African American History

60th Anniversary Of Birmingham Church Bombing Which Killed Four Black Girls! :(

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The 60th Anniversary of the Birmingham, Alabama Church Bombing which killed four young black girls is being commemorated at a time when Republicans, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders and many other Republicans, are trying to deny the truth of African American history.

Supreme Court Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and former Alabama Democratic Senator Doug Jones, who successfully prosecuted Ku Klux Klansmen four decades later who did the dastardly deed, commemorated the horrid events, and made clear that the truth and the reality of history cannot be suppressed because some people might feel disturbed.

Alabama was a center of racial violence and bloodshed six decades ago, and even now, the state legislature has refused to create legitimate congressional and state legislative districts to reflect that 28 percent of the state is black, and the federal courts have intervened.

Sadly, for much of the South, the old South of pre civil rights days has reared its ugly head again, with the difference being that in the past it was a segregationist Democratic South, and now it is a biased, racist Republican South!

The fight for civil rights and teaching of the truth of the past is a battle that cannot be abandoned, and must be pursued without pause!

A Most Despicable Governor: Sarah Huckabee Sanders Of Arkansas! :(

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Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the former Press Secretary to President Donald Trump, became well known for incessant lying and nastiness in that role.

But she managed to promote her profile to the point of believing that she was qualified to run for Arkansas Governor, a position her father, Mike Huckabee, held from 1996-2007.

Her father, once seen as moderate, has become a right wing religious extremist since leaving office in 2007, and his daughter now is surpassing earlier Arkansas governors in moving the state further to the bottom.

Hard to believe that the state once had Winthrop Rockefeller as a Republican governor, and Dale Bumpers, David Pryor, and Bill Clinton as Democratic governors.

And the most recent Republican governor, Asa Hutchinson, while conservative, came across as “reasonable”, and is now challenging Donald Trump for the Republican Presidential nomination in 2024, and is showing guts and courage as a critic of Trump, a rarity in the present.

But Huckabee Sanders is copying Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in his meanness and nastiness, on such issues as race, gender, sexuality, health care, and child labor.

She is promoting discrimination against gays and lesbians; waging war against abortion rights; refusing to allow an African American Advanced Placement history course in high school curriculums; taking poor Arkansans off Medicaid; allowing child labor to return to her state; and threatening librarians with prison terms if they do not remove materials and promote “Book Banning”!

The state is in the bottom five nationally in so many statistics, but Huckabee Sanders is following DeSantis’s playbook, and has national Presidential ambitions, which is stunning, since she has zero qualifications for the Presidency, and is not very smart intellectually!

Kamala Harris At 59, And Her Future Role In American Government!

Ronald 2 Comments

Vice President Kamala Harris celebrated her 59th birthday yesterday, and she is seen as a strong partner of President Joe Biden.

Constantly under attack by conservatives and Republicans, she has played the proper role of remaining in the background, not trying to take attention away from the President, which is the proper role for a Vice President.

But she has become more visible on the issues of abortion rights, civil rights, voting rights, gun safety reform, and the promotion of truth in education, including denouncing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis promoting a distorted view of African American history and slavery, and also, his attack on the field of psychology and the teaching of gender and sexuality.

Harris speaks for those who are being attacked and abused, as the Supreme Court moves the nation backward on issues that were thought to be settled decades ago, but clearly are not resolved.

Harris is a very intelligent woman, with a career of being a prosecutor in San Francisco; Attorney General of California; and four years as a United States Senator!

She is superbly qualified to be President, if tragically, in the next five years, she was called upon to take the Presidential oath.

Hopefully, President Biden will win reelection and served capably, as he has so far, but the nation can be comfortable with the possibility of a succession, knowing this is a woman of compassion, decency, empathy, and sincerity.

Republican Presidential contender Nikki Haley has disgraced herself since she had courage as South Carolina Governor in 2015 to take down the Confederate flag after nine black churchgoers were slaughtered. She has lost all credibility, when she suggests that Joe Biden will die and Kamala Harris will be President in the next term, as if that would be the most horrendous thing possible, and it disqualifies Haley’s own Presidential ambitions.

