The Nonviolent Right To Vote Movement People's Almanac

THE NONVIOLENT RIGHT TO VOTE MOVEMENT PEOPLE’S ALMANAC FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM FROM VIOLENCE TO NONVIOLENCE THE SCIENCE OF GOVERNMENT FROM TRAGEDY TO TRIUMPH

47TH ANNIVERSARY COMMEMORATIVE EDITION Compiled By

Helen L. Bevel 475

Birth Of A Civilization Series

The Nonviolent Right To Vote Movement People’s Almanac From SlaveryTo Freedom From Violence To Nonviolence

Public Domain

This book contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of nonviolence, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material in this book is distributed without profit but to advance the study and usage of nonviolence.

ISBN 978-1-257-95347-9

Published by

The Institute for the Study and Advancement of Nonviolence http://almanac.2freedom.com nonviolentstudy@gmail.com ● (773) 413-0081 ● (202) 527-9798 ● Fax (267) 695-8267

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DEDICATION This book is dedicated to all human beings who would be free and live in peace.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that.

Hate cannot drive out hate; Only love can do that.”

It’s either nonviolence or nonexistence.

—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Violence cannot drive out violence: Only nonviolence can do that.

THE PEOPLE’S MOVEMENT The Nonviolent and Civil Rights Movement would not have been possible without the people who came together at a very unique moment in time to give their life, blood, and sacrifice to make them a reality.

Our goal is to have the most comprehensive almanac, that is inclusive of the names and sometimes stories of the people who made the movements possible by the 50th Anniversary of the Right to Vote Movement. Do you have a story, your own or an ancestors?

If you do please send it to us, so we can review it and determine where it fits in the almanac. We can’t print everybody’s full story, however we can create a web page on our website that has your full story.

We are seeking the following names of people who participated in the following events, for inclusion in the almanac and/or website.

Members of SNCC Delegates to the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party Persons locked in the church in Montgomery, AL, during the Freedom Rides Persons at the first mass meeting in Selma, AL Persons who were in the church in Marion, AL who heard the call for the march from Selma to Montgomery Persons who marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge the first time Persons who marched from Selma to Montgomery (for website) Please send the names and pictures to us for inclusion in the next edition of the almanac. Also we are requesting unique memorabilia (newspaper article, flyer, button, etc.) for our planned museum. If you possess such an item please send a photo copy and information about it to us. Include a self-addressed stamped envelope with your submissions so that we can inform you of our intention to use or not use your story or memorabilia.

This almanac is dedicated to the people, so tell your story so that it can be heard and read.

The Institute for the Study and Advancement of Nonviolence http://almanac.2freedom.com ● nonviolentstudy@gmail.com ● 773.413.0081 ● Fax 267.695.8267 477

“Seek ye first the Kingdom of G_D and its rigteousness and all things shall be added unto you.� —Matthew 6:33

Dear G_D In the Spirit of Love and Truth, I pray that this book finds open hearts and fertile minds, so that an understanding and new direction can be chosen by your people who are lost in the wilderness. An understanding that leads to peace and a direction that leads to the Promised Land. I am grateful for those who have sacrificed, fallen short and given their lives for the cause of freedom and justice for all. I pray that their sacrifices were not in vain and that a new generation of freedom lovers will take up the banner of nonviolence and forge a new system of relationships that is based on principles. Principles that are applied in every relationship. I pray that white supremacy, racism and hatred be destroyed in the hearts, minds, DNA and spirit of all people on the earth and that we as a people will see in our fellow man and woman, a sister and a brother, a refelction of Divinity, beyond race, creed skin color, religion and national origin.

Bless the ancestors who have gone before. May their fervent prayers for freedom, justice, and equality be answered by the lives each of your children live each day. May I find forgiveness in my heart for past and present violations. Create in me a clean heart and renew the right spirit and let me be like you my Source, Creator, Generator, Organizer and Director. Thank you for this opportunity to be of service and may this book spread to the far corners of the earth and give enlightenment of a way of life that begins with the individual and encompasses all aspects of living that is in harmony with the laws that govern the universe. Thank you for nonviolence and those who have experimented with it and found success. May their tribes increase. And may all who read this book find success in applying nonviolence in their personal, interpersonal and social lives as we learn to love ourselves and our fellow Earthians. Bless and protect your children everywhere and send them loving parents. May the evil of this world cease and the love increase. Thank you in advance for the fulfillment of this prayer.

In the name of the Christ, Yeshua ben Joseph (Hebrew name) Jesus (Greek name)

AMEN

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword by Reverend James L. Bevel ................................................ 1 Litany of Cain and Abel ....................................................................... 3 Introduction .......................................................................................... 4

VIOLENCE: The Pathology of Mankind African Enslavement Timeline ............................................................. 8 Remember Who You Are ..................................................................... 9 The Great Enemy: Ignorance .............................................................. 14 Slavery the Untold Story .................................................................... 15 Legalized Rape ................................................................................... 19 Lynchings ........................................................................................... 20 The Sexual Ramifications of Slavery.................................................. 22 The Twenty Seven Findings ............................................................... 24 The American Slave Codes................................................................. 26 All Things Slave ................................................................................. 32 The Universal Law of Ten Fold Retuern ............................................ 33 The Six Nations .................................................................................. 34 Thirteen Things To End Racism ......................................................... 37 Slave Rantings and Pearls of Wisdom ................................................ 41 The Rise of the Pseudo Intellectual..................................................... 45 Movies On Slavery ............................................................................. 47 The Abolitionist .................................................................................. 50 Benjamin Franklin, Anthony Benezet, David Rice, Thomas "Tom" Paine, James Wilson, John Jay, Benjamin Rush, President James Madison, Gouverneur Morris, Bishop Richard Allen, President John Quincy Adams, Elizabeth Heyrick, Arthur & Lewis Tappan, Josiah Henson, Lucretia Mott, Reverend John Rankin, Samuel J. May, Sojourner Truth, Gerrit Smith, Levi & Catherine Coffin, Reverend Nat Turner, John Brown, William H. Seward, Lydia Maria Child, Maria W. Stewart, Theodore & Angelina Weld, William Lloyd Garrison, Gamaliel Bailey, President Abraham Lincoln, Cassius M. Clay, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Jonathan Blanchard, Wendell Phllips, Dr. Martin Robinson Delany, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Henry Highland Garnet, Pardee Butler, Frederick Douglas, Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells, Frances Ellen Harper

FREEDOM BOUND W. E. B. DuBois ................................................................................. 94 Booker T. Washington ........................................................................ 95 Tuskegee Institute............................................................................... 96 Dr. George W. Carver......................................................................... 97 Freedom.............................................................................................. 98 Before the Voting Rights Act ........................................................... 100 Quakers ............................................................................................ 104 Highlander Folk School .................................................................... 105 Myles Horton .................................................................................... 106 Septima Clark ................................................................................... 107 Daisy Bates & The Little Rock Nine ................................................ 108 Thurgood Marshall ........................................................................... 109 NAACP Legal Defense Fund ........................................................... 110 Voting Timeline ............................................................................... 112 Mary Louise Smith, Aurelia Browder, Claudette Colvin .................. 116 Montgomery, AL ............................................................................. 117 Rosa Parks ........................................................................................ 118 The Montgomery Bus Boycott ......................................................... 120 Dr. Martin Luther King, JR. ............................................................. 122 SCLC ............................................................................................... 135 Dr. Ralph Abernathy......................................................................... 136 Reverend Joseph Lowery .................................................................. 137 Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth............................................................ 138 Charles Steele ................................................................................... 139 Dr. Dorothy Cotton ........................................................................... 140 Reverend C. T. Vivian ...................................................................... 141 Bayard Rustin ................................................................................... 142

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Ambassador Andrew Young............................................................. 143 Reverend Hosea Williams ................................................................ 144 CORE—Congress of Racial Equality ............................................... 145 The Nashville Student Movement .................................................... 146 The American Baptist Theological Seminary ................................... 147 Reverend James Lawson .................................................................. 148 Representative John Lewis ............................................................... 149 The Freedom Rides........................................................................... 150 Mayor Marion Barry......................................................................... 152 Ella Baker ......................................................................................... 153 SNCC– Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee...................... 154 Mississippi........................................................................................ 161 Medgar Evers ................................................................................... 166 President John F. Kennedy ............................................................... 168 Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party ............................................ 169 Robert “Bob” Moses......................................................................... 170 Lawrence Guyot ............................................................................... 171 Charles McDew ................................................................................ 172 James Meredith................................................................................. 173 Fannie Lou Hamer ............................................................................ 174 Annelle Ponder ................................................................................. 175 Music & Culture ............................................................................... 176 The Struggle For Voting Rights In Mississippi ................................ 178 COFO– Council of Federated Organizations .................................... 182 The Freedom School......................................................................... 184 Dr. El Zulu ....................................................................................... 190 Judicial Rulings ................................................................................ 191 Forbidden In Slavery ........................................................................ 192 Ku Klux Klan ................................................................................... 193 The Democratic Party ....................................................................... 196 The White Citizens Council.............................................................. 197 Crime & Terrorism ........................................................................... 199 Willie Ricks ...................................................................................... 204 Stokely Carmichael .......................................................................... 205 African American Civil Rights Women............................................ 206 Statements of Discipline of Nonviolent Movements......................... 207 Representative Adam Clayton Powell .............................................. 209 The Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence ........ 210 U.S. Constitution—Amendment 13 .................................................. 212 The Federal Constitution .................................................................. 213 Dr. Virgil Wood ............................................................................... 214 Dr. Dorothy Height ........................................................................... 215 Alabama ........................................................................................... 216 The 1901 Illegal Constitution of the State of Alabama .................... 217 Booker T. Washington Seeks Representation ................................... 218 Alabama Typical Voting .................................................................. 224 Prelude To Birmingham ................................................................... 226 Birmingham, AL .............................................................................. 228 Boming-ham, AL.............................................................................. 229 Dick Gregory .................................................................................... 230 Dorothy Tillman ............................................................................... 231 The March on Washington ............................................................... 232 Monument To A People ................................................................... 235 The Civil Rights Act of 1964............................................................ 236 Coretta Scott King ............................................................................ 238 Selma, AL The Birthplace of Democracy ......................................... 240 Courageous Eight ............................................................................. 243 Sam & Amelia Boynton ................................................................... 244 Reverend F. D. Reese ....................................................................... 245 The Nonviolent Vanguard, Dr. Bernard Lafayette ............................ 246

Colia Lafayette ................................................................................. 247 James Forman ................................................................................... 248 Tabernacle Baptist Church .......................................................................... 249 Reverend L. L. Anderson............................................................................. 250 First Baptist Church ..................................................................................... 251 Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church & Reverend P. H. Lewis ............................. 252 Questions To Determine If Something Is Worth Knowing .......................... 253 Father of the Nonviolent Right-To-Vote-Movement—James L. Bevel ....... 254 Mother of the Nonviolent Right-To-Vote-Movement—Diane Nash ........... 255 Who Is James Luther Bevel? ....................................................................... 256 James Bevel Brief Biological Sketch ........................................................... 258 Timeline of James L. Bevel ......................................................................... 260 No Choice But To Write .............................................................................. 262 Proposal for the Right To Vote ................................................................... 263 Staff of Reverend James L. Bevel................................................................ 268 Reverend James Orange .............................................................................. 269 Reverend Richard Boone ............................................................................. 270 James Bevel, the Nonviolent Right To Vote Movement .............................. 271 Beyond the Visual ....................................................................................... 279 Jimmie Lee Jackson ..................................................................................... 281 Zion United Methodist Church .................................................................... 285 Charles Fager ............................................................................................... 286 Viola Liuzzo ................................................................................................ 287 Reverend James Reeb .................................................................................. 288 J. L. Chestnut ............................................................................................... 289 President Lyndon B. Johnson, The Right To Vote Act ................................ 291 Signing of the Voting Rights Act................................................................. 292 Lucy Foster .................................................................................................. 293 Marie Foster ................................................................................................ 294 Local Heroes & Sheroes .............................................................................. 295 Annie Cooper, Mayor John Jackson, Charles Mauldin, Barbara Howard, Princella Howard, Charles Bonner, L. L. Anderson, JoAnne Bland, Bennie Ruth Johnson Crenshaw, Veronica Smith, Mattie Atkins, Willie Neal Avery, P. H. Lewis, Albert Turner, The Black Belt 8, John Hewlett, Bessie Mc Means, Sheyanne Web & Rachael West, Bruce Carver Boynton, Margaret Moore, Mayor James Perkins Attorney Hank Sanders, The Power of One Standing .................................. 303 Attorney Faya Rose Sanders ....................................................................... 306 The National Voting Rights Museum & Institute ........................................ 307 The Annual Bridge Crossing Re-enactment Jubilee .................................... 308 Churches & Organizations........................................................................... 309 What Is the Voting Rights Act? ................................................................... 310 United States Voting Timeline .................................................................... 311 The Effect of the Voting Rights Act ............................................................ 309 Voting Rights Act of 1965 ........................................................................... 315 Effectively Voting ....................................................................................... 317 The Power of the Vote ................................................................................. 318 Young Voters .............................................................................................. 319 Shirley Chislom ........................................................................................... 321 Reverend Jesse Jackson ............................................................................... 322 Legacy of a Movement President Barack H. Obama ................................... 323 First Lady Michelle Obama ......................................................................... 324 Partial List of Accomplishments ................................................................. 326

THE HEALING Of A NATION Spiritual Parasites, The Plague of Slavery ................................................... 330 Healing Or Punishment ............................................................................... 331 The Nonviolent Clinical Process ................................................................. 323 Violence/Slavery/Hate Chart ....................................................................... 334 Freedom Awaits Healing ............................................................................. 337 Emotional Mastery ...................................................................................... 339 Self-healing Techniques for Healing Your Emotions .................................. 340

NONVIOLENCE 480

Why Violence? ............................................................................................ 360 Declaration of Freedom................................................................................ 362 The Nonviolent Movement Chart................................................................. 363 Man As Government .................................................................................... 364 Freedom & Responsibility ........................................................................... 365 The Laws Governing A Nonviolent Meeting ............................................... 366 Precinct Council the New Frontier ............................................................... 367 Nonviolent Precinct Councils....................................................................... 369 What Is A Precinct Council? ........................................................................ 371 Self-knowledge vs Self-Concept .................................................................. 372 Knowledge of Self ....................................................................................... 373 It’s Never About The Other ......................................................................... 374 Freedom In Nonviolence .............................................................................. 375 Nonviolence: The Time Has Come .............................................................. 377 The Golden Rule .......................................................................................... 379 Sermon on the Mount - Yeshua ben Joseph (Jesus)..................................... 380 Nonviolence As A Christian Principle ......................................................... 383 Nonviolence ................................................................................................. 384 Gandhi’s Contribution.................................................................................. 385 Nonviolent Method of Action ...................................................................... 387 Four Principles of Nonviolence .................................................................... 388 Some General Methods For Changing Society............................................ 389 Steps In A Nonviolent Campaign ................................................................. 390 System of Relationships Based On Justice ................................................... 391 Nonviolent Ecological Consciousness.......................................................... 392 Daily Principles To Live By......................................................................... 393

FEMININE CHOICE VIOLENCE OR NONVIOLENCE The Enerme .................................................................................................. 396 Education For Change .................................................................................. 397 Mis-education of Females Is the Mis-education of A Nation ....................... 398 Twelve Laws of Natural Education .............................................................. 401 Violent & Nonviolent Based Education ....................................................... 402 Pre-conception Choice Education ................................................................ 403 From Lunatic To LunaQueen ....................................................................... 404 Lunatic-LunaQueen Chart ............................................................................ 407 Fertility Literacy Quiz .................................................................................. 408 Motherhood Key To Civilization ................................................................. 409 Why 21st Century Early America Is Not A Civilization .............................. 410 Mother Models ............................................................................................. 411 Self-awareness Study ................................................................................... 413 Home Development For Nonviolent Conscious Living................................ 415 Fertility Literacy .......................................................................................... 417 The Development of A SHE Culture............................................................ 418 Our Birth Choices ........................................................................................ 421 Seven Systems of Prayerful Living .............................................................. 422 From Co-dependency—Co-creativity .......................................................... 423 Voices of the Sisterhood .............................................................................. 425 Questionaire ................................................................................................. 433

MASCULINE RESPONSIBILITY WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON? Declaration of African American Male, An Endangered Species................. 434 Voices of the Brotherhood ........................................................................... 444 Youth Bill of Rights ..................................................................................... 459 An Appeal For Human Rights One .............................................................. 461 An Appeal For Human Rights Two.............................................................. 462 15 Ways To Create A Slave ......................................................................... 467 35 Ways To Eradicate Slavery ..................................................................... 468 I Am Chart ................................................................................................... 470 The Who vs The What Chart........................................................................ 471 Native American 10 Commandments........................................................... 472 Study Section ............................................................................................... 473

It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur.

You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership.

—Nelson Mandela

FOREWORD In the 1960’s, a social method in keeping with America’s constitution emerged, but no one took the time to give people the principles and processes by which the movements of the 60’s worked, so that people facing problems can use these same methods. It was ‘the science of nonviolence applied to constitutional problems and issues that was unbeatable in solving social problems.

If young people, or any group of people really studied nonviolence they could heal themselves of the ills of slavery, establish justice, get all children properly educated, end genocide, banish nuclear weapons, stop pollution and other environmental violations, end poverty, disease and ignorance and create the beloved community. The human mind could thus be freed up for full-time conscious usage and exploration. Nonviolence as a science is unlimited in terms of its potential, and will eventually be found effective in solving personal and family problems.

One of the most important things is the fact that the public perception and the historical projection of the Civil Rights Movement has left out the true essence of the movement. This is because people sought an easy way to explain things and got caught up in the awe and worship of a personality, one of the practitioners of nonviolence named, Martin Luther King, Jr. This is a crisis. The media, the government, the old guard of the movement and the people who don’t know how nonviolence works created a false image of Dr. King as someone to be worshipped. As a result the real truth and dynamics that took place in the 60’s is unknown and a man has been propelled to larger than life proportion. Why has Dr. King been portrayed as a magnificent personality born to save people?

Nonviolence learned and accepted by thousands of young people in Birmingham, AL was the factor that ended segregation.

College students from across the south staged sit-ins, open theater movements and freedom rides. They freed Mississippi, and then obtained the right-to-vote. Many people working with the ‘science of nonviolence’ in Chicago, IL brought about open housing. Average people did this. They are all but forgotten. We are told that it was a “Dr. King Movement,” and when he died, we gave him a national holiday and froze the movement in the amber of a Georgia tomb.

As a result of this, instead of knowing the real story of how young people and nonviolence changed the world, most people sit around feeling inferior and reinforcing the ills of slavery on themselves and their children. Instead of healing their emotions, bodies and mind so that they can solve problems, they look in awe at the picture of a man, worshipping him as a god, rather than as a functional, loving man, that any man can become. This causes people to go into a greater state of inferiority and dejection as they contemplate his murder and believe that if they become like him, that they too will be killed.

Young people need to understand that it was not some great hero, Martin Luther King, Jr. or some great philosophical strategist, James Luther Bevel, that freed us, but it was the principle of truth and nonviolence applied by average people that brought freedom and that changed the conditions in the 60’s. It was children age eight to seventeen that ended segregation. In addition, if the changes of the 60’s are to be upheld, it must be done with the same method that was used to gain them, nonviolence. Once people understand this, they can stop sitting around longing and waiting for some great leader to emerge and save them. They can study the works of Gandhi, they can read and meditate on Yeshua’s (Jesus) Sermon on the Mount. They can read some of Leo Tolstoy’s and Wilhelm Reich’s writings, and also old and new data from many cultures. They can then do what needs to be done to bring the nonviolent movement back to life to finish its work, the creation of the beloved community.

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Gandhi’s words, the Sermon on the Mount and many other writings are not religion, they are science, and when this science is understood and applied, as it was in India, throughout the southern United States and in Chicago, it allowed people to negotiate a new social contract in every instance and it solved problems. The science of non-violence, taught openly and freely will be able to change the world, because if you teach people to see problems and not the illusion of an enemy, and you teach people to reason, then they mature as loving responsible people.

People may ask why James L. Bevel is not a household name. This is so and this will allow you to understand the power of the nonviolent movement even more. James L. Bevel, is not a household name, because while I was involved in most of the movements as the strategist, chief organizer and teacher of non-violence, it was without me seeking credit for my actions. The science applied needs to receive the credit. The people who didn’t understand this gave the credit for my work and that of others to the preacher and public spokesperson, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The movement was not Martin Luther King, Jr. or James Luther Bevel, or any individual. The movement is the application of the ‘science of nonviolence’ applied to constitutional and worldwide violations.

Nonviolence must be advanced in-order for peace on earth to become a reality. Nonviolence is the science of freedom. As nuclear technology continues to develop we must all become nonviolent because, “It’s either nonviolence or nonexistence,” in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. —Reverend James L. Bevel, Co-author of The Selma Right To Vote Movement Proposal and Director of The Selma Right To Vote Movement

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LITANY OF CAIN AND ABEL And when they were in the field, Cain killed Abel.

And Moses came from the mountain, and found the people engaged in idol worship, and Cain killed Abel.

And Joshua marched around the wall of Jericho, and Cain killed Abel.

And Sampson met the Phillistines, and Cain killed Abel.

And David met Goliath, and Cain killed Abel.

And John the Baptist met Herod, and Cain killed Abel.

And Jesus met Pilate, and Cain killed Abel.

And Paul met Stephen, and Cain killed Abel.

And the Pilgrims met the Native Americans, and Cain killed Abel.

And the colonist disagreed with the King of England, and Cain killed Abel.

And the kidnapped Africans rebelled against enslavement, and Cain killed Abel.

And the North and the South disagreed, and Cain killed Abel.

And Mexico and America disagreed, and Cain killed Abel.

And Hitler thought Germans were superior to Jews, and Cain killed Abel.

And North Korea and South Korea disagreed, and Cain killed Abel.

And the French wanted to extend dominance over Vietnam, and Cain killed Abel.

And Gandhi was in a prayer meeting, and Cain killed Abel.

And Kennedy went to Dallas, and Cain killed Abel.

And the four little girls sat in Sunday school, and Cain killed Abel.

And Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner worked for Civil Rights, and Cain killed Abel.

And Malcolm X was in New York, and Cain killed Abel.

And Emmett Till was in Alabama, and Cain killed Abel.

And Jimmy Lee Jackson was killed by the state trooper And Martin Luther King, Jr. was in Memphis, and Cain killed Abel.

And Sadat was at a parade, and Cain killed Abel.

And Mrs. Gandhi was on her way to work, and Cain killed Abel.

And the gas chamber, electric chair and lethal injection became fashionable, and Cain killed Abel.

And atomic bombs, germ warfare and nuclear bombs became national defensive moves, and Cain killed Abel.

And the midwives were killed as witches, and Cain killed Abel And abortions became respectable, and Cain killed Abel.

And gangs began to kill other gangs, and Cain killed Abel.

And, and, and, and……………………………

And the question is WHY? Why do people imagine that the elimination of another person can solve a problem, bring justice, eliminate pain or give protection?

WHY? 3

“There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.”

—A. J. Muste:

INTRODUCTION Slavery in the Americas has been a 400+ years experience. The enslavement of females has lasted for over 12,000+ years and is the prelude for all subsequent enslavement of people. Within any enslaved people their are the females who are the purveyors of the slave culture. Melanin rich people (Blacks) were kidnapped from Africa to be forced labor on the plantations throughout the Americas under the whip, lash and hangman's noose of melanin deficient people (Whites).

Whereas Black people labored in the fields, in the plantation houses as slaves, the White woman upheld the tradition of slavery in the houses and continued to perpetuate slavery through her male and female offspring as did the Black woman.

White males who were referred to as masters were as much slaves as the Black person in the fields, for only a slave would perpetuate, reinforce and engage in slavery. If you cannot see the humanity, goodness, purpose and equality of another then you will fail to recognize it fully in yourself. Thus you will operate as a partial being not able to comprehend the totality of yourself, for in essence there is only the Oneness and Unity of Life. One body with different parts. The right arm is just as valuable as the left arm, the heart is of equal value as the liver, the blood as the lymph. To deny either is to deny the self.

Slavery is violence and freedom is non-violence. Slavery is the result of believing that you can own another, a thing or a moment in time. Life in actuality is like a puzzle whereby you have to determine where each piece fits to create the big picture. All pieces are of equal value and needed to complete the puzzle. Violence is when one discards pieces of the puzzle because they can't readily see where the piece fits and thus they can never see the big picture.

Man (male/female) is a four fold being consisting of spirit, mind, emotion and a body. Each person consists of these four elements. When an individual looks out and concludes that someone else is just a body to be used for labor and sex, then they loose the capacity to know themselves and thus get stuck in the physical reality without a mind to control the body, a heart to give direction and a spirit to create a synthesis of the whole of self for the purpose of liberation and transcendence of the physical realm.

And so it was in the Americas that a people determined that another people were of no value except as a labor force and as sexual objects, and they setout to build a nation on this false belief. Four hundred years later that nation is crumbling as the foundation was rotten to the core, and cannot live up to the creed of “A Nation Under God.” A tenet of nonviolence is that your means and your ends must be congruent. If you plant tomatoes you will get tomatoes and not turnip greens. Likewise if you sow violence then you will reap violence. Americans sowed the seeds of violence that they brought from their respective motherlands. White people brought a legacy of violence from Britain and Europe and Black people from Africa. They met on the shores of America and continued to perpetuate their heritage of violence.

Violence begets violence and an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth will leave everyone blind and toothless.

Violence is a disease that like all disease needs to be healed. Without healing, violence just continues to perpetrate itself.

There is the violence of the body, the mind, the emotions and the spirit and each must be healed. There are many obstacles to overcome to achieve the state of non-violence. There are religious fears, false beliefs, authority figures, selfabnegation or the feeling of unworthiness, a defeatist attitude, depression, laziness, fear of change, peer pressure, hopelessness, the comfort zone of the status quo or don't rock the boat, and the guilt and shame of the past. Getting past all of these can be a challenging task, however once a person realizes that they need a tune-up just like a car, a guitar or piano or a trimming like a tree, a detoxification of the emotions, mind and spirit or just an emotional/mental enema to relive the clogged memories, images and DNA programming of the past then they are half way through.

Many believe that education is the passport to freedom. Education is the passport to freedom when the educational process is built on the foundation of self-healing. Otherwise you build new knowledge onto low self-esteem, depression, hopelessness, shame and guilt, and in the end it all comes crashing down as dark secrets come to the light, unknown 4

shadows surface or sexual aberrations find expression. These should all be eliminated so that ones advancement in life is built on a solid foundation. American history is filled with the lives of leaders whose public and private life were incongruent, and their fall from grace. Such a waste of talent and ability because they did not know how to clear their past, remold their character and purge themselves of the toxins of slavery.

“You can’t put new wine in old skins.”

Why? Because the old skins have already been stretched to their limits and would burst.

Slavery lingers on in the United States of America as she attempts to hold onto outdated, changeless, violent based institutions that stifle the creative goodwill of people. People are birth into life with gifts, skills and talents that are unique for their era and these institutions are designed to impose a rigid system of relationships on people that leaves these gifts, skills and talents dormant. The question must be asked, “are people made for institutions or are institutions made for people?” The latter being so, the institutions must change to receive the treasures of the people in each succeeding generation.

Presently, jails and prisons are filled to overflowing because the schools are incapable of educating children to know, love and be themselves so that they can express civility and bring forth their unique gifts, skills and talents. Houses have yet to become homes as homelessness looms out of control because people are not at home with themselves as homo sapiens and are lost in a identity crisis maze. War rages on and continues to strip our nation of her brightest sons and daughters and our treasures are depleted of resources needed to heal and educate our citizens.

Monsanto and other giant corporations are destroying our soil, air and water by planting genetically modified seeds under the guise of improving agriculture by protecting plants from pests, while all the while establishing a food monopoly with patented seeds. The masses are so caught up in survival that they believe this hype as they only tune into urban affairs and are ill-informed about rural affairs that determine whether they will eat or not. And yet it is the control of a peoples agriculture and food base that leads to mass enslavement of a people.

Children are having children and mothers have long since abandoned the homes for the supposed glory of corporate America only to find a system collapsing under the weight of imitation and assimilation. All the while creating latch-key children who raise themselves or children who are raised by strangers in daycare centers during the formative years of their life and thus inheriting character deformities, bad eating habits and ill health. A once great people have been relegated to rock and rap stars with their pants hanging off their butts, suggesting an easy sexual lay. Health deteriorates as people rely solely on the medical establishment whose wealth comes from people being sick (a clear conflict of interest) and refuse to learn and utilize natural self-healing techniques to assume personal responsibility for their health.

Women use as a hallmark of achievement the Supreme Court Ruling of Roe vs Wade, legalizing abortion as birth control, wasting tax payers time energy and money, rather than support the initiation and development of an educational system that would teach all females to know themselves and their bodily cycles, so that they can consciously plan to have or not have children.

It is clear that non-violence was used to open the doorway to freedom during the Civil Rights Movement of the 50’s and 60’s. Yet because people have lingered in the wilderness and held onto the ways of Egypt (capitalism, racism, sexism, genderism, ageism, exploitation of nature and violence) that the gains have been slowly lost. It stands to reason that to walk through the door one must purge themselves of violence. Violence cannot free a people because violence is the foundation of slavery. Violence sees us and them, master and slave, big I and little you whereas non-violence sees I and Thou, brother and sister. Violence sees an enemy in people. Non-violence sees an enemy in ignorance and the illness it creates.

This book is designed to provide an inside view and understanding of the profundity, relevance and necessity of nonviolence as the weapon of choice for true liberation for the spiritual warrior, who would be victorious in all battles.

Be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace (nonviolence); Above all, taking the shield of faith, 5

wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God: Ephesians 6:10-17

A new day is upon us and the dayspring from on high shines the light of consciousness for all who would be awakened at this time to go forth to walk into the Promised Land. A land flowing with milk and honey, where freedom is a reality, justice a way of life, love an ever present force, truth forever on the throne and where peace reigns eternal. May you choose the weapon of choice, so that your victory will be assured. May you follow the path of least resistance. May your weapon and path be that of the courageous, victorious warriors of antiquity, nonviolence.

I have come to fight the good fight.

The battle that leads to Heavens door.

Which opens wide on my approach.

As I am welcomed in by the door keeper.

He who gave his life to show me the way to eternal life.

I enter the kingdom and my eyes behold the beauty, majesty, limitlessness, and magnificence of G_D’s splendor.

Many mansions set before me.

Treasures from on high and my cup runneth over.

Fountains flowing with goodness and mercy forever.

This is my inheritance as I enjoy life evermore.

As I hear the most melodious voice say, “Well done my good and faithful servant, well done.”

And I smile, a smile of delight, glee and joy, for I have no burdens, no fear, no desires and no enemies.

I am Peace.

Amen —Myeka, February 13, 2011

6

VIOLENCE The Pathology of Mankind “In a nuclear age we can no longer afford to embrace the pathology of violence.”

The Enslavement of Females The Enslavement of Nations The Enslavement of Africans In the Americas The Enslavement of Children

Violence = Slavery 7

AFRICAN ENSLAVEMENT TIMELINE 1441 1444 1444 - 5 1471 1482 1500 1502 1510 1516 1532 1592 1780's 1600 1619 1652 1776 -1783 1787 1791 1804 1807 1808 1814 1823 1831 1834 1839 1848 1849 1851 1852 1859 1860 - 65 1862 1865 1866 1869 1886 1888 1873 1948 1964 1965 2011 -

8

Start of European slave trading in Africa.

First slaves brought to Portugal from northern Mauritania Portuguese make contract with Sub-Saharan Africa Portuguese arrive in the Gold Coast Portuguese begin building Elmina Castle on the Gold Coast Sugar plantations established on island of Sao Tome two hundred miles from coast of West Africa Juan de C贸rdoba of Seville becomes the first merchant to send an African slave to the New World. first slaves shipped to Spanish colonies in South America via Spain Benin ceases to export male slaves, fearing loss of manpower first direct shipment of slaves from Africa to the Americas Bernard Ericks becomes the first Dutch slave trader.

Slave trade at its peak King Philip III of Spain outlaws the use of Native American slaves in Spanish colonies.

The first African slaves arrive in Virginia.

Dutch establish colony at Cape of Good Hope, South Africa American War of Independence Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery by Quobna Cugoano published foundation of the Society for the Abolition of Slave Trade Slavery is made illegal in the Northwest Territory. The U.S Constitution states that Congress may not ban the slave trade until 1808 slave uprising in Haiti (Saint Domingue) led by Toussaint L'Ouverture Danes pass law against slave trade Haitian independence British law passed declaring buying, selling and transporting slaves illegal (ownership continues) North America abolish slave trade Dutch outlaw slave trade founding of Anti-slavery Committee London Nat Turner, an enslaved African American preacher, leads the most significant slave uprising in America.

William Lloyd Garrison begins publishing the Liberator, a weekly paper that advocates the complete abolition of slavery.

British law passed declaring ownership of slaves illegal Amistad slave ship rebellion French abolish slavery Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery and becomes one of the most effective and celebrated leaders of the Underground Railroad.

Freedwoman Sojourner Truth, a compelling speaker for abolitionism, gives her famous "Ain't I a Woman" speech in Akron, Ohio.

Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes her anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin.

John Brown and 21 followers capture the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Va. (now West Virginia.), in an attempt to launch a slave revolt.

American Civil War Emancipation Proclamation issued by US President Abraham Lincoln.

13th Amendment abolishes slavery in America Black Codes passed re-enslaving African Americans Portugal abolishes slavery slavery abolished in Cuba slavery abolished in Brazil slave market in Zanzibar closed General Assembly of the United Nations adopts Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 4 states: 'No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

Civil Rights Act signed July 2nd President Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Voting Rights Act signed into law on August 6th by President Lyndon Johnson The last United States colony still stands Washington D.C.

“History is a light that illuminates the past, and a key that unlocks the door to the future.”

—Runoko Rashidi, www.travelwith runoko.com

REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE The Birth Place of Humanity Human history began in Africa. The oldest evidence of human existence and that of our immediate ancestors has been found in Africa. In July 2002 evidence of the existence of early hominids in Africa was found with the discovery of the fossilised remains of what has been called Sahelanthropus tchadensis, thought to be between 6-7 million years old, in Chad. The latest scientific research points to the fact that all human beings have African ancestors..

Trade, Cultures and Civilisations in Africa African civilizations made an immense contributions to the world. The early monarchy of Ta Seti was founded in Nubia, in what is today the Sudan. Egypt of the pharaohs is best known for its great monuments and feats of engineering (such as the Pyramids), but it also made great advances in many other fields too. Ancient Egypt (Kemet) is one of the first monarchies anywhere in the world. The Egyptians produced early forms of paper and a written script. They developed the calendar and made important contributions in various branches of mathematics, such as geometry and algebra, and they understood and may have invented the use of zero. They made important contributions in mechanics, philosophy, irrigation and architecture. In medicine, the Egyptians understood the body’s dependence on the brain over 1000 years before the Greek scholar Democritus. Ancient Egypt had an important influence on ancient Greece, and Greek scholars such as Pythagoras and Archimedes studied in Egypt, and the work of Aristotle and Plato was largely based on earlier scholarship in Egypt. For example, what is commonly known as Pythagoras’ theorem, was known to the ancient Egyptians hundreds of years before Pythagoras’ birth.

Kush, Axum, Ghana, Mali, and Great Zimbabwe, also flourished in Africa. Towards the middle of the 12th century, the north African scientist, Al Idrisi, wrote, ‘What results from the opinion of philosophers, learned men and those skilled in observation of the heavenly bodies, is that the world is as round as a sphere, of which the waters are adherent and maintained upon its surface by natural equilibrium.’ Africans were involved in trans-oceanic travel long before Europeans and there is evidence suggesting that Africans crossed the Atlantic and reached the American continent, as early as 500 BC. In the 14th century, the Syrian writer, al-Umari, wrote about the voyage of the Emperor of Mali who crossed the Atlantic with 2000 ships but failed to return. Africans in east and south-eastern Africa also set up great civilizations that established important trading links with the kingdoms and empires of India and China long before Europeans had learned how to navigate the Atlantic ocean. When Europeans first sailed to Africa in the 15th century, African pilots and navigators shared with them their knowledge of trans-oceanic travel.

Gold from the great empires of West Africa, Ghana, Mali and Songhay, which provided the means for the economic take off of Europe in the 13th and 14th centuries and aroused the interest of Europeans in western Africa. The king of Ghana was said to have an army of 200,000 men and to rule over an extremely wealthy trading empire. In the 14th century, the west African empire of Mali was larger than western Europe and reputed to be one of the largest, richest and most powerful states in the world. The Moroccan traveller Ibn Batuta wrote about his very favourable impressions of this empire and said that he found ‘complete and general safety’ there.

When the famous emperor of Mali, Mansa Musa visited Cairo in 1324, it was said that he brought so much gold with him that its price fell dramatically and had not recovered its value even 12 years later. The empire of Songhay was known, amongst other things, for the famous university of Sankore based in Timbuctu. Aristotle was studied at Sankore and also subjects such as law, various branches of philosophy, dialectic, grammar, rhetoric and astronomy. In the 16th century one of its most famous scholars, Ahmed Baba, is said to have written more than 40 major books on subjects such 9

as astronomy, history and theology and he had his own private library that held over 1500 volumes. One of the first reports of Timbuctu to reach Europe was by Leo Africanus. In his book, published in 1550, he says of the town: ‘There you will find many judges, professors and devout men, all handsomely maintained by the king, who holds scholars in much honour. There too they sell many handwritten north African books, and more profit is to be made there from the sale of books than from any other branch of trade.

African knowledge and that of the ancient world, was transmitted to Europe as a result of the North African or Moorish conquest of the Iberian peninsular in the 8th century.

Before the devastation of the Transatlantic Slave Trade important diplomatic and trading partnerships had developed between the rulers of European countries and those of Africa who saw each other as equals. Some of the earliest European visitors to Africa recognised that many African societies were as advanced or even more advanced than their own.

In the early 16th century, the Portuguese trader Duarte Barboosa said of the east African city Kilwa: There were many fair houses of stone and mortar, well arranged in streets. Around it were streams and orchards with many channels of sweet water.’ Of the inhabitants of Kilwa he reported, ‘They were finely clad in many rich garments of gold and silk, and cotton, and the women as well; also with much gold and silver in chains and bracelets, which they wore on their legs and arms, and many jewelled earrings in their ears.’

A Dutch traveller to the kingdom of Benin in the early 17th century sent home this report of the capital.

‘It looks very big when you enter it for you go into a great broad street, which, though not paved, seems to be seven or eight times broader than the Warmoes Street in Amsterdam. This street continues for about four miles and has no bend in it. At the gate where I went in on horseback, I saw a big wall, very thick and made of earth, with a deep ditch outside.

Outside the gate there is a large suburb. Inside as you go along the main street, you can see other broad streets on either side, and these are also straight. The houses in this town stand in good order, one close to the other and evenly placed beside the next, like our houses in Holland.’

Africans and the African continent have made enormous contributions to human history just as other peoples and continents have. It is the development of Eurocentric and racist views in Europe that have denied this fact and sought to negate the history of Africa and its peoples.

THE MAAFA HOLOCAUST The continent of Africa was ripped apart with the arrival of Europeans and the enslavement of its peoples, and the harm done both to people and to their communities by the trade runs so deep that it is impossible to calculate. The trade in Africans was about plunder and brutality and a complete lack of respect for the human rights of Africans who were enslaved. The trade was a 'reign of terror' that was imposed first on West and Central Africa, and then on the continent's south-eastern coasts at the end of the 18th century. The slave trade forced people to move away from their families, their homes, their communities, their farmlands and from any kind of economic stability they had. It affected whole populations and political systems.

It impacted massively upon agricultural production and severely disrupted the social and psychological well being of inhabitants.

Reactions across the continent of Africa were different, but it is clear that the slave trade altered the way these societies 'developed'. The effects of African enslavement were deep and long lasting and its legacies can be seen and felt in countries 10

and societies across the continent today.

Stolen, robbed of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The Middle Passage is the infamous route of the ships that carried bonded slaves from West Africa to the Americas. After the arrival in the Americas, slaves were sold or exchanged for the goods. At first, African leaders traded their enemies and disabled people to Europeans in exchange for gifts such as guns, tobacco, iron bars and etc. Once Europeans got a taste of the profits and rewards of a free work force, they began to kidnap Africans from the coastal area of Western Africa.

The Middle Passage was a ninety day journey. Africans were treated terribly on the ships. They were crammed like sardines and chained together. During this journey many Africans died, some commit suicide while others just went completely insane. Africans had to endure extreme heat, and there was little or no food provided.

They contracted diseases that spread quickly. Many died due to unsanitary conditions. Sometimes the sick were thrown overboard to avoid the spread of disease. Sharks followed the ships from the coast of Africa to the Americas to feast on those Africans thrown overboard who died from dysentery, smallpox, or suffocation.

Africans were often whipped, and raped by crew members. Some Africans resisted and tried to escape from the ship. The ships, contained people from many different African tribes. These tribes included the Congo, the Edo and the Yoruba/Nago.

As the greed of Europeans greed grew so did the demand for more and more African slaves. To fulfill this demand, the European kidnappers went deeper and deeper into Africa to capture Africans. They then marched the Captured Africans all the way to the Atlantic coast a journey that was over hundreds of miles long.

Those who were too weak to keep up were mostly murdered. The brutality of this march is well told in the picture below. Note the hanging African, who was probably murdered because he could not keep up or he tried to escape.

The work on plantations was very intense. Africans had to work from early morning until dawn with few breaks. Most Africans picked cotton, which meant bending down toward the land all day long. Men had to perform harder tasks, such as cutting sugar cane and working in the mill. Most Africans on the plantation worked in the fields; others were craft workers, messengers, and servants.

In the book The Biography of a Runaway Slave, Miguel Barnet recorded the narrative story of 105-year-old Esteban Montejo. Montejo was a runaway slave who fled from his master. Montejo describes the life of slaves “life was hard, and bodies wore out quick. If you didn’t escape early on into the forest to be Cimarron, you had to be slave.” In order to provide with more evident mistreatment of Africans, Montejo describes the cruel and inhuman treatment toward bonded people, “the most common type of punishment was whipping…whips were also made of hemp from any old branch in the woods…it sung like the dickens and tore skin into little strips.” In order to escape from the difficult lives they had to bear as the slaves, many African people turned to religion.

During the years of African enslavement more then ten million of African people were sold into slavery. Among these people there were Africans who were from different tribal groups. Each ethnic group had their own values and traditions. However, when many of them were brought to the Americas they were united by the common name as African slaves and this somehow affected their perception of themselves. In the Americas they were faced with a common dilemma, of greater extend then intertribal differences that were so important in Africa.

During the Middle Passage, African people were united by a common problem enslavement. The fact that ethnic borders were erased is due to the reaction of African slaves to the new way of life that they were forced to lead. They had to work from early morning until the sun went down. For little misconduct African slaves were harshly punished. However, slaves found the way to relive their physical and emotional stress, through the religious practices and melodious songs. In general, the unity 11

that developed between different African people allowed them to survive harsh life as slaves.

To justify the enslavement of Africans, it was necessary to believe, that Africans were inherently and naturally less than human and somehow sub-human, non-human, by nature and less than an animal. The Constitution of the United States originally stated that Africans were 'three-fifths' a man (by law). This devaluation was used to dehumanize and to ensure the value of slaves.

The word nigger was created, and the meaning it implied was of a debased, ignorant, or very low person.

African-Americans dropped the 'ER' and added an 'A' forming a new word NIGGA. This word has been accepted and approved because 'the word now has a new meaning, as a term of endearment. This is the same word that was used against our ancestors who shed blood. Now it is accepted and used (daily) by the same people it was used against! The word is used to perpetuate the negative stereotypes of Africans worldwide.

This is a form of internalized self hatred, the end result of enslavement in the Americas.

Today African Americans still linger with the scars, bruises and trauma of slavery as no healing or therapeutic process has ever been applied to restore their natural manhood and womanhood. They have simply from a state of low and no self-esteem attempted to assimilate and be accepted by former slave holders, within the same unjust system that allowed slavery to exist.

The new slavery is best seen in the prison industrial complex as mothers, the purveyors of culture continue to stamp their children with a slave indoctrination.

12

SWEET PEACE AT LAST Slave ships do not a slave make Nor whips or chains or hangman’s noose Slaves make slaves Slaves are born in the mother’s womb Enslaved to sin and shame Who can endure the stifling cry, the pain, sorrow and suffering of a fellow kind Slaves are freed when light doeth shine And awaken the truth that is in the heart May no man know the sting of freedom lost Let no woman birth a slave For ignorance has its own dark path May slavery live not again Let slavery die a certain death That God who lives on high May walk on earth with man in Peace and Grace And Wisdom be a friend It is a day desired of men And long sought The day that Peace shall reign Let the bells ring out That man no longer grieves That day when all are free Let freedom ring May peace doves fly Peace, peace sweet peace At last!

13

THE GREAT ENEMY OF You, Me, Freedom, Justice, Equality, Health and Democracy

IGNORANCE And the

ILLNESS It creates

So we must

HEAL & EDUCATE

EDUCATION Ignorance breeds ● Mental illness ● Emotional toxicity (fear, guilt, shame, anger) and trauma ● Physical disease ● Spiritual disconnect ● Ignorance conditions a person to live and be a lie.

HEALTH Legislate health as a constitutional right.

Illness creates the illusion of a flesh and blood enemy.

Illness creates a warped psychology of us and them, master and slave, big I and little you, racism, classism, capitalism, white supremacy, exploitation of nature and war.

Kill Ignorance Kill ignorance in the nutsack and womb and it won’t show up on the battlefield.

Kill ignorance on the battlefield, and it won’t show up at the victory party.

Long live war, G_D bless the dead, Kill ignorance.

—Bologun Ajanaku

Help make education a constitutional right. Vote for H.J RES. 29 14

"True humanity consists not In a SQUEAMISH EAR, but in listening to the story of human suffering and endeavoring to relieve it."

—Charles James Fox

SLAVERY THE UNTOLD STORY Slavery was a time when devils ran rampant on the earth and engaged in all manner of heinous crimes against suffering humanity without any laws to protect the weak and the helpless. Persons formerly inhabiting the jails and asylums of Europe flooded the North American Continent. The European oligarchy was intent on developing colonies to expand their land base and their coffers. The institution of slavery was and is a heinous system of abuse and violence perpetrated against a people (Africans, Native Americans and females) here in the United States of America, however the enslavement of females began 12,000+ years ago.

Slavery is the conscious and deliberate act of separating a person from their Source (GOD) and imposing on them a false authority rooted in violent actions which include murder, rape, physical abuse, emotional and mental abuse, punishment, starvation, deprivation, and ignorance, thus rendering the person or people helpless, defenseless and dependent. This process leaves the person or people ill, as they do not have the capacity to create from Source, having only the ability to remember and regurgitate facts and information obtained from other sources (books, lectures, sermons and brain washing, etc.) Slavery leaves a person trapped in the past, remembering rules and regulations, isisms and schisms, and do’s and don’ts, that will allow them to gain favor, prestige, accolades and rewards from a false authority that is outside of self.

The slave system consists of superiors, inferiors, and institutions that hold the system of slavery in place. The goal of the inferior is to become a superior, and the goal of the superior is to remain such. The goal of the institutions is perpetuation beyond the life span of the superiors and inferiors as an inheritance for descendants. Superiors fall into two main classes upper and middle class. Inferiors are always on the bottom and are called low class. In the system of enslavement of females all were considered low class and inferior. Status could only be gained via marriage. The class of the man determined the class of the wife, thus females schemed to marry the richest, most powerful, famous, attractive males and thus prostituted themselves.

The institutions that uphold slavery are the church (mosque, temple, synagogue), government, industry/business, prisons, homes, schools and the medical establishment, which are built on a foundation of violence. As long as the institutions built to uphold slavery exist the system exists in that the principalities and powers of slavery are subtle and pervasive. Even when laws are changed to protect the rights of people, if the institutions remain intact the slave tenets are subtly passed on to the people, crippling and injuring them at an emotional level. Slave tendencies are not something that go away with time. Slave tendencies must be uprooted and replaced with humility and understanding.

Slavery exists at four levels physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.

African descendants here in America and the Caribbean's received a triple dose of slavery. First the slavery of the female is deeply entrenched within the DNA of all females, thus females continuously reproduce themselves in their children. Next the separation from the Motherland (weather patterns, foods, herbs, animals and land mass) rendered them extremely vulnerable and helpless even if they did escape. (Note that enslaved Native American who escaped knew the terrain and water sources, the wild foods, the animals and how to hunt them and the weather patterns.) Finally the abdication to a false authority left them totally dependent and ensured their assimilation into whatever system was created for them.

Even after laws granted females and people of color their freedom, they have yet to release the mental shackles and the emotional scars. All people know is slavery and the slave system. Outside of slavery is the unknown. After the Emancipation Proclamation of 1865 many slaves were reluctant to leave their plantations, because they didn’t know where to go. They had a comfort zone in the plantation. Outside of the plantation were unknown perils, what would they eat, where would they sleep, where was the closest water source, and more than anything what was there destination. Many did leave the plantations and migrated to the plants of the cities, but the mental shackles and the emotional scars still remained. The institutions of slavery still existed and freedom was nowhere visible to be found.

The American institution of slavery consisted of the following characters. The slave owner, the slave owner’s wife, the 15

overseer (all the above are of European Ancestry). Of African Ancestry are the house slave, the field slave (male and female), the stud, the liberator (Frederick Douglas’s, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth types). Within the above characters were also found the Snitch (who would sell out his brothers and sisters for some bread crumbs), the nanny (who breastfed the slave owners children), the slave seller, the breeder, the capturer, the slave trainer and the nigger loving white women. We could also add the slave preachers whose job it was to make slaves content with a goal of going to heaven when they died, while they endured hell on earth.

Now slavery as an institution includes all of these characters and the environment in which it takes place is the plantations (country estates) and the plants (city factories and industrial complexes). Slavery as a system was upheld and reinforced by schools that were set-up for the purpose of giving advantages to some so that they could lord it over others. Advantage meant the ability to look down at someone else, who appeared to be less fortunate, regardless of where one is in the slave system. It’s like being in a system where every thing smells foul and the characters in it boost about how there shit smells better than someone else’s. The reality is that all shit stinks. Outside of stink is a sweet smell that no one who exists in the system gets to experience, because stink is all they know and sweet smells are what historical accounts are made of as well as the legendary heaven, that all sufferers eventually go to for redemption.

Initially, the schools were set-up for the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant male. He was the crown prince of slavery with the most advantages. He went to school so that he would be astute at managing the slaves underneath him. In addition his schooling would give him the ability to be competitive and possibly replace another who was higher up in the class system. That person would then become subservient to him. Females vied and competed to snag the most eligible bachelors, or to become the mistress of those who were married. This is how females attained status and a sense of power. Sexual favors given in or out of marriage, caused males to be obligated to the females they put sperm into. So females are then able to manipulate and direct their mates to extract revenge on those who did not honor their wishes.

Thus many Negro male slaves were put to death because they did not succumb to the wishes and desires of the white woman.

Among the Negro slaves the most enviable position was that of the stud. Now here was someone that all the males wanted to be, and all the women wanted to give birth to. The stud had the fortune of being given the best food, the best sleeping quarters, and most of all, he got to have sex with all the females (his mother, his sister, his daughter, aunts, cousins and those from other plantations). The stud was the envy of all slaves, for not only did he go around creating babies, but he didn’t have to take any responsibility for the care of them (this indoctrination still exists, as it has never been healed.)

The stud breeding system was an extensive system that rivaled the breeding of horses, cows, chickens, dogs and pigs. In slavery people are looked at as things to be owned and sold. The physical perspective is thus the only one that matters.

In some cases animals were treated better than slaves. (Please note that this author refers to all participants as slaves, but for language sake we will use the term masters and slaves).

Consider the fact, that the slave master nor his sons would not look at a prize winning cow and want to rape her. The slave woman however was always ripe for the taking. She had nobody to protect her. She was property, and could be treated any way the master pleased. It was a curse to be beautiful, because this would assure daily raping by white males who desired the beautiful little Negro girls, young adults or women. Who could stop them, who would dare? Negro females did not go willingly to these stud, rape sessions. They were violated, over and over again, and the pain of their violations continues to live in their DNA today.

Negro males had to lie to live during slavery. If a white male saw a Negro father with his daughter and asked if he would mind if his daughter became part of his flesh pot (rape), the Negro would have to say, “no suh, have fun master.” And thus began the art of the lying Negro male, who continues to perpetuate lies to this day.

In 1865 the Emancipation Proclamation granted slaves their freedom. Slaves however of both persuasions (masters and slaves), only knew slavery, so they just rearranged the way the slave game would be played, as they did after the passage of The Civil Rights Act of 1964. Slavery itself was never done away with, because the mind-set of slavery and the emotional resonance of slavery was never healed.

After the so-called freeing of the slaves, the slave masters knowing what they had created in the male slaves began to 16

pass unrighteous laws to protect their holdings and this included primarily the white female. Having created a race of sexually perverted slave males who only wanted to be studs, they made it unlawful for a Negro male to look in the face of a white woman, or walk on the street with one. They started lynching, donned, dummy cone hats and masks as the Ku Klux Klan, engaged in cross burnings, erected laws to deny the right to vote and other cruel and unusual means to keep Negro males in check. White males reached out to the Negro women as their protectors and providers and persuaded them to keep a leash on their sons, so that they would stay on the plantations and work their fields. They put fear and horror into the minds of the Negroes to keep them in check.

After the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., they used a different tactic. They flooded the Negro with guilt money, positions, fame, power and notoriety. They in essence bought the Negro leadership. Those they could not buy, they killed, set-up to be caught in a criminal act, assassinated their character or blackmailed them to do their bidding. Others carrying the aberrations of slavery were self-destructive as they acted out womanizing, incest, homosexuality, lying and other unhealed aspects of slavery.

Slavery as a system and its institutions had to remain in tact. For the white slave masters, the system of slavery represents security and achievement over others. Being a very physically weak race, white people had to maintain a position of dominance, where they could make the laws, pull the strings and punish or kill those who threatened their survival. Negro males remained a threat to white males, as they fear reprisal, and this is why after the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation, the State of Mississippi, they revised their constitution, and wrote as the purpose for revision the following. “The purpose for the revision of this constitution is to destroy the manhood of the Negro citizen through to success.�

The Negro male being full of rage, anger, violence and often acting like a rabid dog had to be controlled, killed or incarcerated. Negro males unconsciously threaten the survival of white males, just by their presence, so the white male has had to strike first and be deliberate in his attack so as to maim, or destroy the Negro male.

The Negro males refusal to be Christ like, with a spirit of forgiveness and healing, causes them to project an enemy.

They often believe that there is value in being angry and having a violent edge, so they refuse all forms of therapy. It is this fact that has led to the destruction of so many Negro males as they don’t believe in the power of Divine Mind.

In the white males hierarchy of spiritual power is the Black Christ and the Madonna. This fact is kept hidden from the masses of African American people. The truly nonviolent man is the only one who can squelch the fear in white males, because in their character they will only see oneness, and recognize the divine role that white people play here on earth and give thanks for them, and acknowledge the ancestral blood flowing thorough their veins, even gained from the rape of their ancestral great, great grandmother.. We are family with all our problems; beyond race we are the Soul of God on the Earth.

The slave master conditioned Negro males to live in the shadow realms, and to always vie for recognition and power by any means necessary. The Negro male thus acts this out via their sexuality. Boasting about their sexual prowess and making that the definition of manhood, they fling their penises from one female to the next, just as the white slave master taught them to do, taking no responsibility for their offspring by-and-large, and disrespecting their mothers and all women in the process. Sexual predators they have become, not knowing love or how to love, creating a hell on earth for all they encounter. In order to get in a position to wreck havoc in the lives of females and males of all ages via sexual exploitation, they take on the persona of teacher, doctor, lawyer, politician, sports star, movie star, preachers, gurus and priests. They create an aura of greatness to confuse people about their intentions until they are in a position to strike with their penis to obtain the prize, another victim to add to their collection. This sickness is genetically embedded within the cells of Negro males, and has yet to be eradicated.

These are generally males born to mothers who were unconscious at conception (ignorant, raped, drugged, intoxicated, or physically and emotionally abused), and filled with lust during gestation. So the sons and daughter inherit the lust, fear, pain, grief, inferiority complex, emotional instability and slave tendencies, via their mothers who are the purveyors of culture. The Negro males aggressively takes revenge for their mothers suffering by their expression of anger and hateful actions. The white male aggressively acts out their mother fears by creating the biggest weapons to subdue any 17

threats to their way of life. What differentiates the two is that the white mother seeks protection and the Negro mother seeks revenge. The Negro female and all females pass on their slave tendencies to their offspring, both male and female, thus perpetuating the slave system.

Living in the shadow realms, the light of day has yet to dawn on the masses of suffering humanity, as they continue to reduplicate the past. Unwilling to drop out of this system into the Light of Truth, people continue to seek the top of an invisible pyramid that offers them fame, prestige, money and power over others and perpetuates sickness and disease in the wake of their mother’s ignorance and illness.

