In one week, plezWorld is heading to DC for the Barack Obama Inauguration. To my way of thinking, this is probably the most significant (if not, the most important) presidential inauguration since George Washington's inauguration.
When George Washington took office, he owned over 200 people who looked like Barack Obama. And now over 200 years later, a man who looked like the slaves of George Washington will be sworn in as the President of the United States.
As an American, I feel compelled to bear witness to this historic event and my seven-year old daughter will be able to tell her children that she was "there" for history. Make sure that you are on the right side of history... as January 20, 2009 will have to be added to all US history books going forward as it will easily eclipse Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech which was delivered in Washington, DC in 1963.
Where will you be for Obama's inauguration?
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On Saturday evening, the Obama family visited the Lincoln Memorial. President-elect Barack Obama will be sworn in using the Bible of his political hero Abraham Lincoln. Obama will be the first president to use the Lincoln Bible for his inauguration since Lincoln used it in 1861. Inauguration organizers have said Obama's inaugural theme, "A New Birth of Freedom," was inspired by Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. The president-elect also plans a train trip from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Washington three days before the inauguration, following the final leg of the train route taken by Lincoln.
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In other news: An aircraft carrier named after President George H.W. Bush (#41) was commissioned on Saturday afternoon. The 1,092-foot, 20-story USS George H.W. Bush was decorated with red, white and blue banners for Saturday's ceremony at Naval Station Norfolk.
The 41st president joined the Navy at 18 and served as an aviator in World War II. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and three Air Medals for his Navy service in the Pacific during the war, according to the Department of Defense. His time in the Navy ended after about four years.
About 17,000 people were expected to attend Saturday's ceremony. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Vice President Dick Cheney and Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine were there, as was Bush's son President George W. Bush (#43) and his wife, Laura.
After the ceremony, President George W. Bush left Norfolk for Maryland's Andrews Air Force Base on what turned out to be his last scheduled flight on Air Force One.
On Tuesday, the House of Representatives passed a non-binding resolution apologizing to African-Americans for slavery and the era of Jim Crow (that officially ended in the mid-1960's). Lawmakers also said they were committed to rectifying "the lingering consequences" of slavery and segregation.
The nonbinding resolution, which passed on a voice vote, was introduced by Rep. Steve Cohen, a white Congressman who represents a majority black district in Memphis, Tennessee. While many states have apologized for slavery, it is the first time a branch of the federal government has done so. In passing the resolution, the House also acknowledged the "injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow."
"Jim Crow," or Jim Crow laws, were state and local laws enacted mostly in the Southern and border states of the United States between the 1870s and 1965, when African-Americans were denied the right to vote and other civil liberties and were legally segregated from whites. The name "Jim Crow" came from a character played by T.D. "Daddy" Rice who portrayed a slave while in blackface during the mid-1800s.
Congressman Cohen issued the following statement on his website after the passage of the bill:
I am very proud that my colleagues in the House of Representatives passed our resolution apologizing for slavery and Jim Crow in the United States. This is a historic moment in the ongoing struggle for civil rights in this country, and I hope that this legislation can serve to open the dialogue on race and equality for all. Apologies are not empty gestures, but are a necessary first step towards any sort of reconciliation between people. I thank Congressman John Conyers (MI-14), whose assistance in moving this resolution forward was indispensable, for his strong support for this bill.
The resolution does not address the controversial issue of reparations. Some members of the African-American community have called on lawmakers to give cash payments or other financial benefits to descendants of slaves as compensation for the suffering caused by slavery.
