Tax (Photo credit: 401K)

It hit me that the complaint from Conservatives about taxes is partly a complaint by them that their tax dollars are paying for the poor to live off their hard-earned money.

Duh. For the longest time, I was thinking that the resistance against paying higher taxes was just because they want to hold onto more of their money, as do we all.

But a columnist, Brion McClanahan, wrote in The Daily Caller an article which expressed his, and, I would suppose many others’,  resentment that people on government assistance are living high on the hog off the backs of “hard working tax payers.”

Food stamps, complained McClanahan, are abused; “people use their food stamps for necessary items, then use their money for their smokes, beer and munchies.” (http://dailycaller.com/2012/02/28/damn-i-just-want-some-jam/?print=1) He writes:

These are fine examples of what many Americans witness on a regular basis. The other day, while my family and I were waiting in a check-out line at Wal-Mart, I noticed that the woman checking out in front of us was texting on her $200 cell phone (which probably costs at least $100 a month in service fees and may have been paid for by the government as well) and holding what my wife says was a $100 designer purse, with a stack of junk food, beer and cigarettes on the belt behind a line of subsistence products like milk, cheese, cereal and meat.

People pay for “necessary” items with their EBT government debit cards and then use cash for their smokes, beer and munchies. Yet, I have to fork over my hard-earned dollars for every item in my cart (and in essence theirs as well, since I pay taxes while they probably get “refunds” every April). Something is wrong here. Why is the average taxpayer both screwed by the system and forced to watch his tax dollars being wasted on people who abuse the system?

The Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) say it’s time for Democrats to return to their compassionate roots when priorities were civil rights, caring for elderly/young, equal education and humanity:

The Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) 2012 “Progressive Southern Strategy” will help restore faith in the Democratic Party while ensuring the re-election of President Barack Obama

It is important to learn from history when both major parties touted a “Southern Strategy” to win the hearts of “Dixie” including Ronald Reagan.

Cowboy Ronald Reagan’s “Southern Strategy”:
http://www.salon.com/2011/02/03/reagan_southern_strategy/singleton/

The “Southern Strategy,“ fulfilled: When Ronald Reagan‘s invoked “states’ rights” in 1980, it helped seal a massive political realignment – is the title of the story by Steve Kornacki for “The Real Reagan” online on Feb. 3, 2011

http://www.freedomsjournal.net/2011/11/27/urban-legends-the-southern-strategy
http://www.freedomsjournal.net/author/eric-wallace-2

Urban Legends: The Southern Strategy  - a series of articles by Dr. Eric M. Wallace, PhD, founder and Publisher of Freedom’s Journal Magazine.
Dr. Wallace has been in publishing for over 15 years and in ministry over 30 years, holds a PhD in Biblical studies and is an ordained minister, and is the CEO of Wallace Multimedia Group, LLC, the parent company of Freedom’s Journal Magazine.
He is married to Jennifer Wallace and they have two sons Eric and Greg.

Southern Strategy of President Jimmy Carter with headline from Palm Beach Post-Times newspaper article by Tom Wicker, a heavyweight Washington Political Columnist:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=-UgjAAAAIBAJ&sjid=5M0FAAAAIBAJ&pg=921%2C1809814

Republicans enacted their own harsh – and some say racist – version of the “Southern Strategy” after one popular Democratic President lost re-election but it was “Dixie” that had previously put Jimmy Carter into the nation’s highest office.

Pres. Carter had his own “Southern Strategy.”

Steve Kornacki describes it this way:

“Democrats thought they had solved their Southern problem in 1976, when a peanut farmer-turned-Georgia governor named Jimmy Carter swept through the old Confederacy, winning every state except Virginia en route to a narrow Electoral College victory over President Gerald Ford.

For the first time in 12 years, the Democrats had won a national election — and Dixie was the reason why.”

Republicans returned in 1980 with their nasty version of a “Southern Strategy” after grandpa-esque Ronald Reagan managed to have “Dixie” stab President Jimmy Carter in the back – four years after propelling Georgia’s “native son” to victory.

“The story of why Reagan was in position to run against Carter in 1980 — and how he managed to turn Carter’s prideful home region against its native son — really begins in 1964, when regional tensions within the Democratic Party finally reached a breaking point.

Since Reconstruction, when white Southerners developed a bitter hostility to Reconstruction and its northern Republican liberal architects, Dixie had been the most staunchly Democratic region in the country“

— Wrote Steve Kornacki

“The Neshoba Moment”: Reagan’s white supremacy express landed on the graves of three civil rights workers

Knowing he’d make a hit with white voters – and at the same insulting blacks across America – Ronald Reagan gave his first post-convention speech at the Neshoba County Fair after being officially chosen as the Republican nominee for President of the United States.

“I believe in states’ rights,” Reagan said

The Reagan promised to “restore to states and local governments the power that properly belongs to them,” Reagan said.
Some analysts believe that Reagan used the phrase as a tacit appeal to Southern white voters and a continuation of Richard Nixon‘s painful and evil Southern Strategy

“I believe we have distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended to be given in the Constitution to that federal establishment, Reagan proclaimed in what would become known as “The Neshoba Moment.”

Reagan was courting right-wing whites – and maybe some KKK thugs – during his infamous speech at the Neshoba County Fair – a once popular campaign stop but then became sacred ground because of the most famous civil rights murder cases in U.S. history and sparked the movie “Mississippi Burning” and other movies.

Politicians had not campaigned at the fair in the 16 years since the brutal murders – and other unsolved disappearances.

Reagan faced a firestorm of anger because he promised “states’ rights” near a town associated with the 1964 murders of civil rights workers – Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner.

It became known “The Neshoba Moment” because many believed Reagan purposely launched his campaign at that fair hoping to have a “thinly veiled appeal to white supremacy,” said one critic.

Reagan “couldn’t have been ignorant of the significance of the location,” wrote Brian Jones while reviewing a documentary that examines the fallout of the 1964 murder of three civil rights workers in Neshoba County, Mississippi.

http://www.democracynow.org/embed/story/2006/3/21/fmr_gop_strategist_kevin_phillips_on

President Reagan furthered “the southern strategy of Goldwater and Nixon, making the Republican Party the party of hardcore racist ideology.”

– said writer Ben Greenberg about Reagan articles written Jim Prince III, editor of the Neshoba Democrat, who doesn’t worry about being tactful and some say is racist.
Greenberg is a researcher, editor and activist.

Indeed, (Reagan) deliberately and calculatedly chose the Neshoba Fair to kick off his presidential campaign.

When Reagan took the stage, with dozens of Confederate flags festooning the fairground, the crowd chanted, “We want Reagan.”

A beaming Regan shouted back, “There isn’t any place like this anywhere.”

There was thunderous applause, and rebel yells.

 - via AlterNet / By Earl Ofari Hutchinson The Real Reagan Revolution

Join the “Progressive Southern Strategy” campaign by contacting their national PDA office or Rev. Terence A. Dicks of Augusta, Georgia, who is the PDA Southern Regional organizer (see more below) and the PDA State of Georgia Coordinator.

Here is the Steve Kornacki story on the “trickle down” Ronald Reagan“Southern Strategy“:

View this document on Scribd

PDA is organized around several core issues.
These issues include:

• End Corporate Rule
• Healthcare for All/Single Payer
• Economic and Social Justice
• End Wars and Occupations
• Stop Global Warming
• Clean, Fair, Transparent Elections

—

Nixon’s Southern strategy ‘It’s All In the Charts’
By JAMES BOYD
New York Times (1857-Current file); May 17, 1970; ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851 – 2003)
pg. 215
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/books/phillips-southern.pdf

The “Southern Strategy,” fulfilled
When Ronald Reagan’s invoked “states’ rights” in 1980, it helped seal a massive political realignment
http://www.salon.com/2011/02/03/reagan_southern_strategy/singleton

By Steve Kornacki (February 3, 2011). “The “Southern Strategy,” fulfilled” on Salon.com
Korniacki story was archived from the original on January 22, 2012.

Help support the Progressive Southern Strategy developed by the Progressive Democrats of America, its massive team, and its Southern Regional Organizer Rev. Terence A. Dicks of Augusta, Georgia:

Progressive Democrats of America was founded in 2004 to transform the Democratic Party and our country:
http://www.pdamerica.org

The PDA goals are really the traditional but seemingly lost Democratic Party core values: Ending the Iraq (all) War, Voter Rights, Protecting Social Security, a Full Employment Economy, National Healthcare and Economic Justice.
http://pdamerica.org/about-pda/mission

Progressive Democrats of America on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/PDAmerica

Progressive Democrats of America on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/#!/pdamerica

Progressive Activist site of the Progressive Democrats of America (PDA):
http://www.pdacommunity.org

PDA Announces Progressive Southern Strategy: Rev. Terence A. Dicks of Augusta, Georgia is working with the National team and other PDA regional and state organizers to craft policy and action plans for building a Progressive Southern Strategy.
http://salsa3.salsalabs.com/o/1987/t/0/blastContent.jsp?email_blast_KEY=1213030

PDA Georgia:
http://www.pdacommunity.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=50&Itemid=85

Chapters of PDA Georgia:
http://salsa3.salsalabs.com/o/1987/p/salsa/web/directory/public/?City=&State=GA&directory_KEY=3&run=true&t=&organization_KEY=1987

Terence Dicks profile as state of Georgia Coordinator for the Progressive Democrats of America:
http://www.onenationpda.org/index.php?option=com_community&view=profile&userid=105

Terence Dicks video page for Progressive Democrats of America:
http://www.onenationpda.org/index.php?option=com_community&view=videos&task=myvideos&userid=105

Progressive Democrats of America
P.O. Box 150064
Grand Rapids, MI
49515-0064

1-877-239-2093 Voice Mail/Fax

PDA seeks “to build a party and government controlled by citizens, not corporate elites-with policies that serve the broad public interest, not just private interests.”
As a grassroots PAC operating inside the Democratic Party, and outside in movements for peace and justice, PDA played a key role in the stunning electoral victories of November 2006 and 2008.

Our inside/outside strategy is guided by the belief that a lasting majority will require a revitalized Democratic Party built on firm progressive principles.
For over two decades, the party declined as its leadership listened more to the voices of corporations than those of Americans.