And so the violence that is slavery continues on. Even though nonviolence as a science of liberation has been offered, demonstrated and proven successful, slaves continue to chose violence as their way of life.

“There is a way that seemth right to man, but the end is death.”

The question is asked every day in the closed hearts of the masses, “Which side are you on?” Chose ye this day.

—Myeka

“History, as nearly no one seems to know, is not merely something to be read. And it does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do since it is to history that we owe our frames of reference, our identities, and our aspirations.”

—James Baldwin

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Most of us are not afraid of failure. Failure is what we know. We are afraid of strangers, and success is a stranger.

We must learn to embrace the stranger at the gate.

—Yusuf Ali El,

LEGALIZED RAPE Colonial laws regarding statutory rape were not applied to Blacks and Indians. Indians and Blacks, as well as their children, were prohibited by law from defending themselves against abuse, sexual and otherwise, at the hands of Whites.

A slave who defended herself against the attack of a White person was subject to cruel beatings by either the master or mistress. Liaisons between Whites and Blacks or Indians were illegal. The females of color received the harshest punishment if discovered in a liaison with a White male. Females of color, regardless of their young age, were viewed as seducers of White men. Pregnancy became the evidence of the illegal liaison. A mulatto baby the indicator of the race of the father - White male. The child, by statute took the status of the mother and is thus born into slavery. The full benefit of the relationship and the off-spring enured to the White male. Under English precedent, the status of children was determined by the father. The colonists changed the law to increase the wealth and domination of the White master who had eliminated certain costs of purchasing human labor by becoming "a breeder of slaves." The Black female, woman or child, was forced into sexual relationships for the White slave master’s pleasure and profit.

—excerpted from: Gloria J. Browne-Marshall, Failing Our Black Children: Statutory Rape Laws, Moral Reform and the Hypocrisy of Denial (2002)

"Relative to white men all women were powerless and exploited," says Deborah Gray White. "The powerlessness and exploitation of black women was an extreme form of what all women experienced, because racism, although just as pervasive as sexism, was more virulent. Slave women suffered from the malevolence that flowed from both racism and sexism."

—Tom Sanders http://www.socialistaction.org/news/200103/double.html

African American women had to endure the threat and the practice of sexual exploitation. There were no safeguards to protect them from being sexually stalked, harassed, or raped, or to be used as long-term concubines by masters and overseers. The abuse was widespread, as the men with authority took advantage of their situation. Even if a woman seemed agreeable to the situation, in reality she had no choice. Slave men, for their part, were often powerless to protect the women they loved.

—Conditions of antebellum slavery , 1830 - 1860

CHILD LABOR Research shows that most slave children began work in the fields by the age of 11 and many began work there at the age of six. They were usually placed in the "trash gang" that pulled weeds, cleaned up, hoed, or picked cotton. This means that the ex-slave who helped raise me as a very young child was not as old as I've long thought she was. Thus, much of the United States wealth was built by child labor-a fact that few people are willing to acknowledge.

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LYNCHINGS: BY STATE AND RACE, 1882-1968 STATE ALABAMA ARIZONA ARKANSAS CALIFORNIA COLORADO DELAWARE FLORIDA GEORGIA IDAHO ILLINOIS INDIANA IOWA KANSAS KENTUCKY LOUISIANA MAINE MARYLAND MICHIGAN MINNESOTA MISSISSIPPI MISSOURI MONTANA NEBRASKA NEVADA NEW JERSEY NEW MEXICO NEW YORK NORTH CAROLINA NORTH DAKOTA OHIO OKLAHOMA OREGON PENNSYLVANIA SOUTH CAROLINA SOUTH DAKOTA TENNESSEE TEXAS UTAH VERMONT VIRGINIA WASHINGTON WEST VIRGINIA WISCONSIN

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Black

White

Total

299 0 226 2 3 1 257 492 0 19 14 2 19 142 335 0 27 1 4 539 69 2 5 0 1 3 1 86 3 16 40 1 6 156 0 204 352 2 0 83 1 28 0 5 3,446

48 31 58 41 65 0 25 39 20 15 33 17 35 63 56 1 2 7 5 42 53 82 52 6 1 33 1 15 13 10 82 20 2 4 27 47 141 6 1 17 25 20 6 30 1,297

347 31 284 43 68 1 282 531 20 34 47 19 54 205 391 1 29 8 9 581 122 84 57 6 2 36 2 101 16 26 122 21 8 160 27 251 493 8 1 100 26 48 6 35 4,743

Lynchings By Offense Homicides 1,937 Felonious Assault Rape 912 Attempted Rape Robbery and Theft Insult to White Person All Other Causes Total 4,743 *Statistics provided by the Archives at Tuskegee Institute.

2054 288 232 85 1,084

QUOTES ON LYNCHING As another has well said, to handicap a student by teaching him that his black face is a curse and that his struggle to change his condition is hopeless is the worst sort of lynching.

This crusade is much more important than the anti- lynching movement, because there would be no lynching if it did not start in the schoolroom.

—Carter G. Woodson Every argument on lynching in the South gets back sooner or later to the question of rape.

—Ray Stannard Baker I rise today to offer a formal and heartfelt apology to all the victims of lynching in our history, and for the failure of the United States Senate to take action when action was most needed.

—George Allen It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.

—Martin Luther King, Jr. Although lynchings have steadily increased in number and barbarity during the last twenty years, there has been no single effort put forth by the many moral and philanthropic forces of the country to put a stop to this wholesale slaughter.

Brave men do not gather by thousands to torture and murder a single individual, so gagged and bound he cannot make even feeble resistance or defense.

Our country's national crime is lynching. It is not the creature of an hour, the sudden outburst of uncontrolled fury, or the unspeakable brutality of an insane mob.

If this work can contribute in any way toward proving this, and at the same time arouse the conscience of the American people to a demand for justice to every citizen, and punishment by law for the lawless, I shall feel I have done my race a service.

The alleged menace of universal suffrage having been avoided by the absolute suppression of the negro vote, the spirit of mob murder should have been satisfied and the butchery of negroes should have ceased.

The nineteenth century lynching mob cuts off ears, toes, and fingers, strips off flesh, and distributes portions of the body as souvenirs among the crowd.

—Ida B. Wells

Strange Fruit Southern trees bear strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black body swinging in the Southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant South, The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth, Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh, Then the sudden smell of burning flesh!

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck, For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck, For the sun to rot, for the tree to drop, Here is a strange and bitter crop.

—Written by the teacher Abel Meeropol as a poem, it condemned American racism, particularly the lynching of African Americans. Sung by Billie Holliday and Nina Simone

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Until the great mass of the people shall be filled with the sense of responsibility for each other's welfare, social justice can never be attained.

—Helen Keller

THE SEXUAL RAMIFICATIONS OF SLAVERY Slavery directed the most potent energy in the universe, sexual energy into labor and sexual escapades that included every form of sexual perversity. The most valued slave in the “slave hierarchy of value” was the stud. He was the envy of all men. In many cases he got the best food, the best clothes, he didn’t have to labor in the fields and he could have sex with all the women with out the threat of punishment. Consequently, he was what all black males wanted to be and after the Emancipation Proclamation many black males sought to live out there cherished dream of being the top slave. To this day the irresponsibility promoted by the stud exists in the African American world as men create babies without any sense of fatherhood responsibility.

Slavery destroyed the natural affection and love that can exist between a male and a female and replaced it with lust.

Stud farms were common throughout the south and this was a different condition for Black males than the slave stud who travelled from plantation to plantation like a prized race horse to impregnate girls and women.

The stud farm was a place where black males were kept in pens like animals. They were illiterate, wild like animals and constantly fed young virgins for impregnation. Young girls and women taken to stud farms for impregnation were violently raped, mutilated and beaten by these savage black males made into beasts by the system of slavery that defined them as property.

With the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation these black male beasts had to be set free and it is the fact of this that led to a lot of lynching's, the formation of the Klu Klux Klan, White Citizens Council and rules and laws to curtail the exploitation of White women by these creatures of lust.

The reality of the mis-direction of sex energy can also be seen in the high level of incest that was an acceptable aspect of slavery and whose carry over still exists to this day.

On small plantations which were the majority, slaves did not have the luxury of going from one plantation to another plantation to secure a mate, lover, wife. Only the stud could travel from plantation to plantation and he was always under the auspices of a white male. Slaves on the small plantation thus found release from sexual build-up with any female who was available regardless of age. Thus slaves had sex with their mothers, daughters, sisters, cousins and it became the unspoken activity, incest was an acceptable reality of slave life. Incest flourished during slavery and the remnant of this are still prevalent throughout the South and in African American families.

This incestuous tendency passed on from generation to generation created shame and secrets. When incestuous male family members showed up for large family gatherings the women would just remind each other to keep an eye on the young girls so that Uncle Matt didn’t get with them. It became an acceptable practice for their was no understanding of how it came to be and how to eradicate it.

The sex demon became an inheritance in African American families and still exists given the fact that no healing therapy has been applied to uproot it or any of the lingering invisible scars of slavery.

Great leaders have fallen because of this sex demon inherited from generations of exploitative sex on the plantations.

Today the sex demon has transferred to the industrial plants, and office buildings of the corporate and blue collar world.

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Alive and well the sex demon seeks to exploit young women and men and make sex the foundation of all relationships.

Who you sleep with thus determines the job you get, not what your qualifications are. Sexual energy dominates the minds of the multitudes as they seek to release this energy to no avail, as there is always more to release and the build up can be immediate right after orgasm.

Why is this so? This is so, because sexual energy is really life force energy. Life force energy has many outlets, however slavery corralled and directed this energy to be expiated in labor and sex only. Even after laboring and having sex other aspects of this life force energy seeks release and no avenues for its release have been developed.

Life force energy is designed to be used for initiating, developing, administrating and maintaining institutions. This is a lost art and science for African American people. Institutions are those constructs that allow a people to form families, communities, and nations and that maintain the health, foster the interest, protect the rights and secure the needs of all.

Life force energy is creative energy and its avenues of expression go beyond, sexual expression, sports, entertainment and jobs.

Man (male/female) is spirit, mind, emotion and body and so life force energy must find expression through each aspect of their being. When this is not done the backed-up energy appears to be sexual and thus people seek sexual release, but it can never be fully released physically when it is mental, emotional or spiritual.

Slavery relegated everyone to just having a body, so 3/4ths of the person was never developed, and this is the cause of so many sexual perversions and diseases.

African American people since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 have been attempting to be accepted in the archaic, slave based institutions of the past. They have yet to take serious nonviolence as a science by which to initiate new forms of institutions that are violence free.

Slaves only know slavery, and must seek a new way, less they just drift into the known or their comfort zone. In this case the violent, slave based institutions of Europeans (who were incapable of creating a democratic/republican form of government predicated on the reality of the equality of all homo sapiens). Thus the perpetuation of slavery has been continuous and persistent.

Life force energy is thus used by people to express toxic emotions, sexual lust, engage in sports, entertainment and job activities. Its highest creative expression of institutional development is never considered and certainly not engaged in.

More than anything African American people need institutions build on principals if they are to ever experience the Promised Land. We cannot take the old ways of slavery into the Promised Land. We must “anoint ourselves with the Balm of Gilead, wash ourselves, make ourselves pure, receive clean hands and a clean heart and a renewed spirit before we can enter the door that Yeshua ben Joseph (Jesus) holds open for us to the Kingdom of God, else the angel with the flaming sword will continue to block our path. We must heal ourselves of the traumas of slavery that made us feel and act unworthy of life and its many blessings, so that we can receive our inheritance as children of the living God. We African American people have overcome insurmountable odds to arrive at a place where we can even project this need. We have fought a good fight and achieved outstanding victories and yet the greatest victory is still out of reach. It is the mastery of self.

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THE TWENTY SEVEN FINDINGS Reflections of Dr. Nkosi Ajanaku’s findings and observations from his basic research.

(1) That American local, public and private education systems, colleges and universities leave their graduates totally inadequate in the face of solving America’s psychological problems of slavery and the affects of racism and poverty that leave students totally lacking in their ability to understand the nature of the American Civil Rights Movement or to gather America’s real facts of history and government.

(2) That there are no white, black, red, yellow, or brown people listed on the maps of the world and that the color of the skin of people makes no essential difference, when it is considered, that all people in the world are factually of the same species, Homo sapiens sapiens, although they are born and raised in different and various cultures of the world. They all have the inherent capacity to imagine, to think, to create ideas and concepts, to create new things not in being at the time of their birth, to improve on the past and to create new languages and civilizations.

(3) That European or European Americans did not and do not have the capacity nor the ability to enslave the minds of individuals in Africa or anywhere else because the capacity to decide is inherently encased on the inside of every individual.

(4) That Europeans have not evolved to become a superior or a new species and Europeans have not developed two or three heads or a different head altogether.

(5) That the European and European American did have the physical power to imprison the bodies of African Americans but were dependent upon the cooperation of the African American to plant, harvest and cure tobacco, pick cotton, and raise rice because all the psycho-social systems depend upon cooperation of humans.

(6) That the power to be free resides in each person in every generation of African and European Americans, and that power exists today in every person who makes up the American Family.

(7) That America slavery is a plantation mentality that has engulfed the whole American system since 1619, and it had spread to embrace the whole country from north to south and east and west by 1861 and the American Civil War. (8) That President Hayes put the federal cap on African American development after the presidential election of 1876 and gave the south (freed slaves) back to the southern plantation owners to continue slavery in another form.

(9) That the American slave plantation included the European male and female; the African American male and female; and EuroAfrican American children that were born out of the mixture of the group from Africa and the group from Europe.

(10) That European Americans talk about American slavery in the past tense and African Americans talk about it in the past tense and third person and that neither African or European Americans talk about American slavery in the present tense and that neither African or European Americans talk about American slavery in the present tense or the first person.

(11) That to be free in America each person must recognize the slavery that is in his or herself, speak about it in the present tense and speak about it in the first person or the “I”, and shed her or himself of the inherited slave names master’s names, slave culture, behaviors and habits.

(12) That each person has the human responsibility to be the model in teaching the children of the human family how to be free and to live the Human Creed of the 1776 Declaration of Independence.

(13) That nouns are not adjectives; that nouns name people, places and things and that people are not things or places; and that black, white, red, yellow and brown are adjectives; that African American, European American, Asian American, Australian American and Jewish American, etc., are nouns that define both ethnic heritage on the one hand and civic heritage in the United States on the other.

(14) That ethnic means group heritage, American means civic heritage and esnicity represents the concept of the human individual that is not limited to anything in the past and represents the possibility to create a new drama for a new future. Esnicity encapsulates the fact that people are both ordinary and unique.

(15) That the sun, moon, stars, the earth and its atmosphere, the animals, plants, fauna and flora, are still with us and that the children need to know these facts of life at birth and all along the way to maturity.

(16) That to find answers, one must seek them and be humble to receive the answers, no matter how strange or different from the 24

past memories or experiences those answers may initially appear to be.

(17) That I was a slave five years out of Law School and had been one all of my life and that I needed to assume responsibility and create and re-create myself through the ideal of a free person.

(18) That meaning and reason were forced out of the communication system on slave plantation’s of America and that the people who make up that plantation operate and function without any principles, facts, and truth between them and among them.

(19) I had to be primary and assume the responsibility of creating the concept and the ideal context through which the American Family could grow into and participate in creating the American Dream and learn to live by the legacy of the American Creed.

(20) That I need to understand the difference between how I perceive myself and the African part of the American Family and how I and African Americans are perceived by the European American Family, and how African Americans perceive Africans in Africa and Africans from Africa in the United States.

(21) That the total American experience in human slavery, from 1619 to the present day, produced a new social entity in the world: the American Family, the nucleus of which consists of the African American female and male; the European American female and male, and the Euro-African American female and male, the so-called Mulatto, which is the reproductive product of the African and the European.

(22) That this group of six people making up the core of the American Family has not created and institutionalized a human system of communication between or among them that has its roots in the creed of the 1776 Declaration of Independence.

(23) That because of this human aberration, the whole American family consists of six slaves in its nucleus.

(24) That since all of the three mothers of the American Family are ignorant of these facts, then the three men of the American Family are ignorant of these facts.

(25) That today, there is no academic course in the American home, school, college or university system that teaches the three females in the American Family how to develop a proposal that would be the basis for the meeting of the minds in social interacting with the three males in the American Family; (26) That there is no course in the American home, school, college or university system that teaches the three females in the American Family how to create a human proposal for a new freedom civilization—a proposal that would be the basis for the meeting of the human mind with the three males in the ethnic American family for the purpose of social interaction in every phase in the life of the new society.

(27) No two people can have a principled relationship without an objective (public) standard—measurement of equality in principle, fact, and truth.

—Dr. Nkosi Ajanaku Future America Basic Research Institute, www.futureamericatoday.com

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Where is the justice of political power if it executes the murderer and jails the plunderer, and then itself marches upon neighboring lands, killing thousands and pillaging the very hills?

—Khalil Gibran

THE AMERICAN SLAVE CODE IN THEORY AND PRACTICE: ITS DISTINCTIVE FEATURES SHOWN

BY ITS STATUTES, JUDICIAL DECISIONS, AND ILLUSTRATIVE FACTS. —Goodell, William

THE RELATION OF MASTER AND SLAVE CHAPTER I. SLAVE OWNERSHIP. Fundamental Idea of modern Slaveholding; namely, the assumed principle of Human Chattelhood, or Property in Man; constituting the relation of Owner and Property—of Master and Slave.

SOUTH CAROLINA.—“Slaves shall be deemed, sold, taken, reputed and adjudged in law to be chattels personal, in the hands of their owners and possessors, and their executors, administrators and assigns, to all intents, constructions, and purposes whatsoever.” (2 Brevard’s Digest, 229; Prince’s Digest, 446, &c., &c.)

LOUISIANA.—“A slave is one who is in the power of a master to whom he belongs. The master may sell him, dispose of his person, his industry and his labor. He can do nothing, possess nothing, nor acquire any thing, but what must belong; to his master.” (Civil Code, Art. 35.)

“The slave is entirely subject to the will of his master, who may correct and chastise him, though not with unusual rigor, or so as to maim and mutilate him, or expose him to the danger of loss of life, or to cause his death.” (Art. 173.)

It will be found, as we proceed, that this attempted or pretended limitation of power has no real existence, and affords no protection to the slave.

An exception, in Louisiana, to the general tenure of “chattels personal,” is expressed as follows: “Slaves, though movable by their nature, are considered as immovable by the operation of law.” (Civil Code, Art. 461.)

“Slaves shall always be reputed and considered real estate; shall, as such, be subject to be mortgaged, according to the rules prescribed by law, and they shall be seized and sold as real estate.” (Statute of June 7, 1806; 1 Martin’s Digest, 612.)

This provision, if literally carried into effect, would prevent the sale of slaves from off the plantations of their masters. More of this in its proper place.

KENTUCKY.—By the law of descents, slaves are considered real estate, and pass in consequence to heirs, and not to executors.

(2 Littell & Swigert’s Digest, 1155.)

From the following it appears, however, that special care was taken in Kentucky, that the slaves should derive no benefit from the distinction between real estate and chattels personal: They are, however, liable, as chattels, to be sold by the master at his pleasure, and may be taken in execution for the payment of his debts. (Ib.; see also 1247.)

VIRGINIA.—In 1705 a law similar to that of Kentucky was enacted, but was soon after repealed. (Note to Revised Code, 432.)

Slaves are therefore held as chattels personal in Virginia, as in most of the slave States, where, in the absence of entire written codes, or such general enunciations as those of South Carolina and Louisiana, the chattel principle has, nevertheless, been affirmed and maintained by the courts, and involved in legislative acts. A specimen of the latter description we have in the following: HENRY CLAY, in his celebrated speech in the U. S. Senate, in 1839, based his argument against the abolition of slavery on the value of the slaves, AS PROPERTY. This was his language: “The third impediment to immediate abolition is to be found in the immense amount of capital which is invested in slave property.” “The total value of slave property then, by estimate, is twelve hundred millions of dollars. And now it is rashly proposed, by a single fiat of legislation, to annihilate this immense amount of property! To annihilate it without indemnity, and without compensation to THE OWNERS.” “I know that there is a visionary dogma which holds that negro slaves cannot be the subject of property. I shall not dwell on the speculative abstraction. That IS property which the law declares TO BE property. Two hundred years of legislation have sanctified and sanctioned negro slaves as property.”

By claiming their slaves as “property,” the “owners” of this property are naturally led to forget and even to deny that they are human beings. For proof of this we cite the speech of Mr. SUMMERS of Virginia, in the Legislature of that State, January 26, 1832, as published in the Richmond Whig: “When in the sublime lessons of Christianity, he (the slaveholder) is taught to ‘do unto others as he would have others do unto him,’ he never dreams that the degraded negro is within the pale of that holy canon.”

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Mr. WISE, in the United States House of Representatives, said: “The right of petition belongs to the people of the United Staves. Slaves are not people in the eye of the law. They have no legal personality.”

When a slave is accidentally killed, the Southern newspapers speak of it merely as a loss of property to the owner. Nothing is said of the bereaved widow, children, or parents of the deceased. It would be easy to present numerous instances in proof.

The Natchez (Miss.) Free Trader of February 12, 1838, contained the following advertisement: “FOUND:—A NEGRO’S HEAD Was picked up on the railroad, yesterday, which THE OWNER can have by calling at this office and paying for this advertisement.” (Ib., 169.)

This, in the United States of America, in this nineteenth century, is “the legal relation of master and slave”—a relation that challenges as “goods” and “chattels personal, to all intents, constructions, and purposes whatsoever,” the immortal soul of man, the image of the invisible Creator, the temple of the Holy Spirit, the purchase of a Redeemer’s blood. The statement is no rhetorical flourish. It is no mere logical inference. It is no metaphysical subtlety. It is no empty abstraction. It is no obsolete or inoperative fiction of the law. It is veritable matter-of-fact reality, acted out every day wherever and whenever a negro or any one else is claimed as an American slave. If any slaveholder denies it, let him be challenged to put the denial in writing, duly attested, and in such a shape that the courts of law can take cognizance of it. Whenever he does this, and puts the paper in the hands of his slave or trusty friend, his slave is set free. Every intelligent slaveholder knows this.

THE RELATION HEREDITARY AND PERPETUAL. Slaves being held as Property, like other domestic animals, their Offspring are held as Property, in perpetuity, in the same manner.

“THE law of South Carolina says of slaves, ‘All their issue and their offspring, born or to be born, shall be, and are hereby declared to be, and remain FOR EVER HEREAFTER, absolute slaves, and shall follow the condition of the mother.” (Jay’s Inquiry, p. 129. See Act of 1740. 2 Brevard’s Digest, 229.)

In Maryland, “All negroes and other slaves, already imported or hereafter to be imported into this province, and all children, now born or hereafter to be born of such negroes and slaves, shall be slaves during their natural lives.” (Act of 1715, chap. 44, sect. 22.

Stroud’s Sketch, p. 11.)

USES OF SLAVE PROPERTY. Slaves, as Property, may be used, absolutely by their owners at will, for their own profit or pleasure.

PROPERTY is that which may be used by the owner. “The slave is one who is in the power of a master, to whom he belongs.”

“Goods they are, and as goods they are esteemed.” This is the law of the relation. “As goods,” therefore, they may be used, while, like other goods, they “perish with the using.” ‘Have I not a right to do what I will with mine own?’ is a question affirming a prerogative universally claimed. Admit the validity of the ownership, and the right of use follows of course. If the “legal relation” be an innocent one, the right of use and the exercise of that right are innocent likewise, provided the use be a legitimate one. We shall see what uses are deemed legitimate by those who have shaped, defined, and administered “the relation.”

It is true that the use of property by the owner is limited by the rights of other persons. But slaves are not persons in the view of the law, for any purposes of benefit to them; as will hereafter be more fully shown. The rights of a slave are not recognized, and no limitation of the master’s use of him can come from that quarter. “The slave” (says the law) “is entirely subject to the will of his master.” Nothing, therefore, can prevent the master from putting him to any use he pleases.

It is also true, that the use of property by the owner is limited by the nature of that property. Thus, a living horse, or other domestic animal, may not lawfully be backed and hewed to pieces, as a block of wood may be. The barbarity may be punished. The most that can be claimed for the Slave Code; on this point, is, that by placing slaves upon a level with other live cattle, it entitles them to the same kind and degree of protection. Beyond this, the Slave Code, so far as we know, never attempts or pretends to protect them. It knows them only as mere animals. Their rational and moral natures, not being recognized by the laws, can claim no legal protection. Sufficient evidence of this has already been adduced, but it will accumulate as we proceed. And it will be seen that as a mere animal, the slave has not equal protection, in some respects, with other animals.

We will specify some of the uses of slave property.

1. A prominent use of slave property is unrequited slave labor. The hired laborer is employed. The slave laborer is used as a horse or an ox is used. His labor is held to be the property of his owner. At this point he is degraded to the level of a brute, whether moderately or excessively worked. The use of a slave as a brute laborer is an injury and an insult. It is a denial of his nature as a man, and of his rights as a free moral agent.

“The end of slavery,” said Judge Ruffin, “is the profit of the master.” The slave “is doomed to toil, that others may reap the fruits.”

STATE vs. MANN. (N. Carolina Reports, p. 263. Wheeler’s Law of Slavery, p. 246.)

This honest judicial decision should shame the pretense that slaves are held for their own benefit.

In a separate chapter, we shall look more directly into the particulars of slave labor, and in another, shall consider the withholding of wages. Additional light will then be thrown upon this use of slave property. In the mean time, it will be easy to show that in this use of slave property, in some of the slave States, it is systematically and deliberately so used as to be used up, and destroyed in a manner that would be shameful and wicked, even if brute beasts were the victims.

Dr. Deming, a gentleman of high respectability, residing in Ashland, Richland county, Ohio, stated to Prof. Wright, at New-York City: “That during a recent tour at the South, while ascending the Ohio river on the steamboat Fame, he had an opportunity of conversing with a Mr. Dickinson, a resident of Pittsburg, in company with a number of cotton-planters and slave-dealers from Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi. Mr. Dickinson stated as a fact, that the sugar-planters upon the sugar coast in Louisiana had ascertained that, as it was usually necessary to employ about twice the amount of labor during the boiling season that was required during the season of raising, they could by excessive driving, day and night, during the boiling season, accomplish the whole labor 27

with one set of hands. By pursuing this plan they could afford to sacrifice one set of hands once in seven years! He further stated, that this horrible system was now practiced to a considerable extent. The correctness of this statement was substantially admitted by the slaveholders then on board.” (Weld’s “Slavery as it is,” p. 39.) ”The late Mr. Samuel Blackwell, a highly respected citizen of Jersey City, opposite the city of New-York, and a member of the Presbyterian Church, visited many of the sugar plantations in Louisiana, and says: “That the planters generally declared to him that they were obliged so to overwork their slaves, during the sugar-making season, (from eight to ten weeks,) as to USE THEM UP in seven or eight years. For, said they, after the process is commenced, it must be pushed without cessation, night and day, and we cannot afford to keep a sufficient number of slaves to do the extra work at the time of sugar-making, as we could not profitably employ them the rest of the year.” (Ib.) Rev. Dr. Reed, of London, who went through Kentucky, Virginia, and Maryland, in the summer of 1834, gives the following testimony: “I was told, confidently, from excellent authority, that recently, at a meeting of planters in South Carolina, the question was seriously discussed whether the slave is more profitable to the owner, if well fed, well clothed, and worked lightly; or, if made the most of at once, and exhausted in some eight years. The decision was in favor of the last alternative. That decision will, perhaps, make many shudder. But to my mind, this is not the chief evil. The greater and principal evil is considering the slave as property. If he is only property, and my property, then I seem to have some right to ask how I may make that property most available.” (“Visit to the American Churches,” by Drs. Reed and Matthesou, vol. II., p. 173.)

Other testimony might be added. Southern newspapers have published the proceedings of Agricultural Societies, in which, after discussion, it had been agreed that the more profitable method was to “use up” a gang of negroes once in seven or eight years, and then purchase a fresh supply of the dealers.

A terrible sacrifice of life arises from a change of climate. A writer in the New-Orleans Argus, of 1830, says: “The loss by death, in bringing slaves from a northern climate, which our planters are under the necessity of doing, is not less than twenty-five per cent.”

Advertisements like the following are not uncommon: “I offer my plantation for sale. Also twenty fine acclimated negroes. O. B. COBB.” (Vicksburg Reg., Dec. 27th, 1838.)

“I will sell my Old River Plantation, near Columbia, in Arkansas; also one hundred and thirty acclimated negroes. BEN. HUGHES.—Port Gibson, 14th Jan.” ”PROBATE SALE.—Will be offered for sale, at public auction, to the highest bidder, one hundred and thirty acclimated slaves. G. W. KEETON, Judge of the Parish of Concordia, La., March 22d, 1837.”

General Felix Houston advertises in the Natchez Courier, April 6th, 1838, “Thirty very fine acclimated negroes.” (See Jay’s View, pp. 98, 99.)

Dr. Reed was correct in charging the murderous use of slave property to the principle or law of slave ownership, which constitutes what is called “the legal relation.” Such treatment maybe called an “abuse,” but is a result which will be almost certain to follow, where laborers can be owned and used, instead of being bargained with and hired. Even on the low ground of “consequences,” such a “relation” is to be condemned.

2. Another prominent use of slave property, in the case of females capable of being mothers, is that of breeders of slaves. And if the tenure of slave property be legitimate, and the ownership valid, by what rule of law or of logic shall this use of slave property be condemned? The argument of Mr. Gholson, of Virginia, on that assumption, holds good. If the owners of lands, of orchards, and of brood mares had a right to their products, why had he not a right to the products of the slave women he had purchased? Had not the Slave Code, the legislatures and the courts secured to him his claim upon them as “chattels personal, to all intents, constructions and purposes whatsoever?” Might he not, with other great statesmen,* affirm that “that is property which the law declares to be property,” and that “two hundred years of legislation have sanctified and sanctioned negro slaves as property”? Did he not sustain to those women the relation of owner? And had not Doctors of Divinity, Northern and Southern, attested the lawfulness and the inno cency of sustaining the relation? And how could there be a relation without its implied rights? Thus fortified, was not his inference warranted by his premises, when he spoke as follows? (we quote again from his speech:) “The legal maxim of ‘Partus sequitur ventrem’ is coeval with the existence of the rights of property, and is founded in wisdom and justice. It is on the justice and inviolability of this maxim that the master foregoes the service of his female slave; has her nursed and tended during the period of her gestation, and raises the helpless and infant offspring. The value of the property justifies the expense, and I do not hesitate to say that in its increase consists much of our wealth.” (Speech in Leg. of Va.) The closing sentence indicates the extent and importance of this use of slave property. According to the estimate of Henry Clay as before cited, this use (to “raise slaves” for the “Southern market”) is of more pecuniary value to “the farming portion A terrible sacrifice of life arises from a change of climate. A writer in the New-Orleans Argus, of 1830, says: “The loss by death, in bringing slaves from a northern climate, which our planters are under the necessity of doing, is not less than twenty-five per cent.”

Advertisements like the following are not uncommon: “I offer my plantation for sale. Also twenty fine acclimated negroes. O. B. COBB.” (Vicksburg Reg., Dec. 27th, 1838.)

“I will sell my Old River Plantation, near Columbia, in Arkansas; also one hundred and thirty acclimated negroes. BEN. HUGHES.—Port Gibson, 14th Jan.” ”PROBATE SALE.—Will be offered for sale, at public auction, to the highest bidder, one hundred and thirty acclimated slaves.

G. W. KEETON, Judge of the Parish of Concordia, La., 2. Another prominent use of slave property, in the case of females capable of being mothers, is that of breeders of slaves. And if the tenure of slave property be legitimate, and the ownership valid, by what rule of law or of logic shall this use of slave property be condemned? The argument of Mr. Gholson, of Virginia, on that assumption, holds good. (See Chapter II.) If the owners of lands, of 28

orchards, and of brood mares had a right to their products, why had of the slave States” than all their agricultural operations!

CHAPTER VII. SLAVES CANNOT MARRY. Being held as Property, and incapable of making any Contract, they cannot contract Marriage recognized by Law. MEN may forget or disregard the rules of logic in their reasonings about slavery, but the genius that presides over American slavery never forgets or disregards them. From its well-defined principle of human chattelhood it never departs, for a single moment.

If any thing founded on falsehood might be called a science, we might add the system of American slavery to the list of the strict sciences. From a single fundamental axiom, all the parts of the system are logically and scientifically educed. And no man fully understands the system, who does not study it in the light of that axiom.

The slave has no rights. Of course he, or she, cannot have the rights of a husband, a wife. The slave is a chattel, and chattels do not marry. “The slave is not ranked among sentient beings, but among things,” and things are not married.

“Slaves are not people, in the eye of the law. They have no legal personality.” So said Mr. Wise. So, by their votes, said the Federal Congress. But none except “people” and “persons” ever marry.

“The slave is one who is in the power of a master to whom he belongs.” How, then, can the slave marry?

“The legal relation of master and slave,” with all the vestal robes of its spotless innocency, and saintly Biblical paternity, has never, in this country, been held to be compatible with marriage. So early as in colonial times, when parish ministers, all over NewEngland, owned slaves, it was held by learned civilians, in good old Connecticut, that when a slave master, though inadvertently, gave verbal license to a female slave to marry, the license made her free. Being married, she was not a slave, and the husband bore off his prize in triumph, before her master!

The same doctrine has always been held (though differently enunciated) at the South. Slave mothers are there licensed by their masters to be “breeders,” not wives, and thus they are retained as slaves.

“A slave cannot even contract matrimony, the association which takes place among slaves, and is called marriage, being properly designated by the word contubernium, a relation which has no sanctity, and to which no civil rights are attached.” (Stroud's “Sketch of the Slave Laws,” p. 61.)

“A slave has never maintained an action against the violator of his bed. A slave is not admonished for incontinence, or punished for fornication or adultery; never prosecuted for bigamy, or petty treason for killing a husband being a slave, any more than admitted to an appeal for murder.” (Opinion of Daniel Dulaney, Esq., Attorney General of Maryland. 1 Maryland Reports, pp. 561, 563.)

“Slaves were not entitled to the conditions of matrimony, and therefore they had no relief in cases of adultery; nor were they the proper objects of cognition or affinity, but of quasi-cognition only.” (Dr. Taylor's “Elements of the Civil Law,” p. 429.)

“It is clear that slaves have no legal capacity to assent to any contract. With the consent of their master they may marry, and their moral power to agree to such a contract or connection cannot be doubted; but while in a state of slavery it cannot produce any civil effect, because slaves are deprived of all civil rights. Emancipation gives to the slave his civil rights, and a contract of marriage, legal and valid by the consent of the master, and moral assent of the slave, from the moment of freedom, ALTHOUGH DORMANT DURING SLAVERY, produces all the effects which result from such contract among free persons.” (Opinion of Judge Matthews, case of Girod vs. Lewis, May Term, 1819; 6 Martin's “Louisiana Reports,” p. 559. Wheeler's “Law of Slavery,” p. 199.)

The most favorable inference from this ingenious decision is, that the joint action of master and slave can legalize a slave's marriage when he ceases to be a slave!

The obligations of marriage are evidently inconsistent with the conditions of slavery, and cannot be performed by a slave. The husband promises to protect his wife and provide for her. The wife promises to be the help-meet of her husband. They mutually promise to live with and cherish each other, till parted by death. But what can such promises by slaves mean? The “legal relation of master and slave” renders them void! It forbids the slave to protect even himself. It clothes his master with authority to bid him inflict deadly blows on the woman he has sworn to protect. It prohibits his possession of any property wherewith to sustain her. His labor and his hands it takes from him. It bids the woman assist, not her husband, but her owner! Nay! it gives him unlimited control and full possession of her own person, and forbids her, on pain of death, (as will be shown,) to resist him, if he drags her to his bed!

It severs the plighted pair, at the will of their masters, occasionally, or for ever! The innocent “legal relation” of slave-ownership does or permits all this, and without forfeiting clerical favor, or a high seat in the Church, or in the Senate, or Presidential chair.

What, then, can the marriage vows of slaves mean?

The laws annulling slave marriage are explicit, as has been seen. The corresponding position of the judiciary, as attested by the 29

Maryland Reports, has been adduced. Will any one inquire whether or no, in this particular, the Code be a “dead letter”? or whether the institution of marriage among slaves may not have survived the annulling action of the legislatures and the courts? As a recognized “legal relation,” most assuredly the marriage relation among slaves does not and cannot exist. The petted ”legal relation” of owner and slaves crowds it off from the platform of human society. The two “legal relations” cannot coexist. A choice must be made between the two. And those who will still persist in affirming the innocency and the validity of the “relation” of slave owner, are bound, if sincere and truthful men, to repudiate the “relation” of slave marriage. The Savannah River Baptist Association had the nerve and the consistency to do this.

“In 1835, the following query relating to slaves was propounded to the Savannah River Baptist Association of ministers: Whether, in case of involuntary separation of such a character as to preclude all future intercourse, the parties may be allowed to marry again?”

“ANSWER.—That such separation, among persons situated as our slaves are, is, civilly, a separation by death, and they believe that, in the sight of God, it would be so viewed. To forbid second marriages in such cases, would be to expose the parties not only to greater hardships and stronger temptations, but to church censure for acting in obedience to their masters, who cannot be expected to acquiesce in a regulation at variance with justice to the slaves, and to the spirit of that command which regulates marriage between Christians. The slaves are not free agents, and a dissolution by death is not more entirely without their consent and beyond their control than by such separation.”

The Church is here seen submitting, with complacency, to that feature of the Slave Code that annuls marriage! What the Southern Baptists have avowed, the other religious sects there practice. Some of the facts stated concerning the “uses of slave property” illustrate the absence of slave marriage. And so do the statistics of the domestic slave-trade. The restored institution and sanctity of marriage would cut off the supplies that gorge the slave markets.

The Presbyterian Synod of Kentucky, in their address, have given us their testimony to the general fact and its effects. They say: The system “produces general licentiousness among the slaves. Marriage, as a civil ordinance, they cannot enjoy. Our laws do not recognize this relation as existing among them, and, of course, do not enforce, by any sanction, the observance of its duties. Indeed, until slavery waxeth old, and tendeth to decay, there CANNOT BE any legal recognition of the marriage rite, or the enforcement of its consequent duties. For, all the regulations on this subject would limit the master's absolute RIGHT OF PROPERTY in the slaves.

In his disposal of them he could no longer be at liberty to consult merely his own interest. He could no longer separate the wife and the husband to suit the convenience or interest of the purchaser; no matter how advantageous might be the terms offered.” “Hence; all the marriages that could ever be allowed them, would be a mere contract, violable at the master's pleasure. Their present quasi marriages are continually thus voided. They are, in this way, brought to consider their matrimonial alliances as a thing not binding, and they act accordingly. We are then assured by the most unquestionable testimony that licentiousness is the necessary result of our system.” (Address, pp. 15, 16.)

“Chastity is no virtue among them; its violation neither injures female character in their own estimation, nor in that of their master or mistress. No instruction is ever given—no censure pronounced. I speak not of the world. I speak of Christian families generally.” (Lexington, Ky., Luminary.)

Even in Puritan New-England, seventy years ago, female slaves, in ministers' and magistrates' families, bore children, black or yellow, without marriage. No one inquired who their fathers were, and nothing more was thought of it than of the breeding of sheep or swine. We had the facts from those who well remembered them.

The universal testimony concerning “slave quarters” connected with plantations is, that “the sexes are herded together, promiscuously, like beasts.”

Said a sister of President Madison to the late Rev. George Bourne, then a Presbyterian minister in Virginia: “We Southern ladies are complimented with the name of wives; but we are only the mistresses of seraglios.”

The report of the Presbyterian Synod of Georgia, December, 1833, sustains, on this general subject, the testimony of the Synod of Kentucky.

We have seen a well-authenticated account of a respectable Christian lady at the South, who kept a handsome mulatto female for the use of her genteel son, as a method of deterring him, as she said, from more indiscriminate and vulgar indulgences. Undoubtedly he passed current in the first circles of respectable young ladies. In our chapter on the uses of slave property, this item would have been in place.

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The rapid and constant bleaching of colors, at the South, assures us that there is no exaggeration in these pictures. And if the Synod of Kentucky were not mistaken, the innocent “legal relation” of slave ownership is to be held responsible for it all. Where the laws annul marriage, we may be certain that “the people are not better than their laws.”

CHAPTER VIII.

SLAVES CANNOT CONSTITUTE FAMILIES. Being Property, “Goods” and “Chattels Personal,” to all intents, constructions and purposes whatsoever, they have no claim on each other—no security from Separation—no Marital Rights—no Parental Rights—no Family Government—no Family Education—no Family Protection.

The family relation originates in the institution of marriage, and exists not without it. We have already proved that slaves cannot have families or be members of families, by proving that they cannot be married. To this latter point, in its connection with the former, we cite the words of Judge Jay: “A necessary consequence of slavery is the absence of the marriage relation. No slave can commit bigamy, because the law knows no more of the marriage of slaves than of the marriage of brutes. A slave may, indeed, be formally married, but so far as legal rights and obligations are concerned, it is an idle ceremony.” “Of course, these laws do not recognize the parental relation, as belonging to slaves. A slave has no more legal authority over his child than a cow has over her calf.” (Jay’s Inquiry, p. 132.)

The fact that the slave, as a chattel personal, may be bought, sold, transported from one place to another, mortgaged, attached, leased, inherited, and “distributed” in the settlement of estates shows plainly that slaves cannot constitute families.

“In the slaveholding States, except in Louisiana, no law exists to prevent the violent separation of parents from their children, or even from each other.” (Stroud’s Sketch, p. 50.)

From the above one can easily see the insanity of slavery and the mindset of slave owners. This is the legacy of America and the offspring we have inherited.

This offspring includes: rape, murder, incest, child abuse, the stud mentality, sexual abuse, genocide, suicide, lying, thievery, imitation, swindling, insecurity, fear, hate, guilt, shame, ignorance, superstition, manipulation, mob action, brutality, self promotion, conspiracy, and other inhumane acts.

Our jails are full to capacity and our history is a constant re-enactment of our slave heritage. To be free is to rise above these acts and actions through the purification of our emotions, the unshackling of our minds and the reclaiming of our Spiritual Heritage.

May all be free Now.

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ALL THINGS SLAVE “Know free person would ever think to own another person. Free people advance freedom and only slaves advance slavery.”

—Myeka

Facts To Ponder 1. Mothers are the purveyors of slavery, as they are everyone’s first teacher and the state of her soul is imbued in the fetus while in the womb.

2. Females were the first slaves.

3. Slavery is a system of relationship whereby one person deems themselves better than another and therefore has the right to exploit, abuse, misuse, and deny another free agency.

4. Slave owners were and are slaves.

5. Slavery was a carryover from the system of relationships that existed in Europe.

6. Slavery was a carryover from the system of relationships that existed in Africa.

7. Slaves produce slave institutions built on a violent foundations: churches (mosque, temples, etc.), government, industry/business, healthcare systems/prisons, homes (marriage) and schools (pre-school, elementary, junior high, high school, college, university, and private schools modeled after the above). Nearly 99.9% of all present day institutions are built on violence which is the foundation of slavery 8. Slaves have a limited perspective and people trapped at this level ascertain value from skin color, age, gender, size of a bank account, car driven, house size and location, and other physical markers. Therefore scarcity or lack is a basic tenet of slavery.

9. Slaves perpetuate racism, classism, sexism, genderism, ageism, studism and capitalism.

10. Slavery begins with a shackled mind, toxic emotions, a polluted body and a religion that does not promote heaven on earth.

11. Slaves operate as 1/4th man, seeing life only from the perspective of the physical reality or the five senses.

12. So-called freed slaves are not free if someone else freed them.

13. Freedom is a personal achievement.

14. Free people build nonviolent institutions together.

15. The first thing a free person or people engage in is the creation of an agricultural system that feeds them healthy, nutritious food so as the most essential need is under their control.

16. The second thing a free person or people do is develop other relationships with nature to secure transportation, communication, construction, energy, tools and textiles directly from the Source (GOD), thus developing a system of relationship rooted in nature.

17. Man is spirit, mind, emotion and body which allows s/he to interact with space, energy, elements and motion to create whatever is needed.

18. Freedom provides one with the liberty to pursue and fulfill ones purpose for being created on earth.

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"If mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."

—John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

THE UNIVERSAL LAW OF TEN-FOLD RETURN AS IT RELATES TO SLAVERY The universal law of ten-fold return states that whatever you initiate will come back to you ten fold. Generally, it is used to sow and harvest monetary returns.

The law works for the positive benefit of a person or the negative benefit of a person. If we look at the sowing of seeds by white people as it relates to the destruction of free agency among African American people, then we will be able to see the law of ten-fold return as this nation and its people experience the harsh returns on their investment of hate, racism, injustice, white supremacy and crimes against humanity.

When white males determined that they would “destroy the manhood of the Negro citizen through to success,” in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Georgia, Virginia, and throughout the states, they did not take into account the universal law of ten-fold return.

The return on this investment has been the wholesale destruction of manhood regardless of color. Males populate the jails, are denied access and parenting rights with their children. Homosexuality is on the up rise and female head of households do a great job of demasculating male children. Estrogen dominance is a worldwide phenomenon.

When white males sowed the seeds of manhood destruction they sowed the seeds of their own manhood being destroyed.

What are we to do now that the investment in the destruction of manhood has been enacted? Awareness of what has been done is of utmost importance. By being conscious of the seeds that were sown and how they are constantly being harvested today, and ceasing the actions that lead to the destruction of manhood, we can eradicate the effect.

Racism has to end. White supremacy must be done away with. Capitalism must cease. Prisons must become clinics offering therapeutic healing of emotions and bodies. The toxic emotions of hate, fear, revenge, guilt, shame, blame and depression have to be healed and replaced with love, justice, joy, understanding, goodwill and peaceful co-existence.

The truth is, you can’t hurt someone else without hurting yourself. We are ONE and we must begin to act as one body, one mind and one earth. We have no choice but to become nonviolent. It is the only way left to us as the violent society has outlived its usefulness. Come now let us reason together. We will either walk together as brothers and sisters or we will perish together as fools. The choice is ours. Let’s overcome the curse. NOW!

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O Great Spirit, grant me the strength of eagles wings, the faith and courage to fly to new heights, and the wisdom to rely on his spirit to carry me there —Indian Serenity Prayer

THE SIX NATIONS: OLDEST LIVING PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY ON EARTH “Savagery to Civilization” We, the women of the Iroquois Own the Land, the Lodge, the Children Ours is the right to adoption, life or death; Ours is the right to raise up and depose chiefs; Ours is the right to representation in all councils; Ours is the right to make and abrogate treaties; Ours is the supervision over domestic and foreign poliThe people of the Six Nations, also known by the French term, Iroquois. Confederacy, call themselves the Hau de no sau nee (ho dee noe sho nee) meaning People Building a Long House. Located in the northeastern region of North America, originally the Six Nations was five and included the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas. The sixth nation, the Tuscaroras, migrated into Iroquois country in the early eighteenth century. Together these peoples comprise the oldest living participatory democracy on earth. Their story, and governance truly based on the consent of the governed, contains a great deal of life-promoting intelligence for those of us not familiar with this area of American history. The original United States representative democracy, fashioned by such central authors as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, drew much inspiration from this confederacy of nations. In our present day, we can benefit immensely, in our quest to establish anew a government truly dedicated to all life's liberty and happiness much as has been practiced by the Six Nations for over 800 hundred years.

—http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/6Nations/ The Iroquois' extension of liberty and political participation to women surprised some eighteenth-century EuroAmerican observers. An unsigned contemporary manuscript in the New York State Library reported that when Iroquois men returned from hunting, they turned everything they had caught over to the women. "Indeed, every possession of the man except his horse & his rifle belong to the woman after marriage; she takes care of their Money and Gives it to her husband as she thinks his necessities require it," the unnamed observer wrote. The writer sought to refute assumptions that Iroquois women were "slaves of their husbands." "The truth is that Women are treated in a much more respectful manner than in England & that they possess a very superior power; this is to be attributed in a very great measure to their system of Education." The women, in addition to their political power and control of allocation from the communal stores, acted as communicators of culture between generations. It was they who educated the young.

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Another matter that surprised many contemporary observers was the Iroquois' sophisticated use of oratory. Their excellence with the spoken word, among other attributes, often caused Colden and others to compare the Iroquois to the Romans and Greeks.

Prior to European colonization the Iroquois exercised active dominion over most of what is now New York State. Of the 49,576 square miles of the state the Iroquois held title to about 4/5 of the total area (approximately 39,000 square miles). . . .

All together the Iroquois Confederacy held as its own 24,894,080 acres of some of the most beautiful and resource wealthy lands in all of North America. Yet traditional Iroquois were careful custodians of the earth for nowhere in this broad expanse of territory was there a single polluted stream, hazardous waste site or open landfill. —Doug George-Kanentiio, p. 60

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THIRTEEN THINGS YOU CAN DO TO END RACISM Be honest: Examine your own prejudices, biases, and values. Discuss your own experiences of being hurt by prejudice as well as the ways discrimination has benefited you.

Be secure: Explore and find realistic value in your own group identity, which will help reduce defensiveness and anxiety in relation to others.

Be a partner: Work on projects with members of groups different from your own.

Be a loving parent: Expose your children to diversity at a young age.

Invest in racist free projects: Providing and sustaining quality programming requires adequate funding. Make a financial contribution.

Be a role model: Be vocal in opposing racist views and practices. And don't just criticize, but help educate others about issues and about your own experiences.

Be an ally: Support victims of discrimination and prejudice. Offer support on whatever level you can. For example, be a mentor for someone in your field of work.

Be an activist: Challenge "top-down" or institutional racism. Work to reduce institutional discrimination and prejudice in all institutions.

Be a member: Support organizations that work to end racist, or start your own.

Be a teacher: Teach tolerance. Fight prejudice and racism by proactively teaching understanding, openness, and conflict resolution skills.

Be a student: Educate yourself and others. Read books, see movies, go to hear speakers about the experiences of other groups to increase understanding and empathy.

Be a volunteer: Volunteer to support projects begun by people of different groups. Learn patience and tolerance of others way of doing things, without attempting to take over or criticize.

Be a self-healer: Learn self-applied healing techniques that are effective in eliminating stress and emotional trauma, the precursors to physical ailments (cancer, AIDS, foul disease, etc) via a weak immune system.

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I’m better than you.

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RACISM DEFINITION The projection and acceptance of any feelings, thoughts, words and actions that are based on a belief that a person or group can be judged by the color of their skin (gender, age, economic status, religion, etc) rather than the content of their character, in an attempt to create a false sense of inferiority and superiority in order to sanction mistreatment, inequality, injustice, mis-education, discrimination, ill-health, disenfranchisement, violence, economic disparity and the destruction of people, families, countries, ideas and institutions.

— Myeka

The Affects of Racism Racism affects our health by causing chronic stress among its victims. Researchers have found that people who experience discrimination are far more likely than others to develop high blood pressure and other stressinduced health effects.

—American Journal of Public Health 2001;91(6):927–932.

Racism poses a threat to financial viability and thus, impacts a person’s well-being.

Racism causes anger and rage which lead to increased crime and violence and thus higher crime rates and prison populations among those experiencing the effects.

Racism damages community cohesion, leaving broken families and homelessness.

Spiritual Growth Requires That We: 1. Discover and conquer our limiting programs, destructive impulses and toxic emotions.

2. Listen to the yearnings of our soul and value its expression more than any external distraction or superficial gimmick.

3. Find nourishment in truth, and satisfaction in discovery.

4. Maintain a positive attitude, seeking the good in all situations.

5. Strive to think, feel, speak, and act as our Highest Self would think, feel, speak, and act..

6. Give up attachment to any particular outcome.

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RACISM Racism is one of the most pressing issues in the world today. Although, every nationality in American has been through some form of racism, we still seem incapable of understanding the damage it can and does do. Racism is a phenomenon that has been going on since Biblical times. One race or group of people believing that they are better than another. Any one with common sense can see that we are all humans and that color doesn’t make us who we are. Our bodies are just vehicles for our minds and our spirit. When we set stereotypes based on color or other physical attributes, we only limit our self. It is a blessing when a person can be racist, see their error and correct themselves. When this happens their mind can expand to greater heights and they can mature. It is a shame that children are being raised in a society where racism still exists after so many years of war and pain. Racism stops harmony and joy, and as long as it exist in the world, we can never have peace.

“Racism is the belief that God created more than one race.

God created Man (male and female).”

—James Luther Bevel

Jokes You know you are a racist when your house is on fire and you turn away the Black Fire Department.

You know you are a racist when you are drowning and you’d rather drown than be saved by a Black lifeguard.

You know you are a racist when you lock out a Black Angel and welcome a White devil.

See the butterfly likes me better than you.

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“It is critically important to realize that you will never allow yourself to have what you don’t feel worthy of.”

—Dick Supten

SLAVE RANTINGS AND PEARLS OF WISDOM Like everyone born in the United States of America I was raised by slaves and programmed to be a slave. This is the legacy our parents left us. At a young age I rejected slavery, control, conformity, assimilation and questioned everything. I put myself under observation, abhorred those ugly slave traits I saw in myself, decided not to judge myself, forgave myself, eradicated those traits, continued to look for more and made freedom my highest value.

Many having assimilated into the very society that enslaved them, see things from a very definite and knowable perspective, that of a slave. Following is what I identified as my slave orientation, and the free persons perspective I adopted.

—Myeka 1. Problems have no solutions.

From a mathematical perspective all problems have solutions. Life being mathematical the same is true.

Solutions always lead to another set of problems, thus it is said, “mathematicians love problems.”

2. Cause can only be ascertained by those up top or academia.

Cause can be ascertained by anyone who takes the time to understand how an effect came into being.

3. Anger has relevancy in decision making or communication.

Anger is an immature emotion, displayed by adults who have grown physically, but continue to exhibit childish reactions to life happening. Anger is a short-circuiting of a person’s ability to breath, relax, interpret and respond to life. Anger as an emotional reaction can be uprooted. EFT, TAT, RET, Hypnotherapy and other effective therapies can be useful to attain this goal. Anger blocks communications.

4. Punishment and reward are acceptable practices.

Societies, families and individuals erect punishment/reward models when they are inept at understanding cause, problem solving, conflict resolution, healing and education.

5. Saying that something is incorrect makes it so. Example: I’m offended. So that means you have been offended.

This is usually used to detour, uproot or eliminate the examination or discussion of facts. It derives from cowardly people as a sort of sympathy mechanism. In the human development model all things can be discussed, examined and understood. Offense should never be ascribed to a discussion, only actions that violate the sanctity, dignity, self-worth and spirit, mind, emotion or body of an individual or group.

6. Your attitude, disposition, likes or dislikes are mature expressions.

Attitudes, dispositions, likes and dislikes are infantile reactions to people, situations and conditions that cause one to feel uncomfortable. These are childhood learned behavior patterns that do not aid in the process of human and community development.

7. Nonviolence is only relevant as a tactic.

Martin Luther King, Jr. said “Its either nonviolence or non-existence.” Nonviolence has application in the human development model as a way of personal and social interactions that enhance, protect and support individual growth and development. A nonviolent societal structure is the foundation for civil living and the advancement and development of a civilization. Nonviolence is the way to peace, justice and prosperity.

Nonviolent institutional development is the pathway mankind must tread to avoid extinction through the proliferation of global nuclear warfare.

8. Past achievements give you some type of entitlement that makes you right and others wrong.

Past achievement have a bearing on the present when a continuity of events are built on that foster freedom, justice, equality and the beloved community. Achievements in the present must be examined within the human development model from the perspective of relevancy. Thus a hit song writer or actress would not be expected to have the final say about the curriculum to be taught in a school. Their achievements are irrelevant as it relates to this issue. Thus they have no entitlement to be right over those with less achievements or popularity.

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9. Fear is a great motivator.

Fear is a poor motivator. Fear by its very nature paralyses people. It does not allow one free mobility and keeps one stuck in a cycle of indecisiveness. Fear has been used systematically to control people by people who themselves are fearful. One advocates ones highest ideals and imposes them on others by virtue of a cycle of ignorance and illness.

True self-interest is the best motivator, as people are able to see how overcoming fear and the inertia it brings will lead to a better way of living, being and doing. This is what caused the young people in Birmingham to risk their lives to bring about the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Their self-interest was aroused and it motivated them to take up a cause that was bigger than themselves, their family situation, their nations understanding and the status quo.

At the same time, their parents were stuck in a cycle of fear that immobilized them. Their fear of retaliation, of losing their jobs, status and the possibility of failure did not allow them to take a stand that was needed and in keeping with the time.

10. The majority is always right.

The majority may be right, but the majority may also be wrong. The majority may be made up of a bunch of ill-informed, cowardly, greedy individuals. One person may be right and 10,000 or more others could be wrong. Right or wrong are not based on the size of a group, it is based on truth ascertained, known, understood and applied.

