Lady Freedom and Langston Hughes




December 2, 1863

Today is the 150th Anniversary of the crowning of the Capitol Dome with Freedom.  She is a colossal bronze figure (designed by Thomas Crawford) standing 19½-feet tall, weighing approximately 15,000 pounds and standing 288 feet above Washington, D.C.  Freedom holds a sheathed sword in her right hand, while a laurel wreath and the shield of the United States are held in her left hand. 

1855 Phrygian Cap Design

 

Ironically in 1855, Secretary of War Jefferson Davis (later to become POTCSA) was in charge of the Capitol construction project and Crawford's original design was adorned with a Phrygian Cap...an ancient Roman symbol for an emancipated slave!  This seemed to be a direct insult to slaveholders and Davis erupted with anger (so much hypocrisy/ irony here) against this Northern assault to the "Southern Way of Life":

 “Its (Phrygian Cap) history renders it inappropriate to a people

who were born free and would not be enslaved”.

The original design was changed and the final version of Freedom wearing a military helmet with stars, an eagle's head and crest of feathers was placed atop the dome as the Civil War raged!

She gracefully stands on a cast-iron globe inscribed with the words:

E PLURIBUS UNUM

 

 

 

The freedom that seemed so close in 1863 and so far away in 1963...is still a freedom worth striving for...for many.

 

 

 

This poem (1965) about a "telescope of dreams" by Langston Hughes is a powerful metaphor to remind us that freedom is not merely the casting off of chains...it is also killing jellyfish...

 

 

Long View: Negro

 

Emancipation: 1865

 

Sighted through the

 

Telescope of dreams

 

Looms larger,

 

So much larger,

 

 

So it seems,

 

 

Than truth can be.

 

 

But turn the telescope around,

 

Look through the larger end-

 

And wonder why

 

 

What was so large

 

 

Becomes so small

 

Again.

 

 

 

 

A "Kill The Jellyfish" Thanksgiving

Today, as I celebrate Thanksgiving (and a day off from school) with family and friends I am thinking of the many blessings I have to be thankful for...family, friends, employment, my students, etc. and even football!

I am also thankful for living in America (not necessarily for what she has been) and what she is becoming! Our country still has many problems...but, we are young, strong, and determined to overcome.  Let's take an interest in making our country better, caring for our neighbor, and help ordinary people (like ourselves) to strive toward "All Men Are Created Equal"...so that we can become everything we were meant to be.

Listen to "Let America Be America Again (4:49)...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrqeywXhKfY

Independence Day?

"What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages..."
                                                                                       -Frederick Douglass

Recently in class, I asked my students when they thought the United States began to truly live out the principle of "All Men Are Created Equal".  The Theoretical Nation vs. Real Nation question.

Was it...
July 4, 1776: The Declaration of Independence
April 12, 1861: Ft. Sumter
January 1, 1863: The Emancipation Proclamation
April 9, 1865: Appomattox
February 3, 1870: 15th Amendment Ratified
May 17, 1954: Brown v. Board of Education
Sept. 24, 1957: Federal Troops "Occupy" Little Rock
July 2, 1964: The Civil Rights Act
???????????: ????????????

Maybe a couple of questions will help you determine what our "Independence Day" should be...

What determines freedom in America today?

Citizenship...Land Ownership...Voting...Employment...High Quality Education...

Are we free?

Racial Profiling...Police Brutality...Stop and Frisk..."Low Expectation" Schools...Massive Government Programs...Anti-Immigrant Hatred...

My vote for "Independence Day"...November 11, 1918.  Yes, this is Armistice Day...the day we celebrate the end of WWI..."The War To End All Wars!"  It is also our modern day Veterans Day...I suggest it is the perfect day to celebrate veterans, freedom,  and annually declare war on racism in America! 