The Progressive Southern Strategy is Georgia – Eight PDA Chapters:

PDA Augusta, PDA Southern Regional Organizer and PDA State of Georgia Coordinator of Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) are based in Augusta, Georgia:
http://salsa3.salsalabs.com/o/1987/p/salsa/web/directory/public/view?supporter_KEY=47999720&directory_KEY=3&t

Rev. Terence A. Dicks, PDA Augusta, PDA Southern Regional Organizer and PDA State of Georgia Coordinator
GA Congressional Districts: 10 and 12
Augusta, GA

email Rev. Terence A. Dicks:
tad89@lycos.com

——-

Macon Middle Georgia Chapter of Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) is based in Macon, Georgia:

View Details
http://salsa3.salsalabs.com/o/1987/p/salsa/web/directory/public/view?supporter_KEY=49049028&directory_KEY=2&t

Stephanie Woods-Miller, Chapter Leader Middle Georgia PDA
Macon, GA
GA Congressional District: 8

email Stephanie Woods-Miller:
taylormillerlaw@yahoo.com

Stephanie Woods-Miller LinkedIn page:
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/stephanie-woods-miller/15/2b2/286

Stephanie Woods-Miller Wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:StephanieWoodsMiller

President of the Macon Chapter of the Georgia Association of Black Women Attorneys and legal counsel to the National Federation of Democratic Women:
http://www.gabwa.org/bios/stephanie.php

Georgia Democrats Congressional District 8 Chair:
http://www.georgiademocrat.org/our-party/congressional-district-chairs

——-

Coastal Georgia Chapter of Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) is based in Brunswick, Georgia:

View Details
http://salsa3.salsalabs.com/o/1987/p/salsa/web/directory/public/view?supporter_KEY=48308590&directory_KEY=2&t

Thomas Mullen, Chapter Leader Coastal Georgia PDA
Brunswick, GA
GA Congressional District: 1

email Thomas Mullen:
tmullen425@aol.com

——-

Metro Atlanta/Fulton County Chapter of Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) is based in Atlanta, Georgia:

View Details
http://salsa3.salsalabs.com/o/1987/p/salsa/web/directory/public/view?supporter_KEY=48001088&directory_KEY=2&t

Erica Pines, Chapter Leader Metro Atlanta/Fulton County PDA
Atlanta, GA
GA Congressional District: 5

email Erica Pines:
erica@ericapines.com

——-

Gwinnett County Chapter of Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) is based in Norcross, Georgia:

View Details
http://salsa3.salsalabs.com/o/1987/p/salsa/web/directory/public/view?supporter_KEY=48001101&directory_KEY=3&t

Michelle Thorns, Chapter Leader Gwinnett County PDA
Norcross, GA

email Michelle Thorns:
Matgwindem@gmail.com

——-

Georgia Mountains Chapter of Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) is based in Jasper, Georgia:

View Details
http://salsa3.salsalabs.com/o/1987/p/salsa/web/directory/public/view?supporter_KEY=48307544&directory_KEY=3&t

David Robinson, Chapter Leader Georgia Mountains
Jasper, GA

email David Robinson:
gdavidrobinson@gmail.com

——-

PDA Savannah Chapter of Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) is based in Savannah, Georgia:

View Details
http://salsa3.salsalabs.com/o/1987/p/salsa/web/directory/public/view?supporter_KEY=48001087&directory_KEY=3&t

Miguel Camacho, Chapter Leader PDA Savannah
Savannah, GA

email Miguel Camacho:
mgcamac@aol.com

——-

Progressive Democrats of CSRA (Tri-Counties) Chapter of Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) is based in Avera, Georgia:

View Details
http://salsa3.salsalabs.com/o/1987/p/salsa/web/directory/public/view?supporter_KEY=48001138&directory_KEY=3&t

Dr. Diane Evans, Chapter Leader Progressive Democrats of CSRA (Tri-Counties)
Avera, Georgia

email Dr. Diane Evans:
drdianeevans@gmail.com

——-

Among those highlighting the 2010 PDA National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio were:

Daniel Elsberg is perhaps best known for releasing the “Pentagon Papers” that some say were the final nail in the coffin of the Vietnam War – all because of he and his family’s graver coping hundreds of thousands of papers during clandestine midnight copying scenarios (using actual copying machines long before transferring info on a computer disk)

U.S. Congressman Dennis Kucinich in 2012 is seeking to regain his Ohio U.S. Congressional seat and is the father of the PDA because it was out of his campaign for the Presidency that PDA was born in 2004.

Kucinich fights for progressive values like these listed on his website: “Changing the Debate, Jobs, Monetary Policy, The Economy, Equal Education, Campaign Finance Reform, Energy and Environment, Energy and the Environment, Worker’s Rights, Human Rights, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Food Policy, Retirement Security, Animal Welfare, Health Care, War or Peace?”

John Nichols is an author and Washington correspondent for The Nation magazine

Jeff Cohen is the author and founding director of the Park Center for Independent Media at the Roy H. Park School of Communications at Ithaca College

Marcy Winogradis is the the former PDA-endorsed congressional candidate and Advisory Board member

Wendell Potter is the Senior Fellow on Healthcare with the Center for Media and Democracy

Video with Daniel Ellsberg, Dennis Kucinich, and Donna Smith in Cleveland:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8U99srvLN8

Congressman Dennis Kucinich, out of whose campaign for the presidency PDA was born in 2004, gave a rousing speech:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFN1NCvCmNI

Watch Jeff Cohen’s remarks at the 2010 PDA conference here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjxGJuc9ztE

Website of media watch dog group “Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting” (FAIR):
http://www.fair.org

Other videos with Jeff Cohen:
http://www.pdaillinois.org/site/content/how-democrats-and-obama-became-corporatists-jeff-cohen
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=4783

—
Related links:
—

Wikipedia page about the Southern Strategy used by several campaigns:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

White House page about President Jimmy Carter:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/jimmycarter

Wikipedia page about President Jimmy Carter:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter

Official White House website section devoted to President Richard Nixon:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/richardnixon

President Richard Nixon page on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Nixon

Info about President Ronald Reagan:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/ronaldreagan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan

Wikipedia page about Nixon Strategist and right-wing ethnologist Kevin Phillips:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Phillips_%28political_commentator%29

Kevin Phillips “Author” page on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/kevinphillips1940

Amazon.com page for books written by Nixon Southern Dictator Kevin Phillips
http://www.amazon.com/Kevin-P.-Phillips/e/B001H6GNW0

Amazon.com page for book written by Nixon Southern Dictator Kevin Phillips entitled “The Emerging Republican Majority”:
http://www.amazon.com/Emerging-Republican-Majority-Kevin-Phillips/dp/0870000586

New York Times Reviews and Critics of books and career of infamous Nixon strategist Kevin Phillip, who some say later tried to make amends for his evil GOP deeds.
In fact, the prolific author Phillips went on to write several books critical of the Republican Party and the elitist attitudes:
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/books/author-phillips.html

Has Kevin Phillips Been Making Amends in Recent Years?

Personally, Phillips is a man in denial about his past, but his recent books apparently show a George Wallace kind of revelation about his evil past.

Only Phillips knows for sure whether his heart has changed (see interview below)

For example, check out the comments Kevin Phillips made in this salon.com story by Joan Walsh, Salon’s editor at large:
The Bush dynasty’s dark magic – One-time Republican hero Kevin Phillips dares to speak up against the Walker-Bush oligarchy that rules the American state through oil, intelligence, big money and the power of the Christian right.”
http://www.salon.com/2004/01/27/phillips_7/

Kevin Phillips Book: American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century
http://www.amazon.com/American-Theocracy-Politics-Religion-Borrowed/dp/067003486X/ref=reader_auth_dp
http://www.amazon.com/American-Theocracy-Politics-Religion-Borrowed/dp/067003486X/ref=reader_auth_dp#reader_067003486X

Kevin Phillips Book: The Politics of Rich and Poor: Wealth and the American Electorate in the Reagan Aftermath [Paperback]
http://www.amazon.com/After-Fall-Inexcusable-American-ebook/dp/B0023SDQC6/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1330404267&sr=1-4#reader_B0023SDQC6

Kevin Phillips Book: After the Fall: The Inexcusable Failure of American Finance: An Update to Bad Money (A Penguin Group eSpecial from Penguin Books) [Kindle Edition]
http://www.amazon.com/After-Fall-Inexcusable-American-ebook/dp/B0023SDQC6/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1330404267&sr=1-4

Democracy Now! interview in March 2006 with fromer GOP Strategist Kevin Phillips about his book: American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century

http://www.democracynow.org/embed/story/2006/3/21/fmr_gop_strategist_kevin_phillips_on

——-

Author Joe McGinnis book entitled “The Selling of the President 1968“
Publisher: Pocket Books (October 3, 1980)
ISBN-10: 0671426818
ISBN-13: 978-0671426811

Links about Author Joe McGinnis, whose books include – “The Selling of the President 1968″:

Wikipedia page for Author Joe McGinnis:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_McGinniss

The homepage of Author Joe McGinnis whose books include – “The Selling of the President 1968″:
http://www.joemcginnissjr.com

The Amazon.com selling page for the Author Joe McGinnis book – “The Selling of the President 1968″:
http://www.amazon.com/Selling-President-1968-Joe-mcginnis/dp/0671270435

——-

Author Richard Harris book entitled “Justice: The Crisis of Law, Order and Freedom in America“
Publisher: The Bodley Head Ltd; First edition (October 1, 197o)
ISBN-10: 0370013441
ISBN-13: 978-0370013442

Links for Author Richard Harris and his book “Justice: The Crisis of Law, Order and Freedom in America”:

Amazon.com pages for selling the Richard Harris book “Justice: The Crisis of Law, Order and Freedom in America”:
http://www.amazon.com/Justice-Crisis-Order-Freedom-America/dp/0370013441
http://www.amazon.com/Justice-Crisis-Order-Freedom-America/dp/0525137904

Amazon.com info page about Author Richard Harris:
http://www.amazon.com/Richard-Harris/e/B001HPA8TK/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

Google page for selling the Richard Harris book “Justice: The Crisis of Law, Order and Freedom in America”:
http://books.google.com/books/about/Justice_the_crisis_of_law_order_and_free.html?id=E-xBAAAAIAAJ

Photo shows beginning of a “Harvard Law Review” Review of Author Richard Harris book entitled “Justice: The Crisis of Law, Order and Freedom in America”
http://www.jstor.org/pss/1339696
Vol. 83, No. 8, Jun., 1970
Harvard Law Review © 1970 The Harvard Law Review Association

Bryan Stevenson, founder and director of the Equal Justice Initiative

 By Valerie Merians

In honor of Black History Month, Leonard Pitts tells a story to give readers pause in a column for the Orlando Sentinel.