11. Don’t rock the boat.

Don't rock the boat is a cliche used to mean, don't seek change. Change is always appropriate in that it is the only constant in creation. One should always seek a better way of being, doing, behaving, thinking, feeling and creating. The creative process is an active dynamic process that is harmonious with the laws that govern life. Change should not be feared, abhorred or repressed. Change will happen regardless. “Resist change, suffer pain.”

12. Hurt feelings should be skirted around.

Hurt feeling are cursors of mental, emotional or physical trauma. Thus one should take the time to heal trauma and not use it to mask or avoid looking at situations, conditions and problems fully. Heal your hurt feelings because they obscure the truth. Like rose colored glasses they can paint a picture that is distorted, unreal, exaggerated and unhealthy.

13. If you talk loud enough and long enough you will somehow drown out the truth.

Bullies, big mouths, instigators, and agitators are known to talk loud and long. These characteristics are the reflection of mental and emotional illness.

14. Thinking is not allowed.

This society is inundated with pseudo-intellects, who don’t create, produce or respect thought. Pseudointellectuals operate from imagination and opinion. They always have the latest memory of what they heard someone else say via reading or listening. The ability to produce a thought however is far from them. Even more so these people abhor thinkers. The ability to think is learned. Thinkers are not afraid of the status quo, being liked, being accepted nor do they seek to be acknowledged. Thinking is its own reward.

15. Individual scholarship is of no value.

The society of violence does not honor or reward individual scholarship. You must go to this school, that college, that university, receive xyz degree in order to be valued. This is baloney. George Washington Carver the imminent scientist put all books out of his laboratory when he sought to discover the usage of the peanut, was called crazy, said to disrespect books, etc. etc. etc. His simple position was that what he was after was not known and thus not in any book. He had to go into himself to discover the value of the peanut because the world had no value for him as a man of African descent or the peanut. Individual scholarship is available for all. Once a person learns how to do math, read and write anything is possible.

16. All African Americans and females have to have a European or male to vouch for them to be legitimate.

The tradition of white masters and black servants (slaves) is dead, yet there are those who still prescribe to this tradition. As a result when an African American develops, advances or produces something there are those who ask, “and by whose authority (white) did you do this?” The same is true for a female who takes a stand or develops, advances or produces something. The question becomes what male vouches for you? The generation that promotes this illogic is passing into the dead past, and along with them will go this tradition.

Hallelujah 17. Females, girls, women only have physical value and should be seen and not heard.

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18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

For the past 5,000 + years females have lived in a subservient position. Incapable of thinking thoughts, creating a path to freedom or feeling love, females have suffered a fate of obscurity. The only value placed on us has been that as bearers of children, prostitutes, and sex slaves. As a result the vocalization of a female has been denied. Females have a right to speak. But oh what a huge fire a little tongue can kindle. When females speak from toxic emotions they are destructive spreading gossip, lies, hate, venom and ill repute. When a female speaks from love oh what a joyous vibration she strikes. May all females find vocalization of the principles that govern life and usher in that day of rejoicing when all are free.

Every man for himself. I am not my brothers keeper.

I am my brother and my sister’s keeper, because I am all things. We all comprise the wholeness that is life.

My life is inexplicably woven in a tapestry of oneness with yours. Thus I want for my brother and my sister what I want for myself. There is only one family and that is the human family.

Slaves can never be free.

Slavery like a curse is not forever. These only exist as long as one abdicates personal responsibility for ones state and condition. Once a person accepts responsibility power is gained to change. A person must not fear change. It is the fear of change that enslaves people, leaving them wretched creatures of the lowest desires of sin filled beings. One’s freedom is dependent on ones willingness to face the truth about the self. Freedom is not free, it exacts a heavy toll, one few are willing to pay. Freedom means standing alone with G_D until one is forged in the oven of self-love. Self-love empowers one to be a creative spark in the world that is capable of instigating meaningful change. Herein lies freedom, liberation and peace of mind. Freedom is being free from the fear of death, ostracism, ridicule, and obscurity as one stands in love, and on truth forever ad infinitum.

Opinions are of value.

In the halls of the wise, opinion has no place. Opinions are as fleeting as the morning dew. Anyone can have one, but its relevance is of no bearing on the creation of anything.

The value of education is that it allows you to secure a good paying job.

Education is the elimination of ignorance. Ignorance is evil and causes one pain and suffering. “Deliver me from evil” is rightfully, “Deliver me from ignorance, not knowing, opinions, superstition, here-say, and false teachings.” Education allows a person to; know the self, be true to self, and produce and create from that knowing, for what is inside is outside of the self and it can only be activated from within.

Healing is not possible.

All illness is a result of injury that comes from ignorance. Thus all illness can be healed when right knowledge is applied. Right knowledge allows a person to correct the wrong whether it be in the spiritual, mental, emotional or physical realm. Thus healing is possible and there are no dead-end illnesses that cannot be healed.

Might is right.

Might is often very wrong. Might is often the result of the acquisition of money and power in the physical realm which may have come through murder, the selling of drugs, the exploitation of nature or the kidnapping and sexual abuse of others. How could any of this be right? When one aligns and invests in the universal rather than the personal one acquires the immensity of all of nature to overcome any illusionary might of frail human capacity.

Only slaves and low class people engage in food growing.

All free people take serious the art and science of food production. This is so because freedom is inherent in ones ability to provide one’s self and family with the most basic need food. Food producers need never abdicate to another because they control their food source. Slavery was able to spread so rapidly because indigenous people agreed to grow export crops and were thus left with no natural food crops for consumption.

Ownership gives one the right to be unjust, unloving, unkind, unforgiving and to go on power trips.

Ownership is really a misnomer. One can not own anything even one’s body. Mankind was given stewardship over the earth, not ownership of any part of it, in that it is shared equally among the sons and daughters of G_D. Greed, avarice, egotism, selfishness and sickness has caused some to instill fear in others and thus handicap their ability to exercise stewardship responsibility, but even in this they don’t own anything. Here we have a false belief that people adhere to and give credence to. It has no relevance in the world of truth.

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“There can be no compromise with war; it cannot be reformed or controlled; cannot be disciplined into decency or codified into common sense; for war is the slaughter of human beings, temporarily regarded as enemies, on as large a scale as possible.”

—Congresswoman Jeanette Rankin

"There is, however, a somber point in the social outlook of Americans. Their sense of equality and human dignity is mainly limited to men of white skins.

Even among these there are prejudices of which I as a Jew am clearly conscious; but they are unimportant in comparison with the attitude of the 'Whites' toward their fellow-citizens of darker complexion, particularly toward Negroes. The more I feel an American, the more this situation pains me. I can escape the feeling of complicity in it only by speaking out.

"Many a sincere person will answer: 'Our attitude towards Negroes is the result of unfavorable experiences which we have had by living side by side with Negroes in this country. They are not our equals in intelligence, sense of responsibility, reliability.'

"I am firmly convinced that whoever believes this suffers from a fatal misconception. Your ancestors dragged these black people from their homes by force; and in the white man's quest for wealth and an easy life they have been ruthlessly suppressed and exploited, degraded into slavery. The modern prejudice against Negroes is the result of the desire to maintain this unworthy condition."

—Albert Einstein

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"I know not what course others may take but as for me: give me liberty or give me death."

— Patrick Henry

THE RISE OF THE PSEUDO INTELLECTUAL This archaic, primitive society that was built on the principalities and powers of slavery, punishment and injustice, has successfully implanted itself into the minds of present day people.

It has spawned a generation of pseudo intellectuals who have matriculated in the institutions of so-called higher learning. Also among these are those who voraciously devour books to gain facts and information. The pseudo intellectual is a great gatherer of facts and information and a great exponent of all they have read and heard, putting their particular spin or interpretation upon it from an ego centric perspective. The ego-generated perspective gives them a particular edge that may and can get them attention. This is done in the hopes of filling the void left vacant as a result of growing up in a slave society, postulating as a free society and even as a civilization. As replicas of this society that are void of authentic life giving principles, the pseudo-intellectual attempts to pawn themselves off as being in the know.

Yeshua in the Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ says, “Man knows nothing by being told, if you would know then you must be.”

Totally incapable of arriving at solutions, pseudo-intellectuals simply spout off facts, statistics, quotes, and philosophies. Having no authentic self to purify and filter the conglomeration of information they consume, they are incapable of operating in the now (present tense), and miss every opportunity and experience that would be in their best interest as it relates to forming dynamic principled relationships and solving problems. In fact the pseudo-intellectual does not even want to use the word problem they say, “I would rather say challenge.” This is done because for them problems have no solutions, whereas in truth all problems have solutions.

The problem of the pseudo-intellectual is that they authenticate themselves based on degrees and book learning. Both are attained via institutions and people who have perpetuated the slave system with its inherent violence, capitalism, classism, sexism, ageism, and racism. These institutions are inherently flawed in that their very foundations are corrupt and rotten to the core. The pseudo intellectual however, not being creative is afraid to start from scratch, so they offer band-aid adjustments that only mask the problems, thus never arriving at solutions.

The pseudo-intellectual is thus rendered an empty vessel, a non-entity attempting to live a disjunctive life at the expense of nature, children and the world-at-large. In actuality the pseudo -intellectual is a perversion of the original creation of man (male/female), created in the image and likeness of God to exercise dominion of the earth. This aberration has stripped him/herself of the right to self-determination, freedom, justice and equality.

Pseudo-intellectuals do not know themselves and thus do not have the capacity to know anyone or anything else, they can only approximate. All knowledge begins with self-knowledge, and pseudo-intellectuals have none.

Above all else know thyself.

By and large pseudo-intellectuals will not acknowledge that because of a lack of self-knowledge they have suffered numerous emotional, mental and physical illness, traumas and abuse and thus need healing. This is so because the pseudo-intellectual is completely void of emotional response in the now. Instead the pseudo-intellectual remembers sets 45

of rules, precedence’s, regulations and do’s and don’ts, and imposes them on self and others. Any apparent deviation or new violations are cause for coming up with a new law, or rule. Thus everything for the pseudo-intellectual is regimented and mechanical, which is their comfort zone.

This dis-junctiveness is cause for much suffering, because only effects are addressed, and cause never understood, therefore

solutions are not attained. So the pseudo-intellectual lives a life of blaming others, pointing fingers, judging self and others, punishment and reward, one-upmanship, ego boosting, threatening, angry outbursts, violent attacks and fear.

Caught in a web of ineffectual jargon. The pseudo-intellectual therefore never takes personal responsibility for anything.

Wilhelm Reich, the eminent scientist, coined this phenomenon the “Emotional Plague”. Void of healing institutions and therapies to release the trauma from the bones. the tension for the muscles, the fear from the heart, and the anger from the mind, the condition unchecked will lead to the annihilation of the human species on earth.

We have little time left to effect a change in this condition as nature is gathering her forces to eliminate the perpetuation of the pseudo-intellectual and his/her mechanical world. Nature a living entity will protect itself from the onslaught of the pseudo-intellectual who has separated himself or herself from Source Origin and instead live lives of disconnectiveness, basing everything upon the physical with disregard for the spiritual essence and the principles that govern life.

—Myeka

“The term esnicity gives each individual a social content and a social context to be able to start with an equal biological foundation upon which to be responsible and accountable for her or his acts…”

—Dr. Nkosi Ajanaku, 1936-Present

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MOVIES ON SLAVERY Amazing Grace (2007): This film is based on the life of antislavery pioneer William Wilberforce. Wilberforce was elected to the British House of Commons at the age of 21.

On his way to a successful political career, Wilberforce took on the English establishment and persuaded those in power to end the inhumane trade of slavery in the British Empire. 111 min Anamika: Documentary (2005): Exposing the issues of child commercial sexual exploitation in India, this documentary delves into the very real product of the sex trade, including both physical and mental destruction. 26 min Angel's Ladies (2000): A documentary about the inner workings of a Nevada brothel. 80 min Anonymously Yours (2002): Four women's stories are woven together in this documentary about Burma's sex trafficking trade. 90 min Bangkok Girl (2005): 19-year-old Pla tells of her experience managing to avoid prostitution while working in a bar in Thailand since the age of 13, and how with time she will inevitably be forced into the trade. 42 min Born into Brothels (2004): Taking on a very different vantage point than most films on the subject, this documentary focuses not on prostitutes in India, but on their children. 85 min Bought and Sold (1999): Produced and directed by WITNESS director Gillian Caldwell, this documentary investigates the illegal traffic of women in the former Soviet Union, as well as the groups that are helping them.

42 min Bucharest Express (2003): Enticed falsely by offers of job opportunities as dancers and models, women are trafficked from the Balkans to become sex slaves in Turkey. 15 min Cargo: Innocence Lost (2008): This documentary includes interviews from the nation's leading authorities on trafficking and from victims of modern day slavery themselves. 75 min Carissa (2008): A documentary about a woman who was abandoned as a child. She became a prostitute at 12 and eventually was able to turn her life around. 23 min Children For Sale (2005): Dateline NBC exposes sex tourism and child sex trafficking in Cambodia.

The Children We Sacrifice (2003): Grace Poore’s documentary delves into the many aspects of incest, ranging from cultural attitudes to effective treatments for survivors, and focuses on social and cultural resistance in South Asia. 61 min The Day My God Died (2003): The Day My God Died

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tells the story of the countless girls sold into the sex trade in Bombay and the brave souls working to defend them. 55 min Demand (2007): This documentary exposes the men who buy commercial sex, the vulnerable women and children sold as commodities, and the facilitators of the sale within the marketplace of exploitation. 45 min Diary of a Sex Addict (2001): A middle-aged chef in a luxurious restaurant reveals to his shrink his double personality: He is an impeccable family man who loves his wife and son and at the same time a sexually hungry person who seeks pleasure at any time with any woman. 93 min Dreamworlds 3 (1995): This film analyzes the stories behind contemporary music videos and discusses how they affect the public's view of femininity, masculinity, sexuality, and race. 54 min The Dutch Showcase: This documentary is about the legalized prostitution in Holland and shows that prostitution is slavery whether it is legal or not.

Dying to Leave (2004): This two-part documentary explores the issue of human trafficking and tells the story of a girl trafficked to Australia then sold into prostitution for three years. 104 min The Dark Business of Human Trafficking (2004): This Wide Angle documentary explores the worldwide boom in illicit migration and human trafficking, recording the stories of those who pull up their roots and risk all and putting a human face on an issue too often reduced to statistics. It examines the circumstances that drive these migrants from their homes, highlights the difficulties involved in their epic journeys, and reveals what awaits them in their new world.

57 min Fields of Mudan (2004): A young girl is forced into sex slavery in this moving short film. She befriends another girl in the brothel and dreams of freedom with her mother in America. 23 min Ghosts (2006): A documentary that follows the story of victims of the 2004 Morecambe Bay cockling disaster, in which smuggled immigrants are forced into hard labor. 100 min Girls from Chaka Street (1997): This short documentary tells the tragic story of Eva, a prostitute in Latvia, and many other underage girls like her. 15 min Girl Trafficking (1994): Trafficked from the rural areas of Nepal into India for commercial sexual exploitation, this documentary-drama outlines the very real ordeal of many young girls, as well as the social ostracization they face with their resulting HIV/AIDS infection. 45 min

**Goodbye Uncle Tom (1971): Filmmakers go back in time and visit antebellum America, using period documents to examine, in graphic detail, the racist ideology and degrading conditions faced by Africans under slavery.

Highway to Hell (2000): Exploring the sex trafficking trade between Nepal and India, this documentary also takes on the unique perspectives of male clients in addition to those of the trafficked girls and their families.

38 min Holly (2007): An American stolen artifacts dealer comes across a 12-year-old Vietnamese girl sold by her family into prostitution. The film focuses on the attempt to bring the girl to safety. It brings to light the effort to raise awareness about child trafficking and the K11 Project.

114 min Human Trafficking (2005): This two-part mini-series starring Mira Sorvino and Donald Sutherland depicts the sex trafficking trade in Eastern Europe. 180 min I am a Sex Addict (2005): An autobiographical comedy about a recovering sex addict, his obsession with prostitutes, and how it affected his relationships and his life altogether. 98 min I am Elena: A short graphic clip that depicts the horrors of human trafficking .The Johns (1997): A film about a homeless man who earns money by prostituting himself and robbing people.

96 min Lady Zee (Leydi Zi) (2006): Zlatina has grown up in an institution for abandoned children. When she is 12, a group of boys plans to rape her. Zlatina manages to avert the rape by offering herself to the boarding house supervisor. As she seeks to start life anew, Zlatina keys Lechko, her devoted shadow, into robbing Nayden. She then decides to pass the Greek border pretending to be a prostitute... and ends up in a brothel where her worst nightmare becomes reality. 96 min Lana’s Rain (2004): Lana and her brother Darko escape the war torn country of Balkans to achieve the American dream. But her illusions are shattered as she is forced to survive by any means possible on the mean streets of Chicago. As she gets pulled deeper and deeper into her brother’s criminal world while a steely determination grows in her heart, Lana must risk her own life to overcome Darko and his pursuers if she hopes to finally realize her dream. 105 min Lilya 4-Ever (2002): At 16 in the former Soviet Union, Lilya is left by her mother, penniless, turning to prostitution and the horrifying life it entails. 109 min Lives for Sale (2007): A one-hour investigative documentary exposes the painful, rarely seen human side of illegal immigration, including the growing black market trade in human beings. 58 min Making of a Girl (2006): A five-minute clip, narrated by Rachel Lloyd, about a hypothetical girl facing a life of 48

sexual exploitation. 5 min MTV Exit: End Exploitation and Trafficking (2004): Includes Inhuman Traffic, a documentary about women being sexual exploited in Europe, and Parallel Lives, a series of short films about human trafficking.

The Price of Pleasure (2008): A documentary about the pornography industry. Includes the perspectives of scholars, performers, and producers. 55 min The Price of Sugar (2007): A documentary following a Dominican Priest as he exposes the abuse of Haitian slave laborers on a sugar plantation in the Dominican Republic.

Ignoring warnings not to go on the sugar plantations, where the majority of his parishioners are, Father Hartley finds himself in utter dismay over the conditions of the workers. He fights to educate the parishioners on their rights and fight for justice. 90 min Promised Land (2004): A film shown at the 2004 Venice International Film Festival about human trafficking from Eastern Europe to Israel. 88 min Prostitution: Beyond the Myths (2007): This film depicts three women who have lived the life of prostitution, escaped the lifestyle, and are now living successful lives. The prospectives of various other people such as counselors, judges, and police officers are offered as well. 28 min Respect Me Don’t Media Me: This film looks at the way women are portrayed in the media and examines what this portrayal means to young women. 30 min Remote Sensing (2001): This feature-length film explores the impact of US military presence in Southeast Asia and European migration politics on the global sex trade. 53 min Roots (1977): An American television miniseries based on Alex Haley’s work Roots: The Saga of an American Family.

Sacrifice: The Story of Child Prostitution in Burma (1998): This documentary explores the economic, social, and cultural forces behind the sex trafficking of girls for debt bondage from Burma to Thailand. 50 min The Selling of Innocence (2005): A young girl agrees to take photos for a modeling company that turns out to be a pornography company. The film follows her as she tries to shut the company down and get her images removed from the company's Web site. 88 min The Shanghai Hotel (2006): Twenty-two-year-old Yin Yin came to the US under the impression that she would be trained for a computer job. After a harrowing journey on a crowded and disease-infested cargo ship, she arrives at the Shanghai Hotel, a rundown brothel in New York City, where she is forced into slave labor and sexual exploitation. 110 mi Sex Slaves (PBS Frontline) (2006): How five women from the struggling countries of Eastern Europe were tricked into sexual slavery, beaten by traffickers and pimps, forced to work to turn a profit--and finally

escaped. Plus, a convicted Ukrainian sex trafficker talks about the multibillion dollar sex trade business, and why he sold an acquaintance for $1,000. 60 min Sisters and Daughters Betrayed (1996): Focusing on Thailand, Nepal, and the Philippines, this documentary delves into the social and economic factors driving sex trafficking, as well as the consequences for those women affected. 28 min So Great a Violence: Prostitution, Trafficking & the Global Sex Industry (2000): This inspirational film calls on those with a voice to use their power to create political demand for the ending of sexual exploitation. 29 min Spartan (2004): This film centers on the hunt for the daughter of a high ranking US official who has been kidnapped by an international sex slavery ring. 106 min The Spot (2006): Based on the novel by Grigorii Riazhskii, this film is about the lives of three Russian prostitutes. 92 min Stolen Lives (1999): This film looks at the child prostitution through the eyes of the children who are being exploited. Those who are working to help children escape the sex trade are also profiled. 46 min Stop the Traffick (2001): Set in Cambodia, Emily Marlow’s documentary explores the aftereffects of the Khmer Rouge’s brutal rule and how it has impacted the vulnerability of children in the region to the sex trade. 27 min The Sugar Babies (2007): A documentary that highlights the plight of Haitian victims of human trafficking in the Dominican Republic. 95 min Svetlana's Journey (2008): Based on a true story, this documentary/drama describes the experience of a young Bulgarian girl sold by her adopted parents for only 10,000 euros to another family for sexual exploitation. 40 min Taken (2008): A film about girls who are trafficked with the purpose of being forced into prostitution. 93 min Tijuana Makes Me Happy (2007): A young boy named Indio, who is growing up in Mexico, asks his father for a rooster for his fifteenth birthday. Since he cannot afford a rooster, Indio's father buys him a night with a prostitute.

Indio falls in love with the prostitute and does whatever he can in order to win her love. 79 min Trade (2007): A girl from Mexico City is abducted into modern-day slavery; her brother goes on a quest to rescue her. 119 min Trading Women (2003): Trading Women documents the sex trafficking trade in China, Thailand, and Burma, depicted as a local and international problem. Narrated by Angelina Jolie. 77 min Trafficked (2005): Luigi Acquisto’s documentary explores the sex trafficking trade in Southeast Asia and Australia through former Australian Federal Police Officer Chris Payne. 60 min Trafficking Cinderella (1999): Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, there has been a marked increase 49

in sex trafficking from the former Soviet Union to Western Europe and North America, as explored in this film. 48 min Turning a Corner (2006): A documentary that tells the stories of those affected by the sex trade in Chicago; their efforts to raise awareness for necessary policy reforms are revealed. 60 min Very Young Girls (2007): This film follows 13- and 14year-old girls in New York and the mistreatment and abuse that they endure as young prostitutes. Rachel Lloyd, a survivor herself, runs GEMS, a recovery center that is also discussed in the film. 84 min The Virgin Harvest (2006): After decades of civil war, Cambodia's proud ancient culture has been shattered and the family base has been broken. In this gap, a flourishing child trafficking industry has evolved. Undercover equipment reveals the warped reality in which children are sold and smuggled across borders in order to entertain pedophiles from around the world. The girls tell their intimate and chilling stories with the sensitive help of two women who have risked their lives in order to fight the sex trade. 112 min The Virgin Trade: Sex Lies and Trafficking (2006): A documentary that focuses on Thailand's red light districts and international sex tourism. 54 min Your name is Justine (Masz na imie Justine) (2006): A young woman from Poland travels around Europe with her boyfriend. When they arrive in Germany, he sells her into prostitution. The film follows the woman's attempt to free herself. 97 min

THE ABOLITIONIST The Spirit of Motherhood and Fatherhood Abolitionists correctly understood this. Slavers did not: God is the God of Liberty, ONLY, meaning NO slavery allowed.

Anti-Slavery Society Convention 50

“Not only do I pray for it, on the score of human dignity, but I can clearly foresee that nothing but the rooting out of slavery can perpetuate the existence of our union, by consolidating it in a common bond of principle.”

—President George Washington

THE TIMELINE OF THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY 1619 : George Fox, generally called the founder of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), influences agitation among Quakers against slaveholding by Society members when he speaks against slavery on his visit to North America.

1676: Nathaniel Bacon (Bacon's Rebellion) appeals to enslaved blacks to join in his cause.

Slavery is prohibited in West New Jersey, a Quaker settlement in current day South New Jersey.

1693: An Exhortation & Caution to Friends Concerning the Buying or Keeping of Negroes by the Philadelphia Monthly Meeting is published in Philadelphia.

11750: Georgia is the last of the British North American colonies to legalize slavery.

1754:The first anti-slavery tract is written by John Woolman, a Quaker from New Jersey.

1758: The Quakers of England held their annual meeting and for the first time, denounced England's role in the Slave Trade.

1759: Publication in Germantown (PA) of Anthony Benezet's pamphlet, Observations on the Inslaving [sic], Importing and Purchasing of Negroes, the first of many anti-slavery works by the most influential antislavery writer of 18th century America.

1766: Granville Sharp becomes a prominent lawman for slaves in court. The Quakers of England and America exchange letters and England's Quakers are urged to start the fight against slavery. Letters, essays and other forms of inspirational messages are released amongst the public. An example is Thomas Clarkson's "Is it lawful to make slaves of others against their wills?" essay.

1767: The Strong case established that slaves from the Americas and other colonies would remain slaves in England only, if they had signed a contract agreeing to leave the country and be a slave. Else their master had no rights over them.

1772 : The Somersett case took place, ruling in favor of abducted slave James Somersett and setting him free. With this case, English law had set a stand that slavery does not legally exist in England.

1774: Ignatius Sancho, "the extraordinary Negro" votes in England's parliamentary elections. He is of African origin and was a symbol of inspiration for the abolition movement. The same year, Scottish law officially states that slavery is not a recognized practice.

1775: The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage was formed. It was the first formal abolitionist group that was American in nationality. During America's fight for independence from colonial rule, runaway slaves were promised freedom if they aided the British.

1783: Sir Cecil Wray submitted a petition to the English parliament, to recognize the unfairness of slavery and asking for its abolishment. On the other side of the Atlantic, the American states of Massachusetts and New Hampshire began to free slaves.

Connecticut and Rhode Island would follow suit in a year.

1787: William Wilberforce, the MP of Hull, joined the abolitionists and he would soon become the most influential and indeed, the leader of England's movement against slavery.

1789: Using his parliamentary seat, Wilberforce first brought up the issue of slavery in parliament and would continue to repeat and urge English law to change its pro-slavery attitude for 26 years, until the Slave Trade Act was passed.

1807: An anti-slavery supporter, Lord Grenville became the Prime Minister of England in 1806. One year later, he introduced the Slave Trade Abolition Bill and a month later, the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act is passed. Carrying slaves on ships to and fro from colonies, selling and buying of slaves was banned by law. This act was passed after nearly 200 years, since the first ship carried slaves from Africa to America. But the practice of slavery existed in British colonies, where one could have slaves as property.

1808: America abolished trading of slaves. Like England, owning and controlling slaves was still legal. England ended its slave trade and began to urge other European nations to follow through. In 1810, it started negotiations with Portugal. In 1815, at the Congress of Vienna, it urged Spain, France and the Netherlands to stop their slave trading.

1817: In a smart step to counter illegal trading, Wilberforce introduces and passes a slave registration act, where slave owners must create a bi-yearly account of the laves they own. The central registry was set up in London.

1818: France abolished the slave trade from its shores.

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1822: Most South American nations had abolished slavery by this time. Exceptions were Puerto Rico, Cuba and Brazil.

1831: William Lloyd Garrison publishes The Liberator.

Nat Turner Slave Rebellion.

1833: The American Anti-Slavery Society formed.

The Slavery Abolition Act was passed, banning slavery in totality, in any British state or colony. Slaves were not freed immediately, they had to remain apprentices for 6 years, under their masters. In 1838, even this system is abolished and so slaves were now free people.

1844: John Quincy Adams finally wins repeal of the Gag Rule in Congress.

1847: Frederick Douglass begins publishing The North Star.

1848: The nations of France and Denmark banned slavery in totality, trading and owning. Holland would follow suit in 1863, Spain in 1870.

1853: Argentina bans slavery.

1857: Dred Scott Court Decision which stated that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional, and that slaves were not citizens but the property of their owners 1858: Lincoln-Douglas Debates.

1859: Abolitionist John Brown’s raid at the federal arsenal in Harper’s Ferry, Virginia.

1863: The Emancipation Proclamation is passed, freeing slaves who live in the Confederate states.

1865: The Thirteenth Amendment is added to the U.S Constitution and legitimately bans slavery and bonded or forced labor, throughout the American nation.

1886: Cuba bans slavery.

1888: Brazil finally bans slavery.

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BENJAMIN FRANKLIN January 17, 1706 – April 17, 1790 One of the Founding Fathers of the United States.

“Attention to emancipate black people, it is therefore to be hoped will become a branch of our national police; but, as far as we contribute to promote this emancipation, so far that attention is evidently a serious duty incumbent on us, and which we mean to discharge to “To instruct, to advise, to qualify those who have been restored to freedom, for the exercised and enjoyment of civil liberty; to promote in them habits of industry; to furnish them with employments suited to their age, sex, talents, and other circumstances; and to procure their children an education calculated for their future situation in life, these are the great outlines of the annexed plan, which we have adopted, and which we conceive will essentially promote the public good, and the happiness of these our hitherto too much neglected fellow creatures.”

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ANTHONY BENEZET January 31, 1713 – May 3, 1784 Considered the “Father of Atlantic Abolitionism.” A Pennsylvania Quaker who turned his whole church against slavery. He founded the Pennsylvania Abolition Society and produced a constant stream of influential free tracts. They sent the first anti-slavery petition to the British parliament, and persuaded London Quakers to form the first abolition society there.

“Liberty is the right of every human creature, as soon as he breathes the vital air.

And no human law can deprive him of the right which he derives from the law of nature.”

“The races are equal and the claim of racial inequality is a “vulgar prejudice” founded on the pride and ignorance of the lordly masters, who keep their slaves at such a distance, as to be unable to form a right judgment of them?”

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DAVID RICE 1733 – 1816 He made the provision of low-cost or free education an important aspect of his mission and was instrumental in founding Hampden-Sydney College, in Virginia, and Transylvania University, in Kentucky.

“From our definition it will follow, that a slave is a free moral agent legally deprived of free agency, and obliged to act according to the will of another free agent of the same species; and yet he is accountable to his Creator for the use he makes of his own free agency.”

“When we plead for slavery, we plead for the disgrace and ruin “Slavery naturally tends to destroy all sense of justice and equity. It puffs up the mind with pride: teaches youth a habit of looking down upon their fellow creatures with contempt, esteeming them as dogs or devils, and imagining themselves beings of superior dignity and importance, to whom all are indebted. This banishes the idea, and un-qualifies the mind for the practice of common justice.”

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THOMAS "TOM" PAINE February 9, 1737 – June 8, 1809 One of the Founding Fathers of the United States. An author, pamphleteer, radical inventor, intellectual and revolutionary. He wanted to abolish slavery at the same time that American independence was won, but the pressure from slave owners was too great to overcome.

“He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”

“The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren and to do good is my religion.”

“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.”

“An army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot.”

“If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.”

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JAMES WILSON September 14, 1742 – August 21, 1798 One of the Founding Fathers of the United States and a signer of the United States Declaration of Independence. He was a major force in drafting the United States Constitution. A leading legal theoretician, he was one of the six original justices appointed by George Washington to the Supreme Court of the United States.

“Slavery, or an absolute and unlimited power in the master over the life and fortune of the slave, is unauthorized by the common law.... The reasons which we sometimes see assigned for the origin and the continuance of slavery appear, when examined to the bottom, to be built upon a false foundation. In the enjoyment of their persons and of their property, the common law protects all.”

“The happiness of society is the first law of every government. This rule is founded on the law of nature: it must control every political maxim: it must regulate the legislature itself. The people have a right to insist that this rule be observed; and are entitled to demand a moral security that the legislature will observe it. If they have not the first [that right], they are slaves; if they have not the second [that moral security], they are, every moment, exposed to slavery.”

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JOHN JAY December 12, 1745—May 17, 1829 President of the Continental Congress, 1st Chief-Justice of the Supreme Court. Served as Governor of New York. He was a leading opponent of slavery. He co-wrote the Federalist Papers with “It is much to be wished that slavery may be abolished. The honor of the States, as well as justice and humanity, in my opinion, loudly call upon them to emancipate these unhappy people. To contend for our own liberty, and to deny that blessing to others, involves an inconsistency not to be excused.”

“That men should pray and fight for their own freedom and yet keep others in slavery is certainly acting a very inconsistent as well as unjust and perhaps impious part.”

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DR. BENJAMIN RUSH January 4, 1746—April 19, 1813 One of the Founding Fathers of the United States. a physician, writer, educator, humanitarian and a Universalist, as well as the founder of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

“Freedom can exist only in the society of knowledge. Without learning, men are incapable of knowing their rights.”

“I need say hardly anything in favor of the Intellects of the Negroes, or of their capacities for virtue and happiness, although these have been supposed by some to be inferior to those of the inhabitants of Europe. The accounts which travelers give of their ingenuity, humanity and strong attachments to their parents, relations, friends and country, show us that they are equal to the Europeans.… All the vices which are charged upon the Negroes in the southern colonies, and the West Indies, such as idleness, treachery, theft and the like, are the genuine offspring of slavery, and serve as an argument to prove, that they were not intended, by Providence, for it.”

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PRESIDENT JAMES MADISON March 16, 1751—June 28, 1836 Political philosopher who served as the fourth President of the United States and is one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America.

“If slavery, as a national evil, is to be abolished, and it be just that it be done at the national expense, the amount of the expense is not a paramount consideration.”

“American citizens are instrumental in carrying on a traffic in enslaved Africans, equally in violation of the laws of humanity and in defiance of those of their own country. The same just and benevolent motives which produced interdiction in force against this criminal conduct will doubtless be felt by Congress in devising further means of suppressing evil.”

“We have seen the mere distinction of color made in the most enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man.”

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GOUVERNEUR MORRIS January 31, 1752—November 6, 1816 American statesman and diplomat, was one of the important authors of the U.S. Constitution. He was one of the only delegates at the Philadelphia Convention who spoke openly against domestic slavery.

“Slavery is the curse of heaven on the states where it prevails. ...with the misery and poverty which overspread the barren wastes of Virginia, Maryland, and the other states having slaves.... Proceed southwardly, and every step you take, through the great regions of slaves, presents a desert increasing with the increasing proportion of these wretched beings. Upon what principle is it that the slaves shall be computed in the representation? Are they men? Then make them citizens, and let them vote. Are they property? Why, then, is no other property included?”

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BISHOP RICHARD ALLEN February 14, 1760 – March 26, 1831 A minister, educator, writer, and the founder in 1816 of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME), the first independent black denomination in the United States.

“If you love your children, if you love your country, if you love the God of love, clear your hands from slaves, burden not your children or country with them.”

“We deemed it expedient to have a form of discipline, whereby we may guide our people in the fear of God, in the unity of the Spirit, and in the bonds of peace, and preserve us from that spiritual despotism which we have so recently experienced-remembering that we are not to lord it over God's heritage, as greedy dogs that can never have enough. But with long suffering, and bowels of compassion to bear each other's burdens, and so fulfill the Law of Christ, praying that our mutual striving together for the promulgation of the Gospel may be crowned with abundant success.”

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PRESIDENT JOHN QUINCY ADAMS July 11, 1767 – February 23, 18488 The sixth President of the United States. Pro-slavery members of congress, in 1836, brought about the passage of the first ``Gag Rule,'' whereby all petitions relating to slavery would be laid on the table without being referred to committee or printed; it was re-adopted at the beginning of each succeeding session of congress. Adams contended that these ``Gag Rules'' were a direct violation of the First Amendment to the Federal Constitution, and refused to be silenced on the question, fighting for repeal with indomitable courage, in spite of the bitter denunciation by his opponents. Each year the number of anti-slavery petitions received and presented by him increased; in 1844 his motion to repeal the twentyfirst Gag Rule was carried by a vote of 108 to 80 and his battle was won.

“Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.”

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”

“Human bondage establishes false estimates of virtue and vice for what can be more false and heartless than this doctrine which makes the first and holiest rights of humanity to depend upon the color of the skin.”

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ELIZABETH HEYRICK December 4, 1769—October 18, 1831 A radical abolitionist and social reformer, who wrote Immediate, Not Gradual Abolition in 1824, the publication that convincingly launched women’s intellection in the Abolitionist movement.

She argued that the so-called vices of the slaves are really a product of slavery, not intrinsic to the people enslaved.

“Give the slave his liberty—in the sound name of justice, give it him at once. Whilst you hold him in bondage, he will profit little from your plans of amelioration. He has not, by all his complicated injuries and debasements, been disinherited of his sagacity;—this will teach him to give no credit to your admonitory lessons—your Christian instructions will be lost upon him, so long as he both knows and feels that his instructors are grossly violating their own lessons.”

“It is high time to resort to other measures…too much time has already been lost in declamation and argument…the cause for emancipation calls for something more decisive, more efficient than words.”

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ARTHUR & LEWIS TAPPAN 1788 — 1873 Wealthy merchants from a strong Calvinist family. Lewis is best known for his role in organizing the defense of Joseph Cinque in the Amistad trial. They funded anti-slavery journals and helped to form the American Anti-Slavery Society. They and other disaffected former members of the American Anti-Slavery Society formed the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, which employed political abolitionism. After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, they supported the Underground Railroad, and fought for black civil rights in the North. There abolitionist deeds were often met with hostility, which extended as far as the destruction of a church they built.

“Judge not of virtue by the name, or think to read it on the skin. Honor in white and black the same—the stamp of glory is within.”

“They are entitled to their freedom here.”

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JOSIAH HENSON 1789 – 1883 Author, abolitionist, and minister.

“My brother and sisters were bid off first...my mother, paralyzed with grief, held me by the hand. Her turn came and she was bought. Then I was offered...My mother, half distracted with the thought of parting forever from all her children, pushed through the crowd while the bidding for me was going on, to the spot where Riley was standing. She fell at his feet, and clung to his knees, entreating him in tones that a mother could only command, to buy her baby as well as herself, and spare to her one, of her little ones.

This man disengaged himself from her with violent blows and kicks.”

“We lodged in huts and on the bare ground. Wooden floors were an unknown luxury. In a single room were huddled, like cattle, ten or a dozen persons, men, women, and children. All ides of refinement and decency were of course out of the question.”

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LUCRETIA MOTT January 3, 1793—November 11, 1880 “A Quaker and a “non-resistant” pacifist who was committed to black emancipation and women’s rights. As a woman, her role in official abolitionist movements was fraught with difficulties. In 1840, she and six other American female delegates to the World Anti-Slavery Convention in England were refused seats. Because of her opposition to violence of any kind, Mott did not support the Civil War as a means of liberating slaves. She did, however, “I have no idea, because I am a non-resistant, of submitting tamely to injustice inflicted either on me or on the slave. I will oppose it with all the moral powers with which I am endowed. I am no advocate of passivity.”

“The world has never yet seen a truly great and virtuous nation because in the degradation of woman the very fountains of life are poisoned at their source.”

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REVEREND JOHN RANKIN February 5, 1793 – March 18, 1886 Presbyterian minister, educator and abolitionist. He became known as one of the first and most active "conductors" on the Underground Railroad. Prominent pre-Civil War abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison, Henry Ward Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe were influenced by Rankin's writings and work in the anti-slavery movement. When Beecher was asked after the end of the Civil War, "Who abolished slavery?," he answered, “Let all the friends of justice and suffering humanity, do what little they can, in their several circles, and according to their various stations, capacities and opportunities; and their little streams of exertion will, in process of time, flow together, and constitute a mighty river that shall sweep away the yoke oppression, and purge our nation from the abominations of slavery.”

“We feel the hand of oppression not only upon the slave, but upon ourselves. Where I live, my soul is harrowed continually with the cruelties committed in sight of my house, where slavery exists in its mildest form. I rejoice in the triumph of principles of immediate emancipation because I know, from long observation, that it is the only thing that can relieve both master and slave from inevitable ruin.”

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SAMUEL J. MAY September 12, 1797—July 1, 1871 His life was forever changed when he heard William Lloyd Garrison lecture about immediate, unconditional emancipation without expatriation in 1830. May wrote of that experience, “my soul was baptized in his spirit, and ever since I have a disciple and fellow-laborer of Wm. Lloyd Garrison.” He called for the “rights of humanity” to be respected more than “the rights of property.”

A Unitarian minister, who was a pacifist and practiced non-violent resistance by lecturing, acting as a general agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, and sheltering slaves on the Underground Railroad. In one notable case, May helped to liberate William “Jerry” Henry, who had been taken into custody in Syracuse under the Fugitive Slave Law, and was to be returned to slavery. After the “Jerry Rescue,” a pro-slavery mob attacked May and other rescuers and burned the unwavering May in effigy.

“It is our own prejudice against the color of these poor people that makes us consent to the tremendous wrongs they are suffering.”

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SOJOURNER TRUTH c. 1797—November 26, 1883 She was the self-given name, from 1843, of Isabella Baumfree, an African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist.

Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, New York. Her bestknown speech, Ain't I A Woman?, was delivered in 1851 at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in Akron, OH. “If women want any rights more than they's got, why don't they just take them, and not be talking about it.”

“Truth is powerful and it prevails.”

“Religion without humanity is very poor human stuff.”

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GERRIT SMITH March 6, 1797—December 28, 1874 A wealthy abolitionist from Utica, New York. His conversion to abolitionism occurred in 1835, when he attended an abolitionist conference. The meeting was disrupted by a violent mob of antiabolitionists. Consequently, he offered his Peterboro, New York estate to house the conference and, there, made a powerful speech on behalf of the cause. He became the president of the New York Anti-Slavery Society for three years. He served as Station Master of the Underground railroad and sold portions of his land to fugitive slaves for the nominal fee of one dollar. He was also one of the Secret Six, a group of supporters who gave financial assistance to John Brown for his “God cannot approve of a system of servitude, in which the master is guilty of assuming absolute power—of assuming God’s place and relation toward his fellow-men.”

“Our concern, is with slavery as it is, and not with any theory of it.”

“True, permanent peace can never be restored until slavery,

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LEVI & CATHERINE COFFIN October 28, 1798 –September 16, 1877 A famous Quaker abolitionist. Known as President of the Underground Railroad. He got money for slaves, as quickly as they needed? Levi traveled up and down the Underground Railroad, encouraging workers and seeing for himself, that runaways were being treated well. In, New Garden, North Carolina, he opened a Sunday Quaker school for slaves. Levi was a model for the book Uncle Tom’s Cabin. After that he met up with Harriet Tubman and he began rescuing slaves with her. He and his wife

"I had already risked everything in the work - life, property and reputation - and did not feel bound to respect human laws that came in direct contact with the law of God." “Today, man's law commands us to not interfere with child-sacrifice. This does not cancel God's command to rescue the weak and needy.” (Ps. 82:4).

“May God bless all of you with faith that manifests into courageous obedience.”

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REVEREND NAT TURNER October 2, 1800—November 11, 1831 The leader of a slave insurrection in Virginia, known as the "Nat Turner's Rebellion," on August 21, 1831, as a result of the exploitative conditions of the Southern slave system Unlike most blacks of the time, Turner was literate. He and his companions were caught and he was hanged.

“Being at play with other children, when three or four years old, I was telling them something, which my mother overhearing, said it had happened before I was born... others being called on were greatly astonished...and caused them to say in my “Having soon discovered to be great, I must appear so, and therefore studiously avoided mixing in society, and wrapped myself in mystery, devoting my time to fasting and prayer.”

“What right did white men have to treat me like an ox simply because I am black when an indomitable soul within is as good as they.”

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JOHN BROWN May 9, 1800 – December 2, 1859 Abolitionist who advocated and practiced armed insurrection as a means to end slavery.

John Brown would stand in the back and suddenly at the age of 37 publicly consecrate his life to the destruction of human enslavement, by any means necessary (he raised his right hand as if taking a vow and spoke a single sentence: “Here before God, in the presence of these witnesses, I consecrate my life to the destruction of slavery”.

At his trial in reference to the Holy Bible.

“It teaches me to "remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them." I endeavored to act up to that instruction. I am too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done -- as I have always freely admitted I have done -- in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right. Now if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments. -- I submit; so let it be done.”

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WILLIAM H. SEWARD May 16, 1801—October 10, 1872 Abolitionist, humanitarian, liberator and Union spy during the American Civil War. From Auburn, New York, he served as governor of New York from 1838 to 1842. He was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Whig party member in 1847, primarily because of his anti-slavery stance. He fought a hard political battle against the Missouri Compromise of 1850 and in favor of the admission of California as a free state.

“But you answer, that the Constitution recognizes property in slaves. It would be sufficient, then, to reply, that this constitutional recognition must be void, because it is repugnant to the law of nation and of nations.”

“The color of the prisoners skin, and the form of his features, are not impressed upon the spiritual immortal mind which works beneath. In spite of human pride, he is still your brother, and mine, in form and color accepted and approved by his Father, and yours, and mine, and bears equally with us the proudest inheritance of our race the image of our Maker. Hold him then to be a Man.”

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LYDIA MARIA CHILD February 11, 1802-October Novelist, scholar, and activist for women’s rights She wrote “An Appeal to that Class of Americans Called Africans,” an anti-slavery tract in which she declared her willingness to battle for emancipation.

“The cure for all the ills and wrongs, the cares, the sorrows, and the crimes of humanity, all lie in the one word 'love'. It is the divine vitality that everywhere produces and restores life.”

“While we bestow our earnest disapprobation on the system of slavery, let us not flatter ourselves that we are in reality any better than our brethren of the South.

Thanks to our soul and climate, and the early exertions of the Quakers, the form of slavery does not exist among us; but the very spirit of the hateful and mischievous thing is here in all its strength. The manner in which we use what power we have, gives us ample reason to be grateful that the nature of our institutions does not entrust us with more. Our prejudice against colored people is even more inveterate than it is at the south.”

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MARIA W. STEWART 1803—1879 A public speaker, abolitionist, writer, and feminist, in the 1830’s.

She was the first American born woman to deliver a political speech to a mixed gender audience.

“O, ye daughters of Africa, awake! arise! no longer sleep nor slumber, but distinguish yourselves. Show forth to the world that ye are endowed with noble and exalted faculties.”

“Look at our young men, smart, active, and energetic, with souls filled with ambitious fire; if they look forward, alas! What are their prospects? They can be nothing but the humblest laborers, on account of their dark complexions; hence many of them lose their ambition, and become worthless.”

“Had the men amongst us, who have had an opportunity, turned their attention as assiduously to mental and moral improvement as they have to gambling and dancing, I might have remained quietly at home, and they would have stood contending in my place.”

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THEODORE & ANGELINA WELD November 23, 1803 – February 3, 1895 ▪ February 20, 1805 – October 25, 1879 Leading architects of the American abolitionist movement during its formative years, from 1830 through 1844.

“The Society is based on that great law of human right, that nothing but crime can forfeit liberty. That no condition of birth, no shade of color, no mere misfortune of circumstances, can annul that birthright charter, which God has bequeathed to every being upon whom he has stamped his own image, by making him a free moral agent, and that he who robs his fellow man of this tramples upon right, subverts justice, outrages humanity, unsettles the foundation of human safety, and sacrilegiously assumes the prerogative of God.” “Human beings may be inconsistent, but human nature is true to herself. She has uttered her testimony against slavery with a shriek ever since the monster was begotten; and till it perishes amidst the execrations of the universe, she will traverse the world on its track, dealing her bolts upon its head, and dashing against it her condemning brand.”

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WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON December 13, 1805 - May 24, 1879 The lightning rod of the abolitionist movement, promoted nonviolent and non-political resistance, to achieve emancipation. In 1831, he began publishing The Liberator, the single most important abolitionist publication, and later led the American Anti-Slavery Society. His vociferous language and his very presence outraged antiabolitionist Northerners who attacked him, sometimes physically, with mob-driven violence. His avid support for a woman’s right to participate in the movement and his attack on the American Constitution as a proslavery document created irretrievable divisions in the abolitionist movement.

However, his unflagging conviction and his influence in promoting “immediatism” shaped the course of abolitionism in America..

“Enslave the liberty of but one human being and the liberties of the world are put in peril.”

“That which is not just is not law.”

“Wherever there is a human being, I see God-given rights inherent in that being, whatever may be the sex or complexion.”

“You can not possibly have a broader basis for government than that which includes

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GAMALIEL BAILEY December 3, 1807—June 5, 1859 An American journalist and abolitionist. He edited a daily paper, the Herald, and in 1847 assumed control of the new abolitionist publication, the National Era. "Never respect men merely for their riches, but rather for their philanthropy; we do not value the sun for its height, but for its use.�

Oppression! I have seen thee, face to face, And met thy cruel eye and cloudy brow; But thy soul-withering glance I fear not now For dread to prouder feelings doth give place Of deep abhorrence! Scorning the disgrace Of slavish knees that at thy footstool bow, I also kneel -- but with far other vow Do hail thee and thy hord of hirelings base: I swear, while life-blood warms my throbbing veins, Still to oppose and thwart, with heart and hand, Thy brutalising sway -- till Africa's chains Are burst, and Freedom rules the rescued land, -Trampling Oppression and his iron rod: Such is the vow I take -- SO HELP ME GOD!

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PRESIDENT ABRAHAM LINCOLN February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865 Served as the 16th President of the United States from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through its greatest internal crisis, the American Civil War, preserving the Union and ending slavery.

“This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.”

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

“The slave-breeders and slave-traders, are a small, odious and detested class, among you; and yet in politics, they dictate the course of all of you, and are as completely your masters, as you are the master of your own negroes.”

“I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel.”

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CASSIUS MARCELLUS CLAY October 19, 1810 – July 22, 1903 Cassius Clay was a paradox - a southern aristocrat who became a prominent anti-slavery crusader. He was a son of Green Clay, one of the wealthiest landowners and slaveholders in Kentucky. Clay worked toward emancipation, both as a Kentucky state representative and as an early member of the Republican Party.

“I felt all the horrors of slavery; but my parents were slave-holders ; all my known kindred in Kentucky were slave-holders; and I regarded it as I did other evils of humanity, as the fixed law of Nature or of God, and submitted as best I might.”

“Liberty and,Slavery can not co-exist ! One or the other must triumph utterly.”

“If there was such a thing as evil in the world, slavery was an evil. If there was such a thing as justice among men, then justice required the liberation of the slave; and, as to rights: "The greatest of all rights, was the right of a man to himself.”

“I will never use the sword while slavery is proteected in rebel states. When I draw a sword, it shall be for the liberation and not the enslavement of mankind.”

“Russia liberated her slaves not by war and gave them lands, America did neither.”

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HARRIET BEECHER STOWE June 14, 1811—July 1, 1896 An American abolitionist and author. She wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin an epic of 19th-century life, which depicted life for African Americans under slavery. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was the most powerful attack on slavery written in the 1850s. After Harriet Beecher Stowe’s book was published, more people helped slaves escape North to freedom. When President Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe he said, “So you’re the little lady who started the Civil War!”

“A woman's health is her capital.”

“In all ranks of life the human heart yearns for the beautiful; and the beautiful things that God makes are his gift to all alike.”

“So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why doesn't somebody wake up to the beauty of old women.”

“To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization.”

“In all ranks of life the human heart yearns for the beautiful; and the beautiful things that God makes are his gift to all alike.”

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JONATHAN BLANCHARD January 19, 1811 - 1892 Pastor, Educator, Abolitionist, Social Reformer. He was the first president of Wheaton College in Illinois, which was founded in 1869.

“The slave-holder's rule contradicts this fundamental truth of God's word, that "God has made of one blood all the nations of men," and if of one blood, they are of equal blood.”

“God hath created all men free and equal, and hath endowed them with certain inalienable rights, which may not lay down, and which no man or body of men called a Legislature can take away without sin. This is why we may not make men slaves.”

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WENDELL PHLLIPS November 29, 1811-February 2, 1884 One of the movement’s most powerful orators. He came from a wealthy and influential family, that was appalled by his activism in support of the abolitionist cause. He was undaunted in his work and was thrust into prominence when he gave a riveting speech in Boston’s Faneuil Hall in defense of Elijah Lovejoy in 1837. He also gave generously to abolitionists in need of financial assistance.

“Truth is one forever absolute, but opinion is truth filtered through the moods, the blood, the disposition of the spectator.”

“Write on my gravestone: "Infidel, Traitor.", infidel to every church that compromises with wrong; traitor to every government that oppresses the people.”

“To suppress minority thinking and minority expression would tend to freeze society and prevent progress. Now more than ever, we must keep in the forefront of our minds the fact that whenever we take away the liberties of those we hate, we are opening….”

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few.”

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DR. MARTIN ROBINSON DELANY May 6, 1812– January 24, 1885 Physician, abolitionist, editor, Niger Valley Explorer, trial justice, freemason, author, scientist, highest ranking black officer during the Civil War. He had the qualities of a president watching over the lives of his people.

“We must make an issue, create an event, and establish a national position for ourselves, and never may expect to be respected as men and women, until we have undertaken some fearless, bold and adventurous deeds of daring…”

“Every people should be originators of their own destiny.”

“Our elevation must be the result of self-efforts and work of our own hands. No other human power can accomplish it. If we but decide it shall be, it will be so.”

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ELIZABETH CADY STANTON November 12, 1815—October 26, 1902 She was an American social activist, abolitionist, and leading figure of the early woman's movement. Her Declaration of Sentiments, presented at the first women's rights convention held in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, is often credited with initiating the first organized woman's rights and woman's suffrage movements in the United States. She was the cousin of abolitionist Gerrit Smith.

“The black man, as a slave, was compelled to lie and cheat and steal. All he got was by his wits; he had no rights which any one was bound to respect. He had nothing to hope for, nothing to gain; hence food and clothes were more to him than principles.”

“Virtue and independence go hand in hand. If you would have the future men of this nation do justice and walk uprightly, remove every barrier in the way of woman's elevation, that she, too, with honor and dignity on her brow, may stand self-poised, above fear, want or temptation.”

“When woman understands the momentous interests that depend on the ballot, she will make it her first duty to educate every American boy and girl into the idea that to vote is the most sacred act of citizenship—a religious duty not to be discharged thoughtlessly, selfishly or corruptly; but conscientiously, remembering that, in a republican government, to every citizen is entrusted the interests of the nation.”

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HENRY HIGHLAND GARNET December 23, 1815 – February 13, 1882 Abolitionist and orator. An advocate of militant abolitionism, Garnet was a prominent member of the abolition movement.

Renowned for his skills as a public speaker, he urged blacks to take action and claim their own destinies. Garnet was the first black minister to preach to the United States House of Representatives.

“In every man’s mind, the good seeds of liberty are planted, and he who brings his fellow down so low, as to make him contented with a condition of slavery, commits the highest crime against God and man.”

“The orators and statesmen of our land, whether they belong to the past, or to the present, will live and shine in the annals of history, in proportion as they have dedicated their genius and talents to the defense of Justice and man's God-given rights.”

“Rather die freemen than live to be slaves.”

“The humblest peasant is as free in the sight of God as the proudest monarch that ever swayed a sceptre. Liberty is a spirit sent from God and like its great Author is no respecter of persons.”

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PARDEE BUTLER March 9, 1816 - October 20, 1888 A farmer and preacher who arrived in Kansas in 1855 and was involved there in the run-up to the American Civil War. He is remembered in Kansas history for being set adrift on the Missouri River on a raft by pro-slavery men for his abolitionist beliefs. “As respects slavery, the whole power of the master and the obligation of the servant is found in the proper meaning of the words of such precepts as these "Masters, render unto your servants that which is just and equal;" "servants, obey your masters," etc. All within such limits is the doctrine which is according to godliness--all beyond, whether on the part of the master or the slave, and which is attempted to be foisted into the church as a part of the apostolic doctrine, is schismatical, and essentially fills up the picture drawn by Paul: "If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness; he is proud, knowing nothing'--from such withdraw thyself." In these precepts no right is given to the masters to buy and sell, to traffic in slaves; no right to enslave the children, and the children's children of his servants; no right to hold them in a relentless bondage which knows no limit but the grave, and in which the heritage transmitted by the slave to his children, is a heritage of bondage to all generations.�

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FREDERICK DOUGLAS c. 1818—February 20, 1895 Abolitionist, women's suffragist, editor, orator, author, statesman and reformer.

“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”

“I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.”

“The soul that is within me no man can degrade.”

“I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.”

“America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.”

“No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.”

“Without a struggle there can be no progress.”

“The life of a nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful and virtuous.”

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HARRIET TUBMAN c. 1822—March 10, 1933 Abolitionist, humanitarian, liberator and Union spy during the American Civil War. During the 1850s, she made 19 trips back to Maryland and helped more than 300 slaves escape to freedom.Harriet made 19 trips back to Maryland and helped more than 300 slaves escape to freedom.

“I had reasoned this out in my mind, there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other.”

“Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.”

“I freed a thousand slaves I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.”

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IDA B. WELLS July 16, 1862—March 25, 1931 An early leader in the civil rights movement, she documented the extent of lynching in the United States, and was also active in the women's rights and suffrage movements.

“One had better die fighting against injustice than die like a dog or a rat in a trap.”

“Brave men do not gather by thousands to torture and murder a single individual, so gagged and bound he cannot make even feeble resistance or defense.”

“The white man’s victory soon became complete by fraud, violence, intimidation and murder.”

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FRANCES ELLEN HARPER September 24, 1862—February 22, 1931 Abolitionist, fearless champion of human rights, lecturer, writer, activist and poet.

“No race can afford to neglect the enlightenment of its mothers.”