Read the entire CNN.com article on the slavery apology here.
plez sez: big friggin' whoop! so a non-binding resolution by congress comes along 143 years after slavery to apologize to a group of people who are not slaves and don't know any slaves (save stories from parents and grandparents)! i've never been a proponent of these empty gestures, because they are only words that do nothing to heal the wounds that have afflicted many in the Black community from slavery to this day.
this non-binding resolution will not put food in the bellies of the poor Black children that will go to bed hungry tonight. this non-binding resolution will not put a hot breakfast on their plates tomorrow morning before they trudge off to school hungry from the night before. this non-binding resolution will not provide economic development and bring jobs closer to their neighborhoods so their mothers and fathers can find a decent job where they live.
this non-binding resolution will not improve the schools that are attended by a majority of Black children, schools that are in the worse shape, have the most inexperienced teachers, and whose students perform the worse on standardized tests. this non-binding resolution does not address the 50 percent of our boys who will not graduate from high school. this non-binding resolution does not address the more than 60 percent of Black high school dropouts who will find their way into the criminal justice system.
this non-binding resolution will not provide access to higher education for the Black students who do graduate from high school. this non-binding resolution will not help the Black college graduates find a job.
this non-binding resolution will not prevent mortgage companies and insurance carriers from red-lining Black communities; charging higher interest rates and higher premiums for insurance.
this non-binding resolution will not prevent employers from being so threatened by Black men that if they hire them, they won't be the last hired and the first fired (CNN's Black in America reported that a white man with a felony record has a better chance of getting hired than an educated Black man with no record). this non-binding resolution won't stop a racist from using his/her dim view of the Black race to hold back or hold down or denigrate or slander or impugn a person of African-American descent.
this non-binding resolution will not bring to justice the hundreds - no, thousands - who have raped and pillaged the Black community for profit, greed, and hate. this non-binding resolution will not bring to justice those who have killed and lynched Black people with impunity without fear of reprisal or prosecution.
this non-binding resolution will not address the wealth that my family and millions of families like mine have been denied over the past 300 years! imagine the labor, work, investments, and land that has been denied Black people from the day that their status of indentured servant was converted to slave back in the 1600's and 1700's. how many BILLIONS of dollars of net worth has been stolen or appropriated out of the coffers of Black people, money that the Rockefellers, Kennedys, Vanderbilts, Roosevelts, etc. etc. have enjoyed without equal share with their Black brethren? how many MILLIONAIRES who grace the pages of Fortune magazine had their family fortunes built on the back of free and cheap laborers? how many southern white families are still living off of the money that was made from Black labor in the cotton and tobacco fields of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Georgia?
there is a precedence for Congress apologizing to ethnic groups for injustices:
in 1988, congress passed and President Reagan signed an act apologizing to the 120,000 japanese-americans who were held in detention camps during World War II. The 60,000 detainees who were alive at the time each received $20,000 from the government
in 1993 the senate also passed a resolution apologizing for the "illegal overthrow" of the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1893.
in april 2008, the Senate passed a resolution sponsored by sen. sam brownback (R-KS) that apologized to Native Americans for "the many instances of violence, maltreatment and neglect."
it isn't lost on plezWorld that the two groups that have suffered the longest and the most in america (native americans and Blacks) are the last groups to receive "apologies" from the federal government.
i'm not big on reparations: at this point, there needs to be wholesale correction to the way that Black America (as a whole) does business... and a temporary infusion of cash will not fix our problems of the lack of adequate health care and health education, the lack of quality education in our communities, and the lack of economic development and security in our communities.
i would favor other forms of reparations (and affirmative action) directed to Black americans over the next 30 to 40 years that would begin address these problems:
enact creative measures to eliminate the achievement gap in public school education for Black students
begin to pay teachers a lot more for teaching in lower performing public schools in impoverished communities
eliminate tuition for Black college students making progress towards bachelors or advanced degrees
increase public safety in poor communities with better paid and better trained police
provide tax credits for training programs that target under-represented communities in the workforce
to increase entrepreneurship, reduce or eliminate taxes on Black-owned businesses that operate in the Black community
provide tax credits for companies that outsource jobs to under-represented communities in the workforce (instead of opening a customer service shop in Bangalore, India, open one in Albany, Georgia)
reduce or eliminate the tax burden on Black americans (lower taxes so Blacks get to keep more of their wages)
provide refinancing to lower mortgage rates for Black homeowners (lower the fixed mortgage rate to below the prime rate)
provide lower rates for insurance on homes and automobiles
failing that, let's go to Plan B... it's been about 45 years since the passage of the Civil Rights Act and japanese-americans were given their reparation payments about 45 years after they were detained during World War II, i guess all African-Americans over the age of 45 should start looking for a $20,000 check in the mail.