One woman of Asian Indian ancestry feels a need to attack a woman of similar Asian Indian and Jamaican ancestry as unqualified, when clearly, Harris has far better credentials than Nikki Haley has ever demonstrated, particularly Haley’s bending to Donald Trump, and agreeing that if he is the nominee of the Republican Party in 2024, that she would support him!

The Field Of American History Under Vast Attack By Politicians With Evil Motives!

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This author and blogger has been a scholar of American history for the past half century, since 1972.

My life has been one of research, writing, publishing, giving interviews, and teaching college and university students the facts, the reality, the truth of American history, in all of its glory but also of its travails and shortcomings.

As any scholar in any field, the essential point is to expand the truth, the knowledge, and the reality of the American past, with no allowance for censorship or interference with what books are promoted in the quest for the truth of the American past.

Sadly, American history was badly distorted until the 1960s, with the “Lost Cause” of the Confederate South being permitted to dominate curriculums at all levels of American education, from elementary level through middle school, high school, and even at universities.

The distortion of the truth about the American past was a crime, finally overcome, and transforming the understanding of America’s past for the generations since the rise of the civil rights movement.

The liberation of knowledge meant not only the reality of the African American past, but also that of Hispanic-Latino history, women’s history, labor history, environmental history, and the role of gender and sexuality, have all become part of the total story of America.

The goal has been to liberate America from a white Christian domination of knowledge, which even left people of other religious faiths, as ignored, until recent decades.

We as a society cannot permit the myths of the past to become predominant again, and to disease the minds of the young, so as to promote prejudice, discrimination, and narrowmindedness!

That would be the prescription for the return of the criminal lies and deceit that affected understanding of American History from the era of the Civil War in the 1860s through the next century!

We are faced with the evil motives of politicians in the Republican Party to revive the past mythology!

I, for one, will NOT allow myself to promote and promulgate anything other than the truth, the facts, the reality of the American past, as I move forward into the future, still dedicated to inspiring students about the total, valid story of the American past!

Ron DeSantis Denying Truth Of African American History: A Whitewash Of The American Past!

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It is absolutely infuriating beyond belief that Florida under Ron DeSantis is denying the truth of African American history, and American history at large, in setting a new curriculum that whitewashes the truth of slavery, Jim Crow segregation, lynchings, and horrendous race riots in that state and elsewhere, causing mass destruction and death over the centuries.

To tell students that slavery “benefited” slaves by teaching them “job skills”, and that race riots saw African Americans both being victimized but also being perpetrators of the riots, is a bald faced lie, making Florida look worse than 1960s Alabama and Mississippi!

In the past, the Confederate myth perpetuated lies and racism, and finally in the 1960s and moving forward, the truth was being taught.

As a professor who has taught for a half century, I refuse to teach lies and mistruths, but imagine those who teach at all levels who are in danger of losing their jobs and professions over political interference by a governor, who seems as if he is George Wallace on steroids!

And Florida is setting the stage for other “Red” states to impose the same censorship and manipulation of the truth on students, which will undermine the future of a multiracial society, as nothing can be done to overcome the reality that in 2045, the white population of America will be less than half the nation, and already, non white groups are a majority of young people in many parts of the nation.

This does not bode well for the future of interracial cooperation, and Ron DeSantis must be opposed legally in court to work against this poison he is promoting!

What does this say about the truth of the treatment of Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, and native Americans, which also must be taught, and known by future generations!

The old saying is: “The Truth Shall Set You Free”!, and that must be the motto of all educators, and most specifically, American historians and journalists in this struggle against reality!

Ron DeSantis Is A Right Wing Threat, Undermining Basic Human Rights, Education, Health Care, And Harming Public Safety!

Ronald 4 Comments

Florida, the state I have lived in for 34 years, since 1989, has become a right wing threat under Governor Ron DeSantis.

DeSantis has banned an elective African American Studies Advanced Placement Course in Florida High Schools, claiming it has no educational value.

DeSantis has fired an elected Prosecutor, Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren, for publicly disagreeing with the governor’s stand on abortion rights and transgender health care.

DeSantis has cracked down on the Disney Company and its control of its properties in Central Florida, because they disagree with his policies and actions.