“The important lesson we should learn and be able to teach, is how to make every gift, whether gold or talent, fortune or genius, sub serve the cause of crushed humanity and carry out the greatest idea of the present age, the glorious idea of human brotherhood.”

“We are all bound together in one great bundle of humanity, and society cannot trample on the weakest and feeblest of its members without receiving the curse in its own soul.”

“The work of the mothers of our race is grandly constructive. ... Some races have been overthrown, dashed in pieces, and destroyed; but to-day the world is needing, fainting, for something better than the results of arrogance, aggressiveness, and indomitable power. We need mothers who are capable of being character builders,

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"Spread love everywhere you go: first of all in your own house. Give love to your children, to your wife or husband, to a next door neighbor... Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God's kindness; kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile, kindness in your warm greeting."

-Mother Theresa

WILLIAM EDWARD BURGHARDT DU BOIS February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963 Born in Massachusetts, Du Bois graduated from Harvard, where he earned his Ph.D in History, the first African American to earn a doctorate at Harvard. Later he became a professor of history and economics at Atlanta University. As head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1910, he was founder and editor of the NAACP's journal The Crisis.

Du Bois wrote many books, including three major autobiographies. Among his most significant works are The Philadelphia Negro (1899), The Souls of Black Folk (1903), John Brown (1909), Black Reconstruction (1935), and Black Folk, Then and Now (1939). His book The Negro (1915) influenced the work of several pioneer Africanist scholars, such as Drusilla Dunjee Houston. and William Leo Hansberry.

Du Bois (1899) set forth three significant parts of a criminology theory. The first was that Negro crime was caused by the strain of the "social revolution" experienced by black Americans as they began to adapt to their new-found freedom and position in the nation. This theory was similar to Durkheim's (1893) Anomie theory, but it applied specifically to the newly freed Negro. Du Bois (1900a, p. 3) credited Emancipation with causing the boom in crime in the black population. He explained, "The appearance of crime among the southern Negroes is a symptom of wrong social conditions--of a stress of life greater than a large part of the community can bear." (Du Bois, 1901b, p. 745). He distinguished between the strains on southern Negroes and those on northern Negroes because the problems of city life in the North were different from those of the Southern rural sharecroppers.

Du Bois was the most prominent intellectual leader and political activist on behalf of African Americans in the first half of the twentieth century. A contemporary of Booker T. Washington, he carried on a dialogue with the educator about segregation, political disfranchisement, and ways to improve African American life. He was labeled “The Father of PanAfricanism.” Du Bois thought blacks should seek higher education, preferably liberal arts. He also believed blacks should challenge and question whites on all grounds.

Du Bois was an outspoken opponent of scientific racism. Along with cultural anthropologist Franz Boas, and in the pages of Crisis magazine, and in debates with advocates of a biological basis for white superiority Du Bois opposed the notion that African-Americans are biologically inferior to whites.

Du Bois was invited to Ghana in 1961 by President Kwame Nkrumah to direct the Encyclopedia Africana, a government production, and a long-held dream of his. When, in 1963, he was refused a new U.S. passport, he and his wife, Shirley Graham Du Bois, became citizens of Ghana.

Du Bois was married twice: first to Nina Gomer Du Bois (m. 1896, d. 1950) with whom he had two children, Burghardt (who died as a baby) and Yolande; then to the author, playwright, composer, and activist Shirley Graham Du Bois (m.

1951, d. 1977) .

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Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.

—Will Durant

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON April 5, 1856—November 14, 1915 He was the dominant figure in the African American community in the United States from 1890 to 1915. Representative of the last generation of black leaders born in slavery, he spoke on behalf of the large majority of blacks who lived in the South but had lost their right to vote.

While his opponents called his powerful network of supporters the "Tuskegee Machine," Washington maintained his power because of the sponsorship of powerful whites, widespread support within the black business, educational and religious communities nationwide, his ability to raise large amounts of money from philanthropists, and his accommodation to the political realities of the age of Jim Crow segregation.

Washington attained national prominence for his Atlanta Address of 1895, which attracted the attention of politicians and the public, making him a popular spokesperson for African-American citizens. He built a nationwide network of supporters in many black communities, with black ministers, educators and businessmen composing his core supporters. Washington played a dominant role in black politics, winning wide support in the black community and among more liberal whites (especially rich Northern whites). He gained access to top national leaders in politics, philanthropy and education. Washington's efforts included cooperating with white people and enlisting the support of wealthy philanthropists, helping to raise funds to establish and operate thousands of small community schools and institutions of higher education for the betterment of blacks throughout the South. This work continued for many years after his death.

Washington argued that the surest way for blacks to gain equal social rights was to demonstrate "industry, thrift, intelligence and property."

Northern critics called Washington's followers the "Tuskegee Machine". After 1909, Washington was criticized by the leaders of the new NAACP, especially W. E. B. Du Bois, who demanded a stronger tone of protest for advancement of civil rights needs. Washington replied that confrontation would lead to disaster for the outnumbered blacks, and that cooperation with supportive whites was the only way to overcome pervasive racism in the long run. At the same time, he secretly funded litigation for civil rights cases, such as challenges to southern constitutions and laws that disenfranchised blacks.

Washington's work on education issues helped him enlist both the moral and substantial financial support of many major white philanthropists. He became friends with such self-made men as Standard Oil magnate Henry Huttleston Rogers; Sears, Roebuck and Company President Julius Rosenwald; and George Eastman, inventor and founder of Kodak. These individuals and many other wealthy men and women funded his causes, including Hampton and Tuskegee institutes.

In addition to his contributions in education, Washington wrote 14 books; his autobiography, Up From Slavery, first published in 1901, is still widely read today. During a difficult period of transition, he did much to improve the working relationship between the races. His work greatly helped blacks to achieve higher education, financial power and understanding of the U.S. legal system. This led to a foundation of the skill set needed to support the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and further adoption of important federal civil rights laws.

— Excerpted from Wikipedia

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Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

TUSKEGEE INSTITUTE The school was founded on July 4, 1881 as the Tuskegee Normal School for Colored Teachers. It was part of the expansion of institutions of higher education for blacks in the South following the American Civil War, many founded by the northern American Missionary Association. a teachers school was the dream of Lewis Adams, a former slave, and George W. Campbell, a former slaveholder, who shared a commitment to education of blacks. Despite lacking formal education, Adams could read, write and speak several languages. He was an experienced tinsmith, harness-maker and shoemaker and Prince Hall Freemason, an acknowledged leader of the African-American community in Macon County, Alabama.

Adams and Campbell had secured $2,000 from the State of Alabama for teachers' salaries but nothing for land, buildings, or equipment. Adams, Thomas Dyer, and M.B. Swanson formed Tuskegee's first board of commissioners.

They wrote to the Hampton Institute, a historically black college in Virginia, asking the school for a recommendation for their new school. Samuel C. Armstrong, the Hampton Principal and a former Union general, recommended the 25 yearold Booker T. Washington, an alumnus and teacher at Hampton.

The young principal began classes for his new school in a run-down church and shanty. The following year in 1882, Washington bought a plantation, and over the years, the new campus buildings were constructed there, usually by students as part of their work-study.

Based on his experience at the Hampton Institute, Washington intended to train students in skills, morals and religious life. Washington urged the teachers he trained "to return to the plantation districts and show the people there how to put new energy and new ideas into farming as well as into the intellectual and moral and religious life of the people."

Gradually he developed a rural extension program, to take progressive ideas and training to those who could not come to the campus. Tuskegee alumni founded smaller schools and colleges throughout the South, and continued to stress teacher training.

Tuskegee University offers 34 bachelor's degree programs, 12 master's degree programs, a 5-year accredited professional degree program in architecture, 2 doctoral degree programs, and the Doctor of Veterinary Medicine. Masters and doctoral degrees include engineering.

Tuskegee University is the only historically black college or university to offer the Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (D.V.M.); its School of Veterinary Medicine was founded in 1944. The school is fully accredited by the Council on Education of the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA). —Excerpted from Wikipedia

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“He could have added fortune to fame, but caring for neither, he found happiness and honor in being helpful to the world.”

—Epitaph on the grave of George Washington Carver.

DR. GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER January 1864 – January 5, 1943 George Washington Carver was born in 1864 near Diamond Grove, Missouri on the farm of Moses Carver. He was born into difficult and changing times near the end of the Civil War. The infant George and his mother kidnapped by Confederate night-raiders and possibly sent away to Arkansas. Moses Carver found and reclaimed George after the war but his mother had disappeared forever. The identity of Carver's father remains unknown, although he believed his father was a slave from a neighboring farm. Moses and Susan Carver reared George and his brother as their own children. It was on the Moses' farm where George first fell in love with nature, where he earned the nickname 'The Plant Doctor' and collected in earnest all manner of rocks and plants.

In early 1888, Carver obtained a $300 loan at the Bank of Ness City for education. By June he left the area. In 1890, Carver started studying art and piano at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa. His art teacher, Etta Budd, recognized Carver's talent for painting flowers and plants; she encouraged him to study botany at Iowa State Agricultural College in Ames. When he began in 1891, he was the first black student, and later taught as the first black faculty member.

In 1897, Booker T. Washington, founder of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute for Negroes, convinced Carver to come south and serve as the school's Director of Agriculture. While there he conducted agricultural research and taught students until his death. Carver’s research and instruction helped poor southern farmers, both white and black, change their farming practices and improve their diets. He stressed the importance of planting peanuts to upgrade the quality of the soil, which had been depleted from years of planting cotton. Carver found many practical uses for peanuts, sweet potatoes, and other agricultural products. He also created and tested many recipes in his laboratory. Carver’s ideas and discoveries helped farmers improve their lives. His work also helped revitalize the depressed southern economy.

As an agricultural chemist, Carver discovered three hundred uses for peanuts and hundreds more uses for soybeans, pecans and sweet potatoes. Among the listed items that he suggested to southern farmers to help them economically were his recipes and improvements to/for: adhesives, axle grease, bleach, buttermilk, chili sauce, fuel briquettes, ink, instant coffee, linoleum, mayonnaise, meat tenderizer, metal polish, paper, plastic, pavement, shaving cream, shoe polish, synthetic rubber, talcum powder and wood stain.

Dr. Carver, was born a slave and thus valued only as labor. He defined himself as a servant of G_D and lived a life of honor, service, virtue and faith. At a time when African Americans had no value he proved our worth. He took a lowly weed considered worthless and transformed it into an agricultural crop of immense value. He proved what education combined with a deep abiding faith in G_D could produce, and showed how creativity properly used could benefit a people, a nation and the world.

Dr. Carver is considered a saint by many.

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“Every human has four endowments- self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom... The power to choose, to respond, to change.”

—Steven R. Covey

Freedom is the most valuable quality to possess, because without it the only worthwhile goal is its acquisition.

FREEDOM This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created Man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female He created them, and blessed them and named them Man when they were created.

Genesis 5:1, Annotated Oxford Study Bible, Revised Standard Version

Definition of Man Man is a living body of knowledge who constitutionally and democratically serves the health, interest, rights and needs of all through lawfully establishing institutions.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident that all Men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights among which are the right to have appropriate relationships, the right to have scientific knowledge for development, the right to be healthy and live in a healthy environment, the right to self and collective government, the right to an education that prepares one to generate and create legitimate wealth, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among Man, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.“ —Declaration of Independence by James L. Bevel

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FREEDOM Self-ownership (individual sovereignty) the condition where an individual has the exclusive moral right to control his/her own body and life.

Sovereign, n. 1. A person, body, or state vested with independent and supreme authority; Sovereignty. 1. Supreme dominion, authority, or rule. 2. The supreme political authority of an independent state. 3. The state itself.

“To develop collective sovereignty, a return to the basics of individual sovereignty is necessary. Self-determination begins with the individual, and builds to collective action" Individual Rights and Individual Sovereignty go hand-in-hand. You can not have individual rights without individual sovereignty, because freedom from external control is the basis for all individual human rights.

I think, therefore I am, so I declare, my Individual Sovereignty.

The balancing mechanism that establishes justice for all, is individual freedom and responsibility.

Individual freedom without individual responsibility is Anarchism survival of the fittest.

Individual freedom with individual responsibility is individualism - means peace and tranquility to all.

Extremism is on both ends, only individualism is moderation and morally right.

All people have the rights of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.

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"Bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate would be oppression." —Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural, 1801

BEFORE THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT

Reconstruction and the Civil War Amendments Before the Civil War the United States Constitution did not provide specific protections for voting. Qualifications for voting were matters which neither the Constitution nor federal laws governed. At that time, although a few northern states permitted a small number of free black men to register and vote, slavery and restrictive state laws and practices led the franchise to be exercised almost exclusively by white males.

Shortly after the end of the Civil War Congress enacted the Military Reconstruction Act of 1867, which allowed former Confederate States to be readmitted to the Union if they adopted new state constitutions that permitted universal male suffrage. The 14th Amendment, which conferred citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States, was ratified in 1868.

In 1870 the 15th Amendment was ratified, which provided specifically that the right to vote shall not be denied or abridged on the basis of race, color or previous condition of servitude. This superseded state laws that had directly prohibited black voting. Congress then enacted the Enforcement Act of 1870, which contained criminal penalties for interference with the right to vote, and the Force Act of 1871, which provided for federal election oversight.

As a result, in the former Confederate States, where new black citizens in some cases comprised outright or near majorities of the eligible voting population, hundreds of thousands -- perhaps one million -- recently-freed slaves registered to vote. Black candidates began for the first time to be elected to state, local and federal offices and to play a meaningful role in their governments.

Disfranchisement The extension of the franchise to black citizens was strongly resisted. Among others, the Ku Klux Klan, the Knights of the White Camellia, and other terrorist organizations attempted to prevent the 15th Amendment from being enforced by violence and intimidation. Two decisions in 1876 by the Supreme Court narrowed the scope of enforcement under the Enforcement Act and the Force Act, and, together with the end of Reconstruction marked by the removal of federal troops after the Hayes-Tilden Compromise of 1877, resulted in a climate in which violence could be used to depress black voter turnout and fraud could be used to undo the effect of lawfully cast votes.

Once whites regained control of the state legislatures using these tactics, a process known as "Redemption," they used gerrymandering of election districts to further reduce black voting strength and minimize the number of black elected officials. In the 1890s, these states began to amend their constitutions and to enact a series of laws intended to reestablish and entrench white political supremacy.

Such disfranchising laws included poll taxes, literacy tests, vouchers of "good character," and disqualification for 100

"crimes of moral turpitude." These laws were "color-blind" on their face, but were designed to exclude black citizens disproportionately by allowing white election officials to apply the procedures selectively. Other laws and practices, such as the "white primary,", attempted to evade the 15th Amendment by allowing "private" political parties to conduct elections and establish qualifications for their members.

As a result of these efforts, in the former Confederate states nearly all black citizens were disenfranchised and removed from by 1910. The process of restoring the rights stolen by these tactics would take many decades.

Attacks on Disfranchisement Before the Voting Rights Act In Guinn v. United States, 238 U.S. 347 (1915), the Supreme Court held that voter registration requirements containing "grandfather clauses,", which made voter registration in part dependent upon whether the applicant was descended from men enfranchised before enactment of the 15th Amendment violated that amendment. The Supreme Court found the Oklahoma law was adopted in order to give whites, who might otherwise have been disfranchised by the state's literacy test, a way of qualifying to vote that was not available to blacks. In 1944, the Supreme Court held that the Texas "white primary" violated the 15th Amendment. Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649 (1944). The Southern states experimented with numerous additional restrictions to limit black participation in politics, many of which were struck down by federal courts over the next decade.

Congress passed legislation in 1957, 1960, and 1964 that contained voting-related provisions. The 1957 Act created the Civil Rights Division within the Department of Justice and the Commission on Civil Rights; the Attorney General was given authority to intervene in and institute lawsuits seeking injunctive relief against violations of the 15th Amendment.

The 1960 Act permitted federal courts to appoint voting referees to conduct voter registration following a judicial finding of voting discrimination. The 1964 Act also contained several relatively minor voting-related provisions. Although court decisions and these laws made it more difficult, at least in theory, for states to keep all of their black citizens disenfranchised, the strategy of litigation on a case-by-case basis proved to be of very limited success in the jurisdictions that were sued and it did not prompt voluntary compliance among jurisdictions that had not been sued. Literacy tests, poll taxes, and other formal and informal practices combined to keep black registration rates minimal in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, and well below white registration rates in the others.

Faced with the prospect that black voter registration could not be suppressed forever, however, some states began to change political boundaries and election structures so as to minimize the impact of black re-enfranchisement. In 1960, the Supreme Court struck down one such effort, in which the state legislature had gerrymandered the city boundaries of Tuskegee, Alabama, so as to remove all but a handful of the city's black registered voters. The Supreme Court ruled that by doing so Alabama had violated the 15th Amendment. Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U.S. 339 (1960).

The "Reapportionment Revolution" In the early 1960s, the Supreme Court also overcame its reluctance to apply the Constitution to unfair redistricting practices. Prior to 1962, the United States Supreme Court had declined to decide constitutional challenges to legislative apportionment schemes, on the grounds that such "political questions" were not within the federal courts' jurisdiction. In Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962), however, the Supreme Court recognized that grossly mal-apportioned state legislative districts could seriously undervalue -- or dilute -- the voting strength of the residents of overpopulated districts while overvaluing the voting strength of residents of under populated districts. The Supreme Court found that such malapportionment could be challenged in federal court under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

In later cases including Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533 (1964), and Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U.S. 1 (1964), the Supreme Court established the one-person, one-vote principle. Because in many states mal-apportioned legislative districts had resulted in sparsely-populated rural counties having a much greater share of their state's political power than their state's population, correcting this imbalance led to dramatic realignments of political power in several states. In Fortson v. Dorsey, 379 U.S. 433 (1965), the Supreme Court suggested, but did not hold, that certain types of apportionment might unconstitutionally dilute the voting strength of racial minorities.

Voting During Reconstruction After the Civil War, Congress acted to prevent Southerners from re-establishing white supremacy. In 1867, the Radical Republicans in Congress imposed federal military rule over most of the South. Under U.S. Army occupation, the former Confederate states wrote new constitutions and were readmitted to the Union, but only after ratifying the 14th 101

Amendment. This Reconstruction amendment prohibited states from denying "the equal protection of the laws" to U.S. citizens, which included the former slaves.

In 1870, the 15th Amendment was ratified. It stated that, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

More than a half-million black men became voters in the South during the 1870s (women did not secure the right to vote in the United States until 1920). For the most part, these new black voters cast their ballots solidly for the Republican Party, the party of the Great Emancipator, Abraham Lincoln.

When Mississippi rejoined the Union in 1870, former slaves made up more than half of that state's population. During the next decade, Mississippi sent two black U.S. senators to Washington and elected a number of black state officials, including a lieutenant governor. But even though the new black citizens voted freely and in large numbers, whites were still elected to a large majority of state and local offices. This was the pattern in most of the Southern states during Reconstruction.

The Republican-controlled state governments in the South were hardly perfect. Many citizens complained about over taxation and outright corruption. But these governments brought about significant improvements in the lives of the former slaves. For the first time, black men and women enjoyed freedom of speech and movement, the right of a fair trial, education for their children, and all the other privileges and protections of American citizenship. But all this changed when Reconstruction ended in 1877 and federal troops withdrew from the old Confederacy.

Voting in Mississippi With federal troops no longer present to protect the rights of black citizens, white supremacy quickly returned to the old Confederate states. Black voting fell off sharply in most areas because of threats by white employers and violence from the Ku Klux Klan, a ruthless secret organization bent on preserving white supremacy at all costs.

White majorities began to vote out the Republicans and replace them with Democratic governors, legislators, and local officials. Laws were soon passed banning interracial marriages and racially segregating railroad cars along with the public schools.

Laws and practices were also put in place to make sure blacks would never again freely participate in elections. But one problem stood in the way of denying African Americans the right to vote: the 15th Amendment, which guaranteed them this right. To a great extent, Mississippi led the way in overcoming the barrier presented by the 15th Amendment.

In 1890, Mississippi held a convention to write a new state constitution to replace the one in force since Reconstruction.

The white leaders of the convention were clear about their intentions. "We came here to exclude the Negro," declared the convention president. Because of the 15th Amendment, they could not ban blacks from voting. Instead, they wrote into the state constitution a number of voter restrictions making it difficult for most blacks to register to vote.

First, the new constitution required an annual poll tax, which voters had to pay for two years before the election. This was a difficult economic burden to place on black Mississippians, who made up the poorest part of the state's population.

Many simply couldn't pay it.

But the most formidable voting barrier put into the state constitution was the literacy test. It required a person seeking to register to vote to read a section of the state constitution and explain it to the county clerk who processed voter registrations. This clerk, who was always white, decided whether a citizen was literate or not.

The literacy test did not just exclude the 60 percent of voting-age black men (most of them ex-slaves) who could not read. It excluded almost all black men, because the clerk would select complicated technical passages for them to interpret. By contrast, the clerk would pass whites by picking simple sentences in the state constitution for them to explain.

Mississippi also enacted a "grandfather clause" that permitted registering anyone whose grandfather was qualified to vote before the Civil War. Obviously, this benefited only white citizens. The "grandfather clause" as well as the other legal barriers to black voter registration worked. Mississippi cut the percentage of black voting-age men registered to vote from over 90 percent during Reconstruction to less than 6 percent in 1892. These measures were copied by most of the other states in the South.

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Other Forms of Voter Discrimination By the turn of the century, the white Southern Democratic Party held nearly all elected offices in the former Confederate states. The Southern Republican Party, mostly made up of blacks, barely existed and rarely even ran candidates against the Democrats. As a result, the real political contests took place within the Democratic Party primary elections. Whoever won the Democratic primary was just about guaranteed victory in the general election.

In 1902, Mississippi passed a law that declared political parties to be private organizations outside the authority of the 15th Amendment. This permitted the Mississippi Democratic Party to exclude black citizens from membership and participation in its primaries. The "white primary," which was soon imitated in most other Southern states, effectively prevented the small number of blacks registered to vote from having any say in who got elected to partisan offices--from the local sheriff to the governor and members of Congress.

When poll taxes, literacy tests, "grandfather clauses," and "white primaries" did not stop blacks from registering and voting, intimidation often did the job. An African-American citizen attempting to exercise his right to vote would often be threatened with losing his job. Denial of credit, threats of eviction, and verbal abuse by white voting clerks which also prevented black Southerners from voting. When all else failed, mob violence and even lynching kept black people away from the ballot box.

I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream -- a dream yet unfulfilled.

A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men will not argue that the color of a man's skin determines the content of his character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the human personality.

Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

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The Presidency is more than an administrative office: it is a power for leadership bringing coordination of the forces of business and cultural life in every city, town and countryside. The Presidency is more than executive responsibility. It is the symbol of America's highest purpose. The President must represent the nation's ideals and he must also represent them to the nations of the world.

—Herbert Hoover, 1932

QUAKERS THE Religious Society of Friends as a whole has sought new, creative ways to carry forward their concerns. Public forums, petitions, social and political lobbying and reform movements became the chosen methods for Quakers to continue their political ideals. Throughout the 19th century, these had coalesced around five main concerns which moved Friends to effect reforms first within their religion and then in the wider arena of American politics: • Ending Slavery • Fair Treatment of Native Americans Germantown Friends' Protest against Slavery, 1688 (Excerpted) • Women's Rights These are the reasons why we are against the traffick of men• Conflict Resolution body, as followeth. ... There is a saying, that we shall doe to • Relief for All Who Suffer all men like as will be done ourselves; making no difference Friends expanded their efforts in the 20th century to include Civil Rights and Environmental Concerns. Work on these issues continues into the 21st century. Many of these efforts are being coordinated by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), the Quaker United Nations Office, and the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), the earliest religious lobbying organization in Washington, DC. From non-coercive actions abroad to the stemming of individual violence in families and communities, Quakers continue to press for peaceful measures to accomplish common goals.

of what generation, descent or colour they are. And those who steal or robb men, and those who buy or purchase them, are they not all alike? Here is liberty of conscience, wch is right and reasonable; here ought to be likewise liberty of ye body... . But to bring men hither, or to rob and sell them against their will, we stand against. ... Ah! doe consider well this thing, you who doe it, if you would be done at this manner? and if it is done according to Christianity?... Pray, what thing in the world can be done worse towards us, than if men should rob or steal us away, and sell us for slaves to strange countries; separating housbands from their wives and children. Being now this is not done in the manner we would be done at therefore we contradict and are against this traffic of men-body.

And we who profess that it is not lawful to steal, must, likewise, avoid to purchase such things as are stolen, but rather help to stop this robbing and stealing if possible.

Quaker women held equal rights within the Religious Society of Friends from its founding. Quaker lawmakers had granted Signed by: some equity in property and personal rights. The long campaign for women's rights in America is highlighted by the 1848 Seneca Falls Declaration (written by 5 women, 4 of whom were Quakers: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, Martha C. Wright, Mary Ann McClintock, and Jane C. Hunt, respectively). It continued through the campaign to vote led by Rochester Friend, Susan B. Anthony, and to the ERA Amendment written by New Jersey Quaker, Alice Paul.

Native Americans consider Nixon (a Quaker) to be one of America's finest Presidents because he designed measures that supported tribal preservation rather than acculturation and implemented complete religious freedom for Indians, many of whose rituals had been banned and whose sacred sites had been abused.

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"Freedom is not something that anybody can be given; freedom is something people take and people are as free as they want to be." — James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name

HIGHLANDER FOLK SCHOOL Highlander was created in 1932 by Myles Horton and Don West in Grundy County, Tennessee. Theologian Reinhold Neibuhr wrote the first fundraising appeal for Highlander, and Lillian Johnson, a Tennessee educator and suffragist, donated her farm outside of the town of Monteagle where the founders established what was then known as the Highlander Folk School.

Highlander's original mission, which has since been adapted and expanded, was to educate "rural and industrial leaders for a new social order."

In 1937, Highlander joined the southern organizing drive of the Committee for Industrial Organization (renamed the Congress of Industrial Workers in 1938). Highlander became an integral part of the labor movement in the region and conducted labor education programs with workers from 11 southern states. During this period, Highlander developed a residential educational program designed to help build a broad-based, racially integrated, and politically active labor movement in the South.

While the first black speaker at a workshop at Highlander arrived in 1934, the decision to fully integrate the workshops did not come until 1942, mainly because of fears of reprisal from the local community, and the resistance of labor unions. Until 1942, only field extension projects held outside of Highlander were integrated.

In 1944, leaders of United Auto Workers locals attended the first integrated workshop at Highlander. The integrated workshops defied the conventions of Southern society and labor unions of the time. Highlander's racial policy reflected the staff's belief that the success of the labor movement required confronting racism and the evils of segregation.

These integrated workshops caused great controversy among segregationists and union leaders. Opposition leaders equated Highlander's racial policies with communism and began a campaign to shut Highlander down that culminated in 1961. Part of the school's mission was to help prepare civil rights workers to challenge unjust laws and racist policies that discriminated against African Americans.

Rosa Parks spent ten days at the Highlander Folk School at the end of August, 1955. This was one of the most important experiences of her life. It transformed her. She had never attended an integrated workshop. Parks had never met a white man who was just until her encounter with Myles Horton. He helped to renew her confidence and set a higher standard for her relationship with white males. On December 1, 1955, when told to get up and give her seat to a white man, she had to reflect on Myles Horton who she knew would never demand such from her. She refused and the rest is history.

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FATHER OF THE NONVIOLENT CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT Thank you for claiming your children of melanin rich hue.

MYLES HORTON Born July 5, 1905, in Savannah, Tennessee. Myles Horton entered Cumberland College in Tennessee in 1924 and almost immediately led a student revolt against the hazing of freshmen by fraternities. But it was a summer job in 1927, when he was teaching Bible school classes to poor mountain people in Ozone, Tennessee, for the Presbyterian Church, that led him in his lifelong work: to build a school that would help people learn to transform the impoverished and oppressed conditions of mountain life. In his senior year at Cumberland and after graduation in 1928, he began organizing interracial meetings of the YMCA. Myles began many years of searching for a plan of action. At the urging of a minister and friend, he attended Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan under the mentorship of Reinhold Niebuhr. His searching took him to the University of Chicago and eventually to the folk school movement in Denmark before he was ready to return to Tennessee and start his own school. Myles founded the Highlander Folk School in 1932 in Monteagle, Tennessee. Highlander was a controversial school in the South that for years taught leadership skills to blacks and whites in defiance of segregation laws. Over those years Myles taught thousands of blacks and whites to challenge entrenched social, economic and political strictures of a segregated society. He worked closely with labor unions, antipoverty organizations and civil rights leaders and is often credited with being one of the sparks that ignited the civil rights movement in the United States. Rosa Parks, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., former Mayor Andrew Young of Atlanta, Fanny Lou Hamer, James Bevel and Stokeley Carmichael were among those who attended classes or taught at the school. The school's integrated classes and its theories brought it to the attention of law-enforcement officials. In 1957 Senator James Eastland, a Mississippi Democrat who served as chairman of the Senate Internal Security subcommittee, investigated Highlander for reported Communist ties. Myles repeatedly denied that he was a Communist or that the school had links with the Communist Party. But in 1960 the Highlander Folk School was ordered closed by the Tennessee courts on the grounds that it had violated its charter by "permitting integration in its school work," that it had operated for Mr. Horton's personal benefit and that it had sold beer in violation of Tennessee law.

Myles immediately reopened the school and called it the Highlander Research and Education Center in Knoxville. In 1971 the center moved to its current site, a 100-acre, mountainside farm in New Market, Tennessee. Myles' first wife, Zilphia Horton, is often credited with joining Pete Seeger, Frank Hamilton and Guy Carawan in writing new lyrics to an old religious folk tune that became the anthem of the civil rights movement, "We Shall Overcome." "We believe that education leads to action," Myles said at the school's fortieth anniversary celebration in 1972. "If you advocate just one action, you're an organizer. We teach leadership here. Then people go out and do what they want."

—Source Wikepedia

“Only people with hope will struggle. If people are in trouble, if people are suffering and exploited and want to get out from under the heel of oppression, if they have hope that it can be done, if they can see a path that leads to a solution, a path that makes sense to them and is consistent with their beliefs and their experience, then they'll move. But it must be a path that they've started clearing. They've got to know the direction in which they are going and have a general idea of the kind of society they'd like to have. If they don't have hope, they don't even look for a path. They look for somebody else to do it for them.”

“If you only try to do the things where you win, then you'll never try to do anything worth doing.”

"The way to do something was to start doing it and learn from it."

—Myles Horton 106

“I am one dedicated person working for freedom.”

—Septima Clark

SEPTIMA POINSETTE CLARK Long before sit-in demonstrations and bus boycotts, she waged a personal war against racism. Referred to as the "queen mother of the civil rights movement”, she became Director of Workshops at the Highlander Folk School in TN. She later accepted Dr. King’s request that she work with SCLC. Septima traveled throughout the South, going into communities and recruiting teachers for citizenship schools. In 1962, the Voter Education Project was formed, and over the next four years, they prepared 10,000 teachers for citizenship schools, and nearly 700,000 African-Americans registered to vote in the South.

In 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King insisted that Mrs. Clark accompany him to Sweden when he received the Nobel Peace Prize. He said that she deserved as much credit for the achievements of the Civil Rights Movement as did he.

Born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1898, Clark was the daughter of a former slave. She was trained to be a teacher at Charleston’s Avery Normal Institute, receiving a teaching license in 1916. Because the laws of the time did not allow her to teach in the city’s public schools, Clark took a job on nearby Johns Island.

On Johns Island Clark became active in promoting literacy. She taught islanders to read the Bible and started an adult education program. She also became involved with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She returned to Charleston in 1919 to teach at the Avery Normal School. She also campaigned for a law that would allow black teachers to work in the Charleston schools. In 1920 such a law was finally passed.

Clark spent the next decade assisting many social and civic organizations. She worked with Thurgood Marshall, then an attorney for the NAACP, to achieve equal pay for black teachers. In South Carolina, the state legislature viewed the NAACP as controversial and banned state employees from being associated with the group. Clark refused to give up her membership and in 1956 she moved to Tennessee.

In Tennessee Clark accepted a job at the Highlander Folk School teaching adult education classes. She led workshops to combat segregation and discrimination. In 1955 Rosa Parks was one of her students. Not long afterward, Parks refused to give her seat on a segregated city bus to a white person. This spark ignited the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Clark also developed a citizenship education program to help Africa Americans pass the literacy test required for voter registration. Clark viewed literacy as the key to political change.

“I have a great belief in the fact that whenever there is chaos, it creates wonderful thinking.

I consider chaos a gift. Chaos is a good thing. God created the whole world out of it.

Change is what comes of it.”

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"When evil people rule, everybody suffers without discrimination, good and bad alike. “ — I Ching, Hexagram 36

DAISY BATES & THE LITTLE ROCK NINE It was as president of the Arkansas state conference of the NAACP that Bates coordinated the efforts to integrate Little Rock's public schools after the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision outlawed segregated public schools in 1954. Nine African-American students, the "Little Rock Nine," were admitted to Little Rock's Central High School for the 1957-1958 school year. Violent white reaction against integration forced President Dwight D. Eisenhower to order 1000 army paratroopers to Little Rock to restore order and protect the children.

Bates was the students' leading advocate, escorting them safely to school until the crisis was resolved. She continued to serve the children, intervening with school officials during conflicts, and accompanying parents to school meetings. In 1962, Bates published her memoir of the Little Rock crisis, "The Long Shadow of Little Rock."

The nicknamed "Little Rock Nine" consisted of Ernest Green (b. 1941), Elizabeth Eckford (b. 1941), Jefferson Thomas (1942–2010), Terrence Roberts (b. 1941), Carlotta Walls LaNier (b. 1942), Minnijean Brown (b. 1941), Gloria Ray Karlmark (b. 1942), Thelma Mothershed (b. 1940), and Melba Pattillo Beals (b. 1941). Ernest Green was the first African American to graduate from Central High School.

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"The nation which reposes on the pillow of political confidence will sooner or later end its political existence in a deadly lethargy."

—–James Madison

THURGOOD MARSHALL He was born in Baltimore, Maryland on July 2, 1908, the grandson of a slave. His father, William Marshall, instilled in him from youth an appreciation for the United States Constitution and the rule of law. He attened the historically black Lincoln University in Chester County, Pennsylvania. His classmates at Lincoln included the poet and author Langston Hughes, the future President of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, and musician Cab Calloway. Just before graduation, he married his first wife, Vivian "Buster" Burey. Their twenty-five year marriage ended with her death from cancer in 1955.

In 1930, he applied to the University of Maryland Law School, but was denied admission because he was Black. This was an event that was to haunt him and direct his future professional life. He sought admission and was accepted at the Howard University Law School. That same year and came under the immediate influence of the new dean, Charles Hamilton Houston, who instilled in all of his students the desire to apply the tenets of the Constitution to all Americans. Paramount in Houston's outlook was the need to overturn the 1898 Supreme Court ruling, Plessy v. Ferguson which established the legal doctrine called, "separate but equal." Marshall's first major court case came in 1933 when he successfully sued the University of Maryland to admit a young African American Amherst University graduate named Donald Gaines Murray.

He followed his Howard University mentor, Charles Hamilton Houston to New York and later became Chief Counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). During this period, he was asked by the United Nations and the United Kingdom to help draft the constitutions of the emerging African nations of Ghana and what is now Tanzania. It was felt that the person who so successfully fought for the rights of America's oppressed minority would be the perfect person to ensure the rights of the White citizens in these two former European colonies. After amassing an impressive record of Supreme Court challenges to state-sponsored discrimination, including the landmark Brown v. Board decision in 1954, President John F. Kennedy appointed him to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. In this capacity, he wrote over 150 decisions including support for the rights of immigrants, limiting government intrusion in cases involving illegal search and seizure, double jeopardy, and right to privacy issues. Biographers Michael Davis and Hunter Clark note that, "none of his (Marshall's) 98 majority decisions was ever reversed by the Supreme Court." In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson appointed Judge Marshall to the office of U.S. Solicitor General. Before his subsequent nomination to the United States Supreme Court in 1967, he won 14 of the 19 cases he argued before the Supreme Court on behalf of the government. Indeed, he represented and won more cases before the United States Supreme Court than any other American.

Until his retirement from the highest court in the land, Justice Marshall established a record for supporting the voiceless American. Having honed his skills since the case against the University of Maryland, he developed a profound sensitivity to injustice by way of the crucible of racial discrimination in this country. As an Associate Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall leaves a legacy that expands that early sensitivity to include all of America's voiceless.

Justice Marshall died on January 24, 1993.

—Thurgood Marshall College

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THE NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE FUND The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (NAACP LDF, the Inc. Fund, or simply LDF) is a leading United States civil rights organization and law firm based in New York City.

The organization can trace its origins to the legal department of the NAACP that was created by Charles Hamilton Houston in the 1930s. However, in 1939, LDF was spun off from the NAACP and, by 1957, Thurgood Marshall, Houston's student and the future U.S. Supreme Court Justice, had established LDF as a new organization totally independent of the NAACP. The Defenders of Segregation In defense of segregation, South Carolina gathered a team of lawyers that included the state’s top legal officers, headed by one of the most respected constitutional lawyers in the country. Kansas sent a lone reluctant young assistant attorney general.

Citing Plessy v. Ferguson, the defenders claimed that the equal protection clause of the Constitution did not require integration and that the states had already begun a good faith effort to make their facilities equal. Inequality between the races persisted, they explained, because African Americans still needed time to overcome the effects of slavery.

The Segregationists’ Arguments The case for the defenders of segregation rested on four arguments: • The Constitution did not require white and African American children to attend the same schools.

• Social separation of blacks and whites was a regional custom; the states should be left free to regulate their own social affairs.

• Segregation was not harmful to black people.

• Whites were making a good faith effort to equalize the two educational systems. But because black children were still living with the effects of slavery, it would take some time before they were able to compete with white children in the same classroom.

The Challengers of Segregation The civil rights lawyers of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund were younger than The Legal Defense Fund team their adversaries and had far fewer resources to prepare their cases. Much of The Legal Defense Fund team of the NAACP their work was done at the law schools of Howard and Columbia universities.

The Plessy v. Ferguson decision, they argued, had misinterpreted the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment—the authors of this amendment had not intended to allow segregated schools. Nor did existing law consider the harmful social and psychological effects of segregation. Integrated schools, they asserted, were a fundamental right for all Americans.

(left to right): Louis Redding, Robert Carter, Oliver Hill, Thurgood Marshall, and Spottswood W. Robinson (Courtesy of Associated Press, NAACP)

Thurgood Marshall coordinated all of the plaintiff attorneys and presented arguments in the South Carolina case. Robert Carter presented the arguments in the Kansas case. He attended Howard University School of Law and completed graduate studies at Columbia University. Spottswood W. Robinson III argued the Virginia case. A graduate of Howard University School of Law, Robinson entered private practice with his partner, Oliver W. Hill, in 1939. Louis L. Redding presented a portion of the arguments in the Delaware cases. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1929 and became Delaware’s first African American attorney. Jack Greenberg presented part of the arguments in the Delaware cases. He graduated from Columbia Law School in 1948. George E. C. Hayes argued the first portion of the Washington, D.C., case. A graduate of Howard University’s law school in 1918. James Nabrit Jr. argued the second part of the Washington, D.C., case. A graduate of Northwestern University Law School, he joined Howard’s law faculty in 1936 and helped establish the school’s coursework in civil rights law.

The Integrationists’ Arguments Lawyers for the plaintiffs relied on legal arguments, historical evidence, and psychological studies: 110

In Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court had misinterpreted the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Equal protection of the laws did not allow for racial segregation.

• The Fourteenth Amendment allowed the government to prohibit any discriminatory state action based on race, including segregation in public schools.

• The Fourteenth Amendment did not specify whether the states would be allowed to establish segregated education.

Psychological testing demonstrated the harmful effects of segregation on the minds of African American children.

•

The Justices: Coming to a Decision The Supreme Court agreed to hear Brown v. Board of Education in June 1952. Deciding the case was difficult from the start. Differing social philosophies and temperaments divided the nine justices. Chief Justice Fred Vinson and several others doubted the constitutional authority of the Court to end school segregation. And the justices worried that a decision to integrate schools might be unenforceable.

The Supreme Court agreed to hear Brown v. Board of Education in June 1952. Deciding the case was difficult from the start. Differing social philosophies and temperaments divided the nine justices. Chief Justice Fred Vinson and several others doubted the constitutional authority of the Court to end school segregation. And the justices worried that a decision to integrate schools might be unenforceable.

In September 1953 Vinson died, and President Dwight Eisenhower appointed Earl Warren as chief justice. His leadership in producing a unanimous decision to overturn Plessy changed the course of American history.

The Court’s Decision Earl Warren wrote the decision for the Court. He agreed with the civil rights attorneys that it was not clear whether the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment intended to permit segregated public education. The doctrine of separate but equal did not appear until 1896, he noted, and it pertained to transportation, not education.

Earl Warren

More importantly, he said, the present was at issue, not the past. Education was perhaps the most vital function of state and local governments, and racial segregation of any kind deprived African Americans of equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment and due process under the Fifth Amendment.

“Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law, for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the Negro group...Any language in contrary to this finding is rejected. We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”

—Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court 111

“All of us arrive on earth with souls in perfect form, but from the moment of birth we are assailed by deforming forces from within and without We are assailed by racism, sexism, economic injustice and other social cancers and from within by jealousy, resentment, self-doubt, fear, and other demons of the inner life. We don’t have to collaborate with the things that can damage our souls.”

—Parker Palmer

VOTING TIMELINE 1776 Only people who own land can vote: The Declaration of Independence signed. Right to vote during the Colonial and Revolutionary periods is restricted to property owners—most of whom are white male Protestants over the age of 21.

1780's Free black men can vote in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut.

1787 No federal voting standard—states decide who can vote. The U.S. Constitution adopted. Because there is no agreement on a national standard for voting rights, states are given the power to regulate their own voting laws. In most cases, voting remains in the hands of white male landowners.

February 4, 1789 The first presidential election. There is only one candidate, George Washington. Each state has one electoral vote.

1810 Last religious prerequisite for voting is eliminated.

1820 Owning property is no longer a requirement to vote. For the next 20 years white men must still pay a poll tax or be able to read and, in some places, they must pass religious tests before they can vote.

1848 Activists for ending slavery and women’s rights join together. Women’s rights convention held in Seneca Falls, NY. Frederick Douglass, a newspaper editor and former slave, attends the event and gives a speech supporting universal voting rights. His speech helps convince the convention to adopt a resolution calling for voting rights for women.

The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo ends the Mexican-American War. The treaty guarantees citizenship to Mexicans living in the newly acquired territories of Arizona, California, New Mexico, Texas and Nevada, but their voting rights are denied. Property laws, language and literacy requirements are used to keep them from voting.

1866 The Civil War ends in 1865. Civil Rights Act of 1866 grants citizenship to all native-born Americans but excludes Native Americans. (by now African American men had the right to vote in some states.)

Two women’s rights activists, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, form an organization for white and black women and men dedicated to the goal of universal voting rights. The organization later divides and regroups over disagreements in strategies to gain the vote for women and African Americans.

1868 Former slaves granted citizenship. The14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution passed. Citizenship is defined and granted to former slaves. Voters, however, are explicitly defined as male. Although the amendment forbids states from denying any rights of citizenship, voting regulation is still left in the hands of the states.

February 1869 Fifteenth Amendment is ratified, giving African-American men the right to vote in all states. 15th Amendment passed. It states that the right to vote cannot be denied by the federal or state governments based on race.

However, soon after, some states begin to enact measures such as voting taxes and literacy tests that restrict the actual ability of African Americans to register to vote. Violence and other intimidation tactics are also used.

1872 Women attempt to vote: Susan B. Anthony is arrested and brought to trial in Rochester, New York, for attempting to vote in the presidential election. At the same time, Sojourner Truth, a former slave and advocate for justice and equality, appears at a polling booth in Grand Rapids, Michigan, demanding a ballot but she is turned away.

1876 Indigenous people cannot vote. The Supreme Court rules that Native Americans are not citizens as defined by the 14th Amendment and, thus, cannot vote.

August 18, 1879 Nineteenth Amendment ratified, extending the vote to women.

1882 The Chinese Exclusion Act bars people of Chinese ancestry from becoming citizens. They cannot vote.

1886 The first voting machine is invented by Thomas Edison. Congress complained that it works too fast and refuses to use it. A new machine is invented in 1892 and used in Lockport, NY. 1887 Assimilation=Right to Vote. The Dawes Act passed. It grants citizenship to Native Americans who give up their tribal affiliations 112

1890 The Indian Naturalization Act grants citizenship to Native Americans through an application process similar to immigrant naturalization.

Wyoming admitted to statehood and becomes first state to legislate voting for women in its constitution.

1901 The new Alabama Constitution Expands Criminal Disenfranchisement in Effort to Maintain White Supremacy.

"Between 1890 and 1910 many states adopted new laws or reconfigured preexisting laws to handicap newly enfranchised black citizens whose rights had been expanded by both the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments...The purpose of these various measures, as the President of Alabama's all-white 1901 constitutional convention explained, was 'within the limits imposed by the Federal Constitution to establish white supremacy as law.'" The 1901 Constitution stated the following: "The following persons shall be disqualified both from registering, and from voting, namely: All idiots and insane persons; those who shall by reason of conviction of crime be disqualified from voting at the time of the ratification of this Constitution; those who shall be convicted of treason, murder, arson, embezzlement, malfeasance in office, larceny, receiving stolen property, obtaining property or money under false pretenses, perjury, subornation of perjury, robbery, assault with intent to rob, burglary, forgery, bribery, assault and battery on the wife, bigamy, living in adultery, sodomy, incest, rape, miscegenation, crime against nature, or any crime punishable by imprisonment in the penitentiary, or of any infamous crime or crime involving moral turpitude; also, any person who shall be convicted as a vagrant or tramp, or of selling or offering to sell his vote or the vote of another, or of buying or offering to buy the vote of another, or of making or offering to make a false return in any election by the people or in any primary election to procure the nomination or election of any person to any office, or of suborning any witness or registrar to secure the registration of any person as an elector."

1919 Military Service=Citizenship for Native Americans. Native Americans who served in the military during World War I are granted U.S. citizenship.

1920 Right to vote extended to women. The 19th Amendment passed, giving women right to vote in both state and federal elections.

1924 Congress extends U.S. citizenship to all Native Americans but not the right to vote.

1926 State violence used to prevent people from exercising their right to vote. While attempting to register to vote in Birmingham, Alabama, a group of African American women are beaten by election officials.

Early1940's The saying: "If they're old enough to fight for their country, they're old enough to vote for their country," becomes popular.

1947 Legal barriers to Native American voting removed. Miguel Trujillo, a Native American and former Marine, sues New Mexico for not allowing him to vote. He wins and New Mexico and Arizona are required to give the vote to all Native Americans.

1949 U.S. Sen. Jennings Randolph proposes legislation to amend the Constitution to lower the voting age, but it is voted down.

1946-1956 The NAACP launches a massive effort to register African-Americans, causing a 400% rise in the number of blacks voting.

1952 Puerto Rico becomes a "free associated state" – a special constitutional status unique to Puerto Rico and everyone on the island receives the vote.

1960's The majority of soldiers in Vietnam are 19-years-old, and the slogan "Old enough to fight, old enough to vote" returns.

1961 23rd amendment passed. It gives citizens of Washington, D.C. the right to vote for U.S. president. But to this day, the district’s residents—most of whom are African American—still do not have voting representation in Congress.

1963—64 Voting rights as civil rights: Large-scale efforts in the South to register African Americans to vote are intensified. However, state officials refuse to allow African Americans to register by using voting taxes, literacy tests and violent intimidation. Among the efforts launched is Freedom Summer in Mississippi, where close to a thousand civil rights workers of all races and backgrounds converge on the South to support voting rights.

The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party seeks to represent the state of Mississippi at the Democratic National Convention.

Thousands of young people go to jail in Birmingham, AL, leading to the signing of the Civil Rights Act. 113

Four little girls are killed in a church bombing in Birmingham, AL, precipitating Reverend James L. Bevel and Mrs. Diane Nash-Bevel to write The Alabama Project which becomes The Movement for the Right To Vote.

1965 A grassroots movement begins in Selma, AL, to secure the right to vote.

Jimmie Lee Jackson is murdered in Marion, AL. At his first memorial service, Reverend James L. Bevel calls for a march from Marion to Montgomery (the state capital) AL, to talk to Governor George Wallace, which becomes the historic march from Selma to Montgomery.

The Voting Rights Act is passed. It forbids states from imposing discriminatory restrictions on who can vote, and provides mechanisms for the federal government to enforce its provisions. The legislation is passed largely under pressure from protests and marches earlier that year challenging Alabama officials who injured and killed people during African American voter registration efforts.

1966 Civil rights activist James Meredith is wounded by a sniper during a solo “Walk Against Fear� voter registration march between Tennessee and Mississippi. The next day, nearly 4,000 African Americans register to vote.

And other civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Stokely Carmichael continue the march while Meredith heals. Meredith rejoins March at its conclusion in Mississippi.

1968 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a leading nonviolent and civil rights activist is killed by an assassins bullet in Memphis, TN on April 4th.

1969 Large anti-war protests of over 250, 000 protestors are led by young people in Washington, D.C. 1970 The 10th proposal for an amendment lowering the voting age from 21 to 18 is put forth by Sen. Jennings Randolph. The Bill passes unanimously in the Senate.

1971 President Nixon formally certifies the 26th Amendment to the Constitution which reads: "The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age." Voting age lowered to 18 1972 Because of the 26th Amendment eleven million more people are eligible to vote - 50% of these young people vote in the 1972 election.

1973 Congress enacted the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, providing for an elected mayor and the 13-member Council of the District of Columbia.

1975 Voting materials in various languages: Amendments to Voting Rights Act require that certain voting materials be printed in languages besides English so that people who do not read English can participate in the voting process.

1993 National Voter Registration Act makes registration more uniform and accessible ("Motor Voter"), allowing people to register to vote in at while they get their drivers licenses.

1997 23 states amend their policies to expand voter eligibility to felons.

2000 Voters across the country are shocked, outraged or simply confused when a sample recount in Florida sets off a 36-day political and legal wrestling match over who's president. In the closest presidential election in U.S. history, the Supreme Court eventually rules George W. Bush the winner.

Residents of U.S. colonies are citizens, but cannot vote: A month prior to the presidential election, a federal court decides that Puerto Ricans living in Puerto Rico, though U.S. citizens, cannot vote for U.S. president. Residents of U.S. territories including Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa and the U.S. Virgin 2001 Debate—Should voting rights be taken away from felons? For how long? The National Commission on Federal Election Reform recommends that all states allow felons to regain their right to vote after completing their criminal sentences. Nearly 4 million US citizens cannot vote because of past felony convictions. In California, felons are prohibited from voting while they are in prison or on parole. But, in other states, especially in the South, a person with a felony conviction is forever prohibited from voting in that state. These laws are a legacy of post-Civil War attempts to prevent African Americans from voting. Ex-felons are largely poor and of color.

2002 The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) is signed into law, creating mandates for state and local governments to improve every part of the voting process, including voting machines, ballots, voter registration and poll worker training.

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2003 Alabama Passes Bill Allowing Most Felons to Register to Vote: "In 2003, [Alabama] Governor Riley signed into law a bill [Section 15-22-36.1] that permits most people with felony convictions [in the state of Alabama] to apply for a certificate of eligibility to register to vote after completing their sentence."

2007 Barack Obama Supports Felon Re-Enfranchisement: Presidential candidate Barack Obama made a statement supporting the re-enfranchisement of felons in a Dec. 7, 2007 questionnaire for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP): "I support restoration of voting rights for ex-offenders. I am a cosponsor of the Count Every Vote Act, and would sign that legislation into law as president."

2009 Barack H. Obama, an African American is elected as the 44th president of the United States of America.

2010 US citizens residing overseas are eligible to vote in the November 2, 2010 US Midterm Elections by mail-in absentee ballot. Voting from overseas has never been easier. In the past, it was necessary to obtain the official paper form from a US Embassy or consulate and then consult the Federal Voting Assistance Guide for instructions on filling out the form. Your absentee ballot is available by request through a Federal Post Card Application (FPCA).

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"The righteous CONSIDERETH the cause of the poor but the wicked regardeth not to know it." —Proverbs 29.7.

MARY LOUISE SMITH AURELIA SHINES BROWDER CLAUDETTE COLVIN In April 1955, some seven months before Rosa Parks’ historic arrest, these three females refused to give up their seat to white people on a Montgomery bus, in three separate events. Browder filed suit against the city and Mayor W.A. "Tacky" Gayle. It was on her case, known as Browder v. Gayle, that the Supreme Court ruled in 1956 that segregated busing was unconstitutional. Smith and Colvin were included in the suit, but Browder was the lead plaintiff.

Claudette Colvin, is a pioneer of the African-American civil rights movement. She was the first person to resist bus segregation in Montgomery, Alabama, preceding the better known Rosa Parks incident by nine months. The court case stemming from her refusal to give up her seat on the bus, decided by the U.S. District Court, ended bus segregation in Alabama.

Colvin

Montgomery's black leaders did not publicize Colvin's pioneering effort for long because she was a teenager and became pregnant while unmarried. The NAACP leaders worried about using her to represent their movement, given the social mores of the time.

Mary l. Smith is a civil rights protester. She is famous as one of the pre-Rosa Parks women who refused to give up their seat in the "whites only" section of Montgomery, Alabama city buses.

She was 18 years old when she was arrested.

Born Jan. 29, 1919, Aurelia Browder learned quickly of the color wall that separated blacks from whites. But like so many other African Americans during that time, she refused to let that division squash her desire for equal rights and equal treatment. The law said otherwise. The law in Montgomery said blacks and whites did not sit together on the buses, nor did they dine together or go to the movies together.

Mary L. Smith

But she was an educated woman, educated enough to know the law was wrong. She received a bachelor's degree in science with honors from Alabama State University. Smith was 18 years old when she was arrested.

Claudette Colvin was only 15 years old at the time. She was a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Youth Council. The Browder v.

Gayle case "changed the laws that applied to bus segregation.

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Aurelia Browder

MONTGOMERY, AL

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"Power resides in character and not in outward display. The higher the ideal the greater the potential power.� — I Ching, Hexagram 34

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“Zut Alors, No More War.�

THE MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a political and social protest campaign that started in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, USA, intended to oppose the city's policy of racial segregation on its public transit system. Many important figures in the civil rights movement were involved in the boycott, including Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abernathy, and others, as listed below. The boycott caused crippling financial deficit for the Montgomery public transit system, because the city's black population who were the principal boycotters were also the bulk of the system's paying customers. The campaign lasted from December 1, 1955, when Rosa Parks, an African American woman, was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat to a white person, to December 20, 1956, when a federal ruling, Browder v. Gayle, took effect, and led to a United States Supreme Court decision that declared the Alabama and Montgomery laws requiring segregated buses to be unconstitutional.

Under the system of segregation used on Montgomery buses, white people who boarded the bus took seats in the front rows, filling the bus toward the back. Black people who boarded the bus took seats in the back rows, filling the bus toward the front. Eventually, the two sections would meet, and the bus would be full. If other black people boarded the bus, they were required to stand. If another white person boarded the bus, then everyone in the black row nearest the front had to get up and stand, so that a new row for white people could be created. Often when boarding the buses, black people were required to pay at the front, get off, and reenter the bus through a separate door at the back. On some occasions bus drivers would drive away before black passengers were able to reboard. National City Lines owned the Montgomery Bus Line at the time of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

On the night of Rosa Parks' arrest, Jo Ann Robinson, head of the Women's Political Council, printed and circulated a flyer throughout Montgomery's black community which read as follows: "Another woman has been arrested and thrown in jail because she refused to get up out of her seat on the bus for a white person to sit down. It is the second time since the Claudette Colvin case that a Negro woman has been arrested for the same thing. This has to be stopped. Negroes have rights too, for if Negroes did not ride the buses, they could not operate. Three-fourths of the riders are Negro, yet we are arrested, or have to stand over empty seats. If we do not do something to stop these arrests, they will continue. The next time it may be you, or your daughter, or mother.

This woman's case will come up on Monday. We are, therefore, asking every Negro to stay off the buses Monday in protest of the arrest and trial. Don't ride the buses to work, to town, to school, or anywhere on Monday. You can afford to stay out of school for one day if you have no other way to go except by bus. You can also afford to stay out of town for one day. If you work, take a cab, or walk. But please, children and grown-ups, don't ride the bus at all on Monday. Please stay off all buses Monday."

The next morning at a church meeting led by the new MIA head, King, a citywide boycott of public transit was proposed to demand a fixed dividing line for the segregated sections of the buses. Such a line would have meant that if the white section of the bus was oversubscribed, whites would have to stand; blacks would not be forced to remit their seats to whites.

This demand was a compromise for the leaders of the boycott who believed that the city of Montgomery would be more likely to accept it rather than a demand for a full integration of the buses. In this respect, the MIA leadership followed the pattern of earlier boycott campaigns in the Deep South during the 1950s. A prime example was the successful boycott a few years earlier of service stations in Mississippi for refusing to provide restrooms for blacks. The organizer of that campaign, T. R. M. Howard of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership, had spoken on the brutal slaying of Emmett Till as King's guest at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church only four days before Parks's arrest. Parks was in the audience and later said that Emmett Till was on her mind when she refused to give up her seat.

