “that all men are created equal,” wrote in his almost entirely forgotten 1787 book, Notes on the State of Virginia, that “the blacks…are inferior to the whites in the endowment both of body and mind”), and James Monroe, whose solution to the slavery issue involved shipping the slaves back to Africa, which is why to this day the capital of Liberia is called Monrovia.

So Andrew Jackson, born in 1767, was a child of his time. He grew up in a slave-owning culture. He was taught from childhood on that black people exist to serve white masters, that the whole point of there being different races in the first place is to make it easily discernible, even to children, who is meant to serve whom. His almost unimaginably cruel policy towards native Americans is part of that ideational complex too: by personally leading the charge to buy up Indian lands in the Southeast and then by pushing through Congress the Indian Removal Act of 1830 that led directly to the forced uprooting of countless thousands of Native Americans and their forced participation on death marches to lands in today’s Oklahoma, Jackson was simply putting into deed his strongly-held opinion that whatever impediment affects adversely the ability of white people to flourish on whatever land they choose to settle is by definition something to be fought against and, if possible, removed.

So that’s Andrew Jackson.  But what of Theodore Roosevelt, whose statue is going to be removed from Central Park West as soon as the Natural History Museum can find a suitable new home for it?

Roosevelt was a different kind of racist, not one consumed by visceral hatred for non-white people but rather one possessed of the quasi-scientific conviction that people of color are simply inferior to white people and that there is nothing wrong in society reflecting that fact. In 1914, for example, Roosevelt came out in favor forcibly sterilizing criminals and mentally-challenged individuals to keep them negatively from influencing future gene pools, writing at one point that  “Society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind,” and that “someday, we will realize that the prime duty…of the good citizen of the right type is to leave his or her blood behind him in the world, and that we have no business to permit the perpetuation of citizens of the wrong type.” And who were the citizens of the wrong type? Could they have been the black people whom Roosevelt once characterized as “ape-like naked savages”? This was the same man, after all, who characterized white people as “the forward race” and who warned that they would be committing “race suicide” if they failed to out-reproduce the less advanced races of the world.

So it’s the same issue here as with Jackson. Eugenics was a thing in Roosevelt’s day. The notion that the Nordic, Germanic, and Anglo-Saxon peoples are genetically superior to other groups within the family of mankind was believed by many to be a simple, scientifically verifiable truth. Well-respected institutions like the Carnegie Institute, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and the National League of Women Voters at one point in their history all supported the concept of eugenics as a rational basis for public policy. Famous people were involved as well—people like Margaret Sanger (the founder of Planned Parenthood), Alexander Graham Bell, and Luther Burbank. So Theodore Roosevelt was simply signing onto what was widely perceived, not as prejudice or bigotry, but as science.

And so we come to the same question yet again. Should T.R. be held responsible for having believed in something that has in our day been totally debunked, but which in his was considered a branch of legitimate scientific inquiry? Should Andrew Jackson be condemned today for being a southerner of the 18th and early 19th centuries whose beliefs were fully in sync with the rest of the world from which he came? Should people be blamed for believing things that everybody in their day “just” knows? (Saying yes, of course, means that you are prepared to be similarly judged by your descendants in, say, the 22nd or 23rd centuries. Just saying!)

In terms of the “statues issue” that has surfaced in our own day, I recommend here a middle course. We can and should lionize the rare few who somehow managed to understand the error of their contemporaries’ attitudes and beliefs—the abolitionists, for example, who were Andrew Jackson’s contemporaries but who nonetheless had the insight and the courage to recognize a great evil when they saw it. On the other hand, I don’t know how reasonable it is to expect people to look past what their own experts tell them categorically to be true, what everybody believes to be true. Still, understanding people to be children of their day does not mean we have to erect statues to their glory in our public parks or honor their memory on our twenty-dollar bills. What do have to do is to own up to the fact that some of our past leaders were individuals who embraced beliefs that seem not only obnoxious to us because the mood of the public has shifted, but which seem deeply and essentially immoral. Those beliefs too are part of their legacy and need to be openly rejected and condemned at the same time we take national note of the good those same individuals accomplished.

[blackkudos]

William Warfield

William Caesar Warfield (22 January 1920 – 26 August 2002), was an American concert bass-baritone singer and actor. One of his earliest professional engagements was in Marc Blitzstein's Broadway opera, Regina. His breakthrough came when he gave his recital debut in New York's Town Hall in 1950. He went on to produce a highly acclaimed album of selections from Porgy and Bess with Leontyne Price in 1963.