As mentioned in the past, the greater sum of American history is rarely written in books. The small burg of Louisa, Virginia was the 1929 birthplace of the first Black person to hold elected office in the United States. John Mercer Langston was the son of Ralph Quarles, a wealthy white slaveowner, and Lucy Langston, an emancipated slave. Both of his parents died when he was four years old and he was raised by a friend of his father in Ohio. Langston was the fifth Black person to graduate from Oberlin College.
John Mercer Langston was elected township clerk of Brownhelm, Ohio, on April 2, 1855 by popular vote, becoming the first "Negro" elevated to public office by popular vote. He was elected to a number of local offices in Ohio, was active in the Black freedom movement with Frederick Douglass, served as educational inspector for the Freedmen's Bureau, founded what would become the Howard University law school, and was the US minister to Haiti. In 1888, he ran for Congress in Virginia's 4th Congressional District as an independent; his victory was initially denied, but he contested the election results and eventually won his set.
It is interesting to note that John Langston was elected to office five years before Abraham Lincolm became president. It has been a long 153 years between him becoming the Brownhelm, Ohio township clerk and Barack Obama standing on the cusp of becoming the President of the United States. From then until now, less than 4 percent of elected officials in the US are Black.
Historian William Cheek, who co-authored "John Mercer Langston and the Fight for Black Freedom, 1829-65" with wife Aimee Lee Cheek, describes Langston as slim and debonair, of mixed-raced parentage, highly educated, an expert in constitutional law, a community organizer (he went around Ohio setting up schools), and a soaring orator who sought to unify a divided country after the Civil War. The similarities between Langston and Obama are uncanny... John Mercer Langston was Barack Hussein Obama before Obama!
Read the entire Washington Post article titled "The 'Obama Before Obama'" here.
plez sez: john mercer langston, a extraordinary american, relegated to the dusty footnotes of us history. the first american of african descent elected to office sought elected office six years BEFORE the first shots of the civil war were fired.
I've heard it called the Beltway Primaries, the Chesapeake Primaries, and the Potomac Primaries... basically, Democratic and Republican voters in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC head to the polls today to cast a vote for their desired presidential nominee. My mother (and other relatives) live in the Hampton Roads area in southeastern Virginia... everyone I've talked to is voting for Obama.
My mother plans to vote first. Then she'll swing through and pick up Aunt Bea to take her to the polls. Both are fervent Barack Obama fans.
My parents' generation was raised during the Great Depression and a time of rampant discrimination and Jim Crow laws in North Carolina. They came up having to ride in the back of the bus, having to go to the Black school, having to take off almost half of the school year to harvest the tobacco and cotton, having to sit in the balcony at the movie theaters, not being able to rent a decent hotel room, and not being able to look a white person in the eye!
They also came up at a time when they could not exercise their right to vote: my mother's father was a landowner of more than 100 acres of prime Carolina tobacco farmland from the early 1930's. But being a landowner did not trump his being a Black man in the segregated South. My grandfather's parents had been slaves in the Ahoskie, North Carolina area, but that did not deter him from getting an education and raising 11 children on his own land.
So my mother and her sister and her brother will go to the polls today to exercise the rights that had been so long denied to them. They will go to the polls to exercise the rights that so many of their contemporaries died for. And they will cast their vote for a man whose presidency will change the paradigm of how America upholds its promise of equal rights for all. They will all vote for Barack Obama!
Program Description: Medical scholar Harriet Washington talks about her new book, “Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present.” The book reveals the hidden underbelly of scientific research and the roots of the African American health deficit. It also examines less well-known abuses and looks at unethical practices and mistreatment of blacks that are still taking place in the medical establishment today.
