Category Archives: Slavery

Finding Love (& Living In Sin) In the Library

I never fell in love in a library.

But several times I fell in love with a library, and the experience repeatedly changed my life.

The first time came flooding back yesterday, when I saw this news report from AP:

Hegseth, AGAIN?? Sheesh, every time I turn around, he’s messing with me: this time with important memories.

“Army and Air Force libraries have been told to go through their stacks to find books related to diversity, equity and inclusion, according to new memos obtained by The Associated Press.

The orders from service leaders come about two weeks after the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, removed nearly 400 books from its library after being told by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office to get rid of those that promote DEI.”

Continue reading Finding Love (& Living In Sin) In the Library

“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

Saving Obama With Santa, In Selma 2015;

Durham, North Carolina, and Selma, Alabama

In the autumn of 2014, still settling into retirement in Durham, a question began nagging at me: was Barack Obama going to get shot in Selma Alabama the following March?

Now stay with me: was I just being more than normally paranoid?

The short answer is No. But what’s this got to do with Santa?

More on the latter anon. For the former, consider:

March 7, 2015, would be the 50th anniversary of the famous march for voting rights over the Edmund Pettus Bridge out of Selma, headed for the state capitol in Montgomery.

When that march was attacked by deputies and state troopers, images of the melee were flashed around the world as “Bloody Sunday.” I was there (and recount it in the memoir, Eating Dr. King’s Dinner). Even though my Bloody Sunday assignment was to march with the day’s second contingent — which didn’t happen because of the assault on the first — the experience left its marks on me as well. Continue reading Saving Obama With Santa, In Selma 2015;

They’re Making an (Anti-Woke) Example of Quakers in their “Christian” School:

 

[NOTE: This prominent article mentions Quakers 12 times, 11 times favorably. What do Friends think of that?]]

Washington Post
They quit liberal public schools. Now they teach kids to be anti-‘woke.’

By Hannah Natanson — April 15, 2024

Kali and Joshua Fontanilla

Kali Fontanilla used to teach public school in California. Now she leads her own online Christian school in Florida. (Thomas Simonetti for The Washington Post)

SOUTHWEST FLORIDA — Kali Fontanilla repeated the lesson title to herself one last time — “‘A Com-plete History of Slavery in America’” — sipped her peppermint tea and hit record.
“Hello, Exodus students,” she said, addressing the group of 90 fifth- through 12th-graders who would eventually watch the video as part of their lessons from the Exodus Institute, an online Christian K-12 school Kali and her husband founded in 2021 with the motto “Exit Public Education.” The video, which Kali was recording in her guest bedroom-turned-office, was the latest in a special enrichment program dubbed the “Young Patriots Academy,” which aims to “debunk the ‘woke’ lies taught in most public schools,” per the Exodus website.

Kali, who is half Black and half White, had a particular target that Friday: what she calls the left’s unquestioning advocacy of reparations, the theory that the government should pay restitution to descendants of enslaved Americans.
She told her virtual class they were about to learn of the Quakers, and how White members of that religion helped fight slavery. Continue reading They’re Making an (Anti-Woke) Example of Quakers in their “Christian” School:

Trump to Mark Robinson: You’re MLK Times Two — MLK on Steroids

AP News: Trump endorses Mark Robinson for North Carolina governor and compares him to Martin Luther King Jr.

BY GARY D. ROBERTSON
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) – March 03, 2024

— Former president Donald Trump endorsed North Carolina Lt. Gov Mark Robinson for governor on Saturday, several months after the former president pledged to do so.

At a rally at the Greensboro Coliseum Complex, the former president also compared Robinson, who is Black, to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the famed civil rights leader. He referred to Robinson as “Martin Luther King on steroids.”

Trump said Robinson wasn’t sure how to respond when Trump compared him to the legendary civil rights leader, telling him: “I think you’re better than Martin Luther King. I think you are Martin Luther King times two.”

“You should like it,” Trump said.

Continue reading Trump to Mark Robinson: You’re MLK Times Two — MLK on Steroids