W.E.B. DuBois' "Returning Soldier" Essay

 

But today we return! We return from the slavery of uniform which the world's madness demanded us to don to the freedom of civil garb. We stand again to look America squarely in the face and call a spade a spade. We sing: This country of ours, despite all its better souls have done and dreamed, is yet a shameful land.
It lynches.
And lynching is barbarism of a degree of contemptible nastiness unparalleled in human history. Yet for fifty years we have lynched two Negroes a week, and we have kept this up right through the war.
It disfranchises its own citizens.
Disfranchisement (denying the vote) is the deliberate theft and robbery of the only protection of poor against rich and black against white. The land that disfranchises its citizens and calls itself a democracy lies and knows it lies.
It encourages ignorance.
It has never really tried to educate the Negro. A dominant minority does not want Negroes educated. It wants servants, dogs, whores and monkeys. And when this land allows a reactionary group by its stolen political power to force as many black folk into these categories as it possibly can, it cries in contemptible hypocrisy: "They threaten us with degeneracy; they cannot be educated.
It steals from us.
It organizes industry to cheat us. It cheats us out of our land; it cheats us out of our labor. It confiscates our savings. It reduces our wages. It raises our rent. It steals our profit. It taxes us without representation. It keeps us consistently and universally poor, and then feeds us on charity and derides our poverty.
It insults us.
It has organized a nation-wide and latterly a world-wide propaganda of deliberate and continuous insult and defamation of black blood wherever found. It decrees that it shall not be possible in travel nor residence, work nor play, education nor instruction for a black man to exist without tacit or open acknowledgment of his inferiority to the dirtiest white dog. And it looks upon any attempt to question or even discuss this dogma as arrogance, unwarranted assumption and treason.This is the country to which we Soldiers of Democracy return. This is the fatherland for which we fought! But it is our fatherland. It was right for us to fight. The faults of our country are our faults. Under similar circumstances, we would fight again. But by the God of Heaven, we are cowards and jackasses if now that that war is over, we do not marshal every ounce of our brain and brawn to fight a sterner, longer, more unbending battle against the forces of hell in our own land.
We return.
We return from fighting.
We return fighting.
Make way for Democracy!
We saved it in France, and by the Great Jehovah, we will save it in the United States of America, or know the reason why.

 

40 Acres and A Mule: Anonymous Strength

Last week in class we discussed the Black Codes (1865-1866) and their relation to money, political power, culture/ religion, emotions, and isms.  It became clear to our classes that this system (Black Codes/ Jim Crow) truly was "slavery without chains" and that as many believed it was "worse than slavery".

Possibly the worst pledge of freedom was Special Field Order No. 15 aka the "40 Acres and a Mule" promise.  On the Sea Islands of Georgia, the Freedmen were farming, starting schools, and building free settlements under the direction of Tunis Campbell.  But, the old masters were determined to get their land back and were granted their petition by POTUS Andrew Johnson.  Johnson forced General Oliver O. Howard (using African-American troops) to confiscate the lands and return them to the Rebels...General Howard:

I'd endeavored to explain the wishes of the President, and with one voice they cried,

"NO! NO!" 

 In the noise and confusion, a sweet-voiced Negro woman began the hymn,

"Nobody knows the trouble I feel...nobody knows but Jesus..."

 

 

The remarkable, anonymous, and unwavering strength of millions to persevere, fight, and survive against racist betrayal...hostility...violence...indifference...empty words, etc. is inexplicable.  Why and how could they continue to work, sing, pray, love, build families, etc.?

 

 

My best answer...their belief in God, each other, and us. They were fighting for a future they knew they might not ever see...a future where "All Men Are Created Equal" are not just empty words on a piece of paper!  

 

 

"We repeat, therefore, that we are here; and that this is our country...We shall neither die out, nor be driven out; but shall go on with this people (white people), either as a testimony against them, or as an evidence in their favor throughout their generations. We are clearly on their hands."

 

                                                                             -Frederick Douglass

 

 

A Useless War?

 

"Compromise with the South" Cartoon Interpretation

The Stars and Stripes hanging upside down as a sign of distress...while the Stars and Bars is frayed, but flies triumphantly upright.  The background portrays a Northern city and home on fire, a dead Union soldier, and an African-American Union soldier with his family returned to chains.  The foreground portrays a Union soldier amputee, with his head bowed and hat in his hand. He shakes a Confederate soldier’s hand (resembling Jefferson Davis) clearly defeated.  "Davis" stands proud and rests his foot on a Union grave while breaking a Union sword.  A weeping Lady Columbia sadly kneels beside the soldier at the foot of a grave...The tombstone reads,

 

“In Memory of the Union Heroes...in a Useless War.”

