Category Archives: Racism

“Bloody Sunday” in Selma plus 60: Victory Undone, Battle Renewed

 

Marchers re-enacting in 2005 the first crossing of the Pettus Bridge 40 years earlier.

Below is a black & white news photo from late February, 1965. It turned up a few years back (hat tip to the sharp-eyed Lewis Lewis): it was taken on the steps of Brown Chapel AME Church in Selma, Alabama when John Lewis (center-left, with a tie) announced the plan to march from Selma to Montgomery.

The goal of the march was winning voting rights for southern Blacks, after three generations of formal disfranchisement; but the plan was sparked by the police killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson. I’m at the far right, behind Andrew Young (who is also in a tie).

I had been in Selma since the beginning of the year, and the active phase of the campaign, as a rookie member of Dr. King’s staff. I had marched often, served some days in jail, and was learning a lot very fast.

That was then.

Forty-three years later, one sunny day in April 2018, I woke up again in Selma Alabama, once more prepared to go to jail.

Continue reading “Bloody Sunday” in Selma plus 60: Victory Undone, Battle Renewed

A Shadow on the Daffodils: Preaching from the Big Book of Nobody

Daffs, going wild again.

 

This past First Day (Quaker talk for Sunday) I Zoomed into worship in my Friends meeting, the one out in the farmland of Flyover County, North By-God Carolina, where I missed one of my favorite annual scenes there: the appearance in the back 40 of a big unruly spread of wild daffodils. But I did hear a stirring message.

No one among the elders knows when or by whom the daffodils came. Their location, out behind the community building we fondly call The Hut, isn’t visible from the road, so passersby mostly miss the spread, too bad for them. Continue reading A Shadow on the Daffodils: Preaching from the Big Book of Nobody

Shot Down & Sunk: Pete Hegseth’s “American Crusade” Bags its First High-Ranking Victims: A General, an Admiral, — and Black History Month

 

If Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth should fall off the wagon and be dragged off the public stage to rehab, his Pentagon tenure, however brief or long, will surely be remembered for one thing; or maybe two.

The second would be turning into the answer to a question of the sort that haunts a generation, to wit: “Who lost Ukraine?”

During his maiden visit in mid-February to U.S. bases in Europe, he seemed to be auditioning to head the  honor guard that salutes Vladimir Putin’s victorious entry into the rubble of Kyiv. He acted ready to serve it up on the faux silver platter of MAGA incompetent, arrogant indifference. That would surely be one for the record– and textbooks, fodder for many poignant Banksy wall murals.

But I digress. That is one possible landmark, and (hopefully) the less likely one. Continue reading Shot Down & Sunk: Pete Hegseth’s “American Crusade” Bags its First High-Ranking Victims: A General, an Admiral, — and Black History Month

A Sparkling New Podcast on “Tell It Slant” – The Biography of Chuck Fager

Announcing A Brand-New, free podcast, now online at the link below:

Tell It Slant-Podcast with Emma, Chuck & Mark

Continue reading A Sparkling New Podcast on “Tell It Slant” – The Biography of Chuck Fager

“Nazi, Schmazi. . .” Mark Robinson Retains Some Church Backers

New York Times — On Politics
September 23, 2024
POSTCARD FROM RALEIGH

A church where Mark Robinson still has defenders

By Jess Bidgood — September 23, 2024
The latest, with 43 days to go

It was about an hour into the 11 a.m. service on Sunday, and Bishop Patrick Wooden Sr. of the Upper Room Church of God in Christ in Raleigh, N.C., was at the pulpit, wearing a suit of deep plum. The music had drawn quiet. The morning announcements had been made. And now, the bishop said, he had something to address.

“Everybody’s talking about Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson,” Wooden said, explaining to the congregation that he’d gotten a call from a local reporter on Friday and that the news media — me — was sitting among them that morning. “I called him Friday,” Wooden said, referring to Robinson, “and spoke to him myself.”

Rev. Wooden, upper left

Continue reading “Nazi, Schmazi. . .” Mark Robinson Retains Some Church Backers