Our existence, from our physical birth till our physical death, is finite. It has a beginning and an end. With this limited time, we constantly make decisions about what we choose to learn and remember. We may hear about, say, the Civil Rights Movement during our P-12 education, and remember a few words: “Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, I Have a Dream.” Once we … Read More We Must Never Stop Learning
Anne Moody ends Coming of Age in Mississippi on 1964 as she and a group of activists head to Washington D.C. to participate in a hearing about the Council of Federated Organization’s (COFO) work in Mississippi to register African Americans to vote. By this point, as Moody puts it, she had experienced both personal and national violence: “the Taplin burning, the Birmingham Church bombing, Medgar Evers’ murder, the … Read More Have We Experienced Progress? “I really WONDER”
On October 8, 1955, Jackie Ormes’ Patty-Jo ’n’ Ginger panel in the Pittsburgh Courier showed Patty-Jo standing next to a door as she tells her sister, “I don’t want to seem touchy on the subject . . . but, that new little white tea-kettle just whistled at me!” Ginger leans on a couch, looking at her younger sister. She hold a newspaper behind her back, hiding the … Read More Are We Protecting Our Children When We Don’t Answer Their Questions?
Earlier this week, Edwidge Danticat published “It Can Happen Here” in Harper’s Bazaar. Danticat details how legislation in Florida reminds her of oppressive regimes in her Haiti and the repression of knowledge. She reminds us that no matter what we think, oppression and fascism can happen here, even if we think it can’t. The title of the article harkens back to Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 … Read More Fascism Can’t Happen Here
Ida B. Wells begins Southern Horrors: Lynch law in All Its Phases (1892) by quoting a piece she wrote in the May 21, 1892, edition of the Free Speech, a Black newspaper in Memphis. In the piece, she lists recent acts of racial violence across the United States. She writes, “Eight negroes lynched since last issue of the ‘Free Speech’ one at Little Rock, … Read More Accountability and the Banality of Evil
Interminable Rambling 