 

This Thomas Nast cartoon (September 3, 1864) was intended to criticize Northern politicians, newspaper editors, and families who were calling for an end to the Civil War.  They were calling for a cease fire, a negotiated compromise, and a return to the "United States"...the war, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the attempt to advance civil rights was a failure.  Nast's message is very clear: compromise with the South would be a Confederate victory.

 

 

 

I would suggest that Nast's cartoon is also a poignant foreshadowing of the ultimate Southern victories of the Reconstruction Era... "White Rule" returned to the South (Democrat/ KKK mob rule) and a reinvention of "slavery without chains" (sharecropping/ debt peonage/ lynching, etc.). 

 

Had the Civil War really been fought in vain?!?

 

Yankee and Rebel soldiers celebrate "The Noble Cause"
Gettysburg July 1913

"How stands the case with the recently emancipated millions of colored people in our own country? What is their condition today?...By law, by the constitution of the United States, slavery has no existence in our country. The legal form has been abolished. By the law and the constitution, the Negro is a man and a citizen, and has all the rights and liberties guaranteed to any other variety of the human family, residing in the United States....Yet, the old master class was not deprived of the power of life and death, which was the soul of the relation of master and slave. They could not, of course, sell their former slaves, but they retained the power to starve them to death, and wherever this power is held there is the power of slavery. He who can say to his fellow- man, "You shall serve me or starve," is a master and his subject is a slave..."

 

                                                       -Frederick Douglass (Boston, 1892 or 2013?)

 

 

Veteran's Night

I am so thankful that America celebrates Veterans Day (although we do not have a Veterans Day Assembly at the school where I teach) and thanks Veterans for the many sacrifices they have made to make our freedom possible. THANK YOU VETERANS!



 



But, tonight (currently 15 degrees in Minneapolis) I am reminded that between 130,000 and 200,000 veterans are homeless in America...and this outrages me!  Maybe we should have a Veterans Night to bring awareness to the plight of thousands of veterans.

 

Some statistics on homeless veterans:

 

23% of homeless population are veterans
33% of male homeless population are veterans

67% served three or more years
33% were stationed in a war zone
76% experience alcohol, drug, or mental health problems
46% are age 45 or older

 

 

When will we take serious action to address the underlying causes of homelessness and begin to eliminate this tragedy that plagues our nation?  Veterans...stay safe...stay strong...stay warm...stay proud...

 

 

"When our perils are past, shall our gratitude sleep?"

                                             - George Canning

 



 

 

 

John Brown: The First To Die

First South Carolina (Union) Volunteers

One of my students asked me this week if I knew who was the first African-American soldier to die in the Civil War.  Contrary to popular wisdom, the 54th Massachusetts were not the first African-American troops involved in the Civil War...

Thomas Wentworth Higginson

The following primary source documentation comes from the daily log of  Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson entitled "Army Life in a Black Regiment"...

It is "well known" that the first attempt (duty) to recruit a Black Regiment was given to Charles T. Trowbridge of New York beginning in May of 1862.  The regiment trained on Hilton Head Island, S.C. until the beginning of August, 1862 and was sent to garrison (equip and protect) St. Simon's Island, on the coast of Georgia.

There were Rebel forces on the island and the First S.C. Volunteers were asked to pursue them.  When they arrived at St. Simon's they learned that the Freedmen (African-Americans) of the island had already attacked the Rebels. 

Twenty-five of them had armed themselves, under the command of one of their own number, whose name was John Brown. The second in command was Edward Gould, who was afterwards a corporal in my own regiment. The rebel party retreated before these men, and drew them into a swamp. There was but one path, and the negroes entered single file. The rebels lay behind a great log, and fired upon them. John Brown, the leader, fell dead within six feet of the log,---probably the first black man who fell under arms in the war,---several others were wounded, and the band of raw recruits retreated; as did also the rebels, in the opposite direction. This was the first armed encounter, so far as I know, between the rebels and their former slaves; and it is worth noticing that the attempt was a spontaneous thing, and not accompanied by any white man. The men were not soldiers, nor in uniform, though some of them afterwards enlisted in Trowbridge's company.

 
I never knew till today that "John Brown," was the first negro soldier who fell in this war. He was shot in a skirmish on St. Simon's Island, August 8, 1862. A singular coincidence of names. No wonder our soldiers think him the hero of the John Brown hymn!

"When I strike the bees will begin to swarm!"