DeSantis is planning to promote a policy of guns “open carry”, without any permit or training or licensing, in all public places, which will insure mass murder incidents occurring ever more as happened at the Parkland Florida School Massacre in 2018 and the Orlando Florida “Pulse” Massacre in 2015.

DeSantis is banning books in public schools and libraries, and threatening prosecution for teachers or librarians who defy him. This is censorship, totally against American democratic values, but it will not stop students from inquiry about all kinds of issues, but has the effect of intimidation.

DeSantis has as Florida State Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo who is undermining protection for seniors or children or anyone else with the COVID 19 Pandemic, as he works with DeSantis on banning of masks and vaccinations as Florida policy.

DeSantis has fired school board members in several counties, and appointed Republican replacements that are dictating policies and curriculums in local schools.

DeSantis has set out to destroy the New College of Florida, in Sarasota, a liberal university which has received great honors and reputation. He has put a right wing extremist onto its board, and the President of the university has been fired, and the plan is to fire faculty members who do not fit the version of DeSantis regarding what is proper education.

DeSantis has interfered with college professors at Florida state universities, dictating what can be expressed in classes and put into class syllabi, and working to end tenure rights.

DeSantis has banned any protection or safety for gay and transgender children, which will promote suicides, as his puritan view of sexuality permeates the state of Florida.

DeSantis has declared war on empathy, decency, compassion, and is more concerned about so called “guilt” that white students might feel, totally preposterous, and at the same time, having no concern about the effect on students of color.

DeSantis’s war on abortion rights is also taking away a woman’s control over her body, putting Florida into the crosshairs of right wing control by an authoritarian minded man who wants to be President of the United States.

DeSantis also formed a political stunt about immigration, shipping Venezuelan migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, promoting his nativism agenda.

DeSantis has declared war on people of color; science and medicine; education and libraries; gays, lesbians and transgender individuals; women’s rights over their own bodies; elected officials who defy him; corporations who disagree with his views; immigrants; and he has shown no concern about public safety from unstable individuals who will have license to kill innocent citizens with firearms.

DeSantis is promoting intolerance, hatred, division, and destroying the reputation of Florida, at a time when the cost of living is high and housing prices are out of sight; the state is trying to recover from Hurricane Ian; and the public health threat from COVID 19 is still killing Floridians every day.

And since he did not react to recent examples of antisemitism displayed by White Supremacists and Neo Nazis, that is another great concern.

But his lust for power is unchecked, and he must be challenged and stopped, before he becomes an ever greater threat to the nation and the world beyond just the state of Florida.

All decent, humane people must rise up and resist, even as DeSantis had a law passed barring demonstrations that might block traffic, so one can expect the possibility of the use of police forces to crack down on the freedom of assembly.

This is not a time to sit on the sidelines, as what is happening in Florida could become the future of the entire nation, if Ron DeSantis was to go on and to win the Presidential Election of 2024!

Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday: Republicans Backtracking On Civil Rights!

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Today is the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday, and yet, the Republican Party is doing everything imaginable to backtrack on Civil Rights!

The Supreme Court, with Republican appointments controlling six of the nine seats, is working very hard to negate the Voting Rights Act, Affirmative Action, and so much more, and among those most promoting backtracking is African American Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, who is a total disgrace on the issue of civil rights, which actually advanced his career!

Republican Governors, led by Ron DeSantis of Florida, Greg Abbott of Texas, and other governors, mostly in the South, are mandating that teachers cannot discuss race and ethnicity, and the truth of American history, because some white children might feel “bad”, as if history should be totally sanitized!

This includes literature as well being censored, an absolute outrage, with the goal of keeping young people ignorant, and complying with the demands of many prejudiced white parents, who do not want their children exposed to truth and facts!

It also includes the goal of making it harder for poor people and those of color to be able to vote, a backtracking on the Voting Rights Act of 1965!

So we have Republicans mouthing quotes of Martin Luther King, Jr, but working assiduously to promote a white supremacy version of history and literature, in a nation becoming less white by the decade!

This is a human tragedy of massive proportions, and must be resisted by decent and educated people who do not want a sanitizing of our history and literature, and instead, a full accounting for past shortcomings, in order to promote a better future in a multiracial society!