Biography

Early life and career

Warfield was born in West Helena, Arkansas, the oldest of five sons of a Baptist minister. He grew up in Rochester, New York, where his father was called to serve as pastor of Mt. Vernon Church. He gave his recital debut in New York's Town Hall on 19 March 1950. He was quickly invited by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to tour Australia and give 35 concerts. In 1952, Warfield performed in Porgy and Bess during a tour of Europe sponsored by the U.S. State Department (he made six separate tours for the US Department of State, more than any other American solo artist.) In this production he played opposite the opera star Leontyne Price, whom he soon married, but the demands of two separate careers left them little time together. They divorced in 1972, but were featured together in a 1963 studio recording of excerpts from Porgy and Bess.

According to a recent exhibit about World War Two, Warfield was the only African American member of the "Ritchie Boys", thousands of soldiers who were trained at Fort Ritchie, Maryland. It was an intelligence center where hundreds of Jewish recruits who fled Nazi Germany for the United States were trained to interrogate their one-time countrymen. According to the exhibit at the Zekelman Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills, Michigan, Warfield was brought to the camp because of his strong German skills which he perfected while studying music. Because of segregation, his skills were never put to use.

Warfield was a graduate of the Eastman School of Music. In 1975 he accepted an appointment as Professor of Music at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He later became Chairman of the Voice Department. In 1994, he moved to Northwestern University's School of Music, where he stayed until his death.

He sang the premiere performances of the version for soloist and orchestra of Set I of Aaron Copland's Old American Songs in 1955, and of the version for soloist and piano of Set II of the collection in 1958. (He also recorded both sets of the songs.) His vocal talents were also featured on two recordings of Handel's "Messiah" – a classic, but heavily cut, performance by the Philadelphia Orchestra under the direction of Eugene Ormandy (released in 1959), and a lesser-known, drastically restructured recording made in 1956, also heavily cut, with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic. Bernstein combined the Christmas and Resurrection sections, and ended with the arias and choruses depicting the death of Christ. The Ormandy recording featured the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and Bernstein's the Westminster Choir.

Warfield was also accomplished in acting and poetry recitation. He played the character De Lawd in a celebrated Hallmark Hall of Fame television production of The Green Pastures, a role he played twice on live TV (both versions survive as kinescopes). He appeared in two Hollywood films, including a star-making performance as Joe in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's 1951 Technicolor remake of Show Boat. His other film was an overlooked item called "Old Explorers", starring James Whitmore and José Ferrer. In a nod to "Show Boat", Warfield played a cameo role as a tugboat captain. Footage of Warfield in "Show Boat" has been included in several TV shows and/or films, notably That's Entertainment!. Warfield played his Show Boat role in two other productions of the musical – the 1966 Lincoln Center production, and a 1972 production in Vienna. He sang Ol' Man River in three different record albums of the show – the 1951 motion picture soundtrack album on MGM Records, a 1962 studio album featuring Barbara Cook and John Raitt on Columbia Masterworks, and the RCA Victor album made from the Lincoln Center production.

He made an appearance on The Colgate Comedy Hour and on a program called TV Recital Hall in 1951, the same year that he made his screen debut in Show Boat. He later appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1955. In 1961, he appeared as a recital soloist on an episode of the Young People's Concerts, conducted by Leonard Bernstein. In March 1984 he was the winner of a Grammy in the "Spoken Word" category for his outstanding narration of Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait accompanied by the [1]. And in the 1990s, he narrated a special jazz arrangement of music from "Show Boat", on the PRI program Riverwalk Jazz. In 1999 Warfield joined baritones Robert Sims and Benjamin Matthews in a trio by the name of "Three Generations". Managed by Arthur White, this ensemble toured the United States giving full concerts of African-American spirituals and folk songs until Warfield's death in 2002.

Decline and death

Beginning in 1962, Warfield began to have some trouble with his voice, as he himself admitted in his autobiography. This was only slightly noticeable on the 1962 studio recording of Show Boat. By the time he made the 1966 recording of the Lincoln Center production of the musical, his voice had deepened from merely bass-baritone to a full-fledged bass, and he could not sing the climactic high note on Ol' Man River as easily as he had in the 1951 film version, though he sounded fine on his lower notes. Because of this problem, however, he compensated by learning how to sing even more expressively than he had before.