According to Pitts, Bryan Stevenson, director of the Equal Justice Initiative, a Montgomery, Ala.-based organization that provides legal representation for the indigent and incarcerated, sent two books to prisoner Mark Melvin last year. Melvin is in jail for life for a murder he committed when he was 14.  The books were Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder, about a doctor’s struggle to bring medical services to Haiti, and Slavery by Another Name, Douglas Blackmon‘s Pulitzer Prize-winning account of “how the South instituted a form of de-facto slavery by mass arresting black men on nonsense charges and ‘selling’ them to plantations, turpentine farms and other places of back-breaking labor.”

Melvin was allowed to read the first book, but was denied the right to read Slavery by Another Name. Stevenson told Pitts prison officials “felt it was too provocative, they didn’t like the title, they didn’t like the idea that the title conveyed. They didn’t read the book, but they were concerned about it and thought that it would be ‘too dangerous’ to have in the prisons.”

Click here to read the rest of this story

Rev. Campbell himself was unjustly imprisoned in Georgia and expelled from his Georgia Senate seat after white senators decided blacks could not hold public office in the Peach State

“Exodus From Pity to Power”

The 4th Annual Tunis G. Campbell Birthday Festival on March 30th – April 2nd, 2012 in Brunswick, GA

2012 national stories about Mass Incarceration:
Why Mass Incarceration Really is the New Jim Crow (ACLU)
The Caging of America: Why do we lock up so many people? (The New Yorker)

(Brunswick, Georgia) – The epidemic of “mass incarceration” of African-American youth is the focus of an annual coastal Georgia festival honoring the birthday and life of 19th century civil rights hero Tunis G. Campbell – a black Georgia state senator, education advocate and freedom fighter who himself was “imprisoned in a Georgia labor camp” and earlier was expelled from public office along with other black legislators after white state senators ruled that blacks could not hold political office.

The main purpose of the three-days of events is “mass incarceration, education and labor,” said civil rights and political activist Rev. Zack L. Lyde, pastor at  the St. John’s Missionary Baptist Church in Brunswick, Georgia.

Queen Quet, Chieftess of the Gullah/Geechee Nation represents the Gullah/Geechee Nation, the International Council on Human Rights, and the International Human Rights Association for American Minorities at the United Nations.Official symbol of the Gullah/Geechee Nation

Among the dignitaries attending the event will be Queen Quet Marquetta Goodwine, the Chieftess, Spokesperson, and Head-of-State for the Gullah/Geechee Nation.

A 2006 federal act preserves the sites, sounds and tastes  of the 400-year history of the Gullah/Geechee Culture that has been slowly vanishing along the coasts of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.

“Gullah/Geechee is the statement that defines our particular culture and history of African people on the coast from Jacksonville, Florida to Jacksonville, North Carolina,” said Rev. Lyde. “Gullah/Geechee is the only African culture that has been officially recognized as distinct in country.”

Official symbol of the Gullah/Geechee Nation

Queen Quet will “open up the service and deliver the sermon” at the 10 a.m. worship service on Sunday, April 1, 2012 inside the Baptist Worship Center in Crescent, Georgia, said Rev. Lyde, a Gullah/Geechee pastor.

The church is located on the site of 1,000 acre purchase initiated by Tunis Campbell.

Important Official Updated Festival Information March 15, 2012: Letter from organizer Rev. Zack L. Lyde:

Organizers will encourage parents to be involved in the issues and lives of black youth through sponsor organizations like Brunswick Youth Works, Inc. (affiliated with Jacksonville Youth Works).

“We  want to influence young folks and their parents to be a part of that organization’s great work and rescuing our youth from serious problems both personal and criminal” like gangs, drugs and violence, Rev. Lyde said.

More black men are in the grip of the criminal-justice system today than were in slavery.
More than half of all black men without a high-school diploma go to prison during their lives.
– 2012 Mass Incarceration by The New Yorker magazine

The 2012 commemoration of Tunis G. Campbell (1812-1891) will focus “on the problem of mass incarceration of our youth” and the theme is “Exodus From Pity to Power.”

“Many youth are being pipelined into prison,” states an invitation distributed by Olivia Butler, festival chairperson.

“The daily streamlining of youth into the legal system, and too often on erroneous charges continues to increase,” Olivia Butler stated.

“One example of mass incarceration” involves a 13-year-old Glynn County girl “who was tried, convicted, sentenced to a 5-year prison term after being accused of having a cell phone at school at an after-school program,” Butler said.

The girl served 2 years and 2 months yet her “recent re-entry back into that same school system is being challenged,” Butler said.

The girl’s mother believes her daughter was treated unjustly by a school and court system that doesn’t care about the individual – especially if the incident involves an African American or other minority.

“She is my daughter and that is why I am so passionate about this,” said Estella Wright, who is a veteran at fighting injustice.

Supporters believe the girl was unfairly arrested by school cop called a school resource officer or SRO.

“It incensed the community and we fought to get the child out,” said Rev. Lyde. “She was in a juvenile detention facility – we call it a prison.”

“Schools are a pipeline to prison – they are not designed for intellectual development – they are designed for intellectual retardation,” said Rev. Zack Lyde.

“We are going to show we know how to educate our children and that’s what we are going to do first – focus on the children and being locked up,” he said. “This celebration gives us an opportunity to show that black folks are going to get back involved in their youth.”

“We are not going to have these games that our children end up in prison,” Rev. Lyde said. “We are going to be involved in education like we should.”

“The theme ‘Exodus From Pity to Power‘ is for the organization for the mother who doesn’t know how to fight and the father who doesn’t know he has the right to fight,” Wright said.

Organizers hope the annual event highlighting the injustices faced by Rev. Campbell will “bring the community together,” Wright said.

The festival gives coastal Georgia residents “unity to stand together so these things don’t continue to happen to any other child,” Estella Wright said.

“This case may seem extreme” but “similar incidents are occurring on a regular basis,” Butler said.

1R.U.S.H., Inc., one of the event sponsors, “is the organizing voice of the community,” said Estella Wright, President and CEO of 1R.U.S.H., Inc.

“During the membership drive (Monday, April 2, 2012) we are hoping people with sign up for the organization so we can take a stand for the community,” Wright said.

Before racist white senators arbitrarily expelled Campbell and other black lawmakers from office, he pushed for laws for equal education, integrated jury boxes, homestead exemptions, abolishment of imprisonment for debt, open access to public facilities, and fair voting procedures, according to the Georgia Encyclopedia.

The expelled black lawmakers, led by Campbell and Henry McNeill Turner, lobbied for federal intervention in Washington.

A Reconstruction Georgia lightening rod, Campbell was no stranger to lawsuits, jail and wide-ranging accusations.

In 1876, Campbell, was convicted of malfeasance in office. Handcuffed and chained, Campbell was whisked from the Savannah jail to serve one year in a Georgia labor camp.

Campbell supporters say these and other charges were racist, politically motivated and trumped up – as some occurred during Reconstruction Georgia and while reconstruction across the south lost headway.

One type of Mass Incarceration in the 1800s:
White power structure/law: “arresting all the prominent colored men.”

“Just before every election they commence to intimidate by arresting all the prominent colored men. As usual they have arrested me again,” Tunis G. Campbell said.

The entire black community of Darien, Georgia turned out to protest Campbell’s trials, according to “Forty Acres and a Mule: The Ruined Hope of Reconstruction” by Danielle Alexander.

After his release, Campbell fled north and traveled to Washington to meet with President Rutherford B. Hayes.

A free Northern black missionary, Campbell was appointed to supervise land claims and resettlement in Georgia.

Tunis Campbell

Working hard through the years on Reconstruction Georgia, voting rights and equal education, the lives of Campbell and his family were always in peril.

His home was torched.

Campbell even survived being poisoned.

Campbell wrote at least two books:

“Hotel Keepers, Head Waiters, and Housekeepers’ Guide” (1848) and the “Sufferings of the Reverend T. G. Campbell and His Family in Georgia“  (1877).

Everyone is cordially invited to attend the 4th Annual Tunis G. Campbell Birthday Festival from Friday, March 30 – Monday, April 2, 2012 – on the 200th anniversary of his birth (April 1, 1812).

Scroll down to see the entire festival itinerary including a roundtable on the the “mass incarceration” of African American youth, plus related links and more info about civil rights leaders Tunis Campbell and Septima Clark.

Reconstruction Georgia Collage Caption (above photo):

#1 (Upper Left) Political Cartoon that depicts Mitchell County, Georgia whites holding freed blacks down after the Camilla, Georgia Massacre of 1868.
The massacre was one of the more violent episodes in Reconstruction Georgia.
The Camilla Massacre remained part of southwest Georgia’s hidden past until 1998, when Camilla residents publicly acknowledged the massacre for the first time and commemorated its victims.
At least nine freedmen were killed, and as many as 25 to 30 were wounded.
No whites were killed or seriously wounded.
The political cartoon was drawn by Thomas Nast in Harper’s Weekly.

#2 (Lower Left) An “Old Negro” (former slave) with horn with which slaves were called.
The photograph was taken by Russell Lee in April 1939 near Marshall, TX.
The United States Farm Security Administration or Office of War Information domestic photographic units photo (taken by on-duty federal employee Russell Lee) appeared on the Library of Congress website and is now also on Wikipedia under public domain.

#3 (Upper Right) Blacks voting during Reconstruction Georgia are depicted in a political cartoon.
A Georgia Studies image appearing on GALILEO and the University of Georgia Libraries Georgia Info website (an extensive online resource about Georgia. ) as part of the Digital Library of Georgia.