The MIA's demand for a fixed dividing line was to be supplemented by a requirement that all bus passengers receive courteous treatment by bus operators, be seated on a first-come, first-served basis, and blacks be employed as bus drivers. The proposal was passed, and the boycott was to commence the following Monday. To publicize the impending boycott it was advertised at black churches throughout Montgomery the following Sunday.

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On Saturday, December 3, it was evident that the black community would support the boycott, and very few blacks rode the buses that day. That night a mass meeting was held to determine if the protest would continue, and attendees enthusiastically agreed. The boycott proved extremely effective, with enough riders lost to the city transit system to cause serious economic distress. Martin Luther King later wrote "[a] miracle had taken place." Instead of riding buses, boycotters organized a system of carpools, with car owners volunteering their vehicles or themselves driving people to various destinations. Some white housewives also drove their black domestic servants to work, although it is unclear to what extent this was based on sympathy with the boycott, or the desire to have their staff present and working. When the city pressured local insurance companies to stop insuring cars used in the carpools, the boycott leaders arranged policies with Lloyd's of London.

Black taxi drivers charged ten cents per ride, a fare equal to the cost to ride the bus, in support of the boycott. When word of this reached city officials on December 8, 1955, the order went out to fine any cab driver who charged a rider less than 45 cents. In addition to using private motor vehicles, some people used non-motorized means to get around, such as cycling, walking, or even riding mules or driving horse-drawn buggies. Some people also hitchhiked. During rush hours, sidewalks were often crowded. As the buses received extremely few, if any, passengers, their officials asked the City Commission to allow stopping service to black communities. Across the nation, black churches raised money to support the boycott and collected new and slightly used shoes to replace the tattered footwear of Montgomery's black citizens, many of whom walked everywhere rather than ride the buses and submit to Jim Crow laws.

In response, opposing whites swelled the ranks of the White Citizens' Council, the membership of which doubled during the course of the boycott. The councils sometimes resorted to violence: Martin Luther King's and Ralph Abernathy's houses were firebombed, as were four black Baptist churches. Boycotters were often physically attacked.

Under a 1921 ordinance, 156 protesters were arrested for "hindering" a bus, including King.

He was ordered to pay a $500 fine or serve 386 days in jail. He ended up spending two weeks in jail. The move backfired by bringing national attention to the protest. King commented on the arrest by saying: “I was proud of my crime. It was the crime of joining my people in a nonviolent protest against injustice.�

Pressure increased across the country and on June 4, 1956, the federal district court ruled that Alabama's racial segregation laws for buses were unconstitutional. However, an appeal kept the segregation intact, and the boycott continued until, finally, on November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court upheld the district court's ruling. This victory led to a city ordinance that allowed black bus passengers to sit virtually anywhere they wanted, and the boycott officially ended December 20, 1956. The boycott of the buses had lasted for 381 days. Martin Luther King, Jr. capped off the victory with a magnanimous speech to encourage acceptance of the decision. The Montgomery Bus Boycott also had ramifications that reached far beyond the desegregation of public buses and provided more than just a positive answer to the Supreme Court's action against racial segregation. The Montgomery Bus Boycott reverberated throughout the United States and stimulated the national Civil Rights Movement.

The boycott resulted in the U.S. civil rights movement receiving one of its first victories and gave Martin Luther King, Jr. the national attention that made him one of the prime leaders of the cause. — Source, Wikipedia

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Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.

—Harry S. Truman

DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. January 15, 1929—April 4, 1968 “If the Negro is to be free he must move down into the inner resources of his own soul and sign with the pen and ink of self asserted manhood, his own Emancipation Proclamation.”

“Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.”

“We have flown the air like birds and swum the sea like fish, but we have yet to learn the simple act of walking the earth like brothers.”

The Negro needs the white man to free him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to free him from his guilt.”

"Cowardice asks the question - is it safe?

Expediency asks the question - is it polite?

Vanity asks the question - is it popular?

But conscience asks the question - is it right?

And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor polite, nor popular but one must take it because it is right."

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DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. Timeline 1929 1948 1953 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968

1983

Born January 15th Graduated from Morehouse College. Enters Crozer Theological Seminary.

Ordained to the Baptist ministry, February 25, 1948, at the age 19.

Marries Coretta Scott and settles in Montgomery, Alabama.

Joins the bus boycott after Rosa Parks was arrested on December 1. On December 5, he is elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, making him the official spokesman for the boycott.

November 13, the Supreme Court rules that bus segregation is illegal, victory for the boycott.

King co-founds the SCLC to fight segregation and achieve civil rights.

First Civil Rights Act since reconstruction passed by US Congress. King's first book, Stride Toward Freedom, is published.

On a speaking tour, M. L. King, Jr. is nearly killed when stabbed by an assailant in Harlem.

Visited India to study Mohandas Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence.

Becomes co-pastor with his father at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia.

Lunch counter sit-ins began in Greensboro, N. C. In Atlanta, King arrested during a restaurant sit-in.

SNCC founded to coordinate protests at Shaw University Raleigh, NC In November, the Interstate Commerce Commission bans segregation in interstate travel.

April 13, the Birmingham campaign is launched.

May 10, the Birmingham agreement is announced.

July 2, Civil Rights Act, signed into law.

June 23, King leads 125,000 people on a Freedom Walk in Detroit.

August 28 The March On Washington held is the largest civil rights demonstration in history with nearly 250,000 people.

At the march, King makes his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

November 22, President Kennedy is assassinated.

December 10, King awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

February 2, King arrested in Selma, AL during a voting rights demonstration. After President Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act into law. King turns to socioeconomic problems.

January 22, King moves into a Chicago, IL slum tenement to attract attention to the living conditions of the poor.

In June, King and others begin the March Against Fear through the South.

July 10, King initiates a campaign to end discrimination in housing, employment, and schools in Chicago, The Chicago Open Housing Movement.

April 4 delivers most public and comprehensive speech “Beyond Vietnam” to 3,000 people denouncing the war in Vietnam, Riverside Baptist church, New York City.

November 27, King announces the inception of the Poor People's Campaign .

King announces that the Poor People's Campaign will culminate in a March on Washington demanding a $12 billion dollar, Economic Bill of Rights guaranteeing employment to the able-bodied, incomes to those unable to work, and an end to housing discrimination.

Dr. King marches in support of sanitation workers on strike in Memphis, Tennessee.

March 28, King leads a march that turns violent, for the first.

Delivered “I've Been to the Mountaintop” speech.

April 4, assassinated while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, TN. Riots and disturbances in 130 American cities. There were twenty thousand arrests.

April 19th King's funeral is an international event.

Within a week of the assassination, the Open Housing Act is passed by Congress.

November 2, a National Holiday, January 16th is proclaimed in King's honor.

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One of the most noticeable things about SCLC during the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a little sign in the window at 334 Auburn Avenue in Atlanta, GA.

“Redeeming the Soul of America.”

I suppose the racist, militant, socialist and communist never ever forgave him for that because he never stopped being the evangelist. He never let people or circumstances give him a reason for not loving. At least he never lost his capacity to forgive. And he never became afraid enough to think that the solution to man’s problems could be found outside of the framework of love, truth and non-violence.

Even though the mood and the rhetoric changed, his fundamental belief in redemption and reconciliation never changed. And for this reason I’m forced to put him along with Jesus and Socrates as a man of faith.

The nonviolent movement that he led died essentially because it did not have, nor presently has within it men or women of faith. The nonviolent movement had an option to forgive James Earl Ray, and then give him a fair and impartial trial so that the facts and truth could be brought out and presented to the American people. Instead there was not to be found in the ranks, two or more men/women of faith and love who could forgive.

Practically everyone in his organization thought that the killing of King was a sufficient enough reason for not loving. So loving stopped.

Forgiving stopped. And when loving and forgiving stops – the mind then creates a false reason for being afraid. And when there is no loving, no forgiving, and fear, there can be no redemption and reconciliation. So SCLC, that was redeeming the soul of America, dies when King died and that was a greater loss to America than the losing of King.

—Reverend James L. Bevel

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Ode To Martin Luther King, Jr. Oh, he carried the cross for me, he carried the cross for me, When I was just a boy playing with a toy, he was concerned about my liberty.

When I stood telling tales, he spend many days in jail to restore to me my lost humanity.

When I was a hate-filled man. He made me understand.

He told me truths that set my poor heart free.

When I could only cuss, He rode the Freedom Bus, and introduced me to responsibility.

When I didn’t have a friend, nonviolently he sat in and made the nation honor my dignity.

When I didn’t have a coat and my mama couldn’t even vote, he made the Congress set my people free.

When my sister didn’t have a blouse, and my dad couldn’t buy a house, he made open housing a reality.

We were dying in Vietnam and he stopped Old Uncle Sam, and made him respect all humanity.

When I was but a slave, he gladly went to his grave to set my mind and body free.

He never was afraid, ‘cause this is what he said: “No matter what my son, you must forgive, If you haven’t found a cause to die for then you’re not fit to live!”

And this is the challenge he left you and me.

When Martin Luther King dies, I sat down and cried, ‘cause I had lost my best friend don’t you see…

He taught me to forgive, and now I’m fit to live..

And now I too can face the tree ‘cause He Carried the Cross for Me. —Reverend James L. Bevel Copyright 1978 Helen L. Bevel

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“Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. It is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding, and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals”.

—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

IN HONOR OF DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.’S LIFE AND WORK, I pledge to do everything that I can to make America and the world a place where equality and justice, freedom and peace will grow and flourish.

I PLEDGE TO MAKE NONVIOLENCE A WAY OF LIFE in my dealings with all people.

I WILL REJECT all forms of hatred, bigotry and prejudice, and I will embrace the values of unconditional, universal love, truthfulness, courage, compassion, and dedication that empowered Dr. King.

I WILL DEDICATE my life to creating the Beloved Community of Dr. King’s dream, where all people can live together as sisters and brothers.

_____________________________________

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“It’s either nonviolence or non-existence.”

MARTIN LUTHER KING BEYOND VIETNAM [WAR] A TIME TO BREAK SILENCE "True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."

Delivered 4 April 1967 at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statements of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart, and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal."

And that time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.

And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: "Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King?" "Why are you joining the voices of dissent?" "Peace and civil rights don't mix," they say. "Aren't you hurting the cause of your people," they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.

In the light of such tragic misunderstanding, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church -- the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate -- leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.

I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia. Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they must play in the successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reasons to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful 127

give and take on both sides.

Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the National Liberation Front, but rather to my fellow Americans, who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents.

Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. And so we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. And so we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last three years -- especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they ask -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They ask if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

For those who ask the question, "Aren't you a civil rights leader?" and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: "To save the soul of America." We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself until the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier: O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath -America will be!

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.

As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1954; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission -- a commission to 128

work harder than I had ever worked before for "the brotherhood of man." This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I'm speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men - for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative?

Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the Vietcong or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this One? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?

And finally, as I try to explain for you and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to this place I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood, and because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them.

This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self- defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls "enemy," for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.

And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the ideologies of the Liberation Front, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.

They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1954 -- in 1945 rather -- after a combined French and Japanese occupation and before the communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony.

Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not ready for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination and a government that had been established not by China -- for whom the Vietnamese have no great love -- but by clearly indigenous forces that included some communists. For the peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives.

For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam. before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of their reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at re-colonization.

After the French were defeated, it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva Agreement. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators, our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly rooted out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords, and refused even to discuss reunification with the North. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by United States' influence and then by increasing numbers of United States troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictators seemed to offer no real change, especially in terms of their need for land and peace.

The only change came from America, as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received the regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into 129

concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move on or be destroyed by our bombs.

So they go, primarily women and children and the aged. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one Vietcong-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.

What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?

We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of the nation's only noncommunist revolutionary political force, the unified Buddhist Church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men.

Now there is little left to build on, save bitterness. *Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call "fortified hamlets." The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these. Could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These, too, are our brothers.

Perhaps a more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. What of the National Liberation Front, that strangely anonymous group we call "VC" or "communists"? What must they think of the United States of America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem, which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the South? What do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of "aggression from the North" as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land?

Surely we must understand their feelings, even if we do not condone their actions. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.

How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than twenty-five percent communist, and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam, and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will not have a part? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them, the only party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly relevant. Is our nation planning to build on political myth again, and then shore it up upon the power of new violence?

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.

So, too, with Hanoi. In the North, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. To speak for them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western words, and especially their distrust of American intentions now. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French Commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle against French 130

domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded to give up the land they controlled between the thirteenth and seventeenth parallel as a temporary measure at Geneva. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which could have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again. When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered.

Also, it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva Agreement concerning foreign troops. They remind us that they did not begin to send troops in large numbers and even supplies into the South until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.

Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the North. He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor, weak nation more than *eight hundred, or rather,* eight thousand miles away from its shores.

At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless in Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called "enemy," I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor.

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words, and I quote: “Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom, and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism.�

If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately, the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horrible, clumsy, and deadly game we have decided to play. The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war.

I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmarish conflict: Number One: End all bombing in North and South Vietnam.

Number Two: Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation.

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Number Three: Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos.

Number Four: Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and any future Vietnam government.

Number Five: Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva Agreement.

Part of our ongoing...part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the Liberation Front. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We must provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country, if necessary. Meanwhile... meanwhile, we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must continue to raise our voices and our lives if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative method of protest possible.

As we counsel young men concerning military service, we must clarify for them our nation's role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is a path now chosen by more than seventy students at my own alma mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover, I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors.* These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

Now there is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter that struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing.

The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality...and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing "clergy and laymen concerned" committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end, unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy.

And so, such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God. In 1957, a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years, we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which has now justified the presence of U.S. military advisors in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru.

It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values.

We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

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A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act.

One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just."

The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just."

This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love.

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood. *This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and, through their misguided passions, urgethe United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations.* These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. *We must not engage in a negative anticommunism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity, and injustice, which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.* These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. We in the West must support these revolutions.

It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores, and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain."

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have 133

seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian- Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: "Let us love one another, for love is God. And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love." "If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us." Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.

We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. And history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says: "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word" (unquote).

We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now.

In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood -- it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Khayyam is right: "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on."

We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. We must move past indecision to action.

We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message -- of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.

As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated: Once to every man and nation comes a moment to decide, In the strife of Truth and Falsehood, for the good or evil side; Some great cause, God's new Messiah offering each the bloom or blight, And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.

Though the cause of evil prosper, yet 'tis truth alone is strong Though her portions be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

And if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace, If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.

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"If you are stifled, know you are not living in Truth. If you are in pain, know you are not living in Love and let go.”

—St. Michael

SCLC THE SOUTHERN CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE The very beginnings of the SCLC can be traced back to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The Montgomery Bus Boycott began on December 5, 1955 after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on the bus.

The boycott lasted for 381 days and ended on December 21, 1956, with the desegregation of the Montgomery bus system. The boycott was carried out by the newly established Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). Martin Luther King, Jr. served as President and Ralph David Abernathy served as Program Director. It was one of history’s most dramatic and massive nonviolent protests, stunning the nation and the world.

The boycott was also a signal to Black America to begin a new phase of the long struggle, a phase that came to be known as the modern civil rights movement. As bus boycotts spread across the South, leaders of the MIA and other protest groups met in Atlanta on January 10 – 11, 1957, to form a regional organization and coordinate protest activities across the South.

Despite a bombing of the home and church of Ralph David Abernathy during the Atlanta meeting, 60 persons from 10 states assembled and announced the founding of the Southern Leadership Conference on Transportation and Nonviolent Integration. They issued a document declaring that civil rights are essential to democracy, that segregation must end, and that all Black people should reject segregation absolutely and nonviolently.

Further organizing was done at a meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana on February 14, 1957. The organization shortened its name to Southern Leadership Conference, established an Executive Board of Directors, and elected officers, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as President, Dr. Ralph David Abernathy as Financial Secretary-Treasurer, Rev. C. K. Steele of Tallahassee, Florida as Vice President, Rev. T. J. Jemison of Baton Rouge, Louisiana as Secretary, and Attorney I. M. Augustine of New Orleans, Louisiana as General Counsel.

At its first convention in Montgomery in August 1957, the Southern Leadership Conference adopted the current name, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Basic decisions made by the founders at these early meeting included the adoption of nonviolent mass action as the cornerstone of strategy, the affiliation of local community organizations with SCLC across the South, and a determination to make the SCLC movement open to all, regardless of race, religion, or background.

SCLC is a now a nation wide organization made up of chapters and affiliates with programs that affect the lives of all Americans: north, south, east and west. Its sphere of influence and interests has become international in scope because the human rights movement transcends national boundaries.

Presidents • Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: 1957 to 1968 • Rev. Ralph D. Abernathy: 1968 to 1977 • Rev. Joseph E. Lowery: 1977 to 1997 • Mr. Martin L. King, III: 1997 to 2004 • Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth: February 2004 to November 2004 • Mr. Charles Steele, Jr.: November 2004 to 2008 • Dr. Byron C. Clay: January 2009 to January 2010 • Rev. Dr. Howard Creecy Jr. 2011—Present

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“By amending our mistakes we get wisdom. By defending our faults, we betray an unsound mind.

—The Sutra of Hui Neng

DR. RALPH DAVID ABERNATHY March 11, 1926—April 17, 1990 Born in Linden, Ala. He was a pastor and civil rights leader. He was educated at Alabama State University and Atlanta University. Ordained a Baptist minister in 1948, he became pastor of the First Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala., in 1951. He met Martin Luther King, Jr., a few years later when the latter became pastor of another Baptist church in Montgomery. In 1955 – 56 the two men organized a nonviolent boycott of the city bus system, marking the beginning of the U.S. civil rights movement. In 1957 they founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Abernathy became its president on King's assassination in 1968; in 1977 he resigned to resume work as a pastor in Atlanta. His autobiography, And the Walls Came Tumbling Down, appeared in 1989.

Ordained Baptist minister, 1948; radio disc jockey, Montgomery, AL, 1950; Alabama State College, Montgomery, dean of men, 1951; First Baptist Church, Montgomery, pastor, 1951-61; West Hunter Street Baptist Church, Atlanta, GA, pastor, beginning 1961; Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Atlanta, president, 1968-77, president emeritus, 1977--. Founder, Montgomery Improvement Association, 1955; co-founder, SCLC, 1957; leader, Poor People's Campaign, Resurrection City, Washington, DC, 1968; organizer and chairman, Operation Breadbasket, Atlanta; founder, Foundation for Economic Enterprises Development (FEED). Advisory committee member of the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE); participant in World Peace Council presidential committee meeting, Santiago, Chile, 1972.

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"THE human mind, revolts at a serious discussion of the subject of slavery. Every individual, whatever be his country or complexion, is entitled to freedom."

—Professor Miller, of Glasgow,

REVEREND JOSEPH LOWERY October 6, 1921– Present He was born in Huntsville, Alabama. He attended Knoxville College, Payne College and Theological Seminary, and the Chicago Ecumenical Institute. Lowery earned his doctorate of divinity as well.

In the early 1950’s in Mobile, AL, he began his work in civil right. He headed the Alabama Civic Affairs Association, an organization devoted to desegregation of buses and public places. In 1957, Lowery along with Dr. M.L.King, Jr., and Ralph Abernathy formed SCLC. In 1965, Lowery was named chairman of the delegation to take demand of the Selma to Montgomery March to Alabama governor George Wallace. As president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference from 1977 to 1997, Lowery protested apartheid policies in South Africa and co chaired the 1990 Nelson Mandela visit to Atlanta following Mandela’s release from prison. He led a peace delegation to the Middle East and met with the president of Lebanon and Yasser Arafat to seek justice in the Middle East by nonviolent means.

Lowery also led protests and was arrested twice in a campaign against the dumping of toxic waste in Warren County, N.C. Lowery is a co-founder and former president of the Black Leadership Forum, a consortium of black advocacy groups.

The Forum began protesting apartheid in South Africa in the mid-1970s and continued until the election of Nelson Mandela. After becoming president of the SCLC in February of 1977, Lowery negotiated covenants with major corporations for employment advances, opportunities and business contracts with minority companies. He has led peace delegations to the Middle East and Central America. In addition to serving as pastor to several churches over the years, Lowery’s efforts to combat injustice and promote equal opportunities has led to the extension of provisions to the Voting Rights Act to 2007, the desegregation of public accommodations in Nashville, Tennessee and the hiring of Birmingham, Alabama’s first black police officers.

“Rosa Parks was known as the queen mother of the movement.

She sat down so that her people could stand up,” “The Mothers in Iraq Call Us the Terrorists” “If you don’t know where you come from, it’s difficult to assess where you are. It’s even more difficult to plan where you are going “

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"Government is not reason, and it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master: never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action."

-- A popular Americanism

REVEREND FRED SHUTTLESWORTH Born in March 18, 1922, Fred L. Shuttlesworth grew up in difficult times in rural Alabama. He began his ministry shortly after graduating from high school in Oxmoor, Alabama. He continued his education at Selma University and Alabama State College, eventually ending up as pastor at Birmingham Bethel Baptist Church. Shuttlesworth began a very active ministry by fighting for civil rights. He organized lunchroom sit-ins, bus boycotts and encouraged African Americans to apply for civil service jobs in Birmingham. His activism earned him frequent beatings and arrests, threats of violence to his family and a house bombing on Christmas Day in 1956. He formed the Alabama Christian Rights Movement, and went on to help form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, of which he was secretary for many years.

“Fred Shuttlesworth was fearless and courageous to the point of being almost insane; miraculously surviving a bombing of his home. Had taking his wife and two children trying to integrate a school with a mob of five or six hundred folks with chains and stuff like that; just an incredible human being in my view.”

—Wyatt T. Walker

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"Personal responsibility is the price of liberty.”

—Michael Cloud

CHARLES. K. STEELE February 17, 1914 - August 19, 1980

Steele decided he wanted to become a preacher at an early age. In 1938 he began attending Morehouse College, a wellknown all-black college in Atlanta. He then served as minister at churches in Montgomery, Ala., and Augusta, Ga. In 1952, at age 38, he moved to the Bethel Baptist Church in Tallahassee, Fla., where he served as minister until his death in 1980.

In 1956, after two black college students were arrested for sitting in the “whites only” section of a city bus in Tallahassee, he organized a bus boycott. Following the famous example of the 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery. Ala., the black community of Tallahassee's act of civil disobedience remained a nonviolent one. Steele remarked of the hostility and violence the boycotters faced at the hands of angry whites: “They have thrown rocks, they have smashed car windows, they have burned crosses. Well, I am happy to state here tonight that I have no fear of them and, praise God, I have no hate for them.”

Former Florida governor LeRoy Collins commented years later that “the boycott hurt black people more than it did white people, in the sense that they needed that service more than white people did. But it showed the people of this community that they were very determined to right this wrong.” Two years later, the bus boycott ended triumphantly. Bus service in Tallahassee was finally integrated.

Steele also worked to integrate Tallahassee's schools, restaurants, theaters, and other public facilities. At the same time, he became a national figure in the civil rights movement. In 1957, he helped Martin Luther King organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He served as its vice president, and participated in many national civil rights protests, including the famous march in Selma, Ala. His quest to improve the black community continued for the rest of his life.

Two years before his death in 1980, he announced what he still hoped to accomplish: “I'd like to leave Bethel an educational program that will give young people strong character for living,” to make “some kind of impact against economic deprivation,” and to “convince one person in my lifetime that war does not fit into Christian faith.”

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"Rather than allow political power luster’s to destroy the remnants of individual rights that still protect us, we should be eternally vigilant in protecting and restoring our inalienable rights."

— Glenn Woiceshyn

DR. DOROTHY COTTON Dorothy Cotton was the Education Director for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference for twelve years under the direct supervision of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Working closely with Dr. King, Dorothy served on his executive staff and was part of his entourage to Oslo, Norway, where he received the Nobel Peace Prize. She served as the Vice President for Field Operations for the Dr. M.L.K. Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta. . She directed the Citizenship Education Program and many of the voter registration campaigns of SCLC. Currently she lectures and leads workshops on women’s development issues, race relations, nonviolence and civic participation.

Dr. Cotton was the Director of Student Activities at Cornell University for nine years, and served as the Southeastern Regional Director of ACTION, the Federal Government's Agency for volunteer programs for three years. She holds a Masters Degree from Boston University in the area of Special Education.

Currently she is involved in the expansion of the National Citizenship School in conjunction with Civic Organizing, Inc. of Minnesota. Dorothy's upcoming book will focus on lessons from the historic citizenship education program and her work with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Change comes from individuals.”

"We need a leadership that teaches and models from a place of integrity ... so we don't grow another generation of people who only know how to solve problems with violence, we must see ourselves as active, obligated members of society."

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“Loyalty and allegiance should only be shown to people who demonstrate a willingness to be guided by higher principles.”

—Guy Damian-Knight

REVEREND C. T. VIVIAN July 30, 1924—Present A Baptist minister, his first use of non-violent direct action was in 1947, to end Peoria's segregated lunch counters. Later he founded the Nashville Christian Leadership Conference, organizing the first sit-ins there in 1960 and the first civil rights march in 1961. Rev. Vivian was a rider on the first "Freedom Bus" into Jackson, Mississippi, and went on to work along-side Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on his Executive Staff in Birmingham, Selma, Chicago, Nashville. the March on Washington; Danville, Virginia; and St. Augustine, Florida. During the summer following the Selma Movement, Rev. Vivian conceived and directed an educational program, Vision, and put 702 Alabama students in college with scholarships. The program later became Upward Bound. He serves as Chairman of the board of The National Voting Rights Museum & Institute.

“I know there is no other individual that has been quoted more than Martin Luther King in America. He taught us that in the action, we find out who we are.”

“Every struggle makes another struggle necessary.”

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“Love is the glue that holds together everything in the world.”

BAYARD RUSTIN March 17, 1912 – August 24, 1987

Rustin was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania. He was raised by his maternal grandparents, Janifer and Julia Rustin. Julia Rustin was a Quaker, although she attended her husband's African Methodist Episcopal Church. She was also a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). NAACP leaders such as W.E.B. Du Bois and James Weldon Johnson were frequent guests in the Rustin home. With these influences in his early life, in his youth Rustin campaigned against racially discriminatory Jim Crow laws.

In 1932, Rustin entered Wilberforce University, a historically black college (HBCU) in Ohio operated by the AME Church. As a student at Wilberforce, Rustin was active in a number of campus organizations, including the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity. He left Wilberforce in 1936 before taking his final exams, and later attended Cheyney State Teachers College (now Cheyney University of Pennsylvania).

After completing an activist training program conducted by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), Rustin moved to Harlem in 1937 and began studying at City College of New York. There he became involved in efforts to defend and free the Scottsboro Boys, nine young black men in Alabama who were accused of raping two white women. He joined the Young Communist League in 1936. Soon after coming to New York City, he became a member of Fifteenth Street Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).

Rustin and Houser organized the Journey of Reconciliation in 1947. This was the first of the Freedom Rides to test the ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States that banned racial discrimination in interstate travel (Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia). The NAACP opposed CORE's Gandhian tactics. Participants in the Journey of Reconciliation were arrested several times. Arrested with Jewish activist Igal Roodenko, Rustin served twenty-two days on a chain gang in North Carolina for violating Jim Crow laws regarding segregated seating on public transportation.

Rustin took leave from the War Resisters League in 1956 to advise Martin Luther King Jr. on Gandhian tactics. King was organizing the public transportation boycott in Montgomery, Alabama known as the Montgomery Bus Boycott. According to Rustin, "I think it's fair to say that Dr. King's view of non-violent tactics was almost non-existent when the boycott began. In other words, Dr. King was permitting himself and his children and his home to be protected by guns." Rustin convinced King to abandon the armed protection.[ The following year, Rustin and King began organizing the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Many AfricanAmerican leaders were concerned that Rustin's sexual orientation and past Communist membership would undermine support for the civil rights movement. U.S. Representative Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., who was a member of the SCLC's board, forced Rustin's resignation from the SCLC in 1960 by threatening to discuss Rustin's morals charge in Congress. Although Rustin was open about his sexual orientation and his conviction was a matter of public record, the events had not been discussed widely outside the civil rights leadership.

After passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act, Rustin advocated closer ties between the civil rights movement and the Democratic Party and its base among the working class.

“When an individual is protesting society's refusal to acknowledge his dignity as a human being, his very act of protest confers dignity on him.”

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"LOVE JUSTICE, you rulers of the earth…”

—Wisdom of Solomon

AMBASSADOR ANDREW YOUNG Born in New Orleans, Orleans Parish, LA., March 12, 1932; educated in public schools of New Orleans at Gilbert Academy, and Dillard University. He received a B.S., Howard University, 1951; B.D., Hartford Theological Seminary, 1955; ordained by the United Church of Christ; served as pastor in Marion, Ala., and in Thomasville and Beachton, Ga.; Associate Director, Department of Youth Work, National Council of Churches, 1957-1961; Executive Director, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 1964; executive vice president, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 1967; chairman, Atlanta Community Relations Commission, 1970-1972; elected as a Democrat to the Ninety-third and to the two succeeding Congresses and served from January 3, 1973, until his resignation January 29, 1977, to become United States representative to the United Nations as an Ambassador until his resignation September 23, 1979; elected mayor of Atlanta, Ga., October 27, 1981; reelected in 1985 and served from January 4, 1982, to January 2, 1990; Currently is Chairman of Good Works International and resides in Atlanta, Ga.

“It is a blessing to die for a cause, because you can so easily die for nothing.”

“My hope for my children must be that they respond to the still, small voice of God in their own hearts.”

“Look at those they call unfortunate and at a closer view, you'll find many of them are unwise.”

“The purpose of the civil rights struggle was "to seek the human dignity and respect that allows us to live together as brothers and sisters and not perish together as fools."

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“Freedom is a constant, never-ending struggle.”

—Diane Nash

REVEREND HOSEA WILLIAMS Born to blind parents, he was born in Attapulgus, Georgia, on January 5, 1926. After the death of his mother, Williams was raised by his grandparents. At the age of 13 he was nearly lynched by a white mob after becoming friendly with a local white girl.

Williams joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and in 1963 was recruited to the staff of Martin Luther King. He was active in the Freedom Summer voting registration campaign and was arrested on 124 occasions. King once described Williams as "My wild man, my Castro.

With John Lewis, Williams led the Selma to Montgomery protest march on 7th March, 1965, that was attacked by mounted police. The sight of state troopers using nightsticks and tear gas was filmed by television cameras and the event became known as Bloody Sunday. Williams was with Martin Luther King when he was assassinated on 4th April, 1968.

Williams was elected to Georgia General Council in 1974 and controversially endorsed Ronald Reagan for president in 1980. After becoming a member of the Atlanta City Council, he led a march in Forsyth County, which resulted in a violent confrontation with the Ku Klux Klan in 1987. Two years later, Williams failed in his bid to be elected mayor of Atlanta. Hosea Williams died in Atlanta on 16th November, 2000.

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THE CONGRESS OF RACIAL EQUALITY CORE is a U.S. civil rights organization that played a pivotal role for African-Americans in the Civil Rights Movement.

Membership is still stated to be open to "anyone who believes that 'all people are created equal' and is willing to work towards the ultimate goal of true equality throughout the world." CORE was founded in Chicago in 1941 by James L. Farmer, Jr., George Houser, James R. Robinson, and Bernice Fisher. The group evolved out of the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation, and sought to apply the principles of nonviolence as a tactic against segregation. The group's inspiration was Krishnalal Shridharani's book War Without Violence (1939, Harcourt Brace), which outlined Gandhi's step-by-step procedures for organizing people and mounting a nonviolent campaign. Shridharani, a popular writer and journalist as well as a vibrant and theatrical speaker, had been a protege of Gandhi and had been jailed in the Salt March. Gandhi had, in turn, been influenced by the writings of Henry David Thoreau. At the time of CORE's founding Gandhi was still engaged in non-violent resistance against British rule in India; CORE believed that nonviolent civil disobedience could also be used by African-Americans to challenge racial segregation in the United States.

In accordance with CORE's constitution and bylaws, in the early and mid-1960s, chapters were organized on a model similar to that of a democratic trade union, with monthly membership meetings, elected and usually unpaid officers, and numerous committees of volunteers. In the South, CORE's nonviolent direct action campaigns opposed "Jim Crow" segregation and job discrimination, and fought for voting rights. Outside the South, CORE focused on discrimination in employment and housing, and also in de facto school segregation.

Some CORE main leadership had strong disagreements with the Deacons for Defense and Justice over the Deacons' public threat to racist Southerners that they would use armed self-defense to protect CORE workers from racist organizations, such as the Ku Klux Klan, in Louisiana during the 1960s. By the mid-1960s, Farmer was growing disenchanted with the emerging black nationalist sentiments within CORE — sentiments that, among other things, would quickly lead to the Black Panther Party — and he resigned in 1966, to be replaced by Floyd McKissick.

CORE, SNCC and the NAACP organized the Freedom Summer campaign. Its main objective was to attempt to end the political disenfranchisement of African Americans in the Deep South. They concentrate efforts in Mississippi. In 1962 only 6.7 percent of African Americans in the state were registered to vote, the lowest percentage in the country. This involved the formation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). Over 80,000 people joined the party and 68 delegates attended the Democratic Party Convention in Atlantic City and challenged the attendance of the all-white Mississippi representation.

CORE, SNCC and NAACP also established 30 Freedom Schools in towns throughout Mississippi. Volunteers taught in the schools and the curriculum now included black history, the philosophy of the civil rights movement. During the summer of 1964 over 3,000 students attended these schools and the experiment provided a model for future educational programs such as Head Start.

Recently, on same sex marriage and black health in the U.S.: "When you say to society at large that you have to accept, not only accept our lifestyle, but promote it and put it on the same plane and equate it with traditional marriage, that's where we draw the line and we say 'no.' That's not something that is a civil right. That is not something that is a human right," said Niger Innis, national spokesman for CORE, and son of Roy Innis.

—Source, Wikipedia

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THE NASHVILLE STUDENT MOVEMENT The Nashville Student Movement began as a result of seminars on nonviolence led by James Lawson. Lawson arrived in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1958 as the first southern secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a pacifist organization devoted to social change.

In 1959, the nonviolent group put its training into practice with test sit-ins against segregation. But it was the news of the Greensboro, North Carolina, sit-ins in early February 1960 and the cascading wave of supportive demonstrations elsewhere in the South that spurred Nashville activists to launch a bold campaign against Jim Crow practices in their city.

On February 12, 1960, over five hundred supporters packed the First Baptist Church for the first mass meeting of the sit-in project. There they received instruction from Lawson and other veterans of the nonviolent workshops. The next morning Lawson led over one hundred demonstrators, many of whom were recruited from Nashville’s four black colleges—Fisk, Tennessee State, Meharry Medical, and the American Baptist Theological Seminary—to stage sit-ins at lunch counters in downtown department stores.

At the end of the second week of the sit-ins, word spread that future demonstrators would be arrested by the police. The Nashville activists prepared themselves for the new consequences. John Lewis composed a list of instructions that concluded with the admonition, “Remember the teachings of Jesus, Gandhi, Thoreau, and Martin Luther King, Jr.” The next day the police arrested the demonstrators, many of whom were also beaten by angry whites. Once in court, Diane Nash, John Lewis, and fourteen others refused to pay fines, and their example inspired another sixty students to follow them to jail.

The courage of the students’ nonviolent witness heartened Nashville’s black community.

Unlike in other southern cities such as Birmingham, Alabama, there was little public criticism of the demonstrators by local black leaders. The Nashville Christian Leadership Council, an affiliate of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, in particular, supported the students. The Reverend Kelly Miller Smith opened his First Baptist Church to the movement and threw his substantial influence behind the cause.

When the home of Z.Alexander Looby, a prominent black attorney, was dynamited on April 19, the movement reached an even higher level of intensity. The next day, thousands of demonstrators marched on city hall, where Diane Nash and C.T.Vivian, a minister and an adviser to the students, confronted Mayor West, who publicly spoke about the immorality of segregation. The fate of Jim Crow in downtown Nashville was sealed.

After the success of this early movement action, James Bevel strategized and directed the 1961 Nashville Open Theater Movement. This was the first movement credited to SNCC which desegregated the city's theaters.

The influence of the Nashville activists extended well beyond their city. Their firm theoretical and lived commitment to nonviolence shaped the founding of a new regional organization, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), in April 1960. James Lawson helped give SNCC its original vision, and Lewis, Nash, Marion Barry, James Bevel, and Bernard LaFayette, all Nashville students, numbered among SNCC’s early members.

In May 1961, the Nashville students again influenced the national scene when they rallied to rescue the Freedom Ride campaign. The Freedom Riders, who had left Washington, D.C., by bus bound for New Orleans, had been forced to end their ride when they met with violence in Alabama. Nash arranged for Nashville students to continue the stalled Freedom Ride out of Birmingham, Alabama. Ultimately, Lewis, Bevel, LaFayette, and other Nashville insurgents ended up in jail in Mississippi, but the Freedom Riders succeeded in spotlighting the injustice and brutality of the segregationist South.

—Source, Wikepedia

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THE AMERICAN BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY The American Baptist Theological Seminary, is a small, predominantly African American liberal arts college located in Nashville, Tennessee. Founded in 1924, its predecessor was Roger Williams University, a black college begun in the late -19th century and closed in the early 20th century (Its campus is now occupied by Peabody College of Vanderbilt University). Primarily a school designed to train African American Baptist ministers, its student body was highly influential in the civil rights movement The College has educated Civil Rights champions, national leaders and outstanding Christian ministers. The school’s history during the 1960s and 1970s was lively with cultivating civil rights champions, national leaders and outstanding Christian ministers. Students from American Baptist College, such as Julius Scruggs, Bernard Lafayette, Jim Bevel, William Barbee and John Lewis served on the front line of the Nashville Student Sit-In movement for justice and change.

Under the tutelage of then Professor J.F Grimmett, the late the Rev. Kelly Miller Smith, and Rev Dr. C.T. Vivian, many students dared to sit down at lunch counters dramatically altering the quality of life for Americans living in the South.

They sat, marched, and persevered through arrests and beatings before they were victorious in pursuit of justice and human rights. The campus itself was a popular command post for organizing and training students for social justice causes throughout the city at the time. American Baptist College can boast that a number of its students from that period have gone on to become major names in civil rights history and American politics (e.g., Congressman John Lewis, Dr. Bernard Lafayette, Dr. Julius Scruggs).

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"The World is not dangerous because of those who do harm but because of those who look at it without doing anything." —Albert Einstein

REVEREND JAMES LAWSON James Lawson is one of the great American civil rights leaders in the achievement of desegregation and racial equality.

He differs from all the others such as King and Farmer, in several respects. He is the only one for whom nonviolence did not have to be learned; he learned it as a small boy from his mother.

His father was a Methodist minister in Ohio. As a young conscientious objector he refused to register for the military draft and spent a year in federal prison. After his release he spent three years as a missionary in India, where he learned much from and about Gandhi, his movement and its successes in the use of nonviolence.

Lawson has been a life-long member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), a group which is not only one of the nation's leading nonviolent advocacy organizations, but which was already involved in civil rights work when he was in college. While enrolled at Baldwin Wallace College he met A.J. Muste, a long-time executive of the Fellowship, who put him in touch with Glenn Smiley, the field secretary of FOR, who had already assisted Martin Luther King in becoming committed to nonviolence.

In 1958 Smiley recruited Lawson to work in Nashville, where he could also study at Vanderbilt University theological school. In 1959 the leading black minister in Nashville, Kelly Miller Smith, offered Lawson his church basement to hold workshops on nonviolence to end segregation. The students who came to his workshops had to be convinced that, though their numbers were few and the forces against them huge, their power was in the righteousness of their ideas and eventually their numbers would grow. That was both Ghandian and a Christian idea.

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True leadership lies in guiding others to success. In ensuring that everyone is performing at their best, doing the work they are pledged to do and doing it well.

—Bill Owens

CONGRESSMAN JOHN LEWIS He was born the son of sharecroppers in 1940. John Lewis was first elected to the House of Representatives (D-GA) in 1986 after serving for four years on the Atlanta city council. His work in the early and mid '60s as a civil rights leader and Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) nearly cost him his life at the hands of angry white mobs and club wielding state troopers. At the age of 23, he was recognized as one the six primary leaders of the Civil Rights Movement and was an organizer and a keynote speaker at the 1963 March on Washington, D.C. The following year he coordinated voter registration efforts during the Mississippi Summer Project.

In 1965, he drew straws with other to determine who would lead the march called by Reverend James L. Bevel across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

This march became known as "Bloody Sunday," one of the most dramatic nonviolent protests of the Movement and propelled him into national and international prominence.

“We were determined not to let any act of violence keep us from our goal. We knew our lives could be threatened, but we had made up our minds not to turn back.”

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“Accepting personal responsibility is the first step towareds liberation.� —Dr. Joseph M. Levry

THE FREEDOM RIDES On April 10, 1947, CORE sent a group of eight white and eight black men on what was to be a two-week Journey of Reconciliation through Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky in an effort to end segregation in interstate travel. The members of this group were arrested and jailed several times, and they received a great deal of publicity. By the early 1960s, James Farmer, who had taken a hiatus from leading the group, returned as its executive secretary and sought to repeat the 1947 journey, coining a new name for it: the Freedom Ride.

On May 4, 1961, participants journeyed to the deep South and were scheduled to attend a rally in New Orleans.. The group included women and men and they tested segregated bus terminals as well. The riders were met with severe violence. On May 14, Mother's Day, in Anniston, Alabama, a mob of Ku Klux Klansmen, some still in church attire, attacked the first of the two buses (the Greyhound) and slashed its tires. They forced the crippled bus to stop several miles outside of town, and it was firebombed shortly afterwards by the mob chasing it in cars. As the bus burned, the mob held the doors shut, intent on burning the riders to death. Sources disagree, but either an exploding fuel tank or an undercover state investigator brandishing a revolver caused the mob to retreat, allowing the riders to escape the bus. The riders were viciously beaten as they fled the burning bus, and only warning shots fired into the air by highway patrolmen prevented the riders from being lynched.

When the Trailways bus reached Anniston and pulled in at the terminal an hour after the Greyhound bus was burned, it was boarded by eight Klansmen, who proceeded to beat the Freedom Riders and afterwards left them semi-conscious in the back of the bus When the bus arrived in Birmingham, it too was attacked by a mob of Ku Klux Klan members, aided and abetted by the police under the orders of Commissioner Bull Connor. As the riders exited the bus, they were mercilessly beaten by the mob with baseball bats, iron pipes and bicycle chains. Among the Klansmen attacking the riders was FBI informant Gary Thomas Rowe. White Freedom Riders were particularly singled out for frenzied beatings; James Peck required more than 50 stitches to the wounds in his head. Peck was taken to Carraway Methodist Medical Center, which refused to treat him; he was later treated at Jefferson Hillman Hospital.

When reports of the bus burning and beatings reached US Attorney General Robert Kennedy, he urged restraint on the part of Freedom Riders and sent an assistant, John Seigenthaler, to Alabama to try to calm the situation.

Despite the violence they suffered already and the threat of more to come, the Freedom Riders desired to continue their journey. Kennedy had arranged an escort for the Riders in order to get them to Montgomery safely. However, radio reports told of the mob awaiting the riders at the bus terminal, as well as on the route to Montgomery. The Greyhound clerks also informed them that their drivers were refusing to drive any Freedom Riders anywhere. The Riders agreed that their efforts had already called great attention to the civil rights cause and that if they encountered any more delays, then they would miss the rally in New Orleans. Taking all this into consideration, the Riders decided that their best option was to abandon the rest of the Ride and fly directly to New Orleans from Birmingham.

The Nashville Student Movement leaders Diane Nash, John Lewis, James Bevel and others felt that if violence were allowed to halt the Freedom Rides, the movement would be set back years. They pushed to find replacements to resume the ride, and, on May 17, a new set of riders, 10 students from Nashville, took a bus to Birmingham, where they were arrested by Bull Connor and jailed. These students kept their spirits up in jail by singing freedom songs. Out of frustration, Connor drove them back up to the Tennessee line and dropped them off, stating, "I just couldn't stand their singing." They immediately returned to Birmingham.

The Freedom Riders who had answered SNCC's call from across the Eastern US joined John Lewis and Hank Thomas, the two young SNCC members of the original Ride who had remained in Birmingham. On May 19, they attempted to resume the ride, but, terrified by the howling mob surrounding the bus depot, the drivers refused. Harassed and besieged by the KKK mob, the riders waited all night for a bus.

Under intense public pressure from the Kennedy administration, Greyhound was forced to provide a driver, and Alabama Governor John Patterson reluctantly promised to protect the bus from KKK mobs and snipers on the road between 150

Birmingham and Montgomery after direct intervention from Attorney General's office employee Byron White. On the morning of May 20, the Freedom Ride resumed, with the bus carrying the riders traveling toward Montgomery at 90 miles an hour protected by a contingent of the Alabama State Highway Patrol. However, when they reached the Montgomery city limits, the Highway Patrol abandoned them. At the bus station on South Court Street, a white mob awaited and beat the Freedom Riders with baseball bats and iron pipes. The local police allowed the beatings to go on uninterrupted.

Again, white Freedom Riders were singled out for particularly brutal beatings. Reporters and news photographers were attacked first and their cameras destroyed, but there is a famous picture taken later of Jim Zwerg in the hospital, beaten and bruised. Justice Department official Seigenthaler was beaten and left unconscious lying in the street. Ambulances refused to take the wounded to the hospital. Local blacks rescued them, and a number of the Freedom Riders were hospitalized.

On the following night, Sunday, May 21, more than 1500 people packed Reverend Ralph Abernathy's First Baptist Church to honor the Freedom Riders. Among the speakers were Martin Luther King, Jr., Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, and James Farmer. Outside, a mob of more than 3,000 whites attacked blacks, with a handful of the United States Marshals Service protecting the church from assault and fire bombs. With city and state police making no effort to restore order, President Kennedy threatened to commit federal troops, but Governor Patterson forestalled that by ordering the Alabama National Guard to disperse the mob.

On the next day, Monday, May 22, more Freedom Riders from CORE and SNCC arrived in Montgomery to continue the rides and replace the wounded riders still in the hospital. Behind the scenes, the Kennedy administration arranged a deal with the governors of Alabama and Mississippi. The governors agreed that state police and the National Guard would protect the Riders from mob violence (thereby ending embarrassing media coverage of bloody lawlessness), and, in return, the federal government would not intervene to stop local police from arresting Freedom Riders for violating segregation ordinances when the buses arrived at the depots (even though such arrests violated the Supreme Court's Boynton decision).

On Wednesday morning, May 24, Freedom Riders boarded buses for the journey to Jackson, Mississippi. Surrounded by Highway Patrol and the National Guard, the buses arrived in Jackson without incident, and the riders were immediately arrested when they tried to use the white-only facilities at the depot. In Montgomery, Freedom Riders including Yale University chaplain William Sloane Coffin, Gaylord Brewster Noyce, Shuttlesworth, Abernathy, Wyatt Tee Walker, and others were similarly arrested for violating local segregation ordinances. This established a pattern followed by subsequent Freedom Rides, most of which traveled to Jackson, where they were arrested and jailed. The strategy became one of trying to fill the jails. Once the Jackson and Hinds County jails were filled to overflowing, Freedom Riders were transferred to the infamous Mississippi State Penitentiary ("Parchman Farm"). Their abusive treatment included placement in the Maximum Security Unit (Death Row), issuance of only underwear, no exercise, no mail, and, when Freedom Riders refused to stop singing freedom songs, they took away mattresses, sheets, and toothbrushes and removed the screens from the windows. When the cell block became filled with mosquitoes, they hosed everyone down with DDT at 2 AM. In September 1961, bowing to pressure from the Attorney General and the civil rights movement, the ICC issued the necessary orders, and the new policies went into effect on November 1, 1961, a full six years after the ruling in Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company. After the new ICC rule took effect, passengers were permitted to sit wherever they pleased on interstate buses and trains, "white" and "colored" signs came down in the terminals, separate drinking fountains, toilets, and waiting rooms were consolidated, and the lunch counters began serving people regardless of race. —Source, Wikepedia

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In a democratic society, the only treason is silence.

—Anna Quindlin

MAYOR MARION BARRY In the 1960s he was involved in the Civil Rights Movement, serving as the first president of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

Marion Barry was born in Leflore County, Mississippi, the third of ten children. His father died when he was four years old, and a year later his mother moved the family to Memphis, Tennessee. He had a number of jobs as a child, including picking cotton, delivering and selling newspapers, and bagging groceries. While in high school, Barry worked as a waiter at the American Legion post and at the Boy Scouts earned the rank of Eagle Scout.

Barry attended LeMoyne College (now LeMoyne-Owen College), graduating in 1958.

After graduating from Fisk, Barry joined the American civil rights movement, focusing on the elimination of the racial segregation of bus passengers. He was elected the first chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Barry began a doctoral program at the University of Kansas, but he quit the program when white parents opposed him tutoring their children. He began doctoral chemistry studies at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, the only African American in the class. There too he was prohibited from tutoring white children, and his wife was not allowed to work at the school. He quit the program in favor of his new duties at SNCC. During his time leading SNCC, Barry led protests against racial segregation and discrimination.

In 1965, Barry moved to Washington, D.C. to open a local chapter of SNCC, where he was heavily involved in coordinating peaceful street demonstrations as well as a boycott to protest bus fare increases. He also served as the leader of the Free D.C. Movement, strongly supporting increased home rule for the District. Barry quit SNCC in 1967, when H. Rap Brown became chairman of the group. Two years later, Barry and Mary Treadwell co-founded Pride, Inc., a federally funded program to provide job training to unemployed black men. Barry and Treadwell married in 1972, and separated five years later.

Barry served as the second elected mayor of the District of Columbia from 1979 to 1991, and again as the fourth mayor from 1995 to 1999. In addition to his current term, Barry also served two other tenures on the D.C. Council, as an AtLarge member from 1975–79, and as Ward 8 representative from 1992–95. He is currently serving as a member of the Council of the District of Columbia, representing DC's Ward 8.

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"He that always gives way to others will end in having no principles of his own."

—Aesop

ELLA BAKER Ella Baker was born on December 13, 1903, in Norfolk, Virginia. She worked as a field secretary and then served as director of NAACP branches from 1943 until 1946 when she resigned. In 1957, Baker moved to Atlanta to organize Martin Luther King's new organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). " Baker left the SCLC after the Greensboro sit-ins. She wanted to help the new student activists and organized a meeting at Shaw University for the student leaders of the sit-ins in April 1960. From that meeting SNCC was born. Baker continued to take part in SNCC mostly as a quiet leader who listened and encouraged the young activists. She was widely respected by the students who referred to her as "Miss Baker." Ella Baker died on December 13, 1986, in New York City.

“In order for poor and oppressed people to become part of a society that is meaningful, the system under which we now exist has to be radically changed.”

“Give light and people will find the way.”

“The struggle is eternal. The tribe increases. Somebody else carries on.”

“Most of the youngsters had been trained to believe in or to follow adults if they could. I felt they ought to have a chance to learn to think things through and to make decisions.”

“We who believe in freedom can’t rest.”

—Ella Baker

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"Freedom is not something that anybody can be given; freedom is something people take and people are as free as they want to be." —James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name

SNCC STUDENTS NONVIOLENT COORDINATING COMMITTEE The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) (pronounced (snick) was one of the principal organizations of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. It emerged from a series of student meetings led by Ella Baker held at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina in April 1960. SNCC grew into a large organization with many supporters in the North who helped raise funds to support SNCC's work in the South, allowing full-time SNCC workers to have a $10 a week salary. Many unpaid volunteers also worked with SNCC on projects in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas and Maryland.

SNCC played a major role in the sit-ins and freedom rides, a leading role in the 1963 March on Washington, Mississippi Freedom Summer, and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party over the next few years. SNCC's major contribution was in its field work, organizing voter registration drives all over the South, especially in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi.

Founding and early years Inspired by the Greensboro sit-ins, independent student-led groups began direct-action protests against segregation in dozens of southern communities. The most common action of these groups was organizing sit-ins at racially segregated lunch counters to protest the pervasiveness of Jim Crow and other forms of racism. In addition to sitting in at lunch counters, the groups also organized and carried out protests at segregated public libraries, public parks, and public swimming pools. At that time, all those public facilities financed by taxes were closed to blacks. The white response was often to close the facility, rather than integrate it.

SNCC, as an organization, began with an $800 grant from the SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference) for a conference where student activists could share experiences and coordinate activities. Held at Shaw University the conference was attended by 126 student delegates from 58 sit-in centers in 12 states, along with delegates from 19 northern colleges, SCLC, Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), National Student Association (NSA), and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Out of this conference the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was formed.

Ella Baker, organized the Shaw conference. Among important SNCC leaders attending the conference were Stokely Carmichael from Howard University; Charles F. McDew, who led student protests at South Carolina State University; J. Charles Jones, who organized 200 students to participate in sit-ins at department stores throughout Charlotte, N.C.; Julian Bond from Atlanta, Diane Nash; James Bevel; James Lawson; John Lewis; Bernard LaFayette and Marion Barry from the Nashville Student Movement.

SNCC's first chairman was Marion Barry, who later became the mayor of Washington DC. Barry served as chairman for one year. The second chairman was Charles F. McDew, who served as the chairman from 1961 to 1963, when he was succeeded by John Lewis SNCC's executive secretary, James Forman, played a major role in running the organization.

In the years that followed, SNCC members were referred to as “shock troops of the revolution." SNCC took on greater risks in 1961, after a mob of Ku Klux Klan members and other whites attacked integrated groups of bus passengers who defied local segregation laws as part of the Freedom Rides organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).

Rather than allowing mob violence to stop them, CORE and SNCC "Freedom Riders," including Diane Nash, James Bevel, Marion Barry, Angelina Butler and John Lewis, put themselves at great personal risk by traveling in raciallyintegrated groups through the deep South. At least 436 people took part in these Freedom Rides during the spring and summer of 1961.

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This poster is available for $19.99 + $2 s/h from Helen L. Edmond, www.helenedmond.angelfire.com/posters.

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Robert Parris Moses (also known as Bob Moses) played a central role in transforming SNCC from a coordinating committee of student protest groups to an organization of organizers dedicated to building community-based political organizations of the rural poor. The voter registration project he initiated in McComb, Mississippi in 1961 became the seed for most of SNCC's activities from 1962-1966.

After the Freedom Rides, SNCC worked primarily on voter registration, along with local protests about segregated public facilities. Registering to vote was extremely difficult and dangerous, as blacks who attempted to register often lost their jobs and their homes. SNCC workers lived with local families and often the homes providing such hospitality were firebombed.

The actions of SNCC, CORE, and SCLC forced the Kennedy Administration to briefly provide federal protection to temporarily abate mob violence. Local FBI offices were usually staffed by Southern whites (there were no black FBI agents at that time) who refused to intervene to protect civil rights workers or local blacks who were attempting to register to vote.

One of the ways in which SNCC was unusual among civil rights groups was the way in which decisions were made.

Instead of "top down" control, as was the case with most organizations at that time, decisions in SNCC were made by consensus. Group meetings would be convened in which every participant could speak for as long as they wanted and the meeting would continue until everyone was in agreement with the decision. Because activities were often very dangerous and could lead to prison or death, SNCC wanted all participants to support each activity.

By 1965, SNCC fielded the largest staff of any civil rights organization in the South. It had organized nonviolent direct action against segregated facilities, as well as voter-registration projects, in Alabama, Arkansas, Maryland, Missouri, Louisiana, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Illinois, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Mississippi; built two independent political parties and organized labor unions and agricultural cooperatives; and given the movement for women's liberation new energy. It inspired and trained the activists who began the "New Left." It helped expand the limits of political debate within black America, and broadened the focus of the civil rights movement. Unlike mainstream civil rights groups, which merely sought integration of blacks into the existing order, SNCC sought structural changes in American society itself. —Julian Bond

Excerpt from Wikepedia , Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

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SNCC Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee FOUNDING STATEMENT OF PURPOSE ‘‘We affirm the philosophical or religious ideal of nonviolence as the foundation of our purpose, the presupposition of our faith, and the manner of our action. Nonviolence as it grows from Judaic-Christian traditions seeks a social order of justice permeated by love.’’