By 1976, Warfield, although still making various stage and television appearances, was not singing as much as he had in the past. He served as narrator in various orchestral works, such as Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait, and occasionally performed sprechstimme roles in works by Arnold Schoenberg. However, he did sing on occasion during his final years, despite the fact that by then his singing voice was practically gone. In those years, when he sang Ol' Man River, he would not perform it with the original lyrics, but with the altered ones that Paul Robeson used in his recitals beginning in 1938.

He died in Chicago in August 2002, following treatment at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, succumbing to injuries he sustained in his neck from a fall a month prior.

Membership of organizations

Warfield was active in many organizations, after appearing as the featured artist at the 50th year convention of the National Association of Negro Musicians [2], he became active with the organization, serving as its president for two terms. He later served on the boards of the [3] (NANM) and the Schiller Institute. After joining the Schiller Institute in 1996, he began to collaborate with acclaimed vocal coach Sylvia Olden Lee in a project to save the performance tradition of the Negro spiritual. During the final years of his life, from 1999 to 2002, he performed regularly at Schiller Institute biannual conferences, often with Olden Lee as his accompanist, and the two of them traveled the country conducting singing workshops for members of the LaRouche Youth Movement. Warfield was made an honorary member of the Delta Lambda chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia at Ball State University in 1961, and awarded the Fraternity's Charles E. Lutton Man of Music Award in 1976 at its national convention in Evansville, Indiana.

Legacy

The William Warfield Scholarship Fund was formed in 1977 with the purpose supporting young African American classical singers at the Eastman School of Music. Recipients include Claron McFadden and Nicole Cabell. It has provided financial aid to over 35 students to date.

Wikipedia

[blackwestchester]

32 years before Kingston, Jamaica-born, Ronald A. Blackwood broke the color barrier and became the first Black mayor of the city of Mount Vernon, New York, and 48 years before Richard W. Thomas, the youngest elected MV City Councilman would be elected as the youngest Mayor in Mt. Vernon, a former Grace Baptist Church pastor was paving the way as he became the first black to seek the mayoral seat in Mount Vernon. For those who do not know who I’m talking about, his name was Reverend Dr. Samuel Austin.

I came across Dr. Samuel while doing another story for Black History and was surprised this is not taught in the Mount Vernon City School District. Yes MLK, Frederick Douglass, Rosa Parks and other are important, but this is Black Westchester history, this is Mount Vernon history.

During this time a young loudmouth boxer from Louisville, Kentucky, born Cassius Clay was on trial for refusing to fight in the Vietnam War, a move and decision that was cost him his heavyweight championship belt and the prime of his career. Stokely Carmichael, a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), coins the phrase “black power” in a speech in Seattle. He defines it as an assertion of black pride and “the coming together of black people to fight for their liberation by any means necessary.” The term’s radicalism alarms many who believe the civil rights movement’s effectiveness and moral authority crucially depend on nonviolent civil disobedience. Dr. Austin’s bid for Mount Vernon Mayoral seat the Independent ticket shared the headlines with these events in Mainstream media outlets like the New York Times, black magazines like Jet Magazine and historical African-American newspapers like the Pittsburgh Courier despite the fact is not well-known n the city of Mount Vernon nor taught in the Mount Vernon City School District, this was major new nationwide.

  This was just a few months before Thurgood Marshall was appointed to the United States Supreme Court by President Lyndon Johnson, becoming the first Black U.S. Supreme Court justice. A staunch opponent of discrimination based on race or sex, he would serve on the bench for 24 years. Months before Carl Stokes becomes the first African-American to be elected in Cleveland and Richard G. Hatcher becomes the first African-American mayor Gary, Ind.

This is a year before Dr. Martin Luther King, at age 39, is shot as he stood on the balcony outside his hotel room, in Memphis, Tennessee and a week later President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968, prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing.

…a Negro Baptist minister, Rev. Dr. Samuel Austin, pastor of Grace Baptist Church at 32 S. Sixth Ave., in the downtown commercial area near City Hall, announced that he will file as an independent Democrat for mayor. Dr. Austin said he feels sure he can win the Democratic nomination and defeat his Republican opponent in the general election. Mt. Vernon has approximately 52,970 whites and 19,948 Negroes as residents. – Pittsburgh Courier – Saturday, April 22, 1967

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The Rev. Samuel Austin, 63, died Friday (Jan. 23, 1998) in Los Angeles while attending a board meeting of the National Baptist Convention USA.