#4 (Lower Right) Photo of the ruins of houses in Savannah, Georgia (circa 1865).
The historic photo was apparently taken just after Gen. Sherman’s March to the Sea, the name commonly given to the Savannah Campaign in Georgia from November 15, 1864 to December 21, 1864 by Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman of the Union Army in the American Civil War.
The campaign began with Sherman’s troops leaving the captured city of Atlanta, Georgia, on November 16 and ended with the capture of the port of Savannah on December 21.
The photo is from the University of Georgia Libraries (Special Collections Libraries) in the Richard B. Russell Building in Athens, GA – the home of the Hargrett Rare Book & Manuscript Library and the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies (specifically the UGA Libraries/Reconstruction in Georgia/Selected Bibliography of Georgia Room Holdings).

U.S.A. Shame: The “mass incarceration” of African-American youth is focus of event in Brunswick, GA:

2012 national stories about Mass Incarceration:
Why Mass Incarceration Really is the New Jim Crow (ACLU)
The Caging of America: Why do we lock up so many people? (The New Yorker)

From the Cradle to the Grave: African American males are jailed and imprisoned at a disproportionate rate compared to white males. Photo courtesy the Children's Defense Fund "Cradle to the Grave" effort

Disturbing Irony of Shared Sign Not Lost on Thousands of Black Americans: Kansas African American Museum and Sedgwick County Jail in Wichita, Kansas. While the sign has a more benign meaning, many say perceived reality speaks louder than reality. The Kansas African American Museum (located in an historic church) is partially encircled by (and shares same lot) as the Sedgwick County Courthouse and County Jail in Wichita, KS. http://wiki.worldflicks.org/kansas_african_american_museum.html (Close box to see satellite view)

A roundtable discussion and symposium on “Mass Incarceration in our Community” will be held from noon to 5 p.m. on Saturday, March 31, 2012 at Selden Park in Brunswick, Georgia.

The roundtable will include five presentations and feature labor rights leaders, the International Longshoreman’s Association union, and the Service Employees International Union (S.E.I.U.).

A banquet will be held at 8 p.m. on Saturday, March 31, 2012  at Selden Park in Brunswick.

The cost is $25.

The banquet features Jamal Toure‘ -  Lecturer, author, living historian performer.

Jamal Toure'

Jamal Touré, J.D.  is known as a Djeli (living historian or griot) who can comment on the lives of African people at home and in the diaspora.

He is one of the first Gullah Geechees to be charged with that responsibility.

Touré founded Day Clean: The African Soul to inform, enlighten, and inspire African people regarding their cultures, and history.

Sponsors of the  4th Annual Tunis G. Campbell Birthday Festival include 1R.U.S.H., Inc., the Purple Cloud Legal Aide Defense Fund and Brunswick Youth Works, Inc.

The events that are planned to honor Tunis Campbell “coincide and continue his courageous quest for social justice,” Butler said. “Please join us in this commemorative weekend of events.”

A 19th Century African American freedom fighter, Campbell “urged newly freed blacks of Coastal Georgia to develop educational institutions and obtain landownership.”

Campbell championed social justice issues and impacted both national and international politics.

Festival organizers request public support of the festival by “having your youth group participate in the Septima Clark Parade.”

The “Septima Clark Parade for Education of Our Youth” will be held beginning at 10 a.m. on Saturday, March 31, 2012.

Participating youth groups must line up no later than 9 a.m. at Perry Park located on Cleburne between J and K streets in Brunswick.

The parade is named for civil rights activist and educator Septima P. Clark, who became known as the “Queen mother” or “Grandmother of the American Civil Rights Movement” in the United States.

If your organization cannot participate, nonprofit informational tables will be provided at a cost of five dollars per table or $25 for a for-profit table.

“This allows the communities in Coastal Georgia to learn more about positive youth organizations and agencies,” Butler said.

For more information on the festival call (912) 342-7590.

Tunis Campbell

The 4th Annual Tunis G. Campbell Birthday Festival
March 30th – April 2nd, 2012
Brunswick, Georgia
Theme: “Exodus From Pity to Power”

The schedule of events and activities are open to the public

Friday, March 30, 2012
7:00 p.m
Educator’s Reception
Location: Roxy Theatre, Brunswick, Georgia

Saturday, March 31, 2012
10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Septima Clark Parade for Education of Our Youth
( Parade Route: From Perry Park to Altama Ave. and G Streets in Brunswick)

12 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Round Table Discussion/Symposium 5 presentations (40 min)
Location: Selden Park in Brunswick
*Topic: Mass Incarceration in our Community
Featuring: Labor Rights Leaders, The International Longshoreman’s Association union, and the Service Employees International Union (S.E.I.U.)

8:00 p.m.
Banquet: Cost: $25 per person (Dressy Casual)
Location: Selden Park in Brunswick

The event includes a performance by Jamal Toure’:
Attorney, lecturer, author, and living historian performer

Sunday, April 1, 2012
10:00 a.m
Worship Service
Location: The Baptist Worship Center in Crescent, GA
(The site of 1,000 acre purchase initiated by Tunis Campbell)
Delivering the sermon will be Queen Quet Marquetta Goodwine, Chieftess, Spokesperson, and Head-of-State for the Gullah/Geechee Nation

Monday, April 2, 2012
Membership Drive

“1R.U.S.H., Inc. is the organizing voice of the community,” said Estella Wright, President and CEO of 1R.U.S.H., Inc.
“During the membership drive we are hoping people with sign up for the organization so we can take a stand for the community,” Wright said.

Information about Civil Rights Legends Tunis Campbell and Septima Clark:

Info about the history of Tunis Campbell (April 1, 1812 – December 4, 1891):

http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-2903
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunis_Campbell

Tunis Campbell (April 1, 1812 – December 4, 1891) was a prominent African American politician of the 19th century, and a major figure in Reconstruction Georgia.

Born in Middlebrook, New Jersey, Campbell served as a Justice of the Peace, a delegate to the State Constitutional Convention, and as a Georgia state senator. He died in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 4, 1891.

After Union general William T. Sherman captured Savannah in December 1864, on his march to the sea, and Congress set up the Freedmen’s Bureau in March 1865, Campbell was appointed to supervise land claims and resettlement on five Georgia islands: Ossabaw, Delaware, Colonels, St. Catherines, and Sapelo.

Georgia planters, who received pardons from U.S. president Andrew Johnson, regained control of these islands in 1866. Campbell quickly purchased 1,250 acres at Belle Ville in McIntosh County and there established an association of black landowners to divide parcels and profit from the land.

In 1867 Congress ordered a further Reconstruction of the South.

Campbell worked to register voters before being elected as a justice of the peace, a delegate to the state constitutional convention, and a state senator from the Second Senatorial District (Liberty, McIntosh, and Tattnall counties).

As a justice of the peace, minister, and political boss, Campbell organized a black power structure in McIntosh County that protected freed people from white abuses, whether against their bodies or in labor negotiations.

He headed a 300-strong African American militia that guarded him from reprisals by the Ku Klux Klan or others, even though his home was burned, he was poisoned, and his family lived in constant fear.

In 1867, with a goal to help freedmen vote, Campbell was appointed to the Board of Registration in Georgia.

He was elected to congress as a senator in Georgia in 1868 only to be expelled from office because white congressmen agreed that blacks didn’t have the right to hold office.

Tunis was able to return to office in 1871, but lost in 1872 and eventually imprisoned in a Georgia labor camp before fleeing the state.

Source: Georgia Encyclopedia and Wikipedia

Tunis Campbell book cover "Hotel Keepers, Head Waiters, and Housekeepers' Guide." Published in Boston by Coolidge and Wiley, 1848

The sketch (circa 1848) of Tunis Campbell is the only known image of the prominent black politician and minister.
Original sketch drawing is signed/credited “Hartwell” – the full name of artist is unavailable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tunis_Campbell.jpg

The sketch is from his book “Hotel Keepers, Head Waiters, and Housekeepers’ Guide” (1848) published in Boston by Coolidge and Wiley, 1848

Campbell also wrote the book “Sufferings of the Reverend T. G. Campbell and His Family in Georgia“  (1877)

http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/cookbooks/html/books/book_17.cfm
http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/cookbooks/images/books/400w/book17_frontis.jpg

Info about the history of Septima Clark (May 3, 1898–December 15, 1987):

Septima Clark

Septima Poinsette Clark (May 3, 1898–December 15, 1987) was an American educator and civil rights activist.

Clark developed the literacy and citizenship workshops that played an important role in the drive for voting rights and civil rights for African Americans in the American Civil Rights Movement.”

She became known as the “Queen mother” or “Grandmother of the American Civil Rights Movement” in the United States.

Read more about the history of Septima Clark on Wikipedia.

Source: Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septima_Poinsette_Clark

Links to Septima Clark photos and stories:

http://inthedoghouse.hubpages.com/hub/Freedoms-Sisters–Twenty-Great-Arfrican-American-Women

http://kalamu.posterous.com/archive/8/2010?page=29

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Related links/info:
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Sponsors of the  4th Annual Tunis G. Campbell Birthday Festival include 1R.U.S.H., Inc., the Purple Cloud Legal Aide Defense Fund and Brunswick Youth Works, Inc.:

1R.U.S.H., Inc.
c/o Mrs. Estella Wright, President and CEO
3441 Cypress Mill road
Suite 203-4
Brunswick, Georgia
31520

Mrs. Estella Wright, President/CEO of 1R.U.S.H. Inc.
786-285-1297

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Brunswick Youth Works, Inc.
3441 Cypress Mill Road, Suite 4
Brunswick, Georgia
31520

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Links about civil rights activist Rev. Zack Lyde, pastor of St. John’s Missionary Baptist Church of Brunswick, GA:

Rev. Zack Lucius Lyde
St. John’s Missionary Baptist Church
former chairman of the Georgia Green Party, a Gullah Geechee pastor, leader in the environmental justice movement, founder of “Save the People, Inc.” that addressed environmental racism issues

Saint John’s Missionary Baptist Church
1803 G Street
Brunswick, GA

Photos/video freeze frames of the illegal arrest of Rev. Zack Lyde while expressing his views to Tea Party activists protesting Pres. Obama health policies. A federal Judge ruled that Rev. Lyde's constitutional rights were violated by Brunswick, Georgia Police. Video freeze frames by WTLV-TV. Photos by Terry Dickson, Florida Times-Union.

