“Race in America” in my blog

Once in a while, I review my blog. The no-fee WordPress platform has worked well for me. I would like a more accessible indexing system, but I’m really not motivated to make changes.

Since early 2013, I’ve posted 475 entries, with a few interruptions for illness or travel. I keep an index of my own devising (using Excel). In that document, I’ve got a sub-list of posts related to the environment, numbering 29 but not recently updated.

Recently I started numbering blog entries in two categories – Covid19 and “Race in America”.

I decided to look back and see what I had written that pertains to race/white supremacy. I picked out 32 posts. Most are about books, and most pertain to African American experience. Some are about lectures, performances and personal experiences. Rather than dump the whole list here, I’ll write about a few that seem important, with more to follow.

I have the biggest emotional investment in the three entries I wrote about Lillie Belle Allen. Her story haunts me. “Say her name”, MLK Day (1) and MLK Day (2).

For the reader who wonders about my point of view, I recommend Women’s March and protest memories written in early 2017, and the two subsequent posts. It includes the story of a protest that “went bad”, and explains why it is hard for me to engage in street activism. I also reported on a wonderful, prophetic woman, Ms. Edith Savage-Jennings.

Perhaps most relevant to Black Lives Matter is the essay I wrote on jury duty in early 2015, My Days in Court. I was called (but not empaneled) to serve on a civil case involving police brutality in Atlantic City, NJ.

Here’s a really fine book that you may have missed, “Son of the Rough South” by Karl Flemming, published in 2005. Fleming grew up in the Depression South and became a journalist, covering the Civil Rights movement during its violent years.

And here’s something that lifted my heart! A number Facebook friends linked to You-Tube videos of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” in honor of Juneteenth. I heard a wonderful LIVE rendition a few years ago. Central State University Chorus

So that’s a selection from my blog. Comments are always welcome!

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“The Mirror and the Light” by Hilary Mantel and Shakespeare’s Sonnet 25

This book is #3 in Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy about Thomas Cromwell (1485 to 1540), who served as chief minister to King Henry VIII of England. The title of this book is perfectly clear – King Henry is the light and Thomas Cromwell is the mirror. Reading this book and knowing Thomas Cromwell was executed by order of King Henry, I kept wanting to yell out a warning. “Get out! Now! While you can!”

Serious question: Was hereditary monarchy worse or better than the democratic chaos we now face? Trump will not hold office as long as Henry VIII. What kinds of change can a leader impose? How can those around a powerful leader maintain both sanity and self-respect? Will any Trump cabinet member be beheaded?

For your consideration, I offer Shakespeare’s Sonnet 25:

Let those who are in favour with their stars

Of public honour and proud titles boast,

Whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph bars,

Unlook’d for joy in that I honour most.

Great princes’ favourites their fair leaves spread

But as the marigold at the sun’s eye,

And in themselves their pride lies buried,

For at a frown they in their glory die.

The painful warrior famoused for fight,

After a thousand victories once foil’d,

Is from the book of honour razed quite,

And all the rest forgot for which he toil’d:

Then happy I, that love and am beloved

Where I may not remove nor be removed.

If you don’t want to entertain yourself with historical fiction, why not memorize a sonnet? And share it with someone you love!

NJ Senator Cory Booker, “Town Hall” Meeting, June 11, 2020 – Race in America #2

This was a Zoom gathering, and I was one of about 1500 participants. Senator Booker began by announcing that “the press” was not welcome. I was surprised. There’s no way a meeting that size could be “closed”, so I assume he was simply making it clear that he didn’t want to be quoted.

Questions were accepted both in advance of and during the meeting, but all were in writing and the moderator (his Deputy Campaign Manager) screened and read all questions. No one had an opportunity to throw either a softball or a curveball. I think the term is “on background”. Surely the press was listening, but they were not allowed any part in the event. OK with me.

A video of the event was later made available on line. I don’t think anything surprising or controversial was said. Booker has been in the public eye for a long time. He is suitably cautious.

Booker was born in 1969, after the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King. While admiring that advances of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, he said it had “accepted a negative peace”. The (then common) assumption was that integration and the Civil Rights Act would greatly advance the interests and quality of life for African Americans.

Booker believes racism (as presently experienced) is systemic as well as personal.

Booker talked about America as two nations, with unequal access to healthcare, justice,  and a clean environment (as evidenced by rates of asthma, lead poisoning, etc.) He challenged the idea that the documented differences are really economic. Even controlling for income, health differentials confirm that the system is biased against non-Whites.

Booker says we are experiencing a time of opportunity. He encourages continued demonstrations. (He didn’t address preventing instigators from causing or exacerbating violence.) His sees his role as legislative and discussed the new legislation he (with other Senators) has written. One Republican Senator has expressed crossover support. Booker is uncertain if others can be recruited. The legislation calls for “substantive accountability” as follows:

• ban on chokeholds and other lethal actions
• data transparency and a national database about police infractions and penalties (so violent officers can’t just move to a new department) and
• limits on police immunity, changing the standard from willfulness to recklessness.