PARTIAL SNCC ROSTER Alan Matusow Angeline Butler Ann Braden Ann Cook Anne Moody Anne Romaine Annie Pearl Avery Amzie Moore Archie Allen Arvenna Hall Avon Rollins Ben Brown Bernard LaFayette Bernard Lee Bernice Reagan Bertha Gober Bettie Mae Fikes Betty Poole Bill Hansen Blanton Hall Bob Feinglass Bob Fletcher Bob Mants Bob Moses Bob Smith Bob Zellner Bobbie Yancy Brenda Travis Candy Anderson Casey Hayden Charles Neblett Charles McDew Charles Payne 159

Charles Sherrod Charlie Cobb Cleveland Sellers Clyde Kennard Colia Lidell Connie Curry Cordell Reagan Courtland Cox Curtis Muhammad Cynthia Washington Daniel A. Foss Danny Lyon David Richmond Dennis Gregory Foote Diane Nash Dion Diamond Donald Cox Don Jelinek Donna Richards Dorie Ladner Doris Derby Dorothy Miller Ed Hamlett Edward King Eleanor Holmes Norton Ella Baker El Senzengakulu Zulu Emma Bell Emory Harris Eric Morton Ethel Sawyer Euvester Simpson Evelyn Pierce

Ezell Blair, Jr. Faith Holsaert Fannie Lou Hamer Faye Bellamy Frank Smith, Jr. Franklin McCain George Green Geri Augusto Gloria House Gloria Richardson Gwen Patton Gwen Robinson Hasan Kwame Jeffries H. Rap Brown Hardy Frye Harold Robinson Helen O'Neal Helen Singleton Herb Mack Hollis Watkins Howard Romaine Ida Mae Holland Ike Lewis Ira Grupper Ivanhoe Donaldson Ivory Diggs Izell Blair James L. Bevel James Bond James Chaney James Forman James Wells James West

Jane Stembridge Jane Wynona Fleming Janie Campbell Janice Jackson Jean Wheeler-Smith Jean Wiley Jean Wynona Fleming Jim "Arkansas" Benston Jim Forman Jim Zweig Jimmy Lytle Joan Browning Joan Trumpauer Joanne Grant John Davis John Due John Hardy John Hulett John Lewis Johnny Jackson Joseph McNeil Joyce Ladner Judy Richardson Julian Bond Julius Lester June Johnson Karen Spellman Kathie S. Amatriek Kathleen Cleaver Ken Shilman Kimberly Johnson Lana Taylor Larry Platt

Larry Rubin Lawrence Guyot Lee Chester Vick Lee Jack Morton Leo Lillard Leotus Eubanks Lester McKinne Lonny King MacArthur Cotton Maria Varela Marion Barry Marshall Jones Martha Precod Mary King Mary Sue Short Marzette Watts Matt Herron Matthew A. Jones Jr. Matthew A. Jones Sr. Matthew Walker McArthur Cotton Mendy Samstein

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Michael Thelwell Mike Bibler Mike Sayer Mildred Page Forman Miriam C. Glickman Muriel Tillinghast Myrtis Bennett Norma Collins O.D. Hunt Paul Brooks Paul Lauter Peggy Alexander Penny Patch Per Laurson Prathia Hall Ralph Allen Ralph Featherstone Reggie Robinson Rita Walker Robert Parris Moses Robert Singleton Robert Talbert

Roberta Galler Rosemary Freeman Ruby Smith Robinson Ruby Sales Ruth Harris Sam Anderson Sam Block Sam Shirah Sandra Cason Sandra Hayden Sandra Nixon Sandy Leigh Scott B. Smith Sharlene Kranz Sid Walker Silas McGee Silas Norman Sparky Rucker Stanley Hemphill Stanley Wise Stephen Ashley Stokely Carmichael

Stu House Theresa Del Pozzo Thomas Armstrong Tim Black Tom Hayden Travis Britt Unita Blackwell Victoria Gray Adams Victoria Jackson Gray Wally Roberts William Hansen William Porter Willie Kinkaid Willie Peacock Willie Ricks Worth Long The Unnamed Hero The Unnamed Heroine ___________________

Violent means will give violent freedom. That would be a menace to the world and to India herself. —Mohandas Gandhi

MISSISSIPPI To the Negroes of the state was issued a warning that the Democrats were preparing, through means of the constitutional convention, to shape the election to their law own needs and then" the policy crushing out the manhood the Negro citizens to be carried to success."

J. S. McNeilly, "History of the Measures Submitted to the Committee on Elective Franchise, Apportionment, and Elections in the Constitutional

Convention of 1890," in Mississippi Historical Society, Publications, VI (1902), 132.

Birthplace of James Luther Bevel 161

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Although pregnant with her first child, Nash was convicted of teaching nonviolent direct action to high school students in Mississippi, in 1962 and was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison. She opted to serve her sentence.

“I believe if I go to jail now it may help hasten the day when my child and all children will be free not only on the day of there birth but for all of their lives.”

—Diane Nash

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“Peace is not a relationship of nations. It is a condition of mind brought about by a serenity of soul. Peace is not merely the absence of war. It is also a state of mind. Lasting peace can come only to peaceful people.”

—Jawaharlal Nehru

MEDGAR EVERS July 19, 1925 - June 12, 1963

Evers was born in 1925 in Decatur, Mississippi. He was the third of four children of a small farm owner who also worked at a nearby sawmill. Young Medgar grew up fast in Mississippi. His social standing was impressed upon him every day. In The Martyrs: Sixteen Who Gave Their Lives for Racial Justice, Jack Mendelsohn quoted Evers at length about his childhood. "I was born in Decatur here in Mississippi, and when we were walking to school in the first grade white kids in their school buses would throw things at us and yell filthy things," the civil rights leader recollected. "This was a mild start. If you're a kid in Mississippi this is the elementary course.

"I graduated pretty quickly. When I was eleven or twelve a close friend of the family got lynched. I guess he was about forty years old, married, and we used to play with his kids. I remember the Saturday night a bunch of white men beat him to death at the Decatur fairgrounds because he sassed back a white woman. They just left him dead on the ground.

Everyone in town knew it but never [said] a word in public. I went down and saw his bloody clothes. They left those clothes on a fence for about a year. Every Negro in town was supposed to get the message from those clothes and I can see those clothes now in my mind's eye.... But nothing was said in public. No sermons in church.

No news. No protest. It was as though this man just dissolved except for the bloody clothes.... Just before I went into the Army I began wondering how long I could stand it. I used to watch the Saturday night sport of white men trying to run down a Negro with their car, or white gangs coming through town to beat up a Negro."

Evers was determined not to cave in under such pressure. He walked twelve miles each way to earn his high school diploma, and then he joined the Army during the Second World War. Perhaps it was during the years of fighting in both France and Germany for his and other countries' freedom that convinced Evers to fight on his own shores for the freedom of blacks. After serving honorably in the war he was discharged in 1946.

Evers returned to Decatur where he was reunited with his brother Charlie, who had also fought in the war. The young men decided they wanted to vote in the next election. They registered to vote without incident, but as the election drew near, whites in the area began to warn and threaten Evers's father. When election day came, the Evers brothers found their polling place blocked by an armed crowd of white Mississippians, estimated by Evers to be 200 strong. "All we wanted to be was ordinary citizens," he declared in Martyrs. "We fought during the war for America and Mississippi was included. Now after the Germans and the Japanese hadn't killed us, it looked as though the white Mississippians would."

Evers and his brother did not vote that day.

What they did instead was join the NAACP and become active in its ranks. Evers was already busy with NAACP projects when he was a student at Alcorn A & M College in Lorman, Mississippi. He entered college in 1948, majored in business administration, and graduated in 1952. During his senior year he married a fellow student, Myrlie Beasley. After graduation the young couple moved near Evers's hometown and were able to live comfortably on his earnings as an insurance salesman.

Evers quit the insurance business and went to work for the NAACP full-time as a chapter organizer. He applied to the University of Mississippi law school but was denied admission and did not press his case. Within two years he was named state field secretary of the NAACP. Still in his early thirties, he was one of the most vocal and recognizable NAACP members in his state. In his dealings with whites and blacks alike, Evers spoke constantly of the need to overcome hatred, to promote understanding and equality between the races. It was not a message that everyone in Mississippi wanted to hear.

The Evers family--Medgar, Myrlie and their children--moved to the state capital of Jackson, where Evers worked closely with black church leaders and other civil rights activists. Telephone threats were a constant source of anxiety in the 166

home, and at one point Evers taught his children to fall on the floor whenever they heard a strange noise outside. "We lived with death as a constant companion 24 hours a day," Myrlie Evers remembered in Ebony magazine. "Medgar knew what he was doing, and he knew what the risks were. He just decided that he had to do what he had to do. But I knew at some point in time that he would be taken from me."

Evers must have also had a sense that his life would be cut short when what had begun as threats turned increasingly to violence. A few weeks prior to his death, someone threw a firebomb at his home. Afraid that snipers were waiting for her outside, Mrs. Evers put the fire out with the garden hose. The incident did not deter Evers from his rounds of voter registration nor from his strident plea for a biracial committee to address social concerns in Jackson. His days were filled with meetings, economic boycotts, marches, prayer vigils, and picket lines--and with bailing out demonstrators arrested by the all-white police force. It was not uncommon for Evers to work twenty hours a day.

Some weeks before his death, Evers delivered a radio address about the NAACP and its aims in Mississippi. "The NAACP believes that Jackson can change if it wills to do so," he stated, as quoted in Martyrs. "If there should be resistance, how much better to have turbulence to effect improvement, rather than turbulence to maintain a stand-pat policy. We believe that there are white Mississippians who want to go forward on the race question. Their religion tells them there is something wrong with the old system. Their sense of justice and fair play sends them the same message.

But whether Jackson and the State choose to change or not, the years of change are upon us. In the racial picture, things will never be as they once were."

Evers was featured on a nine-man death list in the deep South as early as 1955. He and his family endured many threats and other violent acts, making them well aware of the danger surrounding Evers because of his activities. Still he persisted in his efforts to end segregation (separating people based solely on their race) in public facilities, schools, and restaurants. He organized voter-registration drives and demonstrations. His days were filled with meetings, economic boycotts (to make a stand against a person or a business by refusing to buy their goods, products, or businesses), marches, prayer services, picket lines, and bailing other demonstrators out of jail.

When the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) looked into Evers's murder, a suspect was uncovered, Byron de la Beckwith (1920–2001), who was an outspoken opponent of integration and a member of a group called the Mississippi's White Citizens Council. A gun found 150 feet from the site of the shooting had Beckwith's fingerprint on it. Several witnesses placed Beckwith in Evers's neighborhood that night. However, he denied shooting Evers and claimed his gun had been stolen days before the incident. Beckwith, too, produced witnesses who swore that he was some sixty miles from Evers's home on the night of the murder.

Beckwith was tried twice in Mississippi for Evers's murder during the 1960s, once in 1964 and again the following year.

Both trials ended in hung juries. After the second trial, Myrlie Evers took her children and moved to California.

However, her strong belief that justice was never served in her husband's case kept Mrs. Evers involved in the search for new evidence. In 1991, Byron de la Beckwith was arrested a third time on charges of murdering Medgar Evers. He was finally convicted of the crime in 1994.

“Our only hope is to control the vote.�

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“I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no “brief candle” to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”

—Geroge Bernard Shaw

PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY May 29, 1917.—November 22, 1963

Of Irish descent, back from the war, he became a Democratic Congressman from the Boston area, advancing in 1953 to the Senate. He married Jacqueline Bouvier on September 12, 1953. In 1955, while recuperating from a back operation, he wrote Profiles in Courage, which won the Pulitzer Prize in history.

In 1960 Kennedy was a first-ballot nominee for President. Millions watched his television debates with the Republican candidate, Richard M. Nixon. Kennedy became the first Roman Catholic President.

John F. Kennedy was sworn in as the 35th President at noon on January 20, 1961. His Inaugural Address offered the memorable injunction: "Ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country."

Kennedy verbally supported racial integration and civil rights; during the 1960 campaign he telephoned Coretta Scott King, wife of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., who had been jailed while demonstrating for equal access of African Americans; Kennedy secured the early release of King, which drew additional black support to his candidacy. Kennedy assigned federal marshals to protect the Freedom Riders as an alternative to using federal troops or uncooperative FBI agents. Robert Kennedy, speaking for the president, urged the Freedom Riders to "get off the buses and leave the matter to peaceful settlement in the courts."

In September 1962, James Meredith enrolled at the University of Mississippi, but was prevented from entering. Attorney General Robert Kennedy responded by sending some 400 U.S. Marshals, while President Kennedy reluctantly federalized and sent 3,000 troops after the situation on campus turned violent. Campus Riots left two dead and dozens injured, but Meredith did finally enroll in his first class. On November 20, 1962, Kennedy signed Executive Order 11063, prohibiting racial discrimination in federally supported housing or "related facilities".

On June 11, 1963, President Kennedy intervened when Alabama Governor George Wallace blocked the doorway to the University of Alabama to stop two African American students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, from attending. Wallace moved aside only after being confronted by Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach and the Alabama National Guard, which had just been federalized by order of the President. That evening Kennedy gave his famous civil rights address on national television and radio, launching his initiative for civil rights legislation - to provide equal access to public schools and other facilities, and greater protection of voting rights. His proposals became part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The day ended with the murder of a N.A.A.C.P. leader, Medgar Evers, at his home in Mississippi.

On November 22, 1963, when he was hardly past his first thousand days in office, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was killed by an assassin's bullets as his motorcade wound through Dallas, Texas. Kennedy was the youngest man elected President; he was the youngest to die.

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“Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!”

—Patrick Henry

MISSISSIPPI FREEDOM DEMOCRATIC PARTY Members of SNCC found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) to challenge the state’s regular (segregationist) Democratic Party which for decades had denied African Americans the opportunity to participate in the electoral process.

The 1964 Democratic National Convention took place in Atlantic City, New Jersey from August 24—27, 1964.

Incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had been Vice President under President John F. Kennedy since 1961, and who had become President following Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963, was nominated for President. Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota was nominated for Vice President.

At the convention the integrated Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party claimed the seats for delegates for Mississippi, on the grounds that the official Mississippi delegation had been elected in violation of the party’s rules because African Americans had been systematically excluded from voting in the primaries, and participating in the precinct and county caucuses and the state convention; whereas the MFDP had all been elected in strict compliance with party rules.

“If the Freedom party is not seated now, I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?”

—Fannie Lou Hamer

“I believe that the Atlantic City challenge directly led to what happened in Selma, as cause and effect. ..To me, Atlantic City is the, —what do they call it, ‘the tipping point?’ The crucial watershed between an appeal-to-conscience type movement, and a movement that says: ‘We are going to apply political power and pressure [to force change] through disruptive non-violence. To me, the direct connection between the betrayal in Atlantic City and Selma goes back one year earlier to the Birmingham church bombing in September of 1963. After the bombing, Diane Nash and Jim Bevel came up with the ‘Alabama Project’. The way I heard it was that when they first proposed this plan to Dr. King a couple of weeks after the Birmingham church bombing he wouldn’t go for it. In the Fall of ’63 he was not ready to shift from moral-witness/appeal-to-conscience type nonviolence to a disruption-pressure-force type of non-violence.

Also he knew that bringing that kind of non-violent direct action into the “Heart of Dixie” was going to be incredibly dangerous. He was simply not willing to risk deaths, maimings and mass jailings on that kind of scale. ” —Bruce Hartford PARTIAL LIST OF THE 68 DELEGATES TO THE 1964 DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION Chair, Lawrence Guyot Aaron Henry Alyenne Quin Annie Devine Charles Darden Charles Sherrod Dr. A. D. Biettell Dr. Aaron Shirley

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Dr. Aaron Shirley E. W. Stepton Ella Baker Fannie Lou Hamer Harriet Turnbow Harymon Turnbow Jackson Gray James M. Houston

James W. Wright Joseph Breadwater L. C. Dorsey Mrs. Charles Bryant Prentiss Walker R.E. I. Smith Reverend Clint Collier Reverend Ed King

Reverend John Cameron Reverend Kirkland Robert Blow Robert Moses Unita Blackwell Victoria Gray Walter Bruce

“We must not believe the many, who say that only free people ought to be educated, but we should rather believe the philosophers who say that only the educated are free” —Epictetus

ROBERT “BOB” MOSES January 23, 1935—Present He was born in Harlem, New York. He studied philosophy at Harvard University and then taught mathematics at the Horace Mann School in New York (1958-1961). Moses left teaching to work full-time in the civil rights movement. He was field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and was director of SNCC's Mississippi Project.

In Mississippi, Moses met Amzie Moore, a local NAACP chairman. Together they planned a campaign to begin registering African-Americans in Mississippi to vote. . Moses spent four years in Mississippi working on voter registration.

In 1961 Moses became a member of the Freedom Riders. After training in non-violent techniques, black and white volunteers sat next to each other as they travelled through the Deep South. Local police were unwilling to protect these passengers and in several places they were beaten up by white mobs and Moses endured numerous beatings and jailings.

Moses emerged as one of the leading figures in SNCC and in 1964 was the main organizer of the Freedom Summer Project. Its main objective was to end the political enfranchisement of African Americans in the Deep South. He also co -organized the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which challenged the Mississippi regulars at the 1964 Democratic Party Convention in Atlantic City.

After Stokely Carmichael was elected chairman of the SNCC in 1966, the organization became a supporter of black power. Moses then temporarily changed his name to Bob Parris and moved to Canada to avoid the Vietnam-war era draft. After getting remarried, Moses moved to Eastern Africa. From 1969-1975, Moses worked as a math teacher in Tanzania. In 1976 he returned to the United States when President Jimmy Carter granted amnesty to draft resisters. Soon after, he started working on a different formula for breaking down racial and economic barriers: teaching inner-city kids math-algebra, to be precise.

As Moses explains it, the connection between civil rights and the right to math literacy is logical. The civil rights movement ensured that minorities had a voice; now they needed economic access-and that started with education, specifically the math and science skills essential to succeeding in a tech-dependent society.

In 1982 he received a MacArthur Fellowship, and used the money to create the Algebra Project, a foundation devoted to improving minority education in math. The Algebra Project, at its peak, has provided help for some 40,000 minority students annually, in the form of kindergarten-through-high-school curricula guides, teacher training, and peer coaching.

"I've been in the classroom and watched these students ... soar and grow," says actor Danny Glover, an Algebra Project board member.

“The most important movement now is for education rights.”

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Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.

—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

LAWRENCE GUYOT Lawrence Guyot was born in Pass Christian, Mississippi July 17, 1939. He went to Tougaloo College on a scholarship at age 17, and there he learned that black citizens in most of Mississippi could not register to vote. While in school, he became a SNCC field secretary working throughout Mississippi on voter education and registration. He and other SNCC workers taught local people about voting, its importance, and about election law.

He was jailed numerous times, beaten nearly to death, and sent to Parchman Penitentiary with other Civil Rights workers.

Guyot joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1962 and was an active member, particularly in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He helped organize and develop voter registration drives throughout Mississippi. He was arrested twice during his time with SNCC, both times after he asked local police to intervene on behalf of African-Americans who were being discriminated against. He directed the 1964 Freedom Summer Project in Hattiesburg and was the founding chairman of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.

Guyot was an elected delegate to the 1964 Democratic National Convention but attending would have caused forfeiture of a property bond posted to secure his release from jail. However, the delegates who went to the convention were prepared to make their case as to why they represented the ideals of the Democratic Party. Though the MFDP didnt unseat the regulars in 1964, never again was a delegation segregated by either race or sex seated at the Democratic National Convention. Guyot also worked on the 1965 Congressional Challenge to unseat the Mississippi Congressional Delegation. The case made by MFDPs Congressional Challenge was key to the passage of a strong Voting Rights Act. After serving as a delegate of Mississippi’s first integrated delegation to the Democratic National Convention in 1968, he moved to Washington, D.C., graduated from Rutgers Law School, and worked for Washington D.C. where he worked for the city, served as an ANC Commissioner, and has remained a Civil Rights Activist working tirelessly to educate young people about empowerment.

“I believe it's our responsibility when we find young, creative people to make their projects our project.”

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"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am for myself only, what am I? If not now, when?"

—The Talmud

CHARLES MCDEW Charles McDew was a student leader from South Carolina State College in Orangeburg, SC. One of the few students in SNCC who came from the North, he was a native of Ohio. His personal experiences with segregation when he went South to attend his father's alma mater had a profound effect on him. In his first semester at South Carolina State College, he was arrested for trying to attend the YMCA (of which he was a member) with a white friend to play ball. He was arrested for refusing to ride in the "Jim Crow" car of the train. He was arrested for refusing to say "sir" to a white police officer. The insults to which blacks were routinely subjected in the south radicalized him and pushed him into "the movement" to challenge the system which demeaned blacks at every step of their lives.

Under McDew's direction, SNCC hired organizers called field secretaries (who were paid $10 per week before taxes) who went into small towns all over the South to develop local leadership in civil rights activities. Most of SNCC's money went to rent store front offices in small towns and for legal expenses, which were very high, due to the fact that SNCC organizers got arrested over and over again for civil rights activities. An organizer who was beaten by white supremacists could be arrested for disturbing the peace and jailed. Demonstrations were usually forbidden by local white law enforcement agencies and holding a march usually resulted in arrests accompanied by violence directed against the marchers or demonstrators by white bystanders and by white police officers. Students who rode interstate busses (desegregated by federal interstate commerce law but not in reality) were called Freedom Riders. They were often beaten violently when they stepped off the busses and the busses burned. The students would then be arrested for violating local "Jim Crow" laws which forbid mixed race seating on public transportation.

—Beri Gilfix

Bob Moses described McDew as, “black by birth, a Jew by choice and a revolutionary by necessity.

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“Liberty without learning is always in peril and learning without liberty is always in vain.”

—John F. Kennedy

JAMES MEREDITH 1933—Present

James Meredith was one of the pioneers of the civil rights movement. In 1962 he became the first black student to successfully enroll at the University of Mississippi. The state's governor, Ross Barnett, vociferously opposed his enrollment, and the violence and rioting surrounding the incident caused President Kennedy to send 5,000 federal troops to restore the peace. Meredith graduated from the University of Mississippi in 1963 (he had entered the university as a transfer student from an all-black college). For a number of years, Meredith continued to work as a civil rights activist, most notably by leading the March Against Fear in 1966, a protest against voter registration intimidation. During the march, which began in Memphis, Tenn., and ended in Jackson, Miss., Meredith was shot and wounded, hospitalized, and then rejoined the march in its last days. He enrolled in Columbia University, where he received a law degree in 1968, and worked as a stock broker.

The same year, Meredith published an autobiographical account entitled Three Years in Mississippi. After graduating, he became a businessman in New York City and maintained his involvement in the civil rights movement. From 1989 to 1991, Meredith served as a policy advisor to conservative Republican Senator Jesse Helms, who only ten years earlier had opposed the establishment of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

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“The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate.”

—Martin Luther King, Jr.

FANNIE LOU HAMER On a night in August of 1962, Fannie Lou Hamer attended a mass meeting at the Williams Chapel Church in Ruleville, Mississippi. A handful of civil rights workers from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) were in Sunflower County spreading the news of voter registration. Sunflower County, in the heart of that "most southern place on earth," the Mississippi Delta, was perhaps the most solid core of the iceberg of southern segregation.

Appropriately, SNCC had recently selected the Delta as one of the strategic points of its voter registration initiative. If the movement could crack the Delta, the reasoning went, it would send unsettling reverberations through the state's recalcitrant white majority.

There was great excitement in the chapel as James Bevel, one of Martin Luther King, Jr., young colleagues in the SCLC, stood to address the people. His short sermon was taken from the sixteenth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. He asked the congregation--mainly black men and women who worked on the nearby cotton plantations--to consider the words of the Lord when he rebuked the Pharisees and Sadducees. He read the Scripture: "Jesus answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather, for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather today; for the sky is red and lowering. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?" How can we discern the signs of the times, Bevel asked. How can we not recognize that the hour has arrived for black men and women to claim what is rightfully their own--indeed the right to vote? To be sure, most folk are not trained to discern the weather nor to forecast the future. But that is not our demand, Bevel told the people. Our demand is that we not ignore the clear signs before our eyes. God's time is upon us; let us not back down from the challenge. She learned that the Constitution gave her the right to vote. Bevel implored listeners to register to vote. Hamer was the first to sign up. Later she said, “I guess if I’d had any sense, I’d have been scared—but what was the point of being scared? The only thing they could do was kill me, and it seemed they’d been trying to do that a little at a time since I could remember.”

Bevel's words stirred Mrs. Hamer's tired spirit. She had endured the burdens of white racism for forty-four years, living the hard life of a field hand on the Marlowe cotton plantation near Ruleville, a small town in the Delta. The youngest child born to Ella and Jim Townsend, by the age of seven Fannie Lou Hamer was in the fields picking cotton with her fourteen brothers and five sisters, the family working long days together and still not making "enough money to live on." "My parents moved to Sunflower County when I was two years old," Mrs. Hamer recalled. "I will never forget, one day [when I] was six years old and I was playing beside the road and this plantation owner drove up to me and stopped and asked me, `could I pick cotton.' I told him I didn't know and he said, `Yes, you can. I will give you things that you want from the commissary store,' and he named things like crackerjacks and sardines--and it was a huge list that he called off. So I picked the 30 pounds of cotton that week, but I found out what actually happened was he was trapping me into beginning the work I was to keep doing and I never did get out of his debt again. My parents tried so hard to do what they could to keep us in school, but school didn't last four months out of the year and most of the time we didn't have clothes to wear." “...The only thing [the whites] could do was kill me and it seemed like they'd been trying to do that a little bit at a time since I could remember." She heard the call of Jesus--and James Bevel--a call demanding sacrifice, but a call also promising freedom and empowerment. She was excited by the speakers' description of the power of the vote. "It made so much sense to me," she said." These very women and men gathered at Williams Chapel Church--dirt-poor sharecroppers, field hands, and domestics-could force out of office the hateful politicians and sheriffs who had controlled the social oppressive order for as long as anyone could remember. “ —Excerpt is from God's Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights, Charles Marsh, Princeton University Press

As a field secretary for SNCC, Hamer traveled throughout the South, speaking and registering people to vote. In 1963 in Winona, MS police arrested her, Annelle Ponder and another colleagues. While in custody, on the order of the guards, other prisoners brutally beat them, causing permanent injury. News of this caused an outcry and several people were arrested. An all-white jury acquitted those accused.

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At the 1964 Democratic National Convention, Hamer used her own life and the Winona beatings in particular as an abject lesson in the importance of the franchise. In a televised speech that reached millions, she challenged the credentials of the all-white Mississippi Democratic delegation and sought to have the integrated Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) seated.

The Democratic Party leadership proposed that the Convention, as a whole, choose two MFDP members to be seated as delegates at-large, and that the Mississippi Democrats promise not to send a segregated delegation to future conventions.

Both sides found the proposal unacceptable. The Mississippi Democrats refused the pledge and walked out. And, speaking for the MFDP, Hamer simply declared, “We didn’t come all this way for no two seats! We didn’t come for no two seats when all of us is tired.” While the MFDP did not win the immediate issue, Hamer and the MFDP members irrevocably changed terms of the debate and galvanized the nation on the need for federal voting rights legislation.

ANNELLE PONDER

MDAH Digital Collection

Civil rights worker from Atlanta, Georgia, who worked tirelessly to end the cruelties in the south and give Black folk the right-tovote. She suffered a severe beating along with Fannie Lou Hamer in Winona, Mississippi.

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MUSIC & CULTURE OF THE NON-VIOLENT MOVEMENT THE SNCC FREEDOM SINGERS The original group of four Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Freedom Singers — Rutha Harris, Bernice Reagon, Cordell Reagon and Charles Sherrod — banded together at Old Mt. Zion Church in 1961.

They started in the churches because that was the only place they could gather without fear. Shortly afterward the quartet performed a concert at Morehouse College where they caugh the attention of activist singer/songwriter Pete Seeger. Seeger was intrigued by the young group and agreed to underwrite their expenses if they would tour the nation.

The quartet’s first tour appearance was at the YMCA in Urbana, Ill. in Dec. of 1962.

Over the next nine months they played 200 college campuses and managed to squeeze in stops at Carnegie Hall, the Newport Folk Festival and capped it all off by performing at the March on Washington.

They soon became part of the national stage. Then Freedom Singers began popping up in cities all over the country. What always struck me about the original Albany group was how young and committed they were. Cordell was just 16 at the time and the others weren’t much older.

NASHVILLE QUARTET A key movement music groups, the Nashville Quartet consisted of James Bevel, Bernard Lafayette, Joseph Carter, and Samuel Collier. They were all students in Nashville, TN who participated in the Nashville Sit-In Movement and The Nashville Open Theater Movement.

Bernard LaFayette and James Bevel, Guy Carawan (guitar)

James Bevel wrote The Dog Song. They performed “You Better Leave Segregation Alone” an original composition. They sang in close harmony “do-wop” style, which enthused audiences.

HARRY BELAFONTE Belafonte supported the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and was one of Martin Luther King Jr.'s confidants. He provided for King's family, since King made only $8,000 a year as a preacher. Like many civil rights activists, Belafonte was blacklisted during the McCarthy era. He bailed King out of the Birmingham City Jail and raised thousands of dollars to release other civil rights protesters. He financed the Freedom Rides, supported voter registration drives, and helped to organize the March on Washington in 1963.

During "Freedom Summer" in 1964, Belafonte bankrolled the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, flying to Mississippi that August with $60,000 in cash and entertaining crowds in Greenwood.

In 1968, Belafonte appeared on a Petula Clark primetime television special on NBC. In the middle of a song, Clark smiled and briefly touched Belafonte's arm, which made the show's sponsor, Plymouth Motors, nervous. Plymouth wanted to cut the segment, but Clark, who had ownership of the special, told NBC that the performance would be shown intact or she would not allow the special to be aired at all. Newspapers reported the controversy and, when the special aired, it grabbed high ratings. Belafonte appeared on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and performed a controversial "Mardi Gras" number with footage intercut from the 1968 Democratic National Convention riots. CBS censors deleted the segment.

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NINA SIMONE Nina Simone, born in 1933, wanted to be the first black woman concert pianist. THAT was the level of her ambition. Needless to say, back in the first 2/3 of the 20th century the chances of that were about nil. America in those days couldn't recognize a black woman as even remotely fitting the image of a concert pianist. But of course America was willing to recognize a black woman as a blues or jazz singer. So that is the path Nina Simone took. One of her early successes was "I Love you Porgy" from Gershwin's Porgy and Bess: In the 1960s, Nina Simone was part of the civil rights movement and later the black power movement. Her songs are considered by some as anthems of those movements, and their evolution shows the growing hopelessness that American racial problems would be solved.

Nina Simone wrote "Mississippi Goddam" after the bombing of a Baptist church in Alabama killed four children and after Medgar Evers was assassinated in Mississipppi. This song, often sung in civil rights contexts, was not often played on radio. She introduced this song in performances as a show tune for a show that hadn't yet been written.

Other Nina Simone songs adopted by the civil rights movement as anthems included "Backlash Blues," "Old Jim Crow," "Four Women" and "To Be Young, Gifted and Black." The latter was composed in honor of her friend Lorraine Hansberry and became an anthem for the growing black power movement with its line, "Say it clear, say it loud, I am black and I am proud!"

CURTIS MAYFIELD June 3, 1942 ? December 26, 1999 Born in Chicago, IL and raised in the poverty stricken Cabrini-Green housing projects on the city's North Side, Mayfield was surrounded by music from an early age—particularly the gospel singing of his grandmother's Travelling Soul Spiritualists' Church. He sang publicly at the age of seven and became an accomplished guitarist a few years later.

Beginning in 1964 with his trailblazing Keep On Pushing, adopted by Martin Luther King as the unofficial anthem of the civil rights movement, and the inspirational People Get Ready, Mayfield began writing songs that reflected the increasing self-confidence of black Americans. This included We're A Winner, This Is My Country, Choice of Colors and Check Out Your Mind.

GUY AND CANDIE CARAWAN Guy Carawan introduced “We Shall Overcome” as a protest song during the civil-rights movement, along with “Eyes on the Prize” and other retooled tunes. They brought their own philosophy to the work of the Highlander Folk Center and to progressive activism across Appalachia and the South — the notion that injustice is more easily overcome by those whose voices are joined in song.

In the spring of 1963 Guy and Candie Carawan traveled to Birmingham, Alabama to participate in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Birmingham campaign to desegregate businesses and public facilities in that city. Fortunately they were able to record several mass meetings attended there, including speeches by the Rev. Ralph Abernathy and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

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"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."

—Justice Louis Brandeis,1928

THE STRUGGLE FOR VOTING RIGHTS IN MISSISSIPPI ~ THE EARLY YEARS During the post-Depression decades of the 1940s and 1950s, most of the South experiences enormous economic changes. “King Cotton” declines as agriculture diversifies and mechanizes. In 1920, almost a million southern Blacks work in agriculture, by 1960 that number has declined by 75% to around 250,000 — resulting in a huge migration off the land into the cities both North and South. By 1960, almost 60% of southern Blacks live in urban areas (compared to roughly 30% in 1930).

But those economic changes come slowly, if at all, to Mississippi and the Black Belt areas of Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana. In 1960, almost 70% of Mississippi Blacks still live in rural areas, and more than a third (twice the percentage in the rest of the South) work the land as sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and farm laborers. The median income for Blacks in Mississippi is just $1,444 (equal to $9,600 in 2006), the median income for Mississippi whites is three times higher. More than 85% of Mississippi Blacks live below the official Federal poverty line.

In 1960, segregated education for Blacks is severely limited. The average funding for Black schools is less than a quarter of that spent to educate white students, and in rural areas the ratio is even more skewed, Pike County, for example, spends $30.89 to educate each white student and only $0.76 cents per Black pupil. It is no surprise then that only 7% of Mississippi Blacks finish high school, and in the rural areas where children are sent to the fields early in life, functional illiteracy is widespread.

Mississippi is still dominated — economically and politically — by less than 100 plantation barons who lord it over vast cotton fields worked by Black hand-labor using hoes and fingers the way it was done in slavery times. And they are determined to keep that labor cheap and docile. The arch-segregationist Senator James Eastland provides a clear example of the economic riches that underlie racism in Mississippi. In 1961, his huge plantation in Sunflower County produces 5,394 bales of cotton. He sells this cotton for $890,000 (equivalent to about 5,850,000 in 2006 dollars). It costs Eastland $566,000 to produce his cotton for a profit of $324,000 (equal to $2,130,000 in 2006). This represents profit of 57%. (For comparison, a modern corporation is doing well if it returns 10-15% profit.) The Black men, women, and children who labor in his fields under the blazing sun — plowing, planting, hoeing, and picking — are paid 30 cents an hour (equal to $1.97 in 2006). That's $3.00 for a 10 hour day, $18.00 for a six-day, 60-hour week.

This system of agricultural feudalism is maintained by Jim Crow laws, state repression, white terrorism, and the systematic disenfranchisement of Blacks. While whites outnumber Blacks in Mississippi overall, the ratio of Blacks to whites is higher than in any other state in the union. And in a number of rural counties Blacks outnumber whites, often by large majorities. Given these demographic realities, the power elites know that to maintain white supremacy they have to prevent Blacks from voting, and they are ruthless in doing so — using rigged “literacy” tests, poll taxes, whiteonly primaries, arrests, economic retaliation, Klan violence, and assassinations. On average, seven Blacks are lynched or assassinated each year in Mississippi since the 1880s.

In 1961, less than 7% of Mississippi Blacks are registered to vote — in many Black-majority counties not a single Black citizen is registered — not even decorated military veterans. And of those few on the voter rolls, only a handful dare to actually cast a ballot. This systematic denial of Black voting rights is replicated in the Black Belt areas of Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina, and Southwest Georgia.

Direct-Action or Voter Registration?

In the summer of 1960, Amzie Moore, Medgar Evers, and other local Black leaders in Mississippi tell Bob Moses that they need help with voter registration more than demonstrations against segregation. Bob promises he will return in the summer of '61, and in July he begins voter registration work in McComb. Staunch, long-time, Movement supporters 178

such as Harry Belafonte and many of SNCC's student leaders also believe that SNCC should focus on voter registration rather than direct action such as sit-ins and Freedom Rides. They argue that poor, rural Blacks have no money for lunch counters or other public facilities and what they need most is political power that in Mississippi has to begin with winning the right to vote.

Other SNCC leaders — many just released from Parchman Prison and Hinds County Jail — argue that the Freedom Rides and other forms of direct-action must continue. The protests are gaining momentum and bringing the Movement into the darkest corners of the Deep South, raising awareness, building courage, and inspiring young and old. They are deeply suspicious of Kennedy's demand that they switch from demonstrations to voter registration, and they are unwilling to abandon the tactics that have brought the Movement so far in so short a time.

In August, the issue comes to a head when SNCC meets at the Highlander Center in Tennessee. After three days of passionate debate, SNCC is split right down the middle — half favor continuing directaction, the other half favor switching to voter registration. Ella Baker proposes a compromise — do both. Her suggestion is adopted. Diane Nash is chosen to head direct-action efforts and Charles Jones is chosen to head voter registration activity. Both groups send activists to join Bob Moses in McComb.

Amid the fires of the Freedom Rides and the heat of debate, SNCC as an organization is rapidly evolving away from its campus/student roots. More and more SNCC activists are leaving school to become full-time freedom fighters. With money raised by Belafonte, first Charles Sherrod, then Bob Moses, then others are hired as SNCC “field secretaries,” devoting their lives to the struggle in the rural areas and small towns of the south. In September, James Forman becomes SNCC's Executive Director to coordinate and lead far-flung projects and a growing staff. Increasingly, it will be the SNCC field staff from projects in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, Virginia and Maryland who will shape and lead SNCC in the years to come.

And as so often turns out to be the case when committed activists passionately disagree over strategy, both sides are proven correct. Both direct-action and voter registration are needed. Each supports and strengthens the other. The determination and courage of student protesters inspires and encourages their elders, and the growing political power of adults organized around the right to vote supports and sustains the young demonstrators.

Voter Registration & Direct-action in McComb, Mississippi In 1961, Black voter registration in the Deep South is entirely controlled by the white power structure. Voter registration procedures in the Deep South — which vary from state to state and county to county — are based on an application and a so-called “literacy test” that prospective voters must pass in order to be registered. The system is designed to allow the county Voter Registrars (all of whom are white, of course) to rig the outcome however they wish. Whites are encouraged to register regardless of their education (or lack thereof), while applications from most Blacks are denied even if they answer every question correctly.

In McComb, for example, the “literacy test” consists in part of the Registrar choosing one of the 285 sections of the Mississippi constitution and asking the applicant to read it aloud and interpret it to his satisfaction. He can assign an easy section, or a dense block of legal baffelgab that even law professors cannot agree on. Then it is entirely up to the Registrar to decide if the applicant's reading and interpretation are adequate. Voters are also required to be of “good moral character,” and again the Registrar has sole authority to decide who does, or does not, posses sufficient “moral character.”

Blacks who attempt to register in defiance of the white power structure are harassed and threatened. They are fired from their jobs and evicted from their homes. Many are beaten. Some are murdered.

In urban areas of the Deep South, a few token Blacks — usually ministers, teachers, doctors, and other professionals — are allowed to register, but never enough to affect the outcome of an election. In the rural counties, particularly those with large Black populations, only a handful — or none at all — are permitted to register. In the three Southwest Mississippi counties around McComb, for example: Pike County (McComb) Adult Blacks - 8,000 Registered - 200 (2.5%) Amite County Adult Blacks - 5,000 Registered - 1 (0%) Walthall County Adult Blacks - 3,000 Registered - 0 (0%) In July, NAACP leader Reverend C.C. Bryant invites Bob Moses to begin a voter registration project in McComb, the 179

main town of Pike County. Moses is soon joined by SNCC members John Hardy of the Nashville Student Movement and Reginald Robinson from the Civic Interest Group in Baltimore. Rev. Bryant introduces Moses to Amite County NAACP leader E.W. Steptoe, and the project spreads to cover adjacent Amite and Walthall Counties. McComb NAACP officer Webb Owens finds housing for the students and takes them to the cafe owned by activist Aylene Quinn, “Whenever any of [the SNCC workers] come by, you feed 'em, you feed 'em whether they got money or not,” he tells her.

Federal response will be if Blacks are prevented from registering. In line with the Kennedy administration's promise to defend voting rights if the students will turn away from direct-action, the DOJ replies that it will “vigorously enforce” Federal statutes forbidding the use of intimidation, threats, and coercion against voter aspirants.

In August, SNCC workers in McComb begin teaching Blacks the complexities of the voter registration process. All 21 questions on the application form have to be studied and understood, and all 285 sections of the Mississippi constitution have to be mastered. After attending the class, 16 local Blacks journey through a century of fear to the Pike County courthouse in Magnolia. Six manage to pass the test and be registered.

More SNCC workers arrive in McComb direct from the Highlander meeting: Ruby Doris Smith, Marion Barry, Charles Jones, and others. In late August, after training in the tactics of Nonviolent Resistance by the SNCC direct-action veterans, two local teenagers — Hollis Watkins and Curtis Hayes (Muhammad), both of whom go on to become SNCC field secretaries of renown — sit-in at the local Woolworth's lunch counter. They are arrested.

On the last day of August, Bob Moses takes two Blacks to the Amite County courthouse in Liberty Mississippi. He is brutally beaten in the street by Bill Caston, cousin to the sheriff and son-in-law of E. H. Hurst the State Representative.

That night in McComb, more than 200 Blacks attend the first Civil Rights Movement mass meeting in the town’s history to protest the arrest of the students and the beating of Moses. They vow to continue the struggle.

Moses files charges against Caston who is quickly found innocent by an all-white jury. But this is the first time since Reconstruction that a Black man has filed charges against a white for racial violence in Amite County.

Brenda Travis, a 15 year old high school student in McComb, canvasses the streets with the SNCC voter-registration workers. To awaken and inspire the adults, she leads other students on a sit-in. For the crime of ordering a hamburger, she is sentenced to a year in the state juvenile prison. She is also expelled from school. In response, McComb's Black students form the Pike County Nonviolent Movement — Hollis Watkins is President, Curtis Hayes is Vice President SNCC workers John Hardy and Travis Britt are beaten by whites and arrested on trumped up charges when they bring Blacks to the courthouse to register in Walthall and Amite counties. In Amite County, Herbert Lee is one of those working with Moses. In late September, he is murdered by State Representative E. H. Hurst. In early October, more than 100 Black high-school students march in McComb to protest Lee's killing and the expulsion of Brenda Travis. When they kneel in prayer, they are arrested, as are the SNCC staff who are with them. Bob Moses, Chuck McDew, and Bob Zellner (SNCC's first white field secretary) are beaten. The SNCC workers are charged with “Contributing to the delinquency of minors,” a serious felony.

More than 100 students boycott the Black high-school rather than sign a mandatory pledge that they will not participate in civil rights activity. SNCC sets up “Nonviolent High” for the boycotting students with Moses teaching math, Dion Diamond teaching science, and Chuck McDew teaching history. Nonviolent High is one of the seeds from which grow the “Freedom Schools” that spread across the state three years later in the summer of '64.

Late in October, an all-white jury convicts the SNCC members on the “Contributing” charge. Their attorneys appeal, but bail is set at $14,000 (equal to $92,000 in 2006 dollars). Unable to raise such a huge amount, they languish in prison.

With their SNCC teachers in jail, Nonviolent High cannot continue, and the boycotting students are accepted by Campbell Junior College in Jackson.

Meanwhile, arrests, beatings, and shootings continue. CORE Freedom Riders are brutally attacked by a white mob when they try to integrate the McComb Greyhound station. Paul Potter and Tom Hayden of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) are dragged from their car and beaten in the street when they come to McComb to support the Movement. Shotgun blasts from a Klan nightrider almost kill Dion Diamond and John Hardy.

Despite their repeated promises of protection for voter registration, Kennedy, the Justice Department, and the FBI do 180

nothing. The DOJ's legal efforts are feeble and ineffective. The arrests, the reign of terror, and the brazen murder of Herbert Lee by a state official, all take their toll. The McComb-area voter registration drive is suppressed — for the moment. Finally, in December, SNCC manages to raise the bail money and the jailed SNCC staff are released on appeal.

In a narrow sense, McComb is a defeat for SNCC — the project is suppressed and driven out by arrests, brutality, and murder. But in a broader sense it is an important milestone, the crucial lessons learned in McComb form the foundation for years of organizing to come, not just in Mississippi but in hard places across the South — places like Selma Alabama and Southwest Georgia. In McComb they discover that courage is contagious and that local people — particularly young people — will respond to outside organizers. They discover that as student activists they have much to teach, but also much to learn from the community, and that if they respect the community the community will in turn protect, feed, and nurture them. And from the community will come new leaders and new organizers to expand and sustain the struggle.

Looking back, Bob Moses later observed: “One of the things that we learned out here [in Amite County] was that we could find family in Mississippi. We could go anyplace in Mississippi before we were through, and we knew that somewhere down some road there was family. And we could show up there unannounced with no money or no anything and there were people there ready to take care of us. That's what we had here in Amite. One of the things that happened in the movement was that there was a joining of a young generation of people with an older generation that nurtured and sustained them. ... It was an amazing experience. I've never before or since had that experience where it's almost literally like you're throwing yourself on the people and they have actually picked you up and gone on to carry you so you don't really need money, you don't really need transportation. ... They're going to see that you eat. It's a liberating kind of experience.”

Out of McComb comes the hard kernel that transforms SNCC into an organization of organizers who in a few short years move the Movement from protest to social revolution. Building on the lessons learned in McComb, they shift the voter registration campaign into the Delta — the most segregated region of Mississippi. And out of McComb they bring five young organizers on to the growing SNCC staff — Hollis Watkins, Curtis Hayes, Emma Bell, Ike Lewis and Bobby Talbot — the first of many to come not from college campuses but from the red dust roads of the rural South.

—Excerpted from “History & Timeline” Civil Rights Movement Veterans Website www.crmvet.org

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"Personal responsibility is the price of liberty.� —Michael Cloud

COFO COUNCIL OF FEDERATED ORGANIZATIONS COFO as it is today began in a Clarksdale, Mississippi Methodist Church in August, 1962, but the name COFO goes back nearly two years before that meeting.

COFO was the name chosen by a group of Negro Mississippians who sought, in 1961, an audience with the then Mississippi Governor, Ross Barnett. Thinking that Barnett would turn down a meeting with representatives of the older, established civil rights organizations, they used the name COFO tonegotiate therelease of arrested Freedom Riders.

Among the organizers of the 'first' COFO were Medgar Evers, slain NAACP field secretary; Dr. Aaron Henry, State President of the Mississippi NAACP Branches; and Carsie Hall one of Mississippi's four Negro lawyers.

COFO Born Again The group became inactive after that meeting. In January, 1962 Robert Moses, head of voter registration in Mississippi for SNCC, and Thomas Gaither, Mississippi CORE representative, wrote a memo proposing that the civil rights groups working in the state band together to register the state's Negroes. Moses has been working on voter registration in rural Mississippi since August, 1961. His experience told him that discrimination in Mississippi would only yield to an all-out unified attack by as strong a force as possible. COFO was revitalized.

A COFO proposal was submitted to the newly formed Voter Education Project (VEP) of the Southern Regional Council in February 1962, under the signature of Dr. Henry, then, as now, state NAACP head and head of COFO (press rumours that he has withdrawn from COFO are false). VEP had announced that it would finance voter registration drives in the South, but it did not support COFO's plan until after the August meeting in Clarksdale.

The Founding Group All of the full-time civil rights workers in Mississippi at that time were present at the Clarksdale meeting, except Evers, whose busy schedule kept him away. CORE's David Dennis (who replaced Thomas Gaither); SCLC's Reverend James Bevel; Moses and Foreman from SNCC, and the ten other SNCC workers then scattered throughout the Mississippi Delta.

The meeting renominatedand elected Aaron Henry president and Carsie Hall, secretary. The Reverend R.L.T. Smith of Jackson was named treasurer and CORE's Dennis elected to the Executive Committee. Bob Moses became project director.

The following month a VEP grant enabled COFO to begin work in Bolivar, Coahoma, Leflore, and Sunflower counties where SNCC staff members already had done crucial ground work.

The Mississippi Freedom Project What happened in the Summer Project is history: it changed forever both Mississippi and the Movement. When it ended in August, 1964, the Mississippi Freedom Project began immediately. Over 200 volunteers remained in the state to continue voter registration work and keep some of the 32 community centers and 41 Freedom Schools open. Fifty of these volunteers were put on the SNCC staff; the remainder form the Freedom Force, for whom SNCC is attempting to get subsistence pay of $10 a week.

Money From the beginning, financial support and staff for COFO have come primarily from SNCC and CORE. COFO itself employs no staff, but borrows workers for its programs from cooperating civil rights organizations (At present, 125 of SNCC's staff of 225 are working in Mississippi on COFO projects). In October, 1963 the Voter Education Project (VEP) withdrew its funds from COFO because the statewide organization engaged in "political programs" not allowable under VEP grants. In the fall of 1963 Bob Moses $$Word$$ with Roy Wilkins, Martin Luther King, and James Farmer to solicit their support. SNCC and CORE agreed to contribute money to take up the slack. CORE supports the work in' 182

Mississippi's 4th Congressional District, and SNCC the work in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 5th Districts, supplying staff, cars, and funds.

SCLC has cooperated with COFO's programs through their Citizenship Teacher Program of training local people to become teachers.

Role of the NAACP The State conference of NAACP branches has supported COFO through its member units. The national NAACP never considered itself a part of COFO, though Dr. Aaron Henry (head of the state conference of NAACP branches) is COFO president. At a national board meeting in January, 1965, the state conference announced it would withdraw its support of COFO: the reason given was non-involvement in decision making. But Aaron Henry reports that he sent notices to each branch chapter every time COFO meetings took place and encouraged them to attend. (COFO meetings are open to all people in Mississippi working on the various aspects of its program.)

The Commission on Religion and Race of the National Council of Churches trained most of the Summer Project volunteers and has directed a steady flow of ministers — acting as counselors — into and out of Mississippi since the project began.

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., the National Lawyers Guild and other legal groups have supplied lawyers and legal advice.

"The most important thing about COFO is not its name or its history," a volunteer worker has said, "but that it has been able to involve so many people and groups, both black and white, from Mississippi and elsewhere, in a total program aimed at completely eliminating discrimination and segregation from every corner of the state."

—Excerpts from: Bay Area Friends of SNCC Newsletter, February 1965 Berkeley, California

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"The acceptance of our present condition is the only form of extremism which discredits us before our children."

— Lorraine Hansberry

THE FREEDOM SCHOOL The following will provide a background of information from which it is hoped the teacher in the Freedom School will be able to direct a discussion and set up a situation in which dialogue will be possible on the subject of politics and its relation to the individual and to groups—especially politics in Mississippi. As part of this, the development of COFO, its aims and purposes as a political action group, will also be discussed.

The approach that will be taken is to use the example of Mrs. Hamer’s campaign for Representative to the U.S. House as a point of departure for discussion of the political situation in the state. It is hoped that through the use of a specific case study, the students may see the political structure as relevant and close to his own experience. That even more importantly, the students may be awakened to the essential role each individual plays in the democratic process, what this role is, and how to go about exercising his right to a voice in the decision making that concerns his life.

Beyond this, by studying Mrs. Hamer’s campaign and the broader aspects of COFO’s political program for the summer and beyond, the student may see one example of how to combat the problems of discrimination that take his right away to have a voice in local, state and national government.

The basic concepts which it is important to get across from this unit are these: 1. Fundamentals of how the political structure is organized at local, state, and national level.

2. How the individual participates in politics and why it is important.

3. How the political structure in Mississippi is organized to discriminate against the Negro and why?

4. What steps can and are being taken to correct existing conditions of discrimination.

I. COFO QUESTION: What is COFO? ANSWER: COFO is the Council of Federated Organizations—a federation of all the national civil rights organizations active in Mississippi, local political and action groups and some fraternal and social organizations.

QUESTION: Why have such a federation of organizations?

ANSWER: To create unity and to give a sense of continuity to Civil Rights efforts in the state. Particularly since any civil rights program must be carried out in an atmosphere of extreme hostility from the white community, it was felt that unity through an organization of this kind would create a bond of support for Negroes all over the state. COFO also provides a sense of identity and purpose to local political action groups already existing and a means of exchanging ideas. One of its major purposes is to develop leadership in local communities all over the state. In the past people have belonged to civil rights organizations. COFO would like to be an organization which in a real sense belongs to the people. It is so structured that all decision making is done democratically and directly by all the groups working together—allowing each individual the right of voicing his opinion and making his vote count.

Decisions concerning COFO are made at its state-wide convention meetings, which are called when necessary.

Anyone active under any of the organizations which make up membership is entitled to attend COFO conventions and participate in policy-making decisions of the organization.

The staff consists of anyone working full time with any civil rights organization in Mississippi. This staff carries out the decisions of the COFO convention and prepares recommendations for its consideration. Below the state COFO convention there are district organizations corresponding to the five congressional districts. These district organizations are only in the planning state at present. The staff is divided into congressional districts with five district directors; this organizational structure is functioning at present.

The state organization has four standing committees: Welfare and Relief, Political Action, Finance and Federal Programs. The district organizations have or will have, similar standing committees. Dr. Aaron E. Henry of Clarksdale, State President of the NAACP, is President of the Council of Federated Organizations. Robert Moses, Field Secretary and Mississippi Project Director for SNCC, is the Program Director, who supervises the Mississippi staff and is elected by it. David Dennis, Mississippi Field Secretary for CORE, is Assistant Program Director, and is similarly elected.

QUESTION: What are the programs sponsored by COFO? ANSWER: COFO works in two major areas. 1) Political 2) Educational and social. The educational and social programs are the Freedom Schools, Federal Programs, Literacy, Work-study, Food and Clothing and Community Centers. Some of 184

these are in operation; others are in the process of being developed.

Freedom Schools are planned for the summer of l964. There are several things which hopefully will be accomplished by the Schools. (1) to provide remedial instruction in basic educational skills but more importantly (2) to implant habits of free thinking and ideas of how a free society works, and (3) to lay the groundwork for a statewide youth movement.

Federal Programs Project is to make the programs of the Federal government which are designed to alleviate poverty and ignorance reach the people of Mississippi. The federal programs include the Area Redevelopment Act, the Manpower Development and Training Act, the bureau of the Farmers Home Administration and the Office of Manpower, Automation and Training. You may ask why it is necessary for COFO to be concerned about the administration of federal programs, which are by definition, desegregated and anti-discriminatory. As things now stand the normal channel of information—the state agencies—do not properly present these programs. The State of Mississippi is not reconciled to the desegregated nature of these programs, so Negroes are not allowed to participate. Because of this, private agencies, such as COFO, must act as liaison between the federal program and the people they are designed to help.

The Literacy Project at Tougaloo College is a research project under the direction of John Diebold and Associates Company, and is financed by an anonymous grant to the college. The goal of the project is to write selfinstructional materials which will teach adult illiterates in lower social and economic groups to read and write.

The Work-Study Project is an attempt to solve the pressing staff problems in Southern movement—the conflict between full-time civil rights work and school for the college age worker. Under the work-study program, students spend a year in full-time field work for SNCC, under the direction of COFO field staff, and with special academic work designed to complement their field work and keep them familiar with learning and intellectual discipline. After this year of field work, they get a full scholarship to Tougaloo College for one year.

Food, Clothing, and Shelter Programs is a privately financed distribution program of the necessities of life for persons whose needs are so basic that they cannot feed their families one meal a day per person. This welfare services aspect of COFO grew partly out of a need to provide for families who are leaving the plantations sometimes because of automation and sometimes because of their activities in voter registration projects, particularly in the Delta.

The food intake of most poor rural Mississippians is at some times sufficient. These times are usually (1) when they receive government commodities, (2) when the tenant or low-income farmer receives money from his cotton and other minor crops, usually in early and mid-fall, and (3) when landlords give credit to tenant families usually from late March to July. The rest of the time the poor rural families and the unemployed often go hungry.

The clothing situation of both the urban and rural poor is desperate. But the problem is not as difficult in summer months, when the weather is warm, as it is in winter, when the children must have warm clothes to go to school.

Many people in the deep South live in housing unfit for human habitation. In Mississippi over 50 percent of the rural occupied farm housing is classified as deteriorating or dilapidated. More than 50 percent of the rural homes in Mississippi have no piped water and more than 75 percent have no flush toilets, bathtubs or showers. COFO hopes to begin a program of home repair workshops and volunteer youth corps assisting people to repair their homes, all working out of a community center.

The Community Centers is to be a network of community centers across the state. It is conceived as a long-range institution. The centers will provide a structure for a sweeping range of recreational and educational programs.

In doing this, they will not only serve basic needs of Negro communities now ignored by the state’s political structure, but will form a dynamic focus for the development of community organization.

QUESTION: How did COFO get started?

ANSWER: COFO has evolved through three phases in is short history. The first phase of the organization was little more than an ad hoc committee called together after the Freedom Rides of l961 in an effort to have a meeting with Governor Ross Barnett. This committee of Mississippi civil rights leaders proved a convenient vehicle for channeling the voter registration program of the Voter Education Project, a part of the Southern Regional Council, into Mississippi.

With the funds of the Voter Education Project, COFO went into a second phase. In this period, beginning in February 1962, COFO became an umbrella for voter registration drives in the Mississippi Delta and other isolated cities in Mississippi. At this time COFO added a small full-time staff, mostly SNCC and a few CORE workers, and developed a voter registration program. The staff worked with local NAACP leaders and SCLC citizenship teachers in an effort to give the Mississippi Negroes the broadest possible support. COFO continued essentially as a committee with a staff and a program until the fall of l963.