Associated Press story on RuffWire.com:

Federal Judge Ruling: Brunswick GA. Officials Violated Rev. Zack Lyde Rights
44-Page Decision: U.S. District Judge Lisa Godbey Wood rules in favor of civil rights leader who took on right-wing Tea Party

Rev. Zack Lyde: Brunswick officials violated his right to free speech and used an unconstitutional city ordinance to falsely imprison him
http://ruffwire.com/2011/10/04/judge-rule-brunswick-ga-officials-violated-rev-zack-lyde-rights

Florida Times-Union Story (August 26, 2009) on Jacksonville.com:
Rev. Zack Lyde arrested for protesting a Brunswick health care protest
Rev. Lyde argued with health care protesters, but did not have a permit
http://jacksonville.com/news/georgia/2009-08-27/story/man_arrested_for_protesting_a_brunswick_health_care_protest#ixzz1hzWGDa1n

Rev. Zack Lyde photo courtesy Black Agenda Report

Black Agenda Report (BAR): BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon reports on the unfair national coverage of the arrest of Rev. Zack Lyde – who later won his federal lawsuit against the police – despite the biased criticism by the national media of the Brunswick, Georgia pastor:
http://blackagendareport.com/content/roland-martin-rick-sanchez-and-cnn-blow-real-story-again

View a copy of the Rev. Zack Lyde civil rights lawsuit that he won in federal court:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/82052138
http://www.citydox.com/lyde_suit.pdf

Rev. Zack Lyde and Jeana Brown co-founded the Redneck Party, a pro-labor coalition.
The Redneck Party PAC is a “grassroots coalition of black, white and immigrant workers founded to be a Southern labor movement to remember our nation’s labor struggles and to honor all those who contribute by the toil of their hands,” Brown said.
Contact Jeana Brown at 1-912-294-3167.

Website of the Redneck Party (PAC):
http://www.redneckparty.org/

Redneck Party on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/RedneckPartyInternational

Citizens Media Resource story about the Redneck Party and Beer Party Protesting the Republican Party Debate: GOP’s ‘Cheap-Labor Conservatives’ Can No Longer Take the South for Granted:
http://citizensmediaresource.blogspot.com/2011/11/redneck-party-and-beer-party-protest.html

Coverage samples of Redneck Party protest of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker Oct. 25 in Franklin, TN:
http://www.newschannel5.com/story/15875837/redneck-party-rallies-in-franklin
http://www.wsaw.com/news/headlines/A_Group_to_Protest__132420803.html

“What Fake Reform of the Prison State Looks Like: Georgia’s Criminal Justice Reform Commission” (June 10, 2011): End Mass Incarceration/Defending Our Immigrant Neighbors by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
http://www.georgiagreenparty.org/ChallengingMassIncarceration/What_Fake_Reform_of_the_Prison_State_Looks_Like

Rev Lyde Stock at New York Exchange during the Occupy Wall Street protests in Dec. 2011

“The governor’s commission needs reforming itself,” declared longtime human rights activist Rev. Zack Lyde of Brunswick GA.

“It’s too narrow, it’s too shallow, it’s too corporate.

They need to come out of that room with the consultants, the D.A.s, the contractors and the insiders.

They need to hold hearings in Savannah and Valdosta, in Macon and Columbus, in Albany, Augusta and Atlanta, and one or two hearings inside the prisons themselves.

A commission that did that would get a glimmer of what real reform might look like. Our state’s obsession with prisons, jails, profit and punishment does not serve justice and does not make us safer, It’s like an unhealthy attachment to Pharaoh, and it’s time for us to let it go.”

The Other Economic Summit (TOES) USA during G-8 Summit in Brunswick in June 2004:
http://www.toes-usa.org/program.html

“We pay taxes to cover the costs associated with the public spaces we want to use. Many of the corporations the G8 leaders represent don’t pay taxes. What right do they have to tell us what to do and what not to do with the public spaces we’ve paid for?”

The Rev. Zack Lyde in Brunswick said that police repeatedly entered his church (St. John’s Missionary Baptist Church) saying they wanted to worship there, but after “gathering intelligence” and intimidating the congregation, they always left before it came time to pray.
Rev. Lyde played a leading role in the effort to organize a local response to the G8 Summit.

He applied for permits on behalf of local organizers a march and rally and a prayer vigil, and when the Brunswick City government “lost” his applications, he went to court to obtain venues for these activities as well as for the TOES conference.

Rev. Lyde is a descendant of the Gullah Geechee people, formerly enslaved people who were given title to islands off the Georgia Coast, including Sea Island, at the end of the Civil War.
The Gullah Geechee people where pushed off this land as it was privatized and turned into valuable real estate.
The re-enslavement process began with debt, indentured servitude, and finally a diaspora, as many Gullah Geechee became economic and environmental refugees.

This pattern is precisely how economic policies promoted by the G8 play out in coastal Georgia, and in the third world in general. The Gullah Geechee have no difficulty recognizing the G8 for what they are, and call them “the Greedy 8″.

Institute for Public Accuracy story/info about the “backstory” of the G-8 Summit in Brunswick, Georgia and the Iraq Resolution – that includes quotes from Rev. Zack Lyde:
http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/news2004/0609-03.htm

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Queen Quet, Chieftess of the Gullah/Geechee Nation

Delivering the sermon on Sunday, April 1, 2012 is Queen Quet Marquetta Goodwine, Chieftess, Spokesperson, and Head-of-State for the Gullah/Geechee Nation

Gullah/Geechee Nation Headquarters
Post Office Box 1109
St. Helena Island, SC
29920

(843) 838-1171
gulllahgeecheenation@officialgullahgeechee.info

Gullah/Geechee Nation website:
http://web.me.com/gullahgeecheenation/Gullah_Geechee_Nation_Headquarters/Tenki_fa_Cumin_ta_We.html

Facebook fan page of the Gullah/Geechee Nation:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/GullahGeechee-Nation/66574769035

LinkedIn page for Queen Quet Marquetta Goodwine, Chieftess of the Gullah/Geechee Nation:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/queenquet

Personal website of Queen Quet Marquetta Goodwine, Chieftess of the Gullah/Geechee Nation:
http://web.me.com/gullahgeecheenation/Queen_Quet/Chieftess_and_%22The_Art-ivist%22_Bio.html

Blog of Queen Quet Marquetta Goodwine, Chieftess of the Gullah/Geechee Nation:
http://web.mac.com/gullahgeecheenation/Gullah_Geechee_Sea_Island_Coalition/Founders_Journal.html

The Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor: Designated by an act of Congress on October 12, 2006

Official website of the Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor:
http://gullahgeecheecorridor.org/?Itemid=137

United States Congressman James E. Clyburn (D-SC) message about the Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor:
http://clyburn.house.gov/our-district/gullah-geechee-cultural-heritage-corridor
http://gullahgeecheecorridor.org

National Public Radio story about the Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor and the Gullah/Geechee culture:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6283153

National Park Service info about the Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Act:
http://www.nps.gov/guge/index.htm
http://www.nps.gov/guge/faqs.htm

Copy of the Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Act:
http://www.theorator.com/bills109/hr694.html

The purposes of this Act:

(1) recognize the important contributions made to American culture and history by African Americans known as the Gullah/Geechee who settled in the coastal counties of South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida;

(2) assist State and local governments and public and private entities in South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida in interpreting the story of the Gullah/Geechee and preserving Gullah/Geechee folklore, arts, crafts, and music; and

(3) assist in identifying and preserving sites, historical data, artifacts, and objects associated with the Gullah/Geechee for the benefit and education of the public.

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International Longshoreman’s Association union (AFL-CIO)
1208 London St.
Brunswick, GA
31520

http://ilaunion.org

(912) 267-7409

Port of Brunswick, GA
Port of Savannah, GA

ILA Local 1423 Brunswick, Georgia
ILA Local 1863 Brunswick, Georgia
ILA Local 2046 Garden City, Georgia
ILA Local 1414 Savannah, Georgia
ILA Local 1475 Savannah, Georgia
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Service Employees International Union (S.E.I.U.)
http://www.seiu.org
http://www.seiu.org/local/georgia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEIU

SEIU Local 5000 – Public
BRANCH Office
Website
1776 Peachtree Rd. NW
Suite 415
Atlanta, GA
30309

(617) 376-0220

SEIU Workers United – Local Union
BRANCH Office
Website
4405 Mall Blvd.
Suite 600
Union City, GA
30291

(646) 448-6402

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Contact info for Georgia historian/Attorney Amir Jamal Toure’ – Lecturer, author, living historian performer

Day Clean – The African Soul
912-220-5966
daycleanhhi@yahoo.com

http://www.daycleanjourneys.net
http://www.blackbusinesslist.com/dayclean
http://www.daycleansoul.com/africansoul/DCASindex.htm

Day Clean Soul on Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Day-Clean-Soul/271331433110

DayCleanSoul on Twitter
https://twitter.com/#!/daycleansoul
Amir Toure’
@daycleansoul
Port City – Savannah, GA
“African Sun a humble soul seeking to fulfill his role in this world, loving his people.”