A report by the American Cancer society shows that African Americans are still more likely than any other group to develop and die of cancer. The study states that socio-economic factors play the largest role in this disparity - African Americans have less access to health care and information, and are less likely to get screening and medical treatment. Well, a new book offers one answer into why black Americans deeply mistrust American medicine.
Harriet Washington. Medical writer and editor. She is a visiting Scholar at DePaul University School of Law. Previously she was a Fellow in Medical Ethics at Harvard Medical School and at Stanford University. She is the author of the new book, “Medical Apartheid.” -- January 19th, 2007.
Interview begins at 17:00 on the divShare Audio Player
plez sez: this interview about medical apartheid in america ran chills up my spine!
i was aware of the Tuskegee Experiment, but was not aware of the amount of medical experimentation that had been wrought on Black people since we landed in this country as slaves. and the chilling experimentation that continues to this day in Africa and Brazil on behalf of large pharmaceutical companies.
after listening to this, one can see why illness and disease (cancer, hypertension, diabetes, hiv/aids, mental illness, etc.) always seems to be worse in the Black community. and i have no doubt that this long history (over 300 years) of being used as guinea pigs by the medical establishment is one reason why Black people are so leery of preventive medicine.
"They were faithful and true to you then; they are no less so today. And yet they ask no special favors as a class; they ask no special protection as a race. They feel that they purchased their inheritance, when upon the battlefields of this country, they watered the tree of liberty with the precious blood that flowed from their loyal veins. They ask no favours, they desire; and must have; an equal chance in the race of life."
- John R. Lynch, former slave and member of the U.S. Congress, speaking in support of the Civil Rights Act of 1875
John R. Lynch was born a slave on September 10, 1847 in Concordia Parish, Louisiana. His father was an immigrant from Ireland and his mother was a slave. He remained in slavery until freed by Union forces in 1863 during the Civil War. Self-educated by secretly eavesdropping on class lessons at a white school, Lynch learned the photography trade, became a Justice of the Peace, and then was elected to the Mississippi legislature when he was only 26 years old. He will subsequently be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1873. His greatest effort was in the long debate in support of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 that banned discrimination in public accommodations. Although, the law was found to be unconstitutional, parts of the act were incorporated into the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (some 90 years later) and the Fair Housing Act.
plez sez: it remains a mystery to me why so much of the rich history of America is relegated to the far reaches of our collective memories. to many, the Civil Rights Movement began in 1963, with King's "I Have a Dream Speech" and ended in 1968 with his assassination. who would know that the quest for freedom and true equality stretches back to the last shots of the Civil War, and the voices for equality from long ago echo to this day?
the history of Black people in America IS the history of America! John R. Lynch was born 160 years ago today.
"If ya don't know, now ya know...!" - The Notorious B.I.G.
plez sez: "Zeitgeist" comes in at just under 2 hours; this movie questions the basis of Christianity, the controversy surrounding September 11, 2001 (9/11), the creation of the Federal Reserve Bank and the Federal Income Tax, and history of profiteering from war. If you cannot watch this movie with an open mind and natural skepticism, then I recommend that you do not watch!
Karen Russell writes the following in her article on Huffington Post this morning:
On what planet is the Confederate Flag NOT racist? Here on Planet Earth, the Klan uses the Confederate Flag as symbol of white supremacy. Get a clue. If the Klan is using your symbol, it's racist.
To deny that it is racist is to deny common sense and to ignore recent history.
