Episodes
Moonlight in Liberty
I came of age in the years after what historian C. Vann Woodward called the Second Reconstruction. I would enjoy its fruits, and there would not be the Nadir that followed the first Reconstruction, but there was a mitigated darkness. I slid in and out of the colored-negro-black world in which I was raised, travelling between the Ivy League and my homeplace, but it was being overtaken by something that was not us.
I came of age in the years after what historian C. Vann Woodward called the Second Reconstruction. I would enjoy its fruits, and there would not be the Nadir that followed the first Reconstruction, but there was a mitigated darkness. I slid in and out of the colored-negro-black world in which I was raised, travelling between the Ivy League and my homeplace, but it was being overtaken by something that was not us.
1. Woodward, C. (1957). The political legacy of reconstruction. The Journal of Negro Education, 26(3), 231-240.
2. Highways gutted American cities. So why did they build them? - Vox
3. Overtown is a neighborhood of Miami, Florida, United States, just northwest of Downtown Miami. Originally called Colored Town during the Jim Crow era of the late 19th through the mid-20th century, the area was once the preeminent and is the historic center for commerce in the black community in Miami and South Florida.
4. Woodward, C. (1955). The strange career of Jim Crow. New York: Oxford University Press. (1955).
5. Attorney General Orders Tougher Sentences, Rolling Back Obama Policy - The New York Times (nytimes.com), Rebecca C. Ruiz, May 12, 2017; Memo by Sessions to U.S. Attorneys on Charges and Sentencing - The New York Times (nytimes.com).
6. James Baldwin interviewed by Kenneth Clark.The interview took place in 1963 immediately following a meeting of Baldwin and U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy.
7. Asch, C. M., & Musgrove, G. D. (2017). Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation's Capital. Chapel Hill, NC: UNC Press Books; From Chocolate City to Latte City: Being black in the new D.C. - The Washington Post
8. ACLU Releases Crack Cocaine Report, Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 Deepened Racial Inequity in Sentencing | American Civil Liberties Union
9. How Political Districts With Prisons Give Their Lawmakers Outsize Influence | KOSU; Who Benefits When A Private Prison Comes To Town? : NPR; Rural Towns Turn to Prisons To Reignite Their Economies - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
A Circle on the Verge of Closing
In his second inaugural address, President Barack Obama evoked the American history of the civil rights struggle as a sojourn made in increments and bold strokes, and that sojourn is the history of my family and so many others whose American story began in this land as indentured servants and as human chattel. In the lifetime of futures, they knew this day, too, would come
In his second inaugural address, President Barack Obama evoked the American history of the civil rights struggle as a sojourn made in increments and bold strokes, and that sojourn is the history of my family and so many others whose American story began in this land as indentured servants and as human chattel. In the lifetime of futures, they knew this day, too, would come
1. President Barack Obama Inaugural Address, January 21, 2103.
2. Tesler, M., & Sears, D. O. (2010). Obamas race: the 2008 election and the dream of a post-racial America. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
3. JFK (President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, assassination 1963), MLK (Rev. Martin Luther King, assassination1968) and RFK (Robert Francis Kennedy, assassination 1968).
4. Hughes, L., Collier, B., & Linn, L. (2012). I, too, am America. New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.
5. Seneca Falls Convention - HISTORY; Selma to Montgomery March; 1969 Stonewall Riots - Origins, Timeline & Leaders - HISTORY
6. Lift Every Voice and Sing (also referred to as a national anthem for African Americans) was first written as a poem written by James Weldon Johnson. It was performed for the first time by 500 school children in celebration of President Lincoln's Birthday on February 12, 1900 in Jacksonville, FL. The poem was set to music by Johnson's brother, John Rosamond Johnson, and soon adopted by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as its official song.
7. Lift Every Voice and Sing, performed by Veronica Thornton. For full lyrics and additional background.
Epilogue. The Ruins of Memory
My student searched my face as if my own blackness held what was lost to him. It would take a lifetime of stories, and even this would not be enough, but still it is those fragments of memory that hold us one to another—and these are mine, and I give them, for us.
My student searched my face as if my own blackness held what was lost to him. It would take a lifetime of stories, and even this would not be enough, but still it is those fragments of memory that hold us one to another—and these are mine, and I give them, for us.
1. Keep Your Eye on the Prize, performed by NitroVoX, and Felix Cross, Arranger. See, NitroVoX
2. Keep Your Eyes on the Prize: A Civil Rights Movement Anthem