WSAV-TV reporter Kim Gusby has this February 21, 2010 Black History Month story with “living historian” Jamal Toure’ who shares the story of Rev. Tunis Campbell and Ulysses Houston

http://www2.wsav.com/news/2010/feb/21/feb_21_bhm_rev_tunis_campbell_and_ulysses_housto-ar-125793

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Reconstruction Georgia:

A story that includes Rev. Tunis G. Campbell on Reconstruction Georgia entitled “Forty Acres and a Mule: The Ruined Hope of Reconstruction” by Danielle Alexander in a series of stories on the Civil War financed by The National Endowment for the Humanities:
http://www.neh.gov/news/humanities/2004-01/reconstruction.html

http://www.historycentral.com/documents/ReconstructionGeorgia.html
http://ourgeorgiahistory.com/history101/gahistory08.html
http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/122/carr/seaframe.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_during_Reconstruction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Seal_of_Georgia.svg

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Black History stories on Progressive Pupil:
http://progressivepupil.wordpress.com

Black Youth and Mass Incarceration:

http://www.laprogressive.com/black-men-prison-system

2012 national stories about Mass Incarceration:
Why Mass Incarceration Really is the New Jim Crow (ACLU)
The Caging of America: Why do we lock up so many people? (The New Yorker)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistics_of_incarcerated_African-American_males

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scottsboro/sb_acct.html

The Black Youth Project: “The Price of Choosing Jails Over Schools” by Latoya Peterson, The Root (April 9, 2011) and it includes the photo of black youth behind bars:

http://www.blackyouthproject.com/2011/04/the-price-of-choosing-jails-over-schools

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Mass Incarceration story by the American Civil Liberties Union “Because Freedom Can’t Protect Itself”

Celebrate Black History

“Why Mass Incarceration Really is the New Jim Crow“

Posted by Inimai Chettiar, ACLU 02/23/2012 at 3:41pm

http://www.aclu.org/blog/racial-justice/why-mass-incarceration-really-new-jim-crow

ACLU:
Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/aclu.nationwide?sk=app_182951925085777

Twitter
ACLU National
The ACLU is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, public interest org devoted to protecting the basic civil liberties of everyone in America.
https://twitter.com/#!/ACLU

Links:
http://bit.ly/pages/privacy
http://www.aclu.org

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A new Mass Incarceration article in the The New Yorker Magazine has scary statistics:

A Critic at Large: “The Caging of America – Why do we lock up so many people?” by Adam Gopnik (January 30, 2012)
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/01/30/120130crat_atlarge_gopnik

• For many poor people in America, particularly poor black men, prison is ordinary life, like high school and college is ordinary life for whites.
• More than half of all black men without a high-school diploma go to prison during their lives
• Mass incarceration  is perhaps a fundamental fact, as slavery was a fundamental fact of 1850
• More black men in the grip of the U.S. criminal-justice system than were in slavery
• More Americans are under “correctional supervision” — more than six million — than were in the Gulag under Stalin
• For privileged/professional people, the jail experience is a mere brush
• No other country even approaches the number of Americans in prison
• Lockuptown is the second largest “city” in the United States

Children’s Defense Fund: “Cradle to the Grave” effort includes photo of young kid on milk carton being booked:

http://www.childrensdefense.org/programs-campaigns/black-community-crusade-for-children-II

Videos: Black Leaders Address Crisis:

http://www.childrensdefense.org/programs-campaigns/black-community-crusade-for-children-II/videos.html

http://cdf.childrensdefense.org/site/PageServer?pagename=c2pp_report2007

http://cdf.childrensdefense.org/site/PageServer?pagename=c2pp_factsheets

http://www.childrensdefense.org/child-research-data-publications/data/cradle-prison-pipeline-report-2007-full-highres.html

Washington Times: Training black teens how to DWB (Drive While Black) by Jeneba Ghatt

http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/politics-raising-children/2011/mar/31/black-v-blue-training-black-teens-how-drive-while-/

Only approximately 7% of the American population is African American, but they make up 46% of the total 2.1 million male inmates in jail or prison (U.S. Department of Justice, 2000).

A wide racial disproportion of the incarcerated population in each state: the proportion of blacks in prison populations exceeded the proportion among state residents in twenty states; the percent of blacks incarcerated was five times greater than the resident population.
(source 2000 U.S. Census data via Wikipedia)

A black male born in 1991 has a 29% chance of spending time in prison at some point in his life.

Nearly one in three African American males aged 20–29 are under some form of criminal justice supervision whether imprisoned, jailed, on parole or probation.

One out of nine African American men will be incarcerated between the ages of 20 and 34.
Black males ages 30 to 34 have the highest incarceration rate of any race/ethnicity.
(According to America Community Survey via Wikipedia)

Georgia Hall of Shame:
http://www.privateci.org/georgia.htm

Slavery and racism did not end in the 19th Century:

Festival organizers hope everyone will watch the movie “Slavery by Another Name.”

Links to the book (512 pages) and movie entitled:

“Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black People in America from the Civil War to World War II“

By Pulitzer Prizing winning author Douglas A. Blackmon
Publisher: Doubleday, ISBN 978-0-385-50625-0

http://www.slaverybyanothername.com

http://www.slaverybyanothername.com/the-book

http://video.pbs.org/program/slavery-another-name
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_by_Another_Name

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Sherman’s March to the Sea and Special Field Orders, No. 15:

Gen. William Sherman’s March to the Sea is the name commonly given to the Savannah Campaign in Georgia from November 15, 1864 to December 21, 1864 by Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman of the Union Army in the American Civil War.
The campaign began with Sherman’s troops leaving the captured city of Atlanta, Georgia, on November 16 and ended with the capture of the port of Savannah on December 21.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery_in_the_United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman%27s_March_to_the_Sea
Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tecumseh_Sherman

Sherman’s military campaigns of 1864 and 1865 freed many slaves, who greeted him “as a second Moses or Aaron” and joined his marches through Georgia and the Carolinas by the tens of thousands.
The fate of refugees became a pressing military and political issue.
Some abolitionists accused Sherman of doing little to alleviate the precarious living conditions of the freed slaves.
To address this issue, on January 12, 1865, Sherman met in Savannah with Secretary of War Stanton and with twenty local black leaders.

Freedmen & Southern Society Project: Newspaper Account of a Meeting between Black Religious Leaders and Union Military Authorities (that occurred on Jan. 12, 1865 at 8 p.m.)
http://www.history.umd.edu/Freedmen/savmtg.htm

Four days later, Sherman issued his Special Field Orders, No. 15.
The orders provided for the settlement of 40,000 freed slaves and black refugees on land expropriated from white landowners in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.
Those orders, which became the basis of the claim that the Union government had promised freed slaves “40 acres and a mule”, were revoked later that year by President Andrew Johnson.
In his Memoirs, Sherman noted political pressure to encourage the escape of slaves, in part to avoid the possibility that “able-bodied slaves will be called into the military service of the rebels.”
Sherman thought concentration on such policies would have delayed the “successful end” of the war and the liberation of all slaves.
He went on to summarize vividly his hard-war philosophy and to add, in effect, that he really did not want the help of liberated slaves in subduing the South:

“My aim then was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us. ‘Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.’ I did not want them to cast in our teeth what General Hood had once done at Atlanta, that we had to call on their slaves to help us to subdue them. But, as regards kindness to the race …, I assert that no army ever did more for that race than the one I commanded at Savannah.”

Source: Wikipedia

Slavery ended nearly 150 years ago. It’s over. Nothing left to see here. Except that it’s Black History Month, and those damnable minorities and their liberal allies keep bringing up the past, reminding everyone of that darkest blemish on American history. The only times you hear conservatives talking about it are to revise history as politicians like Ron Paul have been doing by mainstreaming the belief that the Civil War was not primarily fought over slavery. There is no acknowledgement from conservatives that slavery and its aftermath had any consequences that can be observed today. They continue to argue that everyone has an equal chance of success on an equal playing field. While a disproportionately high number of African Americans remain in deep poverty, conservatives bend over backwards to blame them for their circumstances.

With the way that generations overlap, there are living African Americans who have heard their great-grandparents tell stories of their relatives’ firsthand experiences surviving slavery. During the Great Depression, firsthand accounts by slaves were collected for those who are interested to hear them personally. What kinds of stories would be most relevant to the social circumstances of African Americans today? Certainly, there was the commonplace policy of purposely breaking up families for over 240 years. Ever since the Moynihan Report first identified the struggles of the black family, conservatives have been quick to pounce and attribute the high percentage of single parent families to their moral laxity. They are chronically unable to acknowledge that a systemic decimation of families perpetrated by white people plays a significant role in the instability of male-female relationships to this day.  We have no precedent for the recovery time required to overcome this type of assault on a fundamental societal institution.

Speaking of recovery time, it’s been approximately seven generations since formal slavery ended. But that’s not the whole story; this month on February 13^th, PBS will be airing the documentary, Slavery by Another Name, based on the book by Douglas Blackmon of The Wall Street Journal. This documentary will focus on the period from 1865 to World War II when African Americans experienced neo-slavery, a time of legal discrimination, widespread and brutal violence, and rampant criminalization. For example, “black codes,” or laws that were written to arrest and confine African Americans for crimes such as “vagrancy,” resulted in forced labor camps with conditions indistinguishable from slavery. Of note, a black man could be arrested for vagrancy for not having a job in a community that refused to employ him. As Blackmon states, “African Americans know this story in their hearts…and so people come up to me and say, ‘Gosh the story that my grandmother used to tell…I never believed it because she would describe that she was still a slave in Georgia after WWII or just before, and it never made sense to me, and now it does’…These are things that connect directly to the lives of people and the shape and pattern and structure of our society today.”

Continue reading here…

Related articles

• Presidential Proclamation – National African American History Month, 2012 (appablog.wordpress.com)
• Black History Month: A Visit To The Smithsonian National Museum Of African American History And Culture (washington.cbslocal.com)
• Laurence Fishburne narrated ‘Slavery By Another Name’ explores ‘shameful’ history (thegrio.com)
• Some blacks insist: ‘I’m not African-American’ (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• A Different Perspective (beenetworknews.com)
• Slavery By Another Name: Doug Blackmon, Bill Kennedy and Me (timesunion.com)

Please listen before reading on…

This left me, as one might expect, angered, hurt and hungry for more information about this. Ironically, I was invited by a co-worker last week to a talk at Harlem’s famous Abyssinian Baptist Church, in which lawyer/author Michelle Alexander was to be discussing her new book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. I was unfortunately unable to attend, however I found an NPR interview she did on MLK day which fulfilled my desire to hear about her book.

Please listen here. 

As I took in both of these bowls of information, I found myself feeling motivated. I found myself feeling once again angry and deeply hurt. Ironically,  find myself alive and well in the time of the first black president and yet I feel deeply frustrated and angry about the state of our nation. I have always felt that it was only through education, that one begins to truly draw the connections about who and where one is on the spectrum of existence. The things that my parents and grandparents have experienced as Black people in this country are a testament to the continued struggle that we find ourselves coming face to face with as adults. These are not distant struggles, these are the same struggles! Struggles that sometimes we forgot because we can eat at the lunch counter and hold down a job. Struggles we forget because we can attend college and drive our shiny new cars. But let me tell you that I’ve been called a nigger in my lifetime and so have my siblings. I’ve been told what I can’t and wasn’t supposed to do because I was black. And thousands of young black people continue to live in poverty and oppression and disenfranchisement and it is all part in parcel of the history that we are forever asked to forget. We are asked to put it in the past and let it go, well I say no! Because the moment we forget is the moment we allow the battles waged in the past to fall away and we abandon those who are still victims of severe discrimination and brutality in our nation and worldwide.