An internationally known evangelist and close friend of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Mr. Austin suffered a heart attack after the church’s annual mid-winter meeting. He was attending as president of the 8.5 million-member denomination’s National Baptist Congress of Christian Education, which he had led since 1994.

For the last 24 years of his life, Mr. Austin had been pastor of the 3,000-member Brown Memorial Baptist Church in Brooklyn. In addition, he had served since 1993 as president of the Empire State Missionary Baptist Convention, which is made up of more than 500 Baptist congregations across New York State.

A native of Montgomery, Ala., Mr. Austin came to Buffalo as a child and was educated in the city’s public schools. He was a graduate of Buffalo State College and attended Canisius College and the Buffalo College of the Bible.

A gifted athlete, he set a number of records in basketball and track at Buffalo State and won a National Junior Olympic Championship.

Mr. Austin was only 19 years old when he became pastor of Buffalo’s Pilgrim Baptist Church in 1955. During the seven years he served as pastor, he founded the Buffalo chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

He also taught special education in Buffalo public schools.

A civil rights activist, Mr. Austin was a closely associated with King and participated in several marches and demonstrations with him and the late Rev. Ralph D. Abernathy. In 1964, Mr. Austin became pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Mount Vernon. While there, he served as chairman of the Human Rights Commission and was the first African-American to run for mayor. During a long tenure at Brown Memorial Baptist Church, Mr. Austin founded and administered Transitional Residence Home for young men in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant area.

Mr. Austin has received awards from President Clinton, Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes and Brooklyn Borough President Howard Golden. He recently was awarded an honorary doctorate from American Baptist College in Nashville.

He was survived by his wife, the former Naomi Brown, and a son, Samuel Jr.

His services were held at noon Thursday, January 29, 1988 in Brown Memorial Baptist Church, 484 Washington Ave in Brooklyn, NY and at 10 a.m. Saturday, January 31, 1988 in Pilgrim Baptist Church, 655 Michigan Ave., Buffalo. He is buried in Forest Lawn Cemetary, 1411 Delaware Ave in Buffalo, NY.

Black Westchester Magazine salutes Rev. Dr. Samuel Austin, a true Black Westchester and Mount Vernon legend!

  BW Black History: Rev. Samuel Austin, First Negro To Run For Mayor. 32 years before Kingston, Jamaica-born, Ronald A. Blackwood broke the color barrier and became the first Black mayor of the city of Mount Vernon, New York, and 48 years before Richard W.

[douglasacogan]

Memorializing more drug war casualties: updating the federal drug sentences that COVID-19 turned into death sentences

In this post a few weeks ago, I noted how many individuals among the first federal inmates to die from COVID-19 were in federal prison for drug offenses.  The first documented federal prisoner to die due to the coronavirus was Patrick Jones who died on March 28 and was involved with crack cocaine.  The first female federal prisoner to die was Andrea Circle Bear who died April 28 and was involved with meth.  And the 50th documented federal inmate to die from the virus was Vernon Adderley who died May 11 and was involved in a drug conspiracy.

Because many federal prisoners are serving time for drug offenses, it comes as no surprise that a significant percentage of those who are dying from COVID in federal custody are drug offenders.  But, as I highlighted in my prior post, these kinds of drug war casualties feel especially arbitrary and capricious because such a small percentage of drug offenders are subject to federal prosecution and, thankfully, only a small percentage of this group has been struck down by COVID.  Without diminishing the importance of honoring on this day the those who died serving our nation in traditional wars, I figured today still marked a reasonable time to update my running list of persons who have become casualties of our federal drug war:

Stephen Cino (died April 29: "54 year-old male who was sentenced in the Western District of Virginia to a 292-month sentence for Conspiracy to Distribute Oxycodone Buprenorphine and Fifty Grams or More of Methamphetamine")

Willie Peterson (died April 30: "51 year-old male who was sentenced in the Southern District of West Virginia to a 97-month sentence for Conspiracy to Distribute 100 Grams or More of Heroin and a Quantity of Fentanyl").

Kevin Ivy (died May 2: "59 year-old male who was sentenced in the Eastern District of Texas to a 49-month sentence for Conspiracy to Possess with Intent to Distribute and Distribution of 50 grams or more of Methamphetamine")

Jimmie Lee Houston (dies May 6: "75 year-old male who was sentenced in the District of Alaska to a 120-month sentence for Possessing a Controlled Substance with Intent to Distribute, Possessing a Firearm with Obliterated Serial Number, and Criminal Forfeiture Allegation).