The flag enjoyed a huge renaissance during the Civil Rights era. Angry, white Southerners brought it back to show they weren't going to take this whole desegregation thing lying down. They adopted it again as a symbol of hatred and defiance. They dusted it off to terrorize blacks who had the audacity to fight Jim Crow laws.
plez sez: i rarely pull someone else's post into plezWorld, because you can just as easily go to their post and read it yourself. but this one really resonated with me and i wanted it on my blog, as well.
i've lived in the south for over 25 years, so i've seen my fill of this offensive symbol (for a small fee, you can even have one on the license plate for your car). and i have not met one confederate flag waving yahoo who i would say is not a racist! this confederate flag issue is so wrong and so offensive on so many levels, it is hard to put emotions aside and write my thoughts coherently. but here goes:
the "it's my heritage" argument: guess what, buddy, it's part of my heritage, too! it's just a slimy and dirty and hateful heritage: it's a heritage where hate was used to subjugate and KILL Black people, it's a heritage where Black peoples rights were abused and ignored, and it's a heritage that gives the flag waver tacit approval to speak his/her hate in public without saying a word. when you say that you are not a racist for wanting to wave or display a confederate flag, you are pissing on my leg and saying that it is raining!
the "civil war memorabilia" argument: guess what, buddy, the civil war was fought to destroy this country and preserve the institution of slavery. i don't care how many stories about the number of slaves who fought for the confederacy, because those slaves did not know what they were fighting for (similar to our troops who are currently in Iraq, but that's for another post).
the "you want your history, but you want to destroy mine" argument: guess what, buddy, the civil war was fought to destroy this country and preserve the institution of slavery. that is something that we should never forget and it should be part of every child's educational development. don't teach children about the nobility of the Lost Cause, teach them about the folly of the southern states judgment.
the "states rights" argument: guess what, buddy, no state has the right to promulgate hate against its citizens. in most southern states, the Black population is very sizeable and everything possible was done to keep those citizens in check (anyone remember Jim Crow?). the people who lamented the end of Jim Crow were the same ones who were waving the confederate flag while they were doing it! this is no different than a group of skinheads waving a nazi swaskita, it is no less hateful or threatening.
South Carolina should not have been given the opportunity to host neither the Republican nor the Democratic debates on national television. i specifically wrote nothing about the debates because i did not watch either debate, it is part of my personal boycott of the state (i only go there or go through there if necessary).
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that the bill that would designate April as Confederate History and Heritage Month will not be going before the Georgia State Senate. An excerpt from the AJC reads:
Senate Bill 283 passed a key Senate committee a few days after Republican leaders in the House initially gave a lukewarm response to a request by the state NAACP for the General Assembly and Perdue to apologize for slavery.
State Rep. Al Williams (D-Midway) said he planned to file a resolution calling for recognition and reconciliation of the state's role in slavery, and he gained the support of Senate President Pro Tem Eric Johnson (R-Savannah).
"I'm a good team player," Mullis said. "I was prepared to ask for SB 283, but I saw that leadership determined it was unavailable." Mullis said he is scheduled to meet with Williams this week, and looks forward to working with him to see if they can work on proposals that recognize slavery and the Confederacy.
plez sez: My my my... how the worm has turned! Last week, Sen. Mullis was pretty adamant about not tying slavery to his Confederate Month bill. I guess the Senate leadership must have gotten to him about the error of his ways.
I've already stated my opposition to this bill and the addition of a line about slavery isn't going to do much to change my stance. But with the legislative session winding down, I'm pretty sure it won't see the light of day this time around; I guess ole Sonny Perdue will just have issue his perfunctory recognition of Confederate History Month without the law.
Oh yeah... you read that right: the governor will issue a proclamation for Confederate History Month in April just like he's always done! Senate Bill 283 was just going to be the state law in case some wayward governor decided not to do it! Now do you see why I oppose it?
I wonder if someone in the Georgia State Senate read my blog and decided to let this bill die in committee? *smile*
A bill that would permanently establish April as Confederate History and Heritage Month in Georgia sailed through a Senate committee Thursday without any opposition.
Sen. Jeff Mullis (R-Chickamauga), the sponsor of Senate Bill 283, told the Senate Rules Committee that the proposal would help promote tourism in the state and preserve an important part of the state's and the nation's history.
"I'm not doing this for controversial reasons, but to commemorate a struggle that happened," said Mullis, whose North Georgia hometown was the site of a major Civil War battle in 1863.