The emergence of the Ruleville Citizenship Group, and the Holmes County Voters League, testified to the possibility of starting strong local groups. It was felt that COFO could be the organization through which horizontal ties could develop among these groups, with the strongest common denominator possible within the general aims of the Civil 185

Rights Movement. Every effort was made during this time to cut across county and organizational lines and have people from different areas meet with each other, to sponsor county, regional, and state-wide meetings, to bring students together from different parts of the state for workshops, to help and send groups outside of the state to meetings, conferences, workshops, and SCLC citizenship schools. During this second phase we began to feel more and more that the Committee could be based in a network of local adult groups sprung from the Movement as we worked the state.

The third phase representing the present functioning of the organization began in the fall of l963 with the Freedom Vote for Governor. This marked the first state-wide effort and coincided with the establishment of a state-wide office in Jackson and a trunk line to reach into the Mississippi Delta and hill country. The staff has broadened to include more CORE and SNCC workers and more citizenship schools.

Plans for the fourth phase of the organization would include a budget or funds for program and staff on a long term basis, worked out with the major civil rights organizations and individuals across the country. The aim would be to organize every Negro community in Mississippi to train local people to help lead Mississippi through the next difficult years of transition.

II. Mrs. Hamer’s Campaign For Congress (2nd Congressional District) QUESTION: Who is Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer?

ANSWER: Mrs. Hamer is one of the four candidates running for political office this summer in Mississippi. She is challenging Mr. Jamie Whitten for the seat of U.S. Representative in the Second Congressional District. Mr. Whitten is a powerful man in the House of Representatives, holding the position of Chairman of the House Appropriations SubCommittee on Agriculture. Since the Second Congressional District is the heart of the cotton-growing Delta, where Negroes outnumber whites in most of the counties, what Mr. Whitten does as chairman of this committee has direct bearing on both Negro and white populations. So far, Mr. Whitten’s actions have reflected a decidedly racist bias—so that he is not representing all the people of the Second Congressional District, but those white landholders who control the majority of the wealth in the Delta.

One of the most blatant example of this bias on Mr. Whitten’s part was a bill before the Sub-Committee on Agriculture to train 2400 hundred men to drive tractors. The bill was killed. Why kill a bill which obviously would benefit the state by attacking the problems of automation? The answer becomes clear when we realize that (1) under the Manpower Retraining Act, all projects must be integrated. (2) The majority of those to be trained were Negro (600 whites.)

QUESTION: Why is Mrs. Hamer running for office?

ANSWER: Mrs. Hamer is the mother of several children and besides that, a woman, which is very unusual for Mississippi politics. It is certainly partially because she is a mother and concerned about the future of her children that she is running. However the real answer to this question can only be found in Mrs. Hammer’s history and the experiences she has had as a native Mississippian. Mrs. Hammer, who is forty-seven, comes from Ruleville, Mississippi, in Sunflower County. This is cotton growing country—large plantations (of sometimes hundreds and thousands of acres of land), small towns, the Company Store, the sheriff whose job it is to “control the niggers” and not see the bootleg whiskey being sold—the home of Senator James O. Eastland.

Until 1962, the Hamers had lived for sixteen years on a plantation four miles from Ruleville. On August 31, l962, Mrs. Hamer tried to register to vote—the same day she and her husband were told they would have to leave the plantation immediately by the owner. His comment to Mrs. Hamer was, “What are you trying to do to me.” A Negro does not act independently of his “Owner.” This revealing comment illustrates how inextricably the Negroes’ destiny has been linked to the land and its owner. A system from which all the legal restrictions of slavery have been removed but which has remained frozen in place. It is only now changing because of the forces of change all around it. Mrs. Hamer’s action represents the new attitude of emancipation on the part of the Negro, an attitude which has come slowly to the feudal-like system of the Delta, where the symbiotic relationship of white and black has perhaps been more intense than anywhere else. The slowness with which change has come to the Delta is in direct relationship to the amount of opposition expressed by the white people there. Mrs. Hamer began working with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in December, l962, and has been one of the most active workers in the state on Voter Registration. Because of her activities she has received much abuse from white people in the Ruleville community—people shoot into her home, threaten her life. In l963, she was arrested in Winona, Mississippi, held in jail overnight for no reason and severely beaten with a blackjack. She still suffers from this incident.

Mrs. Hamer feels very strongly that Negroes are not being represented in either state or national government and this forms the basis for her willingness to run for office even in the face of tremendous dangers to herself personally.

Mrs. Hamer tells her audiences that she is only saying “what you have been thinking all along.” But Mrs. Hamer plans to 186

direct her campaign to whites as well as Negroes. It is her feeling that all Mississippians, white and Negro alike, are victims of the all-white, one-party power structure of the state. The major emphasis of Mrs. Hamer’s campaign however, will be voting rights for the Negro. Her platform, like that of the other three candidates, includes a discussion of issues that reach beyond the problems within the state of poverty, automation, education, and equal representation and touches on national domestic issues as well as international policy.

It is a comment on the conservative reaction that the state has shown in the past ten years, that Representative Frank Smith was defeated in the l962 elections. Although not outspokenly liberal about voting rights for the Negro, Smith was concerned for all the people of the Delta and has some idea of the problems the region faces in the future as automation takes away the jobs of many people. Recently he made a statement in support of the Civil Rights bill now before the Congress. The two or three rational men of some vision in the Mississippi Legislature have all been voted out of office in the last four years. It is necessary that Mrs. Hamer and people like her come forward to fill this gap.

QUESTION: How will Mrs. Hamer conduct her campaign?

ANSWER: Mrs. Hamer is entered in the regular Democratic primary in Mississippi to be held June 2, l964. She is running on what is to be called the FREEDOM DEMOCRATIC PARTY. If defeated in the Democratic party, she will be able to continue her campaign as an Independent in the General Election.

QUESTION: Has she any chance of winning? If not, why challenge?

ANSWER: The chances of Mrs. Hamer actually becoming the Representative to the House at this time are of course almost impossible. But since the campaign, as well as the campaigns of the other three candidates, has a two-fold purpose—the chances of winning the goals they seek are very good. One of the purposes is to encourage Negroes not now registered to vote to register by means of the “Freedom Registration” to be conducted this summer. The second purpose is to let the State of Mississippi and the nation become aware that change is taking place in Mississippi and that the rights of the Negro must be realized, if Democracy is to work in a state like Mississippi.

III. Other Aspects of the COFO Political Program for the Summer QUESTION: How will the Democratic Convention be challenged?

ANSWER: The focus of political activity during the spring and summer will be an attempt to unseat the regular Mississippi Delegation to the National Democratic Convention at Atlantic City, New Jersey, in August of this year.

Mississippi does not allow many people, particularly Negroes, to participate in political affairs in meaningful numbers. For this reason COFO claims that the Mississippi delegation to the Convention does not represent all the people of Mississippi and should not be seated. An attempt is being made to contact delegations from other states to have them vote against seating the regular Mississippi delegation. It is not known whether this challenge will be successful.

Two groups of delegates will attempt to be seated at the convention—the regular Democratic delegation and the so-called Freedom Democratic Delegation. This means that COFO is organizing (1) those people who are now registered voters in Mississippi and (2) those who have tried to register and have not been allowed to vote. From each of these groups a delegation will be chosen to go to the National Convention.

QUESTION: Who votes in Mississippi?

ANSWER: There are no statistics available on whites registered to vote. Even the information available on Negro voting is incomplete since it comes from only sixty-nine of the eighty-two counties in the state. In these counties Negroes constitute 37.7 percent of the adult population but only 6.2 percent are registered to vote. In thirteen of the sixty-nine counties there are no registered Negro voters.

It is no accident that information on voting is hard to obtain or that only 25,000 Negroes are registered. As anywhere else, part of the problem is apathy. But in Mississippi even apathy is different. It is born not so much of disinterest as a feeling of utter frustration and futility passed from generation to generation.

For instance in Holmes County where Negroes are three fourths of the population, there are no Negro voters.

Two or three have been trying to register every day since July, 1963. The registrar has said flatly that he will allow Negroes to take the test but he has no intention of passing them. It is this kind of frustration which the Negro is faced with for even attempting to exercise the most basic of democratic rights in Mississippi.

QUESTION: What are the proofs of discrimination in voting?

ANSWER: The whole pattern of voting requirements and of the registration form is calculated to make the process appear to the voter to be hopeless. The process is a complicated one which culminates in the would-be voter’s name being published in the paper. Why publish a prospective voter’s name in the paper—like announcing his marriage or the 187

birth of a child? The major purpose is to overwhelm the voter so that he is afraid to even attempt to register. Behind this approach is supposed to be—and all too often is—a collection of fears that someone will challenge a voter’s moral character, that he may be prosecuted for perjury. This not an altogether unfounded fear as illustrated by the fact that one man who attempted to register was accused of being morally unfit to be a voter because he and his wife were not legally married but had been living in a common-law relationship for over twenty years. In addition, publishing a prospective voter’s name announces his intention to his employer, landlord and anyone else who might retaliate with violence.

It is difficult to prove, on the face of it, that the voting laws in Mississippi are purposefully discriminatory, since they apply equally to white and black. However it is by comparison with other states—particularly those outside the deep South—that the whole procedure becomes suspect. It is much less difficult to see how discrimination works at the level of the individual Negro who attempts to register. There are many evidences of brutality, economic and physical retaliation. An illustration of physical retaliation is the case of the three Negro men who went to Rankin County Courthouse to register. As one man was filling in the form, the County Sheriff came in and began questioning him.

When the man told him he was registering to vote, the sheriff began beating him on the head with a blackjack and forced him out of the office. This was the result of individuals deciding on their own to register—not a planned registration campaign which had aroused feelings against Negroes.

We do have clear evidence, however, that the intent of the voting laws passed by the legislature in l955 and l962 was discrimination against Negro voters. Public officials at the time carefully avoided making statements which could be used in court actions as proof of intention to discriminate. However, Governor White stated in l954 that the constitutional amendments proposed (and passed in l955) would “tend to maintain segregation.” In l962 a representative urged the legislators not to take up unnecessary questions regarding the legislation in public. So there was no real debate on the floor of the house. In recent times this policy has been strictly adhered to on any legislation affecting race in the state legislature. The comments of a legislator, who was very conscious of the power of the Citizens Council, give us an indication of how restricted the lawmakers are to differ: It’s hard for us sometimes to consider a bill on its merits if there is any way Bill Simmons (executive secretary of the Citizens Council) can attach an integration tag. For instance, a resolution was introduced in the House to urge a boycott of Memphis stores because some of them have desegregated. I knew it was ridiculous and would merely amuse North Mississippians who habitually shop in Memphis. The resolution came in the same week that four Negroes were fined in court for boycotting Clarksdale stores. Yet the hot eyes of Bill Simmons were watching. If we vote against the resolution he would have branded us. So there we were, approving a boycott while a Mississippi court was convicting Negroes for doing what we lawmakers were advocating. It just didn’t make sense.

In October, l954, the Jackson Daily News editorialized on statements made by Robert Patterson, Head of the Citizens Council, about the legislation. The headline read, “The amendment is intended solely to limit Negro registration.” The Jackson Times (a now defunct newspaper) reported, “This proposed amendment is not aimed at keeping white people from voting, no matter how morally corrupt they may be. It is an ill-disguised attempt to keep qualified Negroes from voting; and as such, it should not have the support of the people of Mississippi.” This advice was not heeded, however, and the legislation was passed.

The registration form itself is not too difficult in terms of its demands on the person’s literacy. There are, however, numerous factual questions which the registrant must answer, such as his precinct. The attempt to make the application appear difficult begins with its title “SWORN Written Application for Registration.” There are included a series of potentially confusing questions, which ask about the registrant’s occupation, business and employment. The numerous small questions which make up this part of the form are obviously not all necessary and could be answered by fewer questions. Then why have them? Because they provide more opportunity for error on the part of the person registering.

The voter test is an exam in which the registrant must be able to write and interpret a section of the Mississippi Constitution. A Yale law graduate states that “there are some 285 sections of the state constitution, and the document is one of the most complex and confusing in the nation.” The examiner points to a section and tells the applicant to copy and interpret it. On the tester’s cognizance, you pass or fail. He has absolute power. His decision is not reviewable, and there are no standards by which it can be judged in court.

The above information gives us the background of discrimination in voting in the state and some specifics of how the Registrar misuses the registration form to keep Negroes from voting. There are, however other proofs of discrimination—incident after incident of people who have been turned away from the Circuit Clerk’s office without being allowed to register; people who have been shot at, lost their jobs or otherwise have been intimidated for attempting to vote. It has always been made clear to the Negro by his white employer, landlord, or acquaintance that he is not to attempt to vote—this is the most present kind of proof of discrimination.

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QUESTION: Why isn’t the Negro allowed to vote? What does the white man fear?

ANSWER: In Mississippi, where the Negro represents 42 percent of the population, perhaps the numerical reason is the most overpowering answer as to why the Negro is not allowed to vote and why the white man is so afraid. The intensity of white reaction is in direct proportion to the numbers of Negroes in a given county or area. For instance, in the gulf counties and the extreme northern hill counties where there is not as large a percentage of Negroes, opposition by whites to voting is less violent. While in the Delta counties, southern counties and the river counties, with a few exceptions, opposition is sudden, violent and explosive when Negroes attempt to register to vote in large numbers or individually. It is often the individual Negro who deviates from “his place” which frightens the white man the most. What was known and safe suddenly becomes unknown and uncontrollable. Retaliation to individuals is often death, as in the case of Herbert Lee in Amite County. Mr. Lee tried to register and encouraged others to register—for this he was shot down by a state legislator. When Negroes register in large numbers because of a voter drive, the white man can blame “outsiders” and “agitators” for stirring up things.

In essence, then, the reasons Negroes are not allowed to vote and the things the white man fears are inextricably part of the same cloth. The white man fears a “Negro take-over”—block voting. Negroes controlling the state—these are the surface things. Underneath this are the sometimes conscious and sometimes unconscious fears about himself—the guilt for an enslaving system which makes a man less than human because of the color of his skin. All of this gets translated into myths about the Negroes’ inferiority, dirtiness, ignorance, violence. These myths in turn justify the system. For those people who can see beyond the myths, who either for moral or economic reasons would like to see the segregated pattern of southern life change, there is the White Citizens Council. The Council has a great deal of control of the political structure but even more than that is a “big brother” looking over the shoulder of anyone who wants to step out of line.

Perhaps some quotations from Council literature can say it better. “If the Negro was permitted to obtain the ballot . . . it would mean that no qualified white man . . . could ever hold public office (and) seats now held by competent white representatives would be held by ignorant, incompetent Negroes.” “There is a vast gulf between the IQ of the Negro . . . and the average white man because of an inherent deficiency in mental ability, psychological and temperamental inadequacies, of indifference and natural indolence on the part of Negro.”; “If segregation breaks down, the social structure breaks down. . . . The Communists hope to achieve disintegration through integration America”; “Integration represents darkness, regimentation, totalitarianism, communism and destruction. . . . Segregation represents the freedom to choose one’s associates, Americanism, state sovereignty and the survival of the white race”; “The enemy cloaked in the mysterious name of ‘integration’ is hysterically assaulting the natural order, the created order in nature, the legal order under God, and above all else, the free grace of Jesus Christ.”

QUESTION: What steps have been taken to give the Negroes the vote?

ANSWER: The first concerted effort to get Negroes registered in Mississippi began in l961 when Bob Moses, moving into Greenwood, Mississippi, started a program to educate and encourage local people to participate in political activity.

This project was sponsored by the Voter Education Project of the Southern Regional Council. As has already been discussed, the beginning of COFO came from this effort. The focus of COFO has been largely on political action.

Because obtaining the individual’s right to vote is the key to full participation in the democratic process through which hopefully a deeper kind of change can come. Until 1963 much time was spent simply in becoming known in local communities and establishing the basis of a political organization which could act with united effort. The past year has seen several new attempts at education and mass registration.

The Mock Campaign for Governor was one such attempt. By focusing on the Campaign with Freedom Candidates, COFO was able to garner 80-90,000 votes and in the process educate this many people to the process of voting and the importance of political participation.

Freedom Days have also been planned in several communities this past spring. Most notable are the ones in Hattiesburg and Canton, Mississippi. These are voter drives sponsored by COFO to get as many people in the community as possible registered to vote. In both places a day or several days were set to get as many people as possible to go down to register. It was necessary to picket the courthouse in both Canton and Hattiesburg because of the obvious policy of discrimination on the part of the Registrar. In Canton only two or three people a day have been allowed to take the test at all. Picketing has been allowed by the local officials, which in itself is an innovation in Mississippi, where people have never been allowed to picket over five minutes without being arrested. The National Council of Churches has cooperated in this project by sending teams of northern ministers to each city to act as observers and to be in a negotiating role with city officials and sympathetic whites. This has tended to keep down the violence but has not stopped arrests altogether.

—The document is from: SNCC, The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Papers, 1959-1972 (Sanford, NC: Microfilming Corporation of America, 1982) Reel 67, File 328, Page 0346 The original papers are at the King Library and Archives, The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Atlanta, GA 189

“The great aim of your life should be to keep your powers up to the highest possible standard, to so conserve your energies, guard your health, that you can make every occasion a great occasion.”

—Orison Swett Marden

DR. EL SENZENGAKULU “BABA” ZULU He was an organizer of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). He worked to help organize the Freedom Rides. During the 60’s Baba Zulu was arrested 69 times for the liberation struggle of Afrikan people. After their release Baba Zulu and the other SNCC members remained in Mississippi to further the struggles for freedom. El Zulu was stationed in Mississippi (McComb, Jackson and Tougaloo College). Classes in direct action and voter registration were held in McComb. As the brothers and sisters became more aware, politically and socially, they began to participate in direct action against racism. This resulted in 113 students being expelled from school. The responsibility for teaching these students fell to those who were organizing.

Therefore, the Freedom Schools were developed. From this it was clear that there was a need for our people to create another educational system. This was the beginning of Baba Zulus’ thoughts to open up his own school because he knew that at some point we had to open up our schools to teach our own history.

After leaving Mississippi in 1964 he received two scholarships one for Harvard Law School and one from Howard University Law School. He chose Howard University Law School. While attending Howard University Law School, Baba Zulu received a call from James Forman, Executive Secretary of SNCC, requesting his help with the Selma, Alabama Crisis. The assignment was the Washington, DC chapter of SNCC. He went to the White House as a SNCC representative along with H. Rap Brown, NAG; Walter Fauntory, SCLC; The Urban League and others. This visit was to urge the president to send troops to protect the people during the civil rights demonstrations in Alabama.

Baba Zulu and Marion Barry as members of the DC chapter of SNCC organized the Free DC Movement that provided help with the voters’ registration, improved housing, transportation charges, food and shelter for the homeless and the struggle against police brutality.

In 1966 Marion Barry resigned and Baba Zulu became director of the DC Chapter. At this time he organized the freedom schools in DC in order to help our youth with reading, writing and their history. In January of 1968 The Ujamaa Afrikan Shop was opened to build a financial basis for an independent Afrikan community school.

On May 4, 1968 Ujamaa School opened with 3 students in preschool and added a grade each year up through high school. Ujamaa School is an ungraded school system. He chose that system because it allowed him to move students according to their ability.

Ujamaa School is the first and oldest Afrikan independent school in the USA. In the last 40 years many students have graduated from high school, some as early as age 14. The majority of the students who graduated went on to receive honors and degrees from major universities. Some have returned to teach at the school. Many of our graduates now have families of their own and have chosen to send their children to Ujamaa.

UJAMMA SCHOOL UJAMAA SHULE was founded to provide an educational institution that would ensure Afrikan children the development of a strong positive self-image, a sense of values, and the achievement of academic excellence. UJAMAA’s program provides for training in all facets of life; building character, independence, self-sufficiency and positive approaches to meeting life’s challenges.It is the mission of UJAMAA to develop the total being and ensure each child reaches his or her highest potential.

Ujamaa School ▪ 1554 8th St NW ▪ Washington, DC 20002

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"I am not bound to win in what I attempt, but I am bound to be a man. I am bound to be true to the best I know, any departure from this is contemptible cowardice."

—Abraham Lincoln

JUDICIAL RULINGS An important case won in Sunflower County, the home of Senator James O. Eastland was a ruling by District Judge Claude F. Clayton. He ruled that the Sunflower County voter registrar’s office had discriminated against Blacks for more than ten years. He ordered immediate use of less stringent standards for Black voter applicants until April 8, 19676.

Judge Clayton issued a sweeping six-page order, permanently enjoining Registrar Cecil C. Campbell, his successors, and agents from any act resulting in discrimination in the voter registration process. “Since January 26, 1955, as before,, defendant and his agents have permitted white persons to register although they could not read or write while rejecting a number of Blacks who demonstrated their ability to read and write by completing correctly substantial parts of the application form,” said Judge Clayton.

In the judge’s decision it was pointed out that Sunflower County Blacks had been refused permission to apply to vote, subjected to unreasonable delays, denied assistance furnished white person, advised falsely that they had failed tests, required to take them, and in effect denied the right to vote through placing of their names in obsolete registration books.

The court order provided that Blacks be given the same treatment as whites.

—U. W. Court Hits Rules Impeding Negro Voting, Commercial Appeal, April 9, 1965, p.1

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“The best treasure that a man can attain unto in this world is true knowledge; even the knowledge of himself. For man is the greatest mystery of G_D, the microcosm, or complete abridgement of the whole universe. He/she is G_D’s masterpiece, a living emblem and hieroglypic of eternity and time; and therefore to know whence he is and what his temporal and eternal being and well-being are, must needs be that one necessary thing, to which all our chief study should aim and in comparison of which all the wealth of this world is but dross, and a loss to us.”

—Jacob Boehme

FORBIDDEN IN SLAVERY Free Agency

A Home

Your Free Name

Financial Independence

The Right To Vote

Rootedness In Nature

A Wholistic Quality Education

Protection Under The Law

Purposeful Living

Healthcare

Freedom of Mobility Pure and Natural Sex

Recognition of the Motherland (culture, language, history)

Self-determination

The Pursuit of Happiness

A Family

Healthy Food

“Without cleansing, purification, confession and repentance, there is no remission of sin. This is completely different from the statement “without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin.” This latter statement is the religion of Cain and Abel and not the religion of Christ Consciousness. For Christ Consciousness deals with all truth and all power that is necessary to carry out the purpose for which G_D created mankind.

Without the truth of the fall, and the truth of the restoration, there is no personal nor social salvation. Truth is the shared definition and purpose of man that leads to harmony, justice, peace, and prosperity. Truth is that which leads to the restoration of Man.” —Reverend James L. Bevel

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At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst. —Aristotle

KU KLUX KLAN At the end of the American Civil War radical members of Congress attempted to destroy the white power structure of the Rebel states. The Freeman's Bureau was established by Congress on 3rd March, 1865. The bureau was designed to protect the interests of former slaves. This included helping them to find new employment and to improve educational and health facilities. In the year that followed the bureau spent $17,000,000 establishing 4,000 schools, 100 hospitals and providing homes and food for former slaves.

Attempts by Congress to extend the powers of the Freemen's Bureau was vetoed by President Andrew Johnson in February, 1866. In April 1866, Johnson also vetoed the Civil Rights Bill that was designed to protect freed slaves from Southern Black Codes (laws that placed severe restrictions on freed slaves such as prohibiting their right to vote, forbidding them to sit on juries, limiting their right to testify against white men, carrying weapons in public places and working in certain occupations).

The election of 1866 increased the number of Radical Republicans in Congress. The following year Congress passed the first Reconstruction Act. The South was now divided into five military districts, each under a major general. New elections were to be held in each state with freed male slaves being allowed to vote. The act also included an amendment that offered readmission to the Southern states after they had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment and guaranteed adult male suffrage. Johnson immediately vetoed the bill but Congress re-passed the bill the same day.

The first branch of the Ku Klux Klan was established in Pulaski, Tennessee, in May, 1866. A year later a general organization of local Klans was established in Nashville in April, 1867. Most of the leaders were former members of the Confederate Army and the first Grand Wizard was Nathan Forrest, an outstanding general during the American Civil War. During the next two years Klansmen wearing masks, white cardboard hats and draped in white sheets, tortured and killed black Americans and sympathetic whites. Immigrants, who they blamed for the election of Radical Republicans, were also targets of their hatred. Between 1868 and 1870 the Ku Klux Klan played an important role in restoring white rule in North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia.

At first the main objective of white supremacy organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan, the White Brotherhood, the Men of Justice, the Constitutional Union Guards and the Knights of the White Camelia was to stop black people from voting.

After white governments had been established in the South the Ku Klux Klan continued to undermine the power of blacks. Successful black businessmen were attacked and any attempt to form black protection groups such as trade unions was quickly dealt with.

Radical Republicans in Congress such as Benjamin Butler urged President Ulysses S. Grant to take action against the Ku Klux Klan. In 1870 he instigated an investigation into the organization and the following year a Grand Jury reported that: "There has existed since 1868, in many counties of the state, an organization known as the Ku Klux Klan, or Invisible Empire of the South, which embraces in its membership a large proportion of the white population of every profession and class. The Klan has a constitution and bylaws, which provides, among other things, that each member shall furnish himself with a pistol, a Ku Klux gown and a signal instrument. The operations of the Klan are executed in the night and are invariably directed against members of the Republican Party. The Klan is inflicting summary vengeance on the colored citizens of these citizens by breaking into their houses at the dead of night, dragging them from their beds, torturing them in the most inhuman manner, and in many instances murdering."

Congress passed the Ku Klux Act and it became law on 20th April, 1871. This gave the president the power to intervene in troubled states with the authority to suspend the writ of habeas corpus in countries where disturbances occurred.

However, because its objective of white supremacy in the South had been achieved, the organization practically disappeared.

The Ku Klux Klan was reformed in 1915 by William J. Simmons, a preacher influenced by Thomas Dixon's book, The Ku Klux Klan (1905) and the film of the book, Birth of a Nation, directed by D.W. Griffith.

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The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) became the main opponent of the Ku Klux Klan. To show that the members of the organization would not be intimidated, it held its 1920 annual conference in Atlanta, considered at the time to be one of the most active Ku Klux Klan areas in America.

After the First World War the Ku Klux Klan also became extremely hostile to Jews, Roman Catholics, socialists, communists and anybody they identified as foreigners.

In November 1922 Hiram W. Evans became the Klan's Imperial Wizard. Under his leadership the organization grew rapidly and in the 1920s Klansmen were elected to positions of political power. This included state officials in Texas, Oklahoma, Indiana, Oregon and Maine. By 1925 membership reached 4,000,000. Even on the rare occasions they were arrested for serious crimes, Klansmen were unlikely to be convicted by local Southern juries.

After the conviction of the Klan leader, David C. Stephenson, for second-degree murder, and evidence of corruption by other members such as the governor of Indiana and the mayor of Indianapolis, membership fell to around 30,000. This trend continued during the Great Depression and the Second World War and in 1944 the organization. was disbanded.

In the 1950s the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement resulted in a revival in Ku Klux Klan organizations. The most of important of these was the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan led by Robert Shelton. In the Deep South considerable pressure was put on blacks by klansmen not to vote. An example of this was the state of Mississippi. By 1960, 42% of the population were black but only 2% were registered to vote. Lynching was still employed as a method of terrorizing the local black population.

On Sunday, 15th September, 1963, a white man was seen getting out of a white and turquoise Chevrolet car and placing a box under the steps of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Soon afterwards, at 10.22 a.m., the bomb exploded killing Denise McNair (11), Addie Mae Collins (14), Carole Robertson (14) and Cynthia Wesley (14). The four girls had been attending Sunday school classes at the church. Twenty-three other people were also hurt by the blast.

A witness identified Robert Chambliss, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, as the man who placed the bomb under the steps of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. He was arrested and charged with murder and possessing a box of 122 sticks of dynamite without a permit. On 8th October, 1963, Chambliss was found not guilty of murder and received a hundreddollar fine and a six-month jail sentence for having the dynamite.

In 1964 the NAACP, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organized its Freedom Summer campaign. Its main objective was to try an end the political disenfranchisement of African Americans in the Deep South. Volunteers from the three organizations decided to concentrate its efforts in Mississippi. The three organizations established 30 Freedom Schools in towns throughout Mississippi. Volunteers taught in the schools and the curriculum now included black history, the philosophy of the civil rights movement. During the summer of 1964 over 3,000 students attended these schools and the experiment provided a model for future educational programs such as Head Start.

Freedom Schools were often targets of white mobs. So also were the homes of local African Americans involved in the campaign. That summer 30 black homes and 37 black churches were firebombed. Over 80 volunteers were beaten by white mobs or racist police officers and three men, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan on 21st June, 1964. These deaths created nation-wide publicity for the campaign.

The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Bombing was unsolved until Bill Baxley was elected attorney general of Alabama.

He requested the original Federal Bureau of Investigation files on the case and discovered that the organization had accumulated a great deal of evidence against Chambliss that had not been used in the original trial. In November, 1977 Chambliss was tried once again for the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing. Now aged 73, Chambliss was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.

In 1981 the trial of Josephus Andersonan, an African American charged with the murder of a white policeman, took place in Mobile. At the end of the case the jury was unable to reach a verdict. This upset members of the local Ku Klux Klan who believed that the reason for this was that some members of the jury were African Americans. At a meeting 194

held after the trial, Bennie Hays, the second-highest ranking official in the Klan in Alabama said: "If a black man can get away with killing a white man, we ought to be able to get away with killing a black man."

On Saturday 21st March, 1981, Bennie Hays's son, Henry Hays, and James Knowles, decided they would get revenge for the failure of the courts to convict the man for killing a policeman. They travelled around Mobile in their car until they found nineteen year old Michael Donald walking home. After forcing him into the car Donald was taken into the next county where he was lynched.

A brief investigation took place and eventually the local police claimed that Donald had been murdered as a result of a disagreement over a drugs deal. Donald's mother, Beulah Mae Donald, who knew that her son was not involved with drugs, was determined to obtain justice. She contacted Jessie Jackson who came to Mobile and led a protest march about the failed police investigation.

Thomas Figures, the assistant United States attorney in Mobile, managed to persuade the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to look into the case. James Bodman was sent to Mobile and it did not take him long to persuade James Knowles to confess to the killing of Michael Donald.

In June 1983, Knowles was found guilty of violating Donald's civil rights and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Six months later, when Henry Hays was tried for murder, Knowles appeared as chief prosecution witness. Hays was found guilty and sentenced to death.

With the support of Morris Dees and Joseph J. Levin at the Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC), Beulah Mae Donald decided that she would use this case to try and destroy the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama. Her civil suit against the United Klans of America took place in February 1987. The all-white jury found the Klan responsible for the lynching of Michael Donald and ordered it to pay 7 million dollars. This resulted the Klan having to hand over all its assets including its national headquarters in Tuscaloosa.

After a long-drawn out legal struggle, Henry Hayes was executed on 6th June, 1997. It was the first time a white man had been executed for a crime against an African American since 1913.

On 17th May, 2000, the FBI announced that the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Bombing had been carried out by the Ku Klux Klan splinter group, the Cahaba Boys. It was claimed that four men, Robert Chambliss, Herman Cash, Thomas Blanton and Bobby Cherry had been responsible for the crime. Cash was dead but Blanton and Cherry were arrested. In May 2002 the 71 year old Bobby Cherry was convicted of the murder of Denise McNair, Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley and was sentenced to life in prison. —http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAkkk.htm

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Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.

—Frederick Douglas

THE SOUTHERN DEMOCRATIC PARTY 1972 - Unknown · Democrats opposed the Abolitionist · Democrats supported slavery and fought and gave their lives to expand it · Democrats supported and passed the Fugitive Slave Laws of 1793 & 1854 · Democrats supported and passed the Missouri Compromise to protect slavery · Democrats supported and passed the Kansas Nebraska Act to expand slavery · Democrats supported and backed the Dred Scott Decision · Democrats supported and passed Jim Crow Laws · Democrats supported and passed Black Codes · Democrats opposed educating blacks and murdered our teachers · Democrats opposed the Reconstruction Act of 1867 · Democrats opposed the Freedman’s Bureau as it pertained to blacks · Democrats opposed the Emancipation Proclamation · Democrats opposed the 13th , 14th, and 15th Amendments to end slavery, make black citizens and give blacks the right to vote · Democrats opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 · Democrats opposed the Civil Right Act of 1875 and had it overturned by U.S. Supreme Court · Various Democrats opposed the 1957 Civil Rights Acts · Various Democrats argued against the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Acts · Various Democrats argued against the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Acts · Various Democrats voted against the 1972 Equal Employment Opportunity Act · Democrats supported and backed Judge John Ferguson in the case of Plessy v Ferguson · Democrats supported the School Board of Topeka Kansas in the case of Brown v The Board of Education of Topeka Kansas · Southern Democrats opposed desegregation and integration · Southern Democrats orchestrated a plan to destroy the manhood of African Americans. · Democrats started and supported several terrorist organizations including the Ku Klux Klan, an organization dedicated to use any means possible to terrorize African Americans and those who supported African Americans.

—Excerpts in part from Reverend Wayne Perryman

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"Do not keep silent when your own ideas and values are being attacked. ...If a dictatorship ever comes to this country, it will be by the default of those who keep silent. We are still free enough to speak. Do we have time? No one can tell."

— Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

THE WHITE CITIZENS’ COUNCIL It’s important to understand what the White Citizens’ Council and Democratic Party of Mississippi believe and stand for.

In the North, White Citizens’ Council supporters may talk about States Rights and Constitutional government. But in Mississippi it sounds much different. And its main purposes are to prevent Negroes from voting, to maintain white supremacy and racial segregation in all phases of life, and to squash any semblance of Negro or Negro and white organization which is concerned with making changes in the Mississippi pattern of life. The White Citizens’ Councils’ principal techniques are economic intimidation and political control of the state.

Following is a statement from Mississippi Governor Vardaman in 1907, which the White Citizens’ Council includes in its standard literature packet available from the Greenwood headquarters of the Council.

“The Negro should never have been trusted with the ballot. He is different from the white man. He is congenitally unqualified to exercise the most responsible duty of citizenship. He is physically, mentally, morally, racially and eternally the white man’s inferior. There is nothing in the history of his race, nothing in his individual character, nothing in his achievements of the past nor his promise for the future which entitles him to stand side by side with the white man at the ballot box. . . .

“We must repeal the Fifteenth and modify the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

Then we shall be able to recognize in our legislation the Negro’s racial peculiarities, and make laws to fit them.

This would leave the matter precisely as was intended by the father of the Republic.”

At a Harrison County White Citizens’ Council banquet on May 2, 1964, Master of Ceremonies Raymond Butler ended his remarks with the following statement: “Throughout the pages of history there is only one third class race which has been treated like a second class race and complained about it—and that race is the American Nigger.”

Mr. Butler introduced several important Mississippians who had attended the banquet. Most prominent among them was the Chairman of the State Democratic Executive Committee, Bidwell Adam. Mr. Adam is also Chairman of the Harrison County Democratic Executive Committee.

Mr. Butler also introduced the Sheriff of Harrison County, the President of the Gulfport Port Authority and state representative Jim True, a Council member.

The guest speaker at the banquet was General Edwin A. Walker, who was introduced by Medford Evans. Mr. Evans, who holds a PhD. from Yale University is a consultant to the Citizens’ Councils of America. He is also a member of the White Citizens’ Councils of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. Mr. Evans is Secretary of the Louisiana States’ Rights Party, Coordinator of the John Birch Society and was consultant to General Edwin A. Walker at the Senate Preparedness Sub-Committee hearings when General Walker was recalled from Germany.

Mr. Evans said of the White Citizens’ Councils: “It is the only organization which recognize . . . that the key to world revolution, in which we are involved against the revolutionaries, is the racial issue. People are increasingly aware of this due to the racial extremists and our Ambassador of Intelligence in the North: Governor Wallace.”

Of General Walker, Evans said: “The most important individual in the United States is General Edwin A. Walker.”

During his speech, General Walker noted that half the proceeds of the banquet would be sent to the Governor Wallace’s Presidential primary campaigns.

How does the Citizens’ Council operate?

A voter registration drive and boycott of white merchants in Canton this year was met with large numbers of arrests of 197

civil rights workers and local citizens and with economic reprisals against Canton’s Negro residents. The State Senator and two State Representatives from Madison County (in which Canton is located) are White Citizens’ Council members.

They sponsored bills making the distribution of literature concerning the boycott a crime. The white political and economic domination should be contrasted with the population figures: Madison County has 9,267 whites and 23,630 Negroes, according [to] the 1960 U.S. Census.

The Canton Citizens’ Council distributed an open letter to whites in Canton, calling for their support against Negro efforts to change their way of life.

Here are excerpts from that letter: Dear Fellow White Citizens: . . . THE WHITE CITIZENS OF CANTON MUST BE UNIFIED IN ORDER TO SAVE CANTON FROM MASS CONFUSION LEADING TO RACE MIXING. Organization is the key to victory!

The Canton Citizens Council is the gathering place for those white men and women who are determined to keep the white people in all governmental positions and in complete control of our way of life. . . .

Thank you for your support and continued effort to keep Canton, Madison County and Mississippi in the hands of white men and women.

Sincerely, Gus Nobl, President

We have seen some of the approaches of the White Citizens’ Councils. Now let’s look at the position of the Mississippi Democratic Party.

The Mississippi Democratic Party dominates the politics of Mississippi. The Republicans have only one member in the State Legislature and none in the Executive Branch or among the Congressional and Senatorial delegations. And the White Citizens’ Councils dominate the Mississippi Democratic Party.

First let’s look at the platform of the Mississippi Democratic party, adopted in Convention, June 30, 1960.

“We believe in the segregation of the races and are unalterably opposed to repeal or modification of the segregation laws of this State, and we condemn integration and the practice of non-segregation. We unalterably oppose any and all efforts to repeal the miscegenation laws. We believe in the doctrine of interposition as defined in the appropriate resolution adopted by the Legislature of the State of Mississippi at its regular session of 1956. . . .

We believe in the separation of the races in the universities and colleges, in the public schools, in public transportation, in public parks, in public playgrounds, and in all spheres of activity where experience has shown that it is for the best interest of both races that such separation be observed.”

—“Mississippi Power Structure” was written by Jack Minnis and the SNCC research staff. The document is from: SNCC, The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Papers, 1959-1972 (Sanford, NC: Microfilming Corporation of America, 1982) Reel 67, File 339, Page 0746. The original papers are at the King Library and Archives, The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Atlanta, GA

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Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men's skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact.

—Lyndon B. Johnson

CRIME & TERRORISM What is a crime?

A normative definition views crime as deviant behavior that violates prevailing norms – cultural standards prescribing how humans ought to behave normally. This approach considers the complex realities surrounding the concept of crime and seeks to understand how changing social, political, psychological, and economic conditions may affect changing definitions of crime and the form of the legal, law-enforcement, and penal responses made by society.

These structural realities remain fluid and often contentious. For example: as cultures change and the political environment shifts, societies may criminalize or decriminalize certain behaviors, which will directly affect the statistical crime rates, influence the allocation of resources for the enforcement of laws, and (re-)influence the general public opinion.

Similarly, changes in the collection and/or calculation of data on crime may affect the public perceptions of the extent of any given "crime problem". All such adjustments to crime statistics, allied with the experience of people in their everyday lives, shape attitudes on the extent to which the State should use law or social engineering to enforce or encourage any particular social norm. Behavior can be controlled and influenced in many ways without having to resort to the criminal justice system.

Indeed, in those cases where no clear consensus exists on a given norm, the drafting of criminal law by the group in power to prohibit the behavior of another group may seem to some observers an improper limitation of the second group's freedom, and the ordinary members of society have less respect for the law or laws in general — whether the authorities actually enforce the disputed law or not.

What is terrorism?

Violent acts which are intended to create fear (terror), are perpetrated for a religious, political or ideological goal, deliberately target or disregard the safety of non-combatants (civilians), and are committed by non-government agencies.

The use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes.

Terrorism is clearly a threat to human life and represents a certain threat to the social and economic order. It must be combated with all the resources of the state, because it is the role of the state, first and foremost, to provide for the security of its citizens. At the same time, overestimating the impact of terrorism on the society and economy of a given country may result not only in a misallocation of resources, but could provide the terrorists with a psychological victory and enhanced prestige through overestimating their importance and their impact. This enhanced prestige may result in greater recruitment potential, provision of more financial support and the creation of new sources of revenue, provision of greater popular support, enhanced political power, and other benefits for the terrorist organization. Consequently, overestimating the impact of terrorism may prove as dangerous and deadly as underestimating its impact.

—Nadav Morag is Chair of the Political Science Department at the University of Judaismand adjunct professor at the Naval Postgraduate School.

Effects of Deliberate Mass Violence: The rates of PTSD and stress-related problems are greater following events caused by deliberate violence than after natural disasters.

Effects of Ongoing Terrorist Threats: The ongoing threat of new terrorist attacks, especially biological & chemical attacks, causes adverse psychological effects to large percentages of the population. The primary adverse psychological effects are: A. Chronic states of high stress resulting in stress-related health problems; B. Chronic states of low grade suspicion, paranoia, and hyper vigilance; C. Persistent feelings of anxiety, fear, and dread; 199

D. Confusion, and uncertainty.

E. Reduced resiliency, increased depression and demoralization as a result of continuous exposure to the threat of recurrent trauma.

Slavery completely devastated Black Americans.

First of all, the numbers of blacks who didn't even survive the journey by ship from the African coast to America is staggering. Many millions died on the way over from disease, malnutrition, and suffocation.

For those who made it over, slavery destroyed most ties to their native African countries, decimating linguistic and cultural links to Africa. For survival, these Africans had to learn to speak English. Remember: the enslavers took Africans from all over the West Coast of Africa. These Africans were from different tribes, which had their own languages and customs. Just because these people were all Africans didn't mean that they spoke the same languages. English became a common language between these different groups of people who had no other choice.

Slavery completely disrupted the notion of the black family because family members could be sold away from one another at any time. Mothers could be torn away from their infants; husbands could be sold away from their wives without warning.

Slavery made blacks into work animals, or beasts of burden, who were expected to work from sun up to sundown without stopping, and who were sometimes actually bred like cattle or horses to make better, stronger slaves.

Slavery also made black men, women and children extremely vulnerable to brutal violence, the likes of which we cannot even imagine today: rape, murder, torture, lynching's, tar and feathering, whipping, etc.

Slavery also caused severe emotional and psychological trauma, which resulted in oftentimes in self-hatred because blacks were taught that everything black was bad and everything white was good. Some blacks learned to hate the color of their skin, their physical features, and the texture of their hair because they were told over and over that they were ugly because they weren't European.

Slavery kept blacks from being educated in large numbers because it was illegal for slaves to learn to read and write. Slave owners were afraid that educated slaves would find a way to organize themselves and begin a revolution that would end slavery.—Answers.com The social side effects of slavery are these: denial, a sense of inferiority/superiority, not acknowledging the inhumanity of it, injustice, continued cruelty, bigotry, racism, denial of well rounded education, facts excluded from history, denied decent housing and are trapped in inferior neighborhoods and communities, harassed by law enforcement, if they live in nicer neighborhoods or drive nice cars. thinking that people are not still affected by it, bigotry, sexism, misidentification in literature, history, art, science, religion and presumed ignorant or crazy by reason of Skin Color and or gender.

(Freudian Psychology/Darwinism) Slaves had no control of their own bodies and were raped by their slave owners often in front of her husband who could do nothing nor could he defend and protect his children. Many of the children of slave owners by these slave women were bought and sold like cattle. Some of them were Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and his sons!

Children of Africans and other groups of Color are still being placed with those not of their same race or heritage.

African Americans cannot afford to adopt, as they struggle to take care of themselves and family members. It is interesting to note that the same thing was done with African slaves initially by Africans and then was continued in Slavery in the Americas by selling and tearing entire families apart, never to see each other again.

We hear this patronizing banter about tearing Hispanic families apart. For most of them, they are not bought and sold as Slaves! They can at least Know where home is. Most African Americans don't know what tribes they originated from or the areas they came from. For those that remain, America is home and do not speak the languages or know those cultures! Most are Mixed with European and Native American ancestry.

A few People who are descendants of slaves often are "chained in the brain" and cannot let go of living a low lifestyle and not respect themselves or others and their property. Sell themselves and drugs to get ahead, not realizing they are doing a disservice to themselves and their community.

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Those that come from the privileged classes assume they are all in gangs, are prostitutes, criminals and not as good or intelligent as themselves and frequently use other minorities against each other. Often mis-identifying them and claim "They all Look alike". Some people think that these facts are being used as a crutch for not staying out of trouble and are biased against them. These privileged classes think they are using it as a crutch in not accomplishing and being upwardly mobile in society, when there is a "glass ceiling" firmly established and a code of silence in the mistreatment of women and minorities are still in place.

Emotional baggage carried ceaselessly by generation after generation, in time seems to become ingrained into one's sub-conscious. While physical freedom was already obtained with emancipation, liberation from such baggage is psychological and requires recognition of its presence and how, when and why it was infused into us.

These limitations are believed to contribute to a range of negative behavior in individuals and the wider community and many, recognizing the effects, have determined to shed these encumbrances, but many more are unaware.

The truth is that as a people, we have been carrying debilitating baggage for centuries - likely conceived in slavery from the time of our forefathers. This yoke must now be shed.

For more than 250 years, slaves in this hemisphere were traumatized, dehumanized and murdered to an extent unequalled in known history. And for over 100 years since emancipation, the Caribbean and South America were under colonial dominance and the United States under racial segregation. In fact, the post-emancipation period began with the abused, exploited slaves at the foot of the social and economic ladder.

Most research on their descendants has been done in the U.S.A. where, as a racial minority, such research has been largely focused on crime and violence as indicative of both current and future problems to be confronted, rather than on the causative factors, including the psychological impact of sustained trauma over several generations On the other hand, the Jews, although experiencing persecution leading to the unspeakable cruelties of the holocaust during the much shorter period of eight years, have done extensive studies of the psychological impact of the trauma, tracked through succeeding Jewish generations and have noted specific behavioral traces.

Trauma passed on A school of thought has been obtaining increasing support for the concept that the psychological damage from slavery has been passed through succeeding generations to the present.

In Jamaica's case, this would have been absorbed during the over 250 years of slavery, transmitted and further reinfused during the over 100 years since emancipation as 'hewers of wood and drawers of water' for Britain.

They argue that for over two centuries, successive generations experienced the trauma of losing home, family and language. They were degraded, whipped, abused and witnessed the rape and murder of others. For over two centuries, successive generations in response developed means of adopting pre-emptive actions to avoid punishment and being sold. When suffering did occur, they learnt how to survive and overcome until these behavioral reactions became virtually embedded into the psyche and can be traced through the family and community of successive generations. This has resulted generally in a sense of fear, powerlessness and an ingrained sense of unentitlement and lack of self-worth.

They affirm that although universally there are inescapable common patterns of human behaviors, yet extreme trauma- generating experiences over time, such as slavery, can create greater emphasis on these behaviors.

Implements of production Before the slave trade was abolished, slaves were exhaustively used as mere implements of production. Therefore, in maximizing production, more males were brought to Jamaica than females. The breeding of slaves would then have been uneconomic in cost and time and in any event, families as basic socializing units were not the focus, although there were emotional ties.

The system of hard labor, being sold, or death, ensured the habitual absence of males from domestic units, causing 201

considerable strain on the more consistently-present female-heads. Those women tended to develop a 'superwoman' syndrome, taking care of all in need in the community, e.g. mothering orphans or ill males in the community - "Gi this little dinnah to Mass Lennie ovah deh, im no hab nobody" - but never feeling entitled to anything for themselves.

Female slaves neither controlled who they had sex with nor were protected against being raped by white officials or male slaves. The former rationalized that black women were part animal with an animal's appetite for sex - always sexually ready. Female slaves, while de-veloping a shame for their bodies, felt both intense fear and anger. These deepseated emotions were transmitted through daughters in successive generations, though evidenced in opposing ways between stringent modesty and flaunting immodesty characterized by dancehall fashion.

The absence of fathers/husbands meant the scarcity of role models, which tends to become self-perpetuating through the generations, as sons, having no mentors to imitate, fumbled through their own personal experiences. Rather than becoming responsible men, they remained just male, boastfully focusing on the number of children sired [given its commercial importance after the abolition of the slave trade], these being thereby a dual 'badge of honor'. As such, behaviors became entrenched through the generations. They, in turn, generated many problems for individuals, families and communities.

Statistics based on the black community in the U.S.A. affirm that the highest incidence of teenage pregnancies, prison, sex and drug abuse occurs in domestic units without fathers - results many believe to be similar in Jamaica. It is by understanding the influences on our behavior that we are able to be free and fortify ourselves against re-enslavement and its debilitating by-products.

The supervisor saw children as an unproductive budget cost and so they were frequently punished by the parent, even for trivialities, the rationale being 'children are to be seen and not heard' - an implicit limitation imposed on their development through the generations. By punishing the child, some parents were posturing a sense of power in the midst of real powerlessness. This is still a reality today.

Institutionalized Another is the petrifying stare of an adult female slave silently yet unambiguously demanding the child to cease whatever he or she was doing without attracting the overseer's attention. That stare survives today. The overseer's compliment for a child had to be met with deprecating comments, - "Yes Massa, but him stupid" - making the child unattractive for selling, but by insulting instead of encouraging, inculcating into the child uncertainty of worth and ability. Encouragement is still scarce today. As parenting is largely learnt by imitating, so many of these practices become institutionalized.

As the slaves, largely young, strong men, greatly outnumbered the white settlers, the latter vigorously applied a policy of divide and rule over every possible activity - black field slaves against the usually fairer complexioned house slaves, men against women etc. - it is thought inculcating through the succeeding generations today's 'crabs in the barrel' and the feudalistic syndrome in our society.

Our history attests to us being a strong, resilient people, thriving despite oppressive cruelty, yet maintaining our humanity to the point where we have responded kindly to those who were cruel to us. Despite the divide and rule policy we were, when necessary, able to put aside differences, with house slaves for example passing food and information to save the lives of black field slaves. Undergirding all this was a deep spirituality which recognized the reality of a God who sees all humans as equal and from whom they drew comfort, expressed in song through the vestiges of their own culture.

But whether we accept 'trace theory of memory' or 'post-traumatic slave syndrome', there is no denying the continued existence of deviant behavior in our society which, for example, drastically affects our families and which touches all aspects of our lives. Absentee fathers and husbands, how we raise our children, the 'crabs in the barrel' syndrome of selfish disunity etc., none are ends in themselves but rather, generate waves of other major negatives in the society.

These are problems of major importance which urgently require healing.

The research available to date does suggest that many of our behavior patterns can be traced to trauma experienced during the centuries of slavery and colonialism and propose that its findings not be used as an excuse, but as a means of 202

becoming liberated.

Research needed This needed liberation is on three fronts: we need every individual to be acquainted with our culture and true history, generating pride, a sense of self- worth and an entitlement to realizing his/her full potential. At the community level, we need to reorder our education system, relating it to a national plan and at its core, the ability to think and reason - basics to real understanding. At the national level, needed is leadership that understands our path through history with the competence and commitment to facilitate the progress, not to be an obstacle. Needed at all levels is a church which replaces current philosophy for the applied word of God. But a considerable amount of research is still needed in Jamaica (and the United States) to trace and fully understand today's manifestation of the effect of centuries of consistently intense trauma. While we have talented and experienced academics and social workers in the areas of sociology, social psychology and anthropology, substantial funding is crucial. Our people are our most valuable asset; we need them liberated and at their full potential. Perhaps our private sector and the Diaspora will see this as an area not yet fully explored and worthy of their support and enlightened self interest.

—Errol Hewitt, estahewitt@yahoo.com

“If there is no enemy within, the enemy outside can do us no harm.”

—African Proverb

“No one can be integrated, no one can function harmoniously, no one can think clearly and effectively about the deep issues of life who is oblivious to the internal signals, manifested as feelings and emotions, rising from within the self-organism. Most of us have been encouraged to deny and repress who we are, to disown our feelings, to disown important aspects of the self, almost from the day we were born. The road back to selfhood usually entails a good deal of struggle and courage.”

Nathaniel Braden, Ph.D., The Psychology of Self-Esteem

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"Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you."

— Pericles, 430 B.C.

WILLIE RICKS His activities have carried him all over this country and throughout the African World in an effort to eliminate the misery and suffering that peoples of African descent have been subjected to ever since the slave trade depopulated Africa of million of its sons and daughters.

As the Field Secretary for the SNCC, Ricks organized countless sit-ins, marches, demonstrations, and boycotts—all of which ere instrumental in destroying the overt forms of Jim Crow and racial oppression that were so prevalent in the United States less than thirty years ago.

He was introduced to the Civil Rights Movement in 1960 in Chattanooga, TN, at the age of 17. For two years he was active in Chattanooga while working with the local NAACP chapter in In 1961, Ricks was contacted by the SCLC to help voter registration in Chattanooga. Speaking the language of the rural African American community, he became one of the South’s most powerful organizer’s. Ricks continued organizing in Chattanooga until he was asked to come to Georgia by SNCC in 1962. As a result he became a part of SNCC’s first Direct Action Program in Albany, Georgia where he first began to build a longterm working relationship with Martin Luther King, Jr. Ricks continued organizing for SNCC in Georgia, and then in Alabama, Mississippi and throughout the South. While organizing in Mississippi in 1964, he helped to build the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) along with Fannie Lou Hamer and others. Subsequently, Ricks returned to Alabama and helped to organize the Lowndes County Freedom Organization. This organization became known as the Black Panther Party and was the first group inside the movement to defend themselves with guns.

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“While others of my sex devoted themselves to a crusade against the laws that shackle the women of our country, I asserted my individual independence. “ —Victoria Woodhull

STOKELY CARMICHAEL Born in the Port of Spain, Trinidad, on June, 29,1941. In 1960 he joined (SNCC). In 1961 joined the Freedom Riders.

In Jackson, Mississippi, he was arrested and jailed for 49 days in Parchman Penitentiary. He also worked on the Freedom Summer project and in 1966 became chairman of SNCC. He called for "black people in this country to unite, to recognize their heritage, and to build a sense of community". He also advocated that African Americans should form and lead their own organizations and urged a complete rejection of the values of American society. The following year he joined with Charles Hamilton to write the book, Black Power (1967). Some leaders of civil rights groups such as the (NAACP) and (SCLC), rejected Carmichael's ideas and accused him of black racism.

Carmichael also adopted the slogan of "Black is Beautiful" and advocated a mood of black pride and a rejection of white values of style and appearance. This included adopting Afro hairstyles and African forms of dress. He began to criticize Martin Luther King and his ideology of nonviolence. He eventually joined the Black Panther Party where he became "honorary prime minister". When he denounced United States involvement in the Vietnam War, his passport was confiscated and held for ten months. When his passport was returned, he moved with his wife, Miriam Makeba, to Guinea, West Africa, where he wrote the book, Stokely Speaks: Black Power Back to Pan-Africanism (1971). He adopted the name, Kwame Ture, also helped to establish the All-African People's Revolutionary Party and worked as an aide to Guinea's prime minister, Sekou Toure. After the death of Toure in 1984 he was arrested by the new military regime and charged with trying to overthrow the government. However, he only spent three days in prison before being released. He died on cancer on November 15, 1998.

“The first need of a free people is to define their own terms.”

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AFRICAN AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS WOMEN This list is in no way complete, so add a name to the list for the 48th Anniversary of The Right To Vote Movement People’s Almanac.

Amelia Boynton Robinson Annelle Ponder Annie Cooper Barbara Howard Bennie Ruth Johnson Crenshaw Bernice Robinson Bessie Mc Means Betty Shabazz Claudette Colvin Colia Lafayette Coretta Scott King Daisy Bates Diane Nash Dorothy Cotton Dorothy Height Dorothy Tillman Ella Baker Evelyn Turner Fannie Lou Hamer Ida B. Wells JoAnne Bland Margaret Moore Marie Foster Mattie Atkins Maxine Smith Myrlie Evers Williams

Nina Simone Rachael West Rosa Parks Septima Clark Sheyanne Web Vera Piggy Veronica Smith Victoria Gray Adams Vivian Malone Jones

WOMEN STANDING We are women standing

for that circle of strength but we are women

Racing days that weight upon us

fearing that our own power will beat us down

enduring nights that hold our abandon.

that claiming our right to choose will distance

O, we are women fighting

others from us

Refusing to accept lives that bring no gain

Yes we are women praying

We give ourselves our hope

Keeping vigils of our faith learning we can sit

And we are women dreaming

and rest and still know we are women standing

Reaching hands to men and children clasping 206

—Carol Prejean Zippert

Justice that love gives is a surrender, justice that law gives is a punishment.

—Mohandes Gandhi

STATEMENTS OF DISCIPLINE OF NONVIOLENT MOVEMENTS The purpose of this material is to stimulate discussion of the values and practices of the movement. Is the movement the germ of a new society? Would we want a whole society in which people related to each other as they do in the movement?

I. Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Statement of Purpose: We affirm the philosophical or religious ideal of nonviolence as the foundation of our purpose, the presupposition of our faith and the manner of our action. Nonviolence as it grows from the Judeo-Christian tradition seeks a social order of justice permeated by love. Integration of human endeavor represents the crucial first step toward such a society.

Through nonviolence, courage displaces fear; love transforms hate. Acceptance dissipates prejudice; hope ends despair.