I remember when I went to Ghana a few years ago. I stood crying in the Slave Castles at Cape Coast and a friend who went with me, who was from India, but had lived many years in the US, look me in the eyes and said, “I get it. Now I get it.” That is possibly the most powerful thing anyone has ever said. The most healing, the most cathartic. Because it meant that in those moments of looking back through history she was able to piece together the puzzle that stands so haggard before us today. And it is with these increased pieces of knowledge, these moments in which we piece together the levels of atrocity, that we come to understand the state we find ourselves asked to live in now. Asked to live in these times, silent and happy with the “progress we’ve made.”

Until this country is able to acknowledge the horrors it’s committed against humanity, until this country is able to take some serious responsibility for the injustices it allows to continue under the guise of the “war on drugs” and the farce that names itself to be justice, we cannot rest. We must continue to open our eyes, educate ourselves and keep looking back. Keep glancing over your shoulder at our ancestors who are calling on us to fight harder, keep glancing around in our lives and acknowledging the truth. Shine a light on the wrong and perhaps one day we’ll find ourselves standing in the true light of freedom.

Prisons in America are allowed to deny access to any book that is considered likely to incite violence. Slavery by Another Name is an account of how many black Americans were technically freed from slavery after the US Civil War but remained bonded to employers who bought and sold them as if they were still property.

The book’s author, Douglas Blackmon, has dismissed as absurd the suggestion that his book could in any way be deemed to incite violence or hatred. Melvin, who is serving a life sentence for allegedly helping his brother commit murder when he was 14 years old, says that the ban is an affront to his civil rights.

Mr. Melvin never received the book. According to his lawsuit, he was told by an official at Kilby that the book was “too incendiary” and “too provocative,” and was ordered to have it sent back at his own expense.

He appealed, but in his lawsuit he says that prison officials upheld the decision, citing a regulation banning any mail that incites “violence based on race, religion, sex, creed, or nationality, or disobedience toward law enforcement officials or correctional staff.” (Mr. Melvin is white.)

So he sued.

A spokesman for the Alabama Department of Corrections said officials had not seen the suit on Monday and could not comment.

Mr. Stevenson, who is also the director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, said he considered the lawsuit to be less about the rights of people in prison but primarily about the country’s refusal to own up to its racial history.

· A LIVING WAGE FOR WORK: In violation of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution prohibiting slavery and involuntary servitude, the DOC demands prisoners work for free.

As this is ostensibly a legal blog, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that it does not, in fact, violate the Thirteenth Amendment to require prisoners to work for free. (That, of course, is an entirely separate issue from whether prisoners should be paid as a policy matter, or whether particular prisoners may have constitutionally cognizable challenges to particular work assignments — I’m speaking here at a broad level of generality.) And I’d rather risk pedantic than remiss, so here’s the text of the Thirteenth Amendment, passed and ratified in 1865, with the relevant language bolded:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

This is why states that do pay prisoners can legally pay them well under the minimum wage. From the Prison Policy Initiative, here’s a breakdown of prison hourly wages, ranging from $0 in Georgia and Texas, to 13 cents in Nevada prison camps, to $1.15 in some federal prison industries jobs.

Prisoners also face basically insurmountable barriers to forming unions. As summarized by the Jailhouse Lawyers Handbook:

Prison officials are permitted to ban petitions, like those asking for improvements in prison conditions, as long as prisoners have other ways to voice their complaints. Duamutef v. O’Keefe, 98 F.3d 22 (2d Cir. 1996). Officials can ban a prisoner from forming an association or union of inmates, because it is reasonable to conclude that such organizing activity would involve threats to prison security. Brooks v. Wainwright, 439 F. Supp. 1335 (M.D. Fl. 1977). In one very important case, the Supreme Court upheld the prison’s ban on union meetings, solicitation of other prisoners to join the union, and bulk mailings from the union to prisoners, as long as there were other ways for prisoners to communicate complaints to prison officials and for the union to communicate with prisoners. Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners’ Labor Union, Inc., 433 U.S. 119 (1977).

Given all of these legal barriers, not to mention the practical barriers of prison life, it’s all the more remarkable that Georgia prisoners were able to organize and carry out a collective protest of any kind, much less one that lasted almost a week (well, depending on who you ask, the prisoners or the guards) and that attracted national media attention. Hopefully, their demands will draw attention to prison conditions not just in Georgia but around the country.

For those interested in the history of the Thirteenth Amendment, I’ve posted some notes and recommended reading after the jump.

The Thirteenth Amendment: A Brief Overview

For a brief overview of the Thirteenth Amendment’s history, language, and meaning, I recommend “A New Birth of Freedom,” ch. 10 of America’s Constitution: A Biography (Random House, 2005), by Yale Law professor Akhil Reed Amar. The language of the amendment was mostly borrowed from the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and various subsequent statutes regulating slavery in newly acquired territories, but the substance, Amar writes, was totally new:

While the Thirteenth Amendment clearly condemned traditional forms of unfree labor — chattel slavery itself, debt peonage, and so on — the antebellum experience had also dramatized a variety of other, less obviously economic forms of degradation, dehumanization, and unfreedom. While slave men had been worked against their will in the fields, paradigmatic slavery for women and children had taken other forms above and beyond field work — sexual exploitation and child abuse, for example. By banning all forms of “slavery [and] involuntary servitude,” the Thirteenth Amendment cast a wide net not merely over the nation’s economy but also over its social structure and its domestic institutions. …

Despite its seemingly traditional language, the Thirteenth Amendment thus marked a radical break with the antebellum federal Constitution. That prewar document had imposed few limits on what a state could do to its own inhabitants, whereas the Thirteenth pulverized bedrock legal principles and practices in more than one-third of the states and imposed new affirmative federal obligations on every state. The old Constitution had insulated property-holders from uncompensated takings, but the new one ratified and extended the largest redistribution of property in American history. Slaves were worth more than any other capital asset in the nation except land. In 1860, human chattel represented about three times as much wealth as the entire nation’s manufacturing and railroad stock, yet the Thirteenth made no provision for compensation, even of loyal masters in true-blue states. … A structurally proslavery Constitution became, in a flash, stunningly antislavery.

As it has been subsequently interpreted by the courts, the Thirteenth Amendment doesn’t just ban slavery but also various practices that courts have deemed too uncomfortably close to slavery. For instance, the Thirteenth Amendment protects your right to walk away from a labor contract before your work is complete: you may be compelled to pay damages, but you can’t be compelled by a court to actually finish the work. In other words, you can’t voluntarily contract your future self into forced labor. Nevertheless, many Southern states continued to criminalize breach of contract well in the twentieth century, creating a de facto system of involuntary servitude that is well covered in Leon Litwack’s Been in the Storm So Long (1980), and virtual slavery remains the norm in many corners of American agriculture. But that’s just to say that our system of enforcing constitutional guarantees through the legal system often fails; as a theoretical matter the Thirteenth Amendment prohibits these practices.

The only exception, then — the only form of involuntary servitude explicitly allowed by the Thirteenth Amendment — is involuntary servitude as punishment for “crimes.” Of course, states have few restrictions on how they define “crimes.” During Reconstruction and well into the 1940s many Southern states took advantage of this exception to essentially reinstitute slavery in other forms, as covered by Wall Street Journal reporter Douglas Blackmon in his book Slavery by Another Name (which I noted here).

In light of its plain text, the Thirteenth Amendment has generally been interpreted to bar legal challenges to unpaid or minimally paid prison labor. But a 2009 student note in the William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal argued that there is a constitutional case to be made against involuntary labor in private prisons, since private prison companies are motivated by profits rather than rehabilitation (which was, way back in the nineteenth century, the original justification for prison labor, believe it or not).

The Birmingham (Ala.) News has this interesting article about the reception of the book in that Southern city. Although Birmingham is well known for its central role in the Civil Rights Movement, the former steel town has yet to fully confront this aspect of its troubled racial past:

Reading the book, Robert Corley, director of [the University of Alabama at Birmingham]‘s Global and Community Leaders Honor Program, was shocked to discover something he’d never known about his great-grandfather, Robert Franklin.

Franklin, a constable and shopkeeper in Goodwater, was convicted of rounding up blacks and essentially selling them to a plantation owner. Franklin was fined $1,000. Corley said no one in his family knew the story and they have been struggling to comprehend it.

Franklin continued in business. When he died in 1946, Franklin’s estate was worth about $1 million. Corley said his own ability to go to college and obtain advanced degrees was in some part due to Franklin’s prosperity.

Corley, who helped design the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and was a founding member of its board, wonders about the damage done to the men his great-grandfather arrested.

“My great-grandfather was a real criminal,” Corley said. “These others he arrested were not, and yet he didn’t suffer any real consequences.”

Odessa Woolfolk, the BCRI’s former board president, said more attention should be paid to the period between Reconstruction and the civil rights movement. Some worry about bringing up the story, but the facts need to be faced, she said.

“We have a tendency to want to sweep unpleasant facts under the rug,” she said. “I hope that there gets to be more public discussion about the book and the history that the book recalls.”

Notice how those wordy types like long titles…none of that “Duck, Duck Goose” stuff for them! I love to surround myself with competitive types. He just hated to hear that I had more readers than he did with my short and sweet titles. (Of course, first I had to explain the blog thing for him.) Truly impressed, he was. At least that’s how I interpretted his giggle.

Though I’m a little partial, this was a great event for the library, over 150 people showed up after a dinner at the University Club (while I was hanging with the planning committee!!). This right on the heals of the Family Fun Fest on Pre-primary Saturday which welcomed 600 people for a two hour circus under the flourescents! Hey, it was a good time! Hope the other half of the library folks had just as much enjoyment over at The Palace…we’ll compare notes manana.

SLAVERY BY ANOTHER NAME (Jan, 2008 Doubleday/Jan 2009 Anchor paperback) by Wall Street Jounal bureau chief Douglas A. Blackmon lays out the story so cogently that I had to read it in small sections to spare myself the tears, fury, and shame of knowing that my own state and nation conspired to arrest black men for things like walking along a railroad track, speaking loudly in a white person’s presence, not being able to produce proof of employment when stopped on the street, or changing employers without permission. Once arrested and found guilty by a kangaroo court, they were sentenced to hard labor in steel mills, mines, or to labor camps owned by states or the federal government. The awful truth that Blackmon asks us to look at is that until World War II, our country treated black citizens with the same terrible cruelty that Nazi Germany treated Jews.