The proposal has offended some civil rights leaders, who last week asked the Legislature and Gov. Sonny Perdue to offer a symbolic apology for the state's role in slavery. The Rev. Francys Johnson, the NAACP's Southeast region director, said the organization is "vehemently opposed" to Mullis' bill and finds it hypocritical.
"At the same time that the proponents of this bill want to deny any responsibility for state sanctioned and sponsored slavery from 1755 to the end of the Civil War, they still feel the responsibility to honor the treasonous conduct of the Confederacy. It doesn't seem like you can have it both ways.
"You can't honor the past and not take responsibility for it."
Mullis said he has been working on the bill for several months, long before lawmakers and civil rights groups asked for the apology.
Senate Bill 283, if approved by the Senate and the House, would encourage Georgians each April to honor the Confederacy, its history, soldiers and the people who "contributed to the cause of Southern Independence."
The bill also encourages the Georgia Civil War Commission to develop a curriculum to teach Georgia's Confederate history in elementary and high schools, as well as colleges and universities.
Reginald Bohannon, 46, of College Park said that he has no problem with a curriculum that teaches state Confederate history in schools as long as the lessons include both the good and bad parts of history.
"Yes, teach how Georgia had the second-most Civil War sites," Bohannon said. "But also teach that Georgia was on the wrong side of black people's freedom. Teach how some Georgians were Christians, yet condoned lynching, murder and Jim Crow."
The next step for the bill is for the Senate Rules Committee to decide if and when the proposal should come up for a vote by the full Senate.
Click here to view Senate Bill 283 which would establish the month of April as Confederate History and Heritage Month.
plez sez: Here we go again, first it was the Confederate Battle Emblem on the Georgia State flag and now it's this. It appears that my slack-jawed-tobacco-chewing-Confederate-flag-waving-trailer-trash-loving-treasonous-miscreant neighbors, also known as the inbred occupants of the Georgia State Senate, have taken it upon themselves to leave their indelible stain on the fabric of Georgian history.
Despite the fact that the formation of the Confederate States of America was an act of treason against the United States of America, despite the fact that the Civil War was bitterly fought to preserve the institution of slavery (in spite of their ceaseless drivel about taxes and states' rights), and despite the fact that Confederate President Jefferson Davis was a cross dressing fairy (look it up, when the Union army caught up with him, he was captured wearing a dress and patent leather pumps!)... the mindset of those in the Georgia State Senate who support this measure is the same mindset of those who - 146 years ago - split and plunged this country into Civil War.
Personally, I'm having trouble understanding why ANYONE would find any honor in glorifying an ancestry that wrought such misery, hate, bigotry, war, the KKK, and treason! And to think that these cretins want the public schools to incorporate Confederate History into their curriculum; I'm sure their version of history is in stark contrast to what I happen to know is true (there were no happy Negros shufflin' and grinnin' in the watermelon patch). The scars and cancerous lesions of the Confederacy continue to plague and badger the Black community to this day, yet these same people scour in disbelief when the NAACP asks for a token apology for slavery!
I'm not big on apologies, especially from people who had absolutely nothing to do with the "Peculiar Institution," but by the same token, I don't feel that they can have it both ways: honoring their past while dishonoring mine!
~ husband ~ father ~ son ~ brother ~ mentor ~ subdivision dweller ~ northern by birth ~ southern by choice ~ raised a black baptist, now guided by the spiritual ~ raised a kennedy democrat, now politically dead center (moderate) ~ raised in a Cadillac Coupe Deville, now hooked on an SUV ~ college educated and still a student of life ~ wild college frat boy and now a settled alumnus ~ intellectual yet fun-loving geek ~ technical and leading edge ~ corporate cog ~ consultant ~ college football saturday devotee ~ and a ramblin' gamblin' helluva engineer (GO JACKETS!) ~
This is my personal blog. The views expressed on these pages are mine; and they are in no way associated with the views of my employer, family, friends, or associates.
In one week, plezWorld is heading to DC for the Barack Obama Inauguration. To my way of thinking, this is probably the most significant (if not, the most important) presidential inauguration since George Washington's inauguration. 
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