George Escamilla (died May 8: "67 year-old male who was sentenced in the Western District of Texas to a 192-month sentence for Possession with Intent to Distribute 5 kilograms or more of Cocaine and Aiding and Abetting.")

Guadalupe Ramos (died May 10: "56 year-old male who was sentenced in the Western District of Texas to a 210-month sentence for Conspiracy to Distribute 1 Kilogram or More of Heroin")

Juan Mata (died May 11: "59 year-old male sentenced in the Western District of Texas to a 135-month sentence for Conspiracy to Possess With Intent to Distribute 500g or more of Cocaine).

Vernon Adderley (died May 11: "56 year-old male who was sentenced in the Southern District of New York to a 420-month sentence for Narcotics Conspiracy, Conspiracy to Deal in Firearms without a License, and Using and Carrying a Firearm During a Narcotics Crime").

James Lino (died May 13: "65 year-old male who was sentenced in the District of Hawaii to a 34-month sentence for Conspiracy to Distribute and Possess Fifty Grams or More of Methamphetamine with Intent to Distribute").

Calderon Mendoza (died May 14: "60 year-old male sentenced in the Southern District of Florida to a 144-month sentence for Conspiracy to Distribute Cocaine Knowing it Would be Imported into the United States and Distribute Cocaine Using an Airplane Registered in the United States").

Jerry Lynn Dempsey (died May 15: "59 year-old male who was sentenced in the Southern District of California to a 130-month sentence for Conspiracy to Distribute Methamphetamine")

Bich Tran (died May 17: "50 year-old male who was sentenced in the Eastern District of Texas to a 360-month sentence for Conspiracy to Manufacture and Possession with Intent to Distribute Ecstasy, Methamphetamine, Cocaine Base, and Marijuana")

Fidel Torres (died May 20: "62 year-old male sentenced in the Southern District of Texas to a 220-month sentence for Conspiracy to Possess with Intent to Distribute a Quantity in Excess of 1000 kilograms of Marijuana, and Aid and Abet to Possess with Intent to Distribute a Quantity in Excess of 1000 kilograms of Marijuana")

These additional 13 deaths, combined with the 13 deaths noted in this prior post, add up to a full 26 deaths of federal inmates who were incarcerated on drug offenses (from a current total of 59 federal prisoner deaths officially reported by the BOP).  Encouraging, there has not been any reported inmate deaths in the last couple of days, and I hope everyone is eager to see these kinds of drug war casualties go away.  

A few prior related posts:

From drug sentences to death sentences: documenting arbitrary and capricious drug war casualties

The new death penalty: COVID has now killed more US prisoners in weeks than the US death penalty has in over a decade

Notable up-to-date accounting of federal inmate deaths as reported by BOP

"Special Report: 'Death Sentence' — the hidden coronavirus toll in U.S. jails and prisons"

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8247011 https://sentencing.typepad.com/sentencing_law_and_policy/2020/05/bearing-more-witness-as-federal-drug-sentences-become-death-sentences.html via http://www.rssmix.com/

[thepalladiantraveler]

Despite his dream of building a capital city along the banks of the Potomac River and unlike the real estate cliché “George Washington slept here,” America’s first president never once laid his head down on a pillow within the District of Columbia, aka Washington, DC. The closest he ever got was a good night’s sleep at his homestead in nearby Mount Vernon, VA.

Some 228 years later, our nation’s capital welcomes more than 22 million visitors a year. A world-class city embedded with a vibrant history, spectacular monuments, outstanding museums, plentiful parks, lush gardens and exceptional chef-driven cuisine, Washington, DC is well worth a visit. But, don’t just take my word for it, join me as I take the lens cap off and document this monumental city originally planned by Pierre L’Enfant.

For starters, there’s the Smithsonian Institution, a collection of 19 massive, artifacts-filled museums and galleries and the National Zoo, many standing shoulder-to-shoulder on either side of the two-mile long National Mall, “America’s front yard.” Art, history –– natural and chronicled –– science, and red-white-and-blue ingenuity to rocket into space, are all on display inside these titanic buildings. And, the best part? Entry is absolutely free for we, the people.