On this day of celebrating the day when slaves learned they had been free for two years, I highly recommend Blackmon’s book for every American. We will never get past the poison of slavery in our society until we look squarely at it and acknowledge that it hurt every one of us. And still does.

Recreation of slavery in Brazil

Today in 1888 (121 years ago) Brazil officially abolished its slave trade – the last nation in the Western Hemisphere to do so.

Slavery and the slave trade dealt exclusively with Africa and persisted for nearly 400 years. Brazil lasted longer than any other Western Hemispheric nation, although the US South had the highest concentration of slaves that the world has ever seen – 6 million on the eve of the Civil War in 1860. Brazil never reached those heights, but it used slaves in the same fashion as white southerners did. Not only was slavery economically essential to parts of Brazil, but it also created castes of human beings that persist today.

Brazil, like the US, has to deal with a lot of racial strife – positive and negative – over the course of the century since official the end of the slave trade. Let it not be confused – the end of the slave trade did not signal emancipation. Brazil officially began its emancipation of slaves in 1822 when it became an independent nation – but progress was slow. As Douglas Blackmon’s literally revolutionary work Slavery By Another Name: The Re-enslavement of Black People in America from the Civil War to World War II (which just deservedly won a Pulitzer Prize) shows, emancipation did not equate to freedom in the South as forces of oppression in the forms of sheriffs, corrupt judges, systems of debt peonage and forced bondage and imprisonment were implemented to craft Southern entrepreneurs dreams of industrialization.

To Blackmon, these systems of oppression ended in the 1950s as the civil rights movement began to grow and would be hard to fathom these literal and tangible acts happening today in America – despite race and racism still being a major factor in our daily lives. In Brazil, debt peonage and modern slavery – like the forms taken in Blackmon’s narrative – exist today. Just last year, and going back decades, thousands of workers (4,634 in 2008) have been released from slavery and slave-like conditions. In 2004, the government of Brazil said 25,000 citizens work in conditions “analogous to slavery.”In 2007, 1,000 workers at a sugar cane plantation were freed.

It is clear that slavery is still a problem, especially when the mechanisms of racial subjugation remain in place. The US South is still dealing with this, just as Brazil is. It is never enough to ignore “our Negroes,” as white southerners insidiously called blacks, or dismiss the noise from poor people in the favelas across Brazil. We must continue centuries old conversations so that this anniversary is truly a disgusting prick upon the flesh of human history.

A $70 million loss at Baptist Health means bond trouble for the health system, the latest in a string of bad news. Still, expansion!

Meanwhile, at St. Vincent, the hospital’s CEO moves forward on a plan to cut 200 positions by June.

Onward and upward! Chris Roberts, founding CEO of Little Rock’s Centennial Bank, has joined Little Rock’s Delta Trust & Bank as president.

More with Pulitzer Prize-winning Arkansas native Douglas Blackmon, who talks to Mark Hengel.

Gwen Moritz on ANB Financial: “Irresponsible borrowers and irresponsible lenders do have a way of finding each other.”

Jim Karrh wraps up his two-parter on e-mail marketing. Tactics and tips to make it sing for your business.

Brave New Restaurant: Still tasty!

The raging wet-dry alcohol issue in Arkadelphia has virtually paralyzed the Daily Siftings-Herald, which has almost stopped covering the debate altogether! God bless newspapers. You’re gonna miss ‘em when they’re gone.

Author Douglas Blackmon along with Lillie McCain talk about John McCain Family ties on CNN.

Lillie McCain is a descendant of slaves once held on the plantation of John McCain’s great, great grandfather. Oral history of the African American McCains claims a biological connection and family relationship.

The white McCains, according to author Douglas Blackmon, say that “if that’s the case they never knew.” 

Lillie adds that “given the way that the slave masters interacted with the slaves it would be uncommon” to not be biologically related. She says that they neither discount nor are ashamed whether that connection is real or not. 

The white McCain’s who Blackmon spoke to told him, “it doesn’t really matter” if they share bloodlines with African-American McCains. Lillie confirms that DNA testing has not been done.

Still, McCain’s brother, Joseph, has embraced the family ties by attending the McCain Reunion with the African-American McCains held every two years at Teoc, Mississippi. However, Senator McCain, over the years, has chosen to not attend, again missing this year’s reunion, held on July 24. 

Both sides of the McCain Family deserve kudos. Like a growing number of Americans whose families are connected by the travesty of slavery, they have chosen to tackle that part of our history head on.

No secrets. No denials. No shutting the eyes, hoping that it all goes away.

America is a country experiencing rapidly changing demographics. A real leader would take the opportunity to use his elaborately expressed history as an excellent teaching moment for America, rather than using his campaign to stir up the emotions of his constituency by reinforcing unjustified fears of the “otherness” of Barack Obama.

Apparently, that leader is not Senator McCain who seems to drunkenly steer his Straight Talk Express mindlessly and hazardously through small town America. 

Whether or not the racists living in our nation approve, America is “browning.” Get over it. People having browner complexions will not be hopping on boats or planes in an attempt to apply for residence in other countries. It just ain’t gonna happen.

McCain could go a long way in helping his constituency understand it. But, that’s only if the senator bothers to do what it takes to understand it for himself.

More shame on John McCain.

I’ll get a video transcript up later in the day.

(edit)

J Gowasky

As my nighttime zone out brain nightcap, I’ve been streaming videos from PBS.org of Bill Moyers Journal, a news/commentary show with long and engrossing thoughtful interviews with (normally) one notable expert/author/journalist about one of the many most important and perhaps under-covered stories of the day.  His most recent interview with former Colonel (now author and Boston University professor) Andrew J Bacevich about the state of the American executive governing body, and the war in Iraq, was very interesting and ended on a touching note.

The segment that really kept me up one night was an older one with Douglas Blackmon, discussing what they termed as ‘Neoslavery’.  The point that Moyers brings up that I lamentably never hear mentioned is how extreme racism’s existence in history is so RECENT.  Moyers makes a minor, but significant observation that some of the most glaring excesses of vestigial slavery still existed even in Moyers’ lifetime.  Sometimes we look at slavery in America as some fossil from a bygone era, and neglect to keep in mind that there are MILLIONS of people alive today that were alive when 14 year old African-American Emmett Louis Till was brutally murdered for allegedly whistling at a white women.  I hate to spoil the ending for those that don’t know the story, but (highlight to see)… THE TWO MURDERERS WERE FOUND INNOCENT AND EVEN WERE PAID BY LOOK MAGAZINE FOR THEIR CONFESSIONAL TELLING OF THE EVENTS SURROUNDING THEIR MURDER OF THE CHILD, SECURE IN THEIR FREEDOM FROM RECRIMINATION BY WAY OF DOUBLE JEOPARDY PROTECTION.

Many people alive today were children when blacks were routinely lynched for crimes real and imagined, often involving perceived ‘threat’ to white women, as the 14 year old (albeit husky) Emmett apparently represented to two adult males.  Racism in roughly its most brutal form existed by government mandate or government apathy in the lifetimes of many of our neighbours today.  This is not meant to be accusatory of those who lived to see that, as most were so young as to hardly be able to be involved, but I find many people who don’t observe racism and don’t tend to their history believe that racism just… Does… Not… Exist… Anymore.  That it ossified and was worn to dust by the stifling winds of enlightened America.  Not enough time has passed to erode that mountain. Not nearly.

That an idea that seems so obviously wrong and truly exemplary of the height of human malice could be held or allowed to persist so broadly, so recently, reminds me of why it’s so important that I, and every other person in the world, die one day: So that the parasitic heinous ideas that subsist on our souls will die, starving in our empty husks.

… and the cow goes moo

read more | digg story

On March 30, 1908, Green Cottenham was arrested by the Shelby County, Ala., sheriff and charged with vagrancy. After three days in the county jail, the 22-year-old African-American was sentenced to an unspecified term of hard labor. The next day, he was handed over to a unit of U.S. Steel Corp. and put to work with hundreds of other convicts in the notorious Pratt Mines complex on the outskirts of Birmingham. Four months later, he was still at the coal mines when tuberculosis killed him.

Born two decades after the end of slavery in America, Green Cottenham died a slave in all but name. The facts are dutifully entered in the handwritten registry of prisoners in Shelby County and in other state and local government records.

In the early decades of the 20th century, tens of thousands of convicts — most of them, like Mr. Cottenham, indigent black men — were snared in a largely forgotten justice system rooted in racism and nurtured by economic expedience. Until nearly 1930, decades after most other Southern states had abolished similar programs, Alabama was providing convicts to businesses hungry for hands to work in farm fields, lumber camps, railroad construction gangs and, especially in later years, mines. For state and local officials, the incentive was money; many years, convict leasing was one of Alabama’s largest sources of funding.

Janet Maslin’s review of Douglas Blackmon’s recently published book, “Slavery By Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II”:

He [Blackmon] describes free men and women forced into industrial servitude, bound by chains, faced with subhuman living conditions and subject to physical torture. That plight was horrific. But until 1951, it was not outside the law.

All it took was anything remotely resembling a crime. Bastardy, gambling, changing employers without permission, false pretense, “selling cotton after sunset”: these were all grounds for arrest in rural Alabama by 1890. And as Mr. Blackmon explains in describing incident after incident, an arrest could mean a steep fine. If the accused could not pay this debt, he or she might be imprisoned.

Alabama was among the Southern states that profitably leased convicts to private businesses. As the book illustrates, arrest rates and the labor needs of local businesses could conveniently be made to dovetail.

For the coal, lumber, turpentine, brick, steel and other interests described here, a steady stream of workers amounted to a cheap source of fuel. And the welfare of such workers was not the companies’ concern. So in the case of John Clarke, convicted of “gaming” on April 11, 1903, a 10-day stint in the Sloss-Sheffield mine in Coalburg, Ala., could erase his fine. But it would take an additional 104 days for him to pay fees to the sheriff, county clerk and witnesses who appeared at his trial.

In any case, Mr. Clarke survived for only one month and three days in this captivity. The cause of his death was said to be falling rock. At least another 2,500 men were incarcerated in Alabama labor camps at that time.