Peace dominates war; faith reconciles doubt. Mutual regard cancels enmity. Justice for all overcomes injustice. The redemptive community supersedes systems of gross social immorality.

Love is the central motif of nonviolence. Love is the force by which God binds man to himself and man to man. Such love goes to the extreme; it remains loving and forgiving even in the midst of hostility. It matches the capacity of evil to inflict suffering with even more enduring capacity to absorb evil, all the while persisting in love.

By appealing to conscience and standing on the moral nature of human existence, nonviolence nurtures the atmosphere in which reconciliation and justice become actual possibilities.

II. CORE Rules for Action (excerpts) 1. Investigate the facts carefully before determining whether or not racial injustice exists in a given situation.

2. Seek at all times to understand both the attitude of the person responsible for a policy of racial discrimination, and the social situation which engendered the attitude. Be flexible and creative, showing a willingness to participate in experiments which seem constructive, but being careful not to compromise CORE principles.

3. Make a sincere effort to avoid malice and hatred toward any group or individual.

4. Never use malicious slogans or labels to discredit any opponent.

5. Be willing to admit mistakes.

6. Meet the anger of any individual or group in the spirit of good will and creative reconciliation; submit to assault and do not retaliate in kind either by act or word.

7. Never engage in action in the name of the group except when authorized by the group or one of its action units.

8. When in action obey the orders issued by the authorized leader or spokesman of the project. Criticism (may be referred later) back to the group.

III. Staff decorum suggested for SNCC SW Georgia Project: (1) There will be no consumption of alcoholic beverages.

(2) Men will not be housed with women.

(3) Romantic attachments on the level of ‘girl-boy friend relations’ will not be encouraged within the group.

(4) The staff will go to church regularly.

(5) The group shall have the power of censure.

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IV. Pledge of Freedom Riders imprisoned in Parchman Penitentiary (also discussed in Unit VII): Having, after due consideration, chosen to follow without reservation, the principles of nonviolence, we resolve while in prison: * to practice nonviolence of speech and thought as well as action; * to treat even those who may be our captors as brothers; * to engage in a continual process of cleansing of the mind and body in rededication to our wholesome cause; * to intensify our search for orderly living even when in the midst of chaos.

V. From the Discipline of the San Francisco-to-Moscow Walk: General statement. The purpose of the Walk is to appeal to the mind and conscience of the American people. It is also a part of a nonviolent philosophy to have respect for all human beings and to seek to communicate with them, not to put up barriers between them and ourselves. It is recognized that dress, manners, ways of speaking, etc., of the Team members have a bearing on the impact, emotional, intellectual and spiritual, which they make on those with whom they come into contact on the Walk.

We do not think any committee is in a position to lay down detailed rules on such subjects and in any case sensitivity in our relations to persons and commitment to the project and the way of nonviolence constitute the only true source of right action in these matters.

Specifics Our attitude toward officials will be one of sympathetic understanding of the burdens and responsibilities they carry.

No matter what the circumstances or provocation, we will not call names, make hostile remarks, nor respond with physical violence to acts directed against us.

We will adhere as closely as we are able to the letter and spirit of truth in our spoken and written statements.

We will always try to speak to the best in all men, rather than seeking to exploit their weaknesses to what we may believe is our advantage.

Epilogue: (ask students if this sums up the foregoing): “The revolution is a need of being no longer alone, one man against another; it is an attempt to stand together and be afraid no longer . . .” (Ignazio Silone) —The document is from: NCC, The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Papers, 1959-1972 (Sanford, NC: Microfilming Corporation of America, 1982) Reel 67, File 340, Page 0797.

The original papers are at the King Library and Archives, The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Atlanta, GA

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"We have met the enemy and he is us."

—Walt Kelly

REPRESENTATIVE ADAM CLAYTON POWELL November 29, 1908 - April 4, 1972 Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., was born in New Haven, Connecticut. At the age of six months he moved to New York City with his older sister Blanche and his parents, Mattie Fletcher Schaffer and Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., a Baptist preacher who was assigned to serve as a minister at the century-old Abyssinian Baptist Church in midtown Manhattan. Under his leadership, the congregation grew into one of the largest in the United States. Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., oversaw the move of the church and his family during the black migration to Harlem in the 1920s.

In 1937, Powell succeeded his father as pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church. A popular community leader, he decided to enter the local political scene. During World War II, Powell attacked racial discrimination in the military and on the domestic front. Airing his views on racism through speaking engagements and columns in The People’s Voice, a weekly newspaper he published and edited from 1941 to 1945, the feisty politician attracted national attention. Powell gained additional political experience during the war years by serving on the New York State Office of Price Administration. The creation in 1942 of a new U.S. congressional district that encompassed much of Harlem, along with name recognition and political skill, positioned Powell for a strong bid for a vacant House seat in 1944.

Running on a platform that focused on the advancement of African-American rights through the promotion of fair employment practices and a ban on poll taxes and lynching, Powell received support from two of New York City’s most influential organizations, the Abyssinian Church and the local Democratic machine He was the first African-American Member to represent New York. Powell’s demand for racial equality and his uncompromising demeanor resonated with his Harlem constituents, whose support essentially guaranteed Powell a House seat for the majority of his career. Like many of his future African-American House colleagues, Powell parlayed his strong record of civil rights at the local level into a congressional career.

When Congress convened on January 3, 1945, William Dawson of Illinois, the only other black Member, escorted Powell into the House Chamber for his first day in office. Powell and Dawson remained the only African-American Representatives from 1945 to 1955. In 1947, the Education Committee and the Labor Committee were merged, and Powell remained on the new panel for 11 terms, three of them as chairman. Powell was also a member of the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs from 1955 until 1961.

During his first term, he introduced legislation to extend the civil rights of District of Columbia residents, to outlaw lynching and the poll tax, and to end discrimination in the armed forces, housing, employment, and transportation. He attached an anti-discrimination clause to so many pieces of legislation, the rider became known as the Powell Amendment. Initially considered a symbolic maneuver, his rider was included in the 1964 Civil Rights Act. His commitment to prohibit federal funding to groups advocating unequal treatment of Black Americans earned him the epithet “Mr. Civil Rights”.

Soon after his arrival in Washington, Powell challenged the informal regulations forbidding black Representatives from using Capitol facilities reserved for Members. Following the lead of Oscar De Priest, Powell often took black constituents to the whitesonly House Restaurant and ordered his staff to eat there. Always looking for ways to advance racial equality, Powell also successfully campaigned to desegregate the press galleries.

Powell spent considerable time drawing attention to the plight of poor Africans and Asians. He urged President Dwight D. Eisenhower and other American policymakers to stand firm against colonialism and to pay greater attention to the emerging Third World. To keep the issue in the public eye, Powell made speeches on the House Floor that celebrated the anniversaries of the

independence of nations such as Ghana, Indonesia, and Sierra Leone.

In the late 1950s, Powell began to make headlines outside the political realm. He was indicted for income tax evasion by a federal grand jury in 1958, and the federal government continued to investigate his finances, even though the well publicized 1960 trial ended with a hung jury.

The New York Representative was criticized for taking numerous trips abroad at public expense, payroll discrepancies, and a high level of absenteeism for House votes. Asked to justify his erratic attendance record on the Hill, Powell replied, “You don’t have to be there if you know which calls to make, which buttons to push, which favors to call in.”

When Representative Barden retired after the 86th Congress (1959–1961), Powell, next in seniority, assumed the chairmanship of the Committee on Education and Labor, a position he held for three terms until January 1967. Powell’s service as chairman marked the most productive period of his congressional career. The committee approved more than

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50 measures authorizing federal programs for increases in the minimum wage, education and training for the deaf, school lunches, vocational training, student loans, and standards for wages and work hours as well as aid for elementary and secondary schools and public libraries. “We have been a more productive committee in the last year and a half than the New Deal,” a committee member noted in 1965. “You talk about Roosevelt’s one hundred days—what the hell, look at what we’ve done. It’s been under Powell’s chairmanship and you’ve got to give him credit for that.” The legislation introduced by Powell’s committee helped shape much of the social policy of the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson administrations. A personal supporter of President Kennedy and, especially, President Johnson (Powell once claimed Johnson was “the only man who could bridge the bleeding gap between the North and the South”), Powell benefited from the agendas of both Presidents.

His achievements provided a beacon of hope to millions of Black Americans, his personal foibles left him vulnerable and oddly impassive to obvious consequences. “If the political system could for so long oppress and permit the subjugation of a whole people,” Hamilton wrote, “then why would [Powell] expect, as a spokesman for that people, to be accorded any better treatment?”

The House Democratic Caucus stripped Powell of his committee chairmanship on January 9, 1967 because of his legal problems and unpredictable antics. The full House refused to seat him until the Judiciary Committee completed an investigation. Unimpressed by the House’s mandate to ban their Representative, Harlem’s voters sent Congress a resounding message during the special election to fill Powell’s seat on April 11, 1967. He received 86 percent of the vote but refused to take his seat and spent most of the term on the island of Bimini in the Bahamas. After he was reelected to a 12th term in November 1968, the House voted to deny Powell his seniority and to fine him for misusing payroll and travel finances. The Supreme Court helped vindicate Powell with its June 1969 ruling that the House acted unconstitutionally by excluding him from the 90th Congress.

He lost to Charles Rangel who benefited from redistricting that diluted Powell’s base of power in Harlem by adding to the district a slice of the mostly white Upper West Side. Rangel edged out Powell in the primary by approximately 200 votes to become the Democratic candidate and the eventual Representative for his district.

Diagnosed with cancer in 1969, Powell declined rapidly after he left Congress. He retired as minister of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in 1971 and spent his waning days in Bimini.

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U.S. Constitution - Amendment 13 Amendment 13 - Slavery Abolished 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Proposed 1/31/1865 "Dat man ober dar say dat woman needs to be lifted ober ditches, and to have de best place every whar.

Nobody eber helped me into carriages, or ober mud puddles, or gives me any best place and ar'n't I a woman?

"Look at me! Look at my arm! I have plowed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me-and ar'n't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man (when I could get it), and bear de lash as well-and ar'n't I a woman?

"I have born 13 chilern and seen em mos all sold off into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother's grief, none but Jesus heard-and ar'n't I a woman?"

-Sojourner Truth.

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The goal of slavery was to turn a human being into an animal for the purpose of free labor and the expression of deviant sexual behavior by Caucasian people. —Myeka

THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 169} The federal constitution is, of course, superior to a state constitution, and any amendment conflicting with the federal instrument is invalid.16 The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any State, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Government in America is based upon popular sovereignty. The Federal Constitution was ordained and established by "the people of the United States, "1 and guarantees to each of the several States "a republican form of government." 2 This means, in other words, a representative form.

Of the American system of government, the two leading principles are, first, that laws and Constitutions can be rightfully formed and established only by the people over whom they are to be put in force; and, secondly, that the people being a corporate unit, comprising all the citizens of the state....

All government of right originates from the people, is founded in consent, and instituted for the general good.

Whenever the ends of government are perverted, and public liberty manifestly endangered, and all other means of redress are ineffectual, the people may, and of right ought, to reform the old, or establish a new government. The doctrine of non-resistance against arbitrary power, and oppression, is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind.14 The people here meant are the whole — those who constitute the entire state, male and female citizens, infants and adults.

The voice of the people can be heard only through an authorized form, for, as we have seen, without this authority a part cannot speak for the whole, and this brings us back to a law as the only authority by which the will of the whole people, the body politic called the state, can be collected under an existing lawful government.25

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DR. VIRGIL WOOD He is a church leader, educator, and civil rights activist, who committed much of his life’s work to the struggle for economic and spiritual development among the nation’s disadvantaged. Ordained as a Baptist Minister in his late teens, Wood has served churches for over 50 years in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Virginia. Dr. Wood concluded his Pastoral Ministry in 2005 at Pond Street Baptist after serving for 25 years.

During his Pastorate in Lynchburg, Virginia, he became actively involved with the Civil Rights movement, setting up the Martin Luther King work there as the Lynchburg Improvement Association, a local unit of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). From 1963 to 1970, Wood led the Blue Hill Christian Center, of Boston’s Roxbury community, as its Pastoral Director, and head of the Massachusetts Unit of SCLC. He served on the National Executive Board of the SCLC for the last ten years of Dr. King’s life and work, and coordinated the State of Virginia in the Historic March on Washington April 28, 1963.

Dr. Wood has many notable accomplishments. As an administrator for Opportunities Industrialization Centers of America, a job training organization serving disadvantaged and under skilled Americans of all races, he assisted in founding and establishing 13 OIC centers in eight southern states, and in Boston, Massachusetts. Wood also served as a panelist and member of three White House Conferences under the Johnson, Nixon, and Carter Administrations.

Among Wood’s publications are INTRODUCTION TO BLACK CHURCH ECONOMIC STUDIES, (Sparks Press: Raleigh, N. C., 1974), ORIGININATOR and contributing editor, THE JUBILEE BIBLE, (American Bible Society, New York,) 1999; and author, “IN LOVE WE TRUST: Lessons I Learned From Martin Luther King”, published by Beckham House, Silver Spring, Maryland, February, 2005. http://soulscope.com and http://ajlp.org Dr. Wood received his Doctorate in Education from Harvard University. As an educator, he served as Dean and Director of the African American Institute, Associate Professor of Northeastern University at Boston, a Professor at Virginia Seminary and College in Lynchburg, and a visiting Lecturer, Research and Teaching Fellow at Harvard University.

Martin Luther King and Associates, saw their mission as Redeeming The Soul of America, even as our allies, and friends know well that we are unable to heal the soul of any nation, until we indeed find healing for our own souls, even as Martin did for his own soul, and gave us his final report from Memphis, April 3, 1968. I have been to the mountaintop, and I have seen the promised land, and I may not get there with you, but WE AS A PEPOPLE (a people of the Beloved Community, a people of Love), WILL GET TO THE PROMISED LAND. His Fifty Year Jubilee Legacy (1968-2018), yet calls and beckons us on to—FIGURE IT ALL OUT AND JUST GET IT DONE. Then we can really celebrate his GRAND JUIBLEE, in 2018.

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DR. DOROTHY HEIGHT March 24, 1912—Apri 20, 2010

She was a leader of the African-American and women’s rights movements who was considered both the grande dame of the civil rights era and its unsung heroine. She had a career in civil rights that spanned nearly 80 years, from anti-lynching protests in the early 1930s to the inauguration of President Obama in 2009. That the American social landscape looks as it does today owes in no small part to her work.

• In 1933, Height became a leader of the United Christian Youth Movement of North America in the New Deal era. It was during this period that Height's career as a civil rights advocate began to unfold, as she worked to prevent lynching, desegregate the armed • Height was an organizer and served as Vice President of the United Christian Youth Movement of North America. In this capacity she was chosen as one of 10 American youth delegates to the World Conference on Life and Work of the Churches in Oxford England. Two years later (1939), she was a representative of the YWCA to the World Conference of Christian Youth in Amsterdam Holland.

• 1937 was the turning point in the life of Dorothy Height. She was serving as Assistant Executive Director of the Harlem YWCA when Mary McLeod Bethune, founder and president of the National Council of Negro Women, noticed young Height who was escorting Eleanor Roosevelt into the NCNW meeting. Mrs. Bethune invited Height to join NCNW in her quest for women's rights to full and equal employment, pay and education.

• In 1938, Height was one of 10 American youth invited by Eleanor Roosevelt to spend a weekend at her Hyde Park NY home to plan and prepare for the World Youth Conference to be held at Vassar College.

• Height served in her dual role as YWCA Staff member and NCNW volunteer, integrating her training as a social worker and her commitment to rise above the limitations of race and sex. She rose quickly through the ranks of the YWCA, from the Emma Ransom House in Harlem to the Executive Director of the Phyllis Wheatley Association in Washington D.C. and to the National Staff.

• For thirty-three years - (1944 - 1977), Height served on the staff of the National Board of the YWCA of the USA and held several leadership positions in Public Affairs and Leadership Training and as Director of the National YWCA School for Professional Workers. In 1965, she was inaugurated and became Director of the Center for Racial Justice, a position she held until her retirement.

• In l952, Height served as visiting professor at the University of Delhi, India, in the Delhi School of Social Work, which was founded by the YWCAs of India, Burma and Ceylon. She became known for her internationalism and humanitarianism, and conducted international studies and travel to expand the work of the YWCA. • Height made a study of the training of women's organizations in five African countries: Liberia, Ghana, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Nigeria under the Committee of Correspondence.

• Height was elected National President of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority in 1947 - and served until l956. She carried the Sorority to a new level of organizational development, initiation eligibility and social action throughout her term. Her leadership training skills, social work background and knowledge of volunteerism benefited the Sorority as it moved into a new era of activism on the national and international scene.

• In l957, Height was elected fourth National President of NCNW and served until l998 when she became Chair and President Emerita.

• In 1960, Height was the woman team member leader in the United Civil Rights Leadership along with Martin Luther King, Whitney H. Young, A. Philip Randolph, James Farmer, Roy Wilkins and John Lewis.

• In 1961, while Height was participating in major Civil Rights leadership, she led NCNW to deal with unmet needs among women and their families to combat hunger, develop cooperative pig banks, provided families with community freezers and showers, etc..

• In 1964, after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, Height with Polly Cowan, an NCNW Board Member, organized teams of women of different races and faith as "Wednesdays In Mississippi" to assist in the freedom schools and open communication between women of difference races. The workshops which followed stressed the need for decent housing which became the basis for NCNW in partnership with the Department of Housing and Urban Development to develop Turnkey III Home Ownership for low income families in Gulfport Mississippi.

• In l970, Height directed the series of activities culminating in the YWCA Convention adopting as its "One Imperative" to the elimination of racism.

• In 1970, Height established the Women's Center for Education and Career Advancement in New York City to prepare women for entry level jobs. From this experience in 1975, Height in collaboration with Pace College established a first-time Associate Degree for Professional Studies (AAPS) - now incorporated as a regular professional studies degree course at Pace University.

• In l975, Height participated in the Tribunal at the International Women's Year Conference of the United Nations in Mexico City.

As a result of this experience, NCNW was awarded a grant from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to hold a conference within the conference for women from the United States, African countries, South America, Mexico and the Caribbean. This was followed with a site visit with 50 of the women to visit with rural women in Mississippi.

• Under the auspices of the USAID, Height lectured in South Africa after addressing the National Convention of the Black Women's Federation of South Africa near Johannesburg (1977).

—Excerpted from, http://www.ncnw.org/about/height.htm

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ALABAMA

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THE 1901 ILLEGAL AND UN-AMERICAN CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE OF ALABAMA OFFICIAL PROCEEDINGS OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION OF THE STATE OF ALABAMA May 21st, 1901, To September 3rd, 1901.

JOHN B. KNOX, Esq., President.

FRANK N. JULIAN, Esq., Secretary.

PAT McGAULY, Esq., Official Stenographer MONTGOMERY, ALA., Wednesday, May 22, 1901.

MR. KNOX - Gentlemen of the Convention:

IMPORTANCE OF THE ISSUE In my judgment, the people of Alabama have been called upon to face no more important situation than now confronts us, unless it be when they, in 1861, stirred by the momentous issue of impending conflict between the North and the South, were forced to decide whether they would remain in or withdraw from the Union.

Then, as now, the negro was the prominent factor in the issue.

WHITE SUPREMACY BY LAW But if we would have white supremacy, we must establish it by law--not by force or fraud.

These provisions are justified in law and in morals, because it is said that the negro is not discriminated against on account of his race, but on account of his intellectual and moral condition. There is a difference, it is claimed with great force, between the uneducated white man and the ignorant negro. There is in the white man an inherited capacity for government, which is wholly wanting in the negro. Before the art of reading and writing was known, the ancestors of the Anglo-Saxon had established an orderly system of government, the basis in fact of the one under which we now live. That the negro on the other hand, is descended from a race lowest in intelligence and moral preceptitions of all the races of men. As was remarked by the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Williams vs. Mississippi (170 U.S. 213), quoting the Supreme Court of Mississippi: "Restrained by the Federal Constitution from discriminating against the negro race, the Convention discriminates against its characteristics and the offense to which its criminal members are prone."

As stated by Judge Cooley, the right of suffrage is not a natural right, because it exists where it is allowed to be exercised only for the good of the State--to say that those whose participation in the affairs of the State would endanger and imperil the good of the State have nevertheless, the right to participate, is not only folly in itself, but it is to set the individual above the State.

1901 Constitutional Convention 155 delegates—all white and all male.

Controlled by a coalition of big planters and industrialists.

Note: This constitution still governs the State of Alabama as of August 1, 2011.

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BOOKER T. WASHINGTON SEEKS REPRESENTATION OF NEGROES AT THE 1901 ALABAMA CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION

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“If once [the people] become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions.”

— Thomas Jefferson , 1787

ALABAMA TYPICAL VOTING REGISTRATION PROCESS FOR AN AFRICAN-AMERICAN CITIZEN In the rural counties where most black folk lived, you had to go down to the courthouse to register. The Registrars Office was only open two or three days each month for a couple of hours, usually in the morning or afternoon. You had to take off work — with or without your employer's permission — to register. And if a white employer gave such permission, or failed to fire an African-American who tried to vote, he could be driven out of business by economic retaliation from the Citizens Council.

On the occasional registration day, the county Sheriff and his deputies made it their business to hang around the courthouse to discourage "undesirables" from trying to register. This meant that black women and men had to run a gauntlet of intimidation, insults, and threats just to get to the Registration office. Once in the Registrars Office they faced hatred, humiliation, and harassment from clerks and officials.

The Alabama Application Form and oaths you had to take were four pages long. It was designed to intimidate and threaten. You had to swear that your answers to every single question were true under penalty of perjury. And you knew that the information you entered on the form would be passed on to the Citizens Council and KKK. Many counties used what they called the "voucher system." You had to have someone who was already a registered voter "vouch" for you — under oath and penalty of perjury — that you met the residence qualification to vote. In some counties this "supporting witness" had to accompany you to the registrars office, in others they were interviewed elsewhere. Some counties limited the number of new applicants a registered voter could vouch for in a given year to two or three. Since no white voter would dare vouch for a black applicant, in counties where only a handful of African-Americans were already registered only a few more each year could be added to the rolls. And in counties were no African-Americans were registered, none ever could because they had no one to vouch for them.

In addition to completing the application and swearing the oaths, you had to pass the actual "Literacy Test" itself.

Because the Movement was running "Citizenship Schools" to help folk learn how to fill out the forms and pass the test, Alabama changed the test 4 times in less than two years (1964-1965). At the time of the Selma Voting Rights campaign there were actually 100 different tests in use. In theory, each applicant was supposed to chose one at random from a big loose-leaf binder. In real life, some individual tests were easier than others and the registrar made sure that black applicants got the hardest ones.

A typical test consisted of three-parts. For example: •In "Part A" the applicant was given a selection of the Constitution to read aloud. The registrar could assign you a long complex section filled with legalese and convoluted sentences, or he could tell you to read a simple one or two sentence section. The Registrar marked each word he thought you mispronounced. In some cases you had to orally interpret the section to the registrar's satisfaction. You then had to either copy out by hand a section of the Constitution, or write it down from dictation as the registrar spoke (mumbled) it. White applicants usually were allowed to copy, Black applicants usually had to take dictation. The Registrar then judged whether you were able to "read and write," of if you were "illiterate."

•In Parts "B" and "C," you had to answer two different sets of four written questions each. Part "B" was 4 questions based on the excerpt you had written down. Part "C" consisted of 4 "general knowledge" questions about state and national government.

Your application was then reviewed by the three-member Board of Registrars — often in secret at a later date. They voted on whether or not you passed. It was entirely up to the judgment of the Board whether you passed or failed. If you were white and missed every single question they could still pass you if — in their sole judgment — you were "qualified." If you were Black and got every one correct, they could still flunk you if they considered you "unqualified."

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Your name was published in the local newspaper listing of those who had applied to register. That was to make sure that all of your employers, landlords, mortgage-holders, bank loan officers, business-suppliers, and etc, were kept informed of this important event. And, of course, all of the information on your application was quietly passed under the table to the White Citizens Council and KKK for appropriate action. Their job was to encourage you to withdraw your application, — or withdraw yourself out of the county, — by whatever means they deemed necessary.

Some people ask how anyone, white or black, ever got through this mess to actually register? A good question. As a matter of public record, white registration in Alabama was very high, while black registration was minuscule. In the counties where African-Americans were the majority of the population, white registration was close to, or over, 100% (in some cases as high as 115%), while black registration was zero or close to it.

White registration could be over 100% because when white voters died or moved out of the area their names were kept on the voting list. Oddly enough, many of them (even the dead ones), still somehow managed to actually vote (usually for the incumbent) every election day. This was commonly referred to as the "tombstone vote" and to the local politicians it was a miracle of Southern democracy

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“Declare the past, diagnose the present, foretell the future; practice these acts and make a habit of two things—to help, or at least to do no harm.”

PRELUDE TO BIRMINGHAM

By Reverend James L. Bevel A series of Alabama movements, the Montgomery Boycott (1955), the Birmingham Movement (1963) and the Selma Right-to -Vote Movement (1965) were all blessings that came to black folks as a result of the NAACP being put out of Alabama.

Subsequently, the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) developed local leadership. It was not subject to anyone sitting somewhere pretending to be committed to someone’s freedom only to draw a paycheck. It also precipitated the organizing of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights headed by Fred Shuttlesworth. It also precipitated the organizing of The Dallas County Voters League, headed by Mrs. Amelia Boynton. So local leadership took responsibility based on their faith in G_D, not based on an assumption that they had some allies that were going to protect them or look after their interest in Washington.

Dr. King did a lot of preaching after the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 around the country on nonviolence. So did CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) and The Fellowship of Reconciliation and the American Friends Service Committee or the Quakers. So a lot of information was distributed among students introducing the principle of nonviolence and the person of Mahatma Gandhi. Also in 1957, we had Daisy Bates and the Little Rock Nine and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, headed

by Thurgood Marshall precipitating legal action against schools denying black people access.

The idea of integrated schools had nothing to do with race or going to school with white people, it was about the right of black children to go to accredited schools as in the case of the University of Alabama and Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.

These actions led to the student sit-ins and finally the birth of SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) in the spring of 1960 which led to a lot of nonviolent social action against the practice of racial segregation.

Dr. King was invited into Albany, GA by the ministers as a result of not having comprehensive planning and execution of the nonviolent movement by the SNCC people. I had started working with Dr. King, and was brought into Albany to help reconcile some of the conflict. The Albany, GA movement sort of failed because they attacked police chief Pritchett while there was internal dissension between SNCC, SCLC and the local people. There was no cohesion built that would allow for clear nonviolent strategy and tactical planning, because nobody there who was in charge was clear about the use of nonviolence. There was Wyatt T. Walker for SCLC, Charles Sherrod, Cordell Reagon, and Charles Jones of SNCC, and Dr. King were not clear on the application of nonviolence as an active forward campaign.

During the Montgomery Boycott you basically had people withdrawing they did not have action movement. They had a withdrawal movement. They did not confront on a consistent basis with tactical confrontation, they simply withdrew. SNCC introduced another dimension which was tactical confrontation. So King and the movement in Albany fizzled out.

The next thing that happened was that at the spring convention, Fred Shuttlesworth, an organizer of SCLC and its secretary invited SCLC to Birmingham. He was one of the progressive ministers in the 60’s who had moved to Birmingham from 226

Selma. He had pastured The First Baptist Church in Selma, AL. He had headed the Alabama Christian League since 1955 so even before King started his boycott. Fred had been organizing against bus segregation, discrimination downtown, segregated schools and had been carrying on nonviolent guerilla warfare tactics in Alabama all the time. So they had a root. And experienced housing and churches being bombed in Birmingham and he still held the fort. So he invited SCLC to come in and to join with him to make a joint effort to make a breakthrough in Birmingham.

So after Albany, King, Bevel and SCLC made the decision to move to Birmingham to take that on as a joint SCLC and Alabama Christian project. Birmingham was one of the most segregated cities anywhere, harsh, small, and filled with intimidation. Homes had been bombed, nothing was there. It was just like black people stone aging. You couldn’t walk on the sidewalks, the children couldn’t use the library, they had double standards, double water fountains, and no black employment in stores downtown. Blacks could just indiscriminately get beat up by the police on the street. It was just a horrible town. So we moved in during the early spring of 1963, then Wyatt Walker and others started doing some preliminary work.

One of the reasons I recommended the March on Washington was that we didn’t need to keep going through these brush fires every time we go from town to town and need to use the bathroom or eat or sleep. So we needed a national law, so we needed to create an action and a movement sufficient enough to move the whole nation, the whole Congress, and get all the people involved. To precipitate massive movements around the south and massive action so that we could get a federal law that wiped out that aspect of segregation.

So the Birmingham movement achieved that objective because we thought in those terms. That is what we planned our actions to accomplish.

—Transcript from an interview with Helen L. Bevel

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BIRMINGHAM, AL The Children’s March

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This Birmingham, AL tragedy was the impetus for Reverend James L. Bevel and his former wife Diane Nash writing the proposal that led to the Nonviolent Right To Vote Movement in Selma, AL.

Bombing-ham, Alabama JAMES BEVEL: My first reaction when I heard about the bombing of the church was anger, rage. The bombing felt almost like a personal insult; the reactionary forces of the Klan, or whoever, were trying to teach us a lesson. Then I got information to the effect that some of the guys involved in it were from the sheriff's department, and then I was thinking about killing people. I had to do a lot of thinking about that. That's when I started thinking about what would be the appropriate response to that kind of situation. I think it's natural for human beings to get angry when there's an intense violation, and I think if a person doesn't have the capacity to get angry, they don't have the capacity to think through fully the implications of that which causes them to be angry....

DIANE NASH: My former husband and I, Jim Bevel, cried when we heard about the bombing, because in many ways we felt like our own children had been killed. We knew that the activity of the civil rights movement had been involved in generating a kind of energy that brought out this kind of hostility. We decided that we would do something about it, and we said that we had two options. First, we felt confident that if we tried, we could find out who had done it, and we could make sure they got killed. We considered that as a real option. The second option was that we felt that if blacks in Alabama had the right to vote, they could protect black children. We deliberately made a choice, and chose the second option....

On September 15, 1964, Ku Klux Klan members bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham and killed four young girls who were attending Sunday School. They were Addie Mae Collins, Carol Denise McNair and Cynthia Diane Wesley.

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“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment!"

—Anonymous

RICHARD “DICK” GREGORY October 12, 1932—Present Dick Gregory was ready to go to jail in Birmingham, Alabama. May 6, 1963, the day more nonviolent civil rights protestors were arrested than any other day in American history. As demonstrators took on a city with a reputation as "the Bastille of segregation."

At the height of the Birmingham protests, Gregory gave confidential advice to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy on how the Kennedy administration could work with civil rights leaders. It led to a secret New York meeting between RFK and a group of African American leaders, artists, and others organized by author James Baldwin.3 Gregory remained active in politics and civil rights. In 1967, he fasted for forty days to protest the Vietnam War. He also ran for mayor of Chicago and the U.S. presidency. In the 1970s and 1980s, Gregory became a widely quoted advocate of dieting and nutrition.

Excerpt from his speech at St. John's Baptist Church, Birmingham, AL, May 20, 1963 I'll tell you one thing, it sure is nice being out of that prison over there. Lot of people asked me when I went back to Chicago last night, they said, "Well how are the Negroes in Birmingham taking it? What did they act like? What did they look like?" I said, "Man, I got off a plane at 10:30, arrived at the motel at 11 and by one o'clock I was in jail." [laughter] So I know what you all mean when you refer to the good old days. I asked one guy, "What is the 'good old days'?" and he said, "10 B.C. and 15 B.C." And I said, "Baby, you're not that old" and he said, "Nah, I mean 10, 15 years before Bull Connor got here." [laughter] Man they had so many Negroes in jail over there, the day I was there, when you looked out the window and see one of them walking around free, you knew he was a tourist. I got back to Chicago last night and a guy said, "Well how would you describe the prison scene?" and I said, "Baby, just wall to wall us." [laughter] So I don't know, really, when you stop to think about it. That was some mighty horrible food they were giving us over there. First couple of days, it taste bad and look bad and after that it tasted like home cooking. [laughter] Matter of fact, it got so good the third day it got so good that I asked one of the guards for the recipe. [laughter] Of course you know, really, I don't mind going to jail myself, I just hate to see Martin Luther King in jail. For various reasons: one, when the final day get here, he is going to have a hard time trying to explain to the boss upstairs how he spent more time in jail than he did in the pulpit. [laughter] When I read in the paper in Chicago that they had him in jail on Good Friday, I said that's good. And I was praying and hoping when they put him in Good Friday they had checked back there Easter Sunday morning and he would have been gone. That would have shook up a lot of people, wouldn't it? [laughter] I don't know, when you stop and think about it, I guess little by little when you look around, it kind of looks like we're doing alright. I read in the paper not too long ago, they picked the first Negro astronaut. That shows you so much pressure is being put on Washington, these cats just reach back and they trying to pacify us real quickly. A lot of people was happy that they had the first Negro astronaut, well I'll be honest with you, not myself. I was kind of hoping we'd get a Negro airline pilot first. They didn't give us a Negro airline pilot; they gave us a Negro astronaut. You realize that we can jump from back of the bus to the moon? [laughter] That's about the size of it. I don't know why this cat let 'em trick him into volunteering for that space job, they not even ready for a Negro astronaut. You have never heard of no dehydrated pig's feet. I never would have let them give me that job, myself. No, I wouldn't, that's one job I don't think I could take. Just my luck, they'd put me in one of them rockets and blast it off, we'd land on Mars somewhere. A cat'd walk up to me with 27 heads, 59 jaws, 19 lips, 47 legs and look at me and say, "I don't want you marrying my daughter neither." Oh I'd have to cut him.

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“Not voting is just as bad as voting for evil men because it allows evil to succeed by default. Take a stand with people who support what you really support. Stop cowering and merely complaining about America's pending demise and act in such a way as to truly make a difference.”

—-Tom Ambrose

DOROTHY TILLMAN Former Chicago Alderman Dorothy Wright Tillman is driven by a passion to improve the plight of African Americans.

Born on May 12, 1947, in Montgomery, Alabama, Tillman joined the civil rights movement at age sixteen. As a trainee and a field staff organizer for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), she fought for rights and political consciousness. She marched with King and was one of the first SCLC organizers to cross the Edmund-Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on the infamous Bloody Sunday, a turning point in the battle to ensure the right to vote for African American citizens. While in Chicago with King in 1965 to fight for the open housing plight, she met and married musician Jimmy Lee Tillman, with whom she has five children. In 1985, Tillman became the first woman to serve as alderman of Chicago's Third Ward and the only female elected official in the United States who worked on King's staff. As a major political figure in Chicago, she has been highly involved in numerous community-building activities, especially projects related to issues of waning inner-city education, housing needs and homelessness. Tillman has also been an extremely influential player in the movement for slave reparations.

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THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON August 28, 1963 The Caller: Reverend James L. Bevel The Organizer: Bayard Rustin The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom took place in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963. Attended by some 250,000 people, it was the largest demonstration ever seen in the nation's capital, and one of the first to have extensive television coverage.

1963 was noted for racial unrest and civil rights demonstrations. Nationwide outrage was sparked by media coverage of police actions in Birmingham, Alabama, where attack dogs and fire hoses were turned against protestors, many of whom were in their early teens or younger. Martin Luther King, Jr., was arrested and jailed during these protests, writing his famous "Letter From Birmingham City Jail," which advocates civil disobedience against unjust laws. Dozens of additional demonstrations took place across the country, from California to New York, culminating in the March on Washington. President Kennedy backed a Civil Rights Act, which was stalled in Congress by the summer.

The March on Washington represented a coalition of several civil rights organizations, all of which generally had different approaches and different agendas. The "Big Six" organizers were James Farmer, of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE); Martin Luther King, Jr., of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC); John Lewis, of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC); A. Philip Randolph, of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; Roy Wilkins, of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); and Whitney Young, Jr., of the National Urban League.

The stated demands of the march were the passage of meaningful civil rights legislation; the elimination of racial segregation in public schools; protection for demonstrators against police brutality; a major public-works program to provide jobs; the passage of a law prohibiting racial discrimination in public and private hiring; a $2 an hour minimum wage; and self-government for the District of Columbia, which had a black majority.

March organizers themselves disagreed over the purpose of the march. The NAACP and Urban League saw it as a gesture of support for a civil rights bill that had been introduced by the Kennedy Administration. Randolph, King, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) saw it as a way of raising both civil rights and economic issues to national attention beyond the Kennedy bill. Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) saw it as a way of challenging and condemning the Kennedy administration's inaction and lack of support for civil rights for African Americans.

President Kennedy originally discouraged the march, for fear that it might make the legislature vote against civil rights laws in reaction to a perceived threat. Once it became clear that the march would go on, however, he supported it.

Outright opposition came from two sides. White supremacist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, were obviously not in favor of any event supporting racial equality. On the other hand, the march was also condemned by some civil rights activists who felt it presented an inaccurate, sanitized pageant of racial harmony; Malcolm X called it the "Farce on Washington," and members of the Nation of Islam who attended the march faced a temporary suspension.

Nobody was sure how many people would turn up for the demonstration in Washington, D.C. Some travelling from the South were harrassed and threatened. But on August 28, 1963, an estimated quarter of a million people—about a quarter of whom were white—marched from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial, in what turned out to be both a protest and a communal celebration. The heavy police presence turned out to be unnecessary, as the march was noted for its civility and peacefulness. The march was extensively covered by the media, with live international television coverage.

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On August 28, more than 2,000 buses, 21 special trains, 10 chartered airliners, and uncounted cars converged on Washington. All regularly scheduled planes, trains, and buses were also filled to capacity.

The march began at the Washington Monument and ended at the Lincoln Memorial with a program of music and speakers. The march failed to start on time because its leaders were meeting with members of Congress. To the leaders' surprise, the assembled group began to march from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial without them.

The 1963 March also spurred anniversary marches that occur every five years, with the 20th and 25th being some of the most well known. The 25th Anniversary theme was "We Still have a Dream...Jobs*Peace*Freedom."

The two most noteable speeches came from John Lewis and Martin Luther King, Jr. John Lewis represented the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a younger, more radical group than King's. The speech he planned to give, circulated beforehand, was objected to by other participants; it called Kennedy's civil rights bill "too little, too late," asked "which side is the federal government on?" and declared that they would march "through the Heart of Dixie, the way Sherman did" and "burn Jim Crow to the ground窶馬onviolently." In the end, he agreed to tone down the more inflammatory portions of his speech, but even the revised version was the most controversial of the day, stating: The revolution is at hand, and we must free ourselves of the chains of political and economic slavery. The nonviolent revolution is saying, "We will not wait for the courts to act, for we have been waiting hundreds of years. We will not wait for the President, nor the Justice Department, nor Congress, but we will take matters into our own hands, and create a great source of power, outside of any national structure that could and would assure us victory." For those who have said, "Be patient and wait!" we must say, "Patience is a dirty and nasty word." We cannot be patient, we do not want to be free gradually, we want our freedom, and we want it now. We cannot depend on any political party, for the Democrats and the Republicans have betrayed the basic principles of the Declaration of Independence.

Dr. King's speech is one of the most famous speeches in American history.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last."

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MONUMENT TO A PEOPLE

The Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Memeorial 48 years from the March On Washington, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s monument stands in the national mall, joining memorials to former presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. His granite likeness is part of a national monument, a memorial to his life and his work, and a commemoration the speech he gave August 28, 1963, which is recited by school children around the country – and around the world. “I have a dream…” is as much a part of our country’s life as “Four score and seven years ago…” and “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

More than a monument to a man, it is a monument to a people who struggled against insurmountable odds to obtain the victory of freedom, justice and liberty for all. Dr. King is a representative of the people, a people who bled and died, who erred and fell short, but dispite the obstacles overcame and continue to overcome.

The memorial was a long time in the making, the mid-1980s brainchild of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. During the fall of 1996, the Senate and House approved joint resolutions authorizing the building of the memorial honoring the civil rights leader. President Bill Clinton signed the resolution in 1998, and in 1999 the King Memorial Foundation began accepting design proposals. The monument was sculpted by China’s famed Lei Yixin (a 57-year-old master from Changsha in the Hunan province) and then shipped to America. Harry S. Johnson Sr., is the president and CEO of the MLK Project Foundation and a former president of the fraternity.

The design of the 30-foot sculpture took form from a line in one of King’s speeches: “With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.” The monument sculpture depicts King emerging from the mountain of despair and thus forming “a stone of hope”—his own monumental image. However, as in the nation itself, the monument evidences the slow recognition of African American contributions.

A survey of monuments in the nation’s capital turned up only four others depicting African Americans solely or grouped with subjects from other ethnicities: • The Emancipation Memorial • The Mary McLeod Bethune Memorial • The Three Soldiers • The African American Civil War Memorial The history of the memorial began in January 1984, when a group of “brothers” from Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, led by George Sealey, took a proposal to build a national memorial to their fellow Alpha, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to the organization’s board of directors. It was approved, followed two years later by then-President Bill Clinton signing congressional legislation authorizing the memorial. In 1998 and 1999, the National Capital Planning Commission approved a location on the National Mall.

These actions were followed by the release of a series of fundraising messages that involved personalities such as Morgan Freeman, Harry Belafonte and Al Roker. They kicked off an effort that would stretch from 2005 through today.

Calling on corporate America, the faith-based community, children and college students, as well as utilizing auctions, special dinners and through individual donations, the monument foundation raised $114 million of the $120 million needed to build the memorial.

The centerpiece of the monument is called The Stone of Hope, and depicts Dr. King emerging from a mountain of granite with his arms crossed. It is inscribed with key quotes from the civil rights leader set on a four-acre plot of land located near the Tidal Basin between the Jefferson and Lincoln memorials.

Two stones that are parted and one stone wedge pushing forward toward the horizon as if departed from a single boulder 234

form the entrance to the memorial and are called the Mountain of Despair. Once through the entry point, visitors emerge onto a plaza.

Fourteen of Dr. King’s most notable quotes are engraved on a 450-foot crescent-shaped granite Wall of Inscription. They represent the civil rights leader’s most universal and timeless messages of justice, democracy, hope and love.

Crape myrtle trees and 182 Yoshino cherry blossoms as well as additional American elm trees have been included as part of the landscaping.

The goal of the design, as explained by Harry Johnson, “is for you to be invited in. The second goal is that, as you pass through what is called the Mountain of Despair — two large boulders of granite, 30 feet tall — it appears as though you're going through the struggle of the civil rights movement. Once you're on the other side, you see a crescent-shaped wall with 14 quotations from Dr. King. When you walk out toward the Tidal Basin, you see the third stone — one that looks like it was carved out of the Mountain of Despair. And Dr. King is standing there, and that is called the Stone of Hope. The ultimate goal is for visitors to visit, see and feel what Dr. King meant to this country and, indeed, the world.”

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THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT 1964 “The Negro baby born in America today, regardless of the section of the nation in which he is born, has about one-half as much chance of completing high school as a white baby born in the same place on the same day; one third as much chance of completing college; one third as much chance of becoming a professional man; twice as much chance of becoming unemployed; about oneseventh as much chance of earning $10,000 a year; a life expectancy which is seven years shorter; and the prospects of earning only half as much.”

—President John F. Kennedy

The 1964 Civil Rights Act made racial discrimination in public places, such as theaters, restaurants and hotels, illegal. It also required employers to provide equal employment opportunities. Projects involving federal funds could now be cut off if there was evidence of discriminated based on color, race or national origin.

The Civil Rights Act also attempted to deal with the problem of African Americans being denied the vote in the Deep South. The legislation stated that uniform standards must prevail for establishing the right to vote. Schooling to sixth grade constituted legal proof of literacy and the attorney general was given power to initiate legal action in any area where he found a pattern of resistance to the law.

The seeds of the 1964 Act were sown in Kennedy’s presidency. Johnson believed that he owed it to Kennedy’s life to push through this act especially as he was not an elected president. The civil rights bill’s success in passing Congress owed much to the murder of Kennedy. How could anybody be so unpatriotic? Johnson simply appealed to the nation still traumatized by Kennedy’s murder. To win over the Southern hard-liners, Johnson told them he would not allow the bill to tolerate anybody using it as a lever to have an easy life regardless of their color. By January 1964, public opinion had started to change - 68% now supported a meaningful civil rights act. President Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act in July of that year.

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Many Southerners were horrified by the extent of the act. Johnson probably only got away with the act because he was from Texas. Ironically, the African American community were most vocal in criticizing the act. There were riots by African Americans in north-eastern cities because from their point of view, the act did not go far enough and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (a predominantly Black political party) demanded seats at the Democratic Party Convention to be held in Atlantic City as they believed that they were more representative of the people who lived in Mississippi than the politicians who would usually have attended such conventions. Johnson was dismayed at this lack of public support among the African American community.

Regardless of these protests from both sides of society, many historians now believe that the 1964 Act was of major importance to America’s political and social development. The act has been called Johnson’s greatest achievement. He constantly referred to the morality of what he was doing and made constant reference to the immorality of the social structure within America that tolerated any form of discrimination. Johnson’s desire, regardless of his background, was to advance America’s society and he saw the 1964 Civil Rights Act as the way forward.

Major Features of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 Title I Barred unequal application of voter registration requirements, but did not abolish literacy tests sometimes used to disqualify African Americans and poor white voters.

Title II Outlawed discrimination in hotels, motels, restaurants, theaters, and all other public accommodations engaged in interstate commerce; exempted private clubs without defining "private," thereby allowing a loophole.

Title III Encouraged the desegregation of public schools and authorized the U. S. Attorney General to file suits to force desegregation, but did not authorize busing as a means to overcome segregation based on residence.

Title IV Authorized but did not require withdrawal of federal funds from programs which practiced discrimination.

Title V Outlawed discrimination in employment in any business exceeding twenty five people and creates an Equal Employment Opportunities Commission to review complaints, although it lacked meaningful enforcement powers.

On July 2, 1964, President Johnson spoke the following words before signing the bill: We believe that all men are created equal -- yet many are denied equal treatment. We believe that all men have certain inalienable rights. We believe that all men are entitled to the blessings of liberty -- yet millions are being deprived of those blessings, not because of their own failures, but because of the color of their skins.

The reasons are deeply embedded in history and tradition and the nature of man. We can understand without rancor or hatred how all this happens. But it cannot continue. Our Constitution, the foundation of our Republic, forbids it. The principles of our freedom forbid it. Morality forbids it. And the law I sign tonight forbids it....

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“When my heart is at peace, the world is at peace.”

—Chinese Proverb

CORETTA SCOTT KING April 27, 1927—January 30, 2006

She was born in Heiberger, Alabama and raised on the farm of her parents Bernice McMurry Scott, and Obadiah Scott, in Perry County, Alabama, into a family that had owned land since the Civil War. Her parents, were truck farmers. Even though the Scotts were better off financially than most Blacks in the area, life for them and their three children was difficult. Scott, along with her mother and sister, tended the family garden and crops, fed the chickens and hogs, and milked the cows. She helped supplement the family income by hiring out to hoe and pick cotton. She was exposed at an early age to the injustices of life in a segregated society. She walked five miles a day to attend the one-room Crossroad School in Marion, Alabama, while the white students rode buses to an all-white school closer by. Young Coretta excelled at her studies, particularly music, and was valedictorian of her graduating class at Lincoln High School. She graduated in 1945 and received a scholarship to Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

In 1945 Scott graduated as valedictorian of her high school class and won a partial scholarship to Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Eager to leave southern racial hostility, Coretta Scott enrolled at Antioch only to discover that prejudice and racism were very much alive there too. Being the first Black to major in elementary education at Antioch created problems for the Scott. Such a major required a twoyear internship - one year in the Antioch private elementary school and the other in the Ohio public schools. The year at the Antioch school where Scott taught music went well. The Yellow Springs School Board, however, refused to allow Scott to teach in its school system. The student body was integrated but the faculty was white. Given the option of going to Xenia, Ohio, and teaching in an all-Black school or remaining at the Antioch private school for a second year, she chose the latter.

Discrimination made Coretta more determined than ever. She joined the campus chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a race relations committee, and a civil liberties committee. According to the young college student, "I was active on all of them. From the first, I had been determined to get ahead, not just for myself, but to do something for my people and for all people. I took to my heart the words of Horace Mann, 'Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”

Coretta Scott realized at Antioch that she wanted to continue in music and to develop her voice to its fullest potential.

She subsequently enrolled in the New England Conservatory in Boston, graduating in 1954 with a bachelor's degree in music. It was in Boston that she met Martin Luther King, Jr. They were married on June 18, 1953. Her decision to marry the young minister meant giving up her career as a performing concert artist.

The family moved to Montgomery, Alabama, where Dr. King was to pastor the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, and it was here that they were thrust into the leadership of the civil rights movement. She was vehemently against the war in Vietnam and convinced her husband to speak out against it. After Dr. King's assassination on April 4, 1968, Coretta King established the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta; she also supported the establishment of a national holiday in honor of her husband, an idea which became law in 1986. Coretta and Martin Luther King had four children: 238

Yolanda (born 1955), Martin Luther III (b. 1957), Dexter (b. 1961), and Bernice (1963).

King had always spoken out for human rights and freedom for all people. She became involved in opposition of the death penalty. Although King has lost her husband and mother-in-law to gunmen, she cannot accept the judgment that their killers deserve to be executed. She believes the death penalty continues the cycle of violence and destroys all hope for a decent society. Another of King's passions is the International Peace Movement. In 1985, she was arrested while protesting the South African Government's policy of racial segregation known as apartheid.

In 1981, The King Center, the first institution built in memory of an African American leader, opened to the public. The Center is housed in the Freedom Hall complex encircling Dr. King's tomb in Atlanta, Georgia. It is part of a 23-acre national historic site that also includes Dr. King's birthplace and the Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he and his father both preached. The King Center Library and Archives houses the largest collection of documents from the Civil Rights era.

The Center receives over one million visitors a year, and has trained tens of thousands of students, teachers, community leaders and administrators in Dr. King's philosophy and strategy of nonviolence through seminars, workshops and training programs.

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Selma, Alabama The Birthplace of Democracy

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Straws were drawn to determine who would lead the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Route __ to Montgomery, AL John Lewis won the draw. That night on the six o’clock news people throughout the United States and the world witnessed the beating of marchers by State Troopers in Selma, AL. The Edmund Pettus Bridge became history., and yearly a re-enactment is held in Selma to commemorate those who suffered that day of March 7, 1965.

SELMA, AL

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SELMA, ALABAMA “The Capital of Democracy” Selma is a city in and the county seat of Dallas County, Alabama, United States, located on the banks of the Alabama River. The population was 20,512 at the 2000 census. The city is best known for the 1965 Selma Voting Rights Movement and its Selma to Montgomery marches, three civil rights marches that began in the city.

Prior to settlement by European peoples, the area of present-day Selma was occupied by the Native American people known as the Muscogee (also known as the Creek).

Selma was incorporated in 1820. The city was planned and named by future Vice President of the United States William R. King. The name, meaning "high seat" or "throne", came from the Ossianic poem The Songs of Selma. Selma became the seat of Dallas County in 1866 During the Civil War, Selma was one of the South's main military manufacturing centers, producing tons of supplies and munitions, and turning out Confederate warships such as the Ironclad warship Tennessee. The Selma iron works and foundry was considered the second most important source of weaponry for the South, after the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, Virginia. This strategic concentration of manufacturing capabilities eventually made Selma a target of Union raids into Alabama late in the Civil War. Before the Freedom Movement, all public facilities were strictly segregated. Blacks who attempted to eat at "whiteonly" lunch counters or sit in the downstairs "white" section of the movie theater were beaten and arrested. More than half of the city's residents were black, but only one percent were registered to vote. Blacks were prevented from registering to vote by economic retaliation organized by the White Citizens' Council, Ku Klux Klan violence, police repression, and the literacy test. To discourage voter registration, the registration board only opened doors for registration two days a month, arrived late, and took long lunches.

In early 1963, Bernard Lafayette and Colia Lafayette of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) began organizing in Selma alongside local civil rights leaders Sam, Amelia, and Bruce Boynton, Rev. L.L. Anderson of Tabernacle Baptist Church, J.L. Chestnut (Selma's first Black attorney), SCLC Citizenship School teacher Marie Foster, public school teacher Marie Moore, and others active with the Dallas County Voters League (DCVL).

Against fierce opposition from Dallas County Sheriff Jim Clark and his volunteer posse, voter registration and desegregation efforts continued and expanded during 1963 and the first part of 1964. Defying intimidation, economic retaliation, arrests, firings, and beatings, an ever increasing number of Dallas County blacks attempted to register to vote, but few were able to do so. In the summer of 1964, a sweeping injunction issued by local Judge James Hare barred any gathering of three or more people under sponsorship of SNCC, SCLC, or DCVL, or with the involvement of 41 named civil rights leaders. This injunction temporarily halted civil rights activity until Dr. King defied it by speaking at Brown Chapel on January 2, 1965.

Commencing in January 1965, SCLC and SNCC initiated a revived Voting Rights Campaign designed to focus national attention on the systematic denial of black voting rights in Alabama, and particularly Selma. After numerous attempts by blacks to register, over 3,000 arrests, police violence, and economic retaliation, the campaign culminated in the Selma to Montgomery marches--initiated and organized by SCLC's Director of Direct Action, James Bevel--which represented the political and emotional peak of the modern civil rights movement.

On March 7, 1965, known as "Bloody Sunday", approximately 600 civil rights marchers departed Selma on U.S. Highway 80, heading east. They reached the Edmund Pettus Bridge, only six blocks away, before being met by state troopers and local sheriff's deputies, who attacked them, using tear gas and billy clubs, and drove them back to Selma.

Two days after the march, on March 9, 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr. led a "symbolic" march to the bridge. He and other civil rights leaders attempted to get court protection of a third, larger-scale march from Selma to Montgomery, the site of the state capital. Frank Minis Johnson, Jr., the Federal District Court Judge for the area, decided in favor of the demonstrators.

On March 21, 1965, a Sunday, approximately 3,200 marchers departed for Montgomery. They walked 12 miles per day, and slept in nearby fields. By the time they reached the capitol, four days later on March 25, their strength had swelled to around 25,000 people.

—Source, Wikepedia

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“God is the author of the best future we can imagine. God is all the outcroppings of good in our past that allows us to experience the blessings of our present.”

—Sherrilynn Bevel-Tillman

COURAGEOUS EIGHT

L-R Ernest Doyle, Henry Shamon, Marie Foster, F.D. Reese and James Gildersleeve. Not pictures Amelia Boynton, J. D. Hunter and Ulysses Blackmon

In July 1964, Dallas County Circuit Judge James Hare issued an injunction barring black people from meeting in groups of three or more to discuss civil rights. The intention was to stop these men and women from testing the Public Accommodation Act and from seeking other rights. "The injunction really put a damper on the movement," said Dr. Reese. "But the eight of us kept meeting, trying to figure out how to revive the movement." There were eight. Let us look briefly at these eight leaders, these six men and two women: Marie Foster, a widow working in the dental office of her brother; J. D. Hunter, an agent for a Black insurance company and minister; the Rev. Henry Shannon, Jr., a barber and minister; Mrs. Amelia Boynton, who owned an insurance agency; Earnest L. Doyle, an interior decorator of note; Ulysses Blackmon, a teacher at the Lutheran Church School; James Gildersleeve, a principal at Lutheran Church School; the Rev. F. D. Reese, who taught for the Selma City School System and pastored two churches. They were all family folks, each a parent with a lot to lose in addition to their lives.

The Dallas County Voters League; was formed in the 1930’s, by Sam and Amelia Boynton, to try to register African Americans in our county (Dallas County) to vote. I went to meetings with Grandmother, I would sit at her feet while they strategized; the children internalized what they were talking about, you can’t just block it out; it’s like learning the song off the radio, you never see the lyrics but you know every word of the song.

The Dallas County Voters League worked for 30 years before it got any media attention. For those of you who try to make change, you know media is one of the main ingredients to any change, without it no one knows your struggle – there’s no one to be outraged. For example, when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. came to Selma in 1965, the media came; he brought money, motivation and the media – key ingredients. But prior to that, no one knew, but men and women were marching in Selma since the 1930s. They were going to jail since the 1930s in Selma. The folks here even wrote the letter that invited Dr. King to Selma; he didn’t show up by accident, he was invited here.

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Via mass criminalization, unreconstructed slavers restored slavery under the guise of jails, and massively disenfranchise freedmen's descendants.

—Reverend John G. Fee

MOTHER OF THE ALABAMA RIGHT TO VOTE MOVEMENT AMELIA BOYNTON August 18, 1911 - Present

Amelia Robinson, a living legend, was born in Georgia, in a family of ten children. Her father was a building contractor. She traces her history on both sides back to a mixture of African slaves, Cherokee Indians, and German and other European nobility.

The account of the life of this remarkable woman is given in the “Bridge Across Jordan,” published by the Schiller Institute in July 1991. “Bridge Across Jordan” is the account of Mrs. Robinson's life-long struggle for civil rights and human rights for citizens of all colors. Amelia Boynton Robinson is perhaps best known as the woman at the front of the march who was gassed, beaten, and left for dead on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, during the “Bloody Sunday” march on March 7, 