Bookending the Mall is the Capitol Building at the eastern end, where the legislative branches of government apply their checks and balances atop old Jenkins’ Hill, and the awe-inspiring Lincoln Memorial, where Honest Abe sits in deep contemplation at the western edge along the banks of the Potomac. And, smack dab in the middle of it all stands the Washington Monument, a 555-foot marble obelisk — the tallest structure in the District — honoring the “Father of His Country” that’s encircled by 56 American flags, one for each state along with the five territories and the District of Columbia.

Our historical walk around the Mall also includes a bevy of memorials: Jefferson, Vietnam and Korean War Veterans, Martin Luther King, Jr., FDR and World War II. Join the lengthy queue to get inside the National Archives to view  John Hancock’s John Hancock on the Declaration of Independence, along with the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights. Book way in advance for access to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the newest venue on the Mall. Spend an entire day exploring the myriad of exhibitions at the National Galleries of Art and Portrait. Reach for the sky and the stars beyond at the National Air and Space Museum. And, stop long enough to smell the plant life inside the US Botanic Garden.

The United States is a cultural melting pot and its capital reflects the nation’s sea-to-shining-sea international roots. Heavily influenced by Egyptian, Greek, Roman, medieval European and 19th-century French architecture, wherever you look, especially up, you’ll see an abundance of tall columns, massive domes and the occasional flying buttress. From the White House to the U.S. Capitol, from the Washington Monument to the Library of Congress, from Union Station to the National Cathedral, a simple stroll around architecturally impressive DC alone is well worth the airfare. Right?

The District’s a showcase of American performance arts and is home to such iconic venues as the National Theatre and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

In the early 20thcentury, jazz music had a dizzying effect here as DC natives, like Duke Ellington, played the night away on stages up and down famed U Street. Years later, homegrown go-go, a blend of funk, R&B and hip-hop set the beat around clubs and out on the street.

And, let’s not forget that John Philip Souza came marching down Pennsylvania Avenue at the dawn of the 1900s leading the Marine Corps Band, the oldest musical group in the US. Today, Souza’s iconic march music is one of the highlights at the annual A Capitol Fourth, the national Independence Day celebration that unfolds at twilight on the West Lawn of Capitol Hill.

The White House, Congress and the Supreme Court, the three pillars of the US government, all punch their clocks here, while the Pentagon, the State Department, the World Bank and embassies from almost every corner of the globe float around their orbit. Power, those that carry it and those eager to wrestle it away, is why DC emits such a 24/7/365 buzz. Can you feel it?

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Washingtonians, all 700,000+ of them, know full well the difference between the city itself and the District of Columbia, aka “inside the beltway.”

Beyond the high profile attractions, the city, all 68 square miles of it, is made up of small, distinctive neighborhoods where normal folk live and breathe; where restaurants, cafes, bars and nightclubs are hopping; where Ubers are hailed and bicycles and electric scooters are shared via smartphone apps, and one of the cleanest metro systems in the world moves the populace quickly; and, where friends share a laugh, like my DC-based fam, on colorful row-house front porches or on terraces atop apartment complexes with fab views of their fair city spread out below.

While we’re here, let’s grab some cutlery and tuck in to one of the country’s hottest food scenes. The District is a can’t-miss epicurean destination touted by the likes of Bon Appétit, the Michelin Guide and Zagat, and where celebrity chefs like José Andrés, Tim Ma and Marjorie Meek-Bradley conjure up their culinary wizardry.

From food magazine-worthy dishes created and plated at coveted tables around Penn Quarter, to local favorite half-smokes served at a 24-hour diner up in Adams Morgan, to one-stop grazing at foodie mecca Union Market, just about every kitchen on the planet is represented within DC.

Regardless of your crave one thing is certain, it’s all delectable no matter where you dine. Uh, I’ll have the Maryland crab cake sandwich topped with crispy bacon, please.

With loads of attractions and activities for every visitor, budget-minded and value-added, Washington, DC is teeming with a good-time vibe. Affording unmatched free access to museums, monuments and memorials and one-of-a-kind events, like the National Cherry Blossom Festival, not to mention five pro sports teams — Redskins, Nationals, Wizards, Capitals and DC United — the District is in a class all by itself.

Washington, DC, America’s monumental city that our first commander-in-chief envisioned, is all grown up now. I’m just happy that you let me show you around.

©ThePalladianTraveler

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  Washington, DC: America’s Monumental City Despite his dream of building a capital city along the banks of the Potomac River and unlike the real estate cliché “George Washington slept here,” America's first president never once laid his head down on a pillow within the District of Columbia, aka Washington, DC.