Booker emphasized that it’s not the job of law enforcement to solve problems. That responsibility rests on government. Law enforcement does what government prescribes.

The next topic was incarceration. He describes our prisons as being full of addicts and non-violent offenders, many of whom are desperate for health care, especially mental health services. He says that there ARE solutions, it is a matter of how much we the American people are willing to struggle. Booker wants to end “mass” incarceration in this generation. It’s a big goal.

During the Q/A, topics included police in schools, systemic issues like the food and clothing industries, and voter suppression.

Asked how to keep protest going, he asked allies to stay engaged, to use every possible platform, to be creative and aggressive, and to be increasingly well informed. He advised reading The New Jim Crow and Just Mercy.

Considering he had been my Senator for about seven years, I’m a little late trying to get acquainted with Cory Booker. This was a reasonable, not particularly surprising, introduction. I’m optimistic about his leadership and concerned about the pitfalls and challenges of being a Senator at this time.

“To Have or Not to Have – Dispatches from one millennial’s uterus” by Katie O’Reilly in Sierra magazine.

My attention span is short these days, so I’ve decided to review articles instead of books. The November/December (2019) issue of Sierra magazine was a special issue examining:

• gender
• equity
• the changing climate

This article about (potential) parenthood caught my eye. Katie O’Reilly writes as adventure and lifestyle editor for Sierra magazine. She was born in the mid 1980s and is now just about the same age as I was when my older son was born.

When she confided her doubts about parenthood to her mother, O’Reilly was informed that HER own conception might have been derailed if her mother had become obsessive about the threat of nuclear annihilation, which was receiving attention from SANE and the Nuclear Freeze movement at that time. I remember! A movie called “The Day After” (about the impact of nuclear war) was released in November of 1983. Activist friends of mine were busy organizing watch parties. Newly pregnant, I just couldn’t deal with it. I stayed home, eyeing my TV as if it could turn itself on and inflict the movie on me.

O’Reilly brought my attention to BirthStrike, an organization for people uncertain about or opposed to parenthood, based on the future livability of planet earth. Governments, in particular, need to listen, as they have had little success in convincing people to have babies.

I also learned about a new psychological counseling specialty, called “baby decision CLARITY counseling”, which O’Reilly undertakes. She does not, in this article, announce a decision, but it sounds like she is leaning towards parenthood.

“ ‘Existential suicide’ may sound dramatic, but letting the climate dictate decisions about my uterus increasingly feels like a sign that I’ve acclimated to a dreary future, that I’ve stopped trying…” In her conclusion, she states “I’m looking forward to help my own hypothetical kid make the most of their time on the beautiful, ephemeral Earth they’ve inherited – whatever it happens to look like.”

Now, I wonder how women like O’Reilly will make decisions about pregnancy in the time of Covid plus (in America) racial turmoil. I’ve been (distant) witness to the arrival of a handful of babies since Covid struck. All, thank goodness, healthy and safe. One part of me wants to shriek “Don’t do it!” to anyone contemplating pregnancy, but I know that children have always been born in bad times, and no one is guaranteed peace and security. But here we are, with no way to know if “the worst” is over. I wonder how the “clarity counselor” has adjusted her practice. Who am I, a woman who gave birth in 1984 (of all years!) to offer an opinion!?

Say her name: Lillie Belle Allen, murdered in York PA, July 21, 1969. Race in America #1

As we agonize over the murder of George Floyd, the names of victims of police brutality are being listed in the media. I want to honor the memory of a woman who may be overlooked, Lillie Belle Allen. She was not killed by police, but the Mayor and Chief of Police in the City of York, Pennsylvania, had created an atmosphere so racially tense and poisonous that driving down the wrong street led to her death.

I wrote about this previously, here and here. I learned this tragic history in 2018, many years after the fact. It shocked me to realize that I moved to York in 1973, lived there two years, and never heard of Lillie Belle Allen, Henry Schaad or the York race riots.

What led up to the York riots, which are described in Wikipedia? In 1962, the City had imposed a discriminatory policy of aggressive policing in black neighborhoods, including the use of dogs. I don’t know why. I speculate that the white residents of York couldn’t tolerate the changes that came upon them in the 1950s and 1960s. African Americans from the South moved to York for work in its many factories. Suburbanization “hollowed out” the downtown. Schools were integrated by busing. Resentment festered. Gangs coalesced.

I am grateful to the York Daily Record and journalist Kim Strong for their reporting.

Some York residents regarded the summer of 1969 as a “draw”. One death on each “side”. I can’t accept this. Lillie Belle Allen was an uninvolved by-stander, not even a resident of York. Henry Schaad chose employment as a police officer. I regard his death as a particularly grim and awful case of the sins of the fathers being visited on the sons. One analyst, writing 30 years after the fact, concluded he died because he was a police officer, not because he was white. (York’s police force was not 100% white in 1969.)

I’m saddened by the death of Lillie Belle Allen. If she hadn’t been shot, she might now be 78 years old. Who knows what those lost decades might have brought? To her family, I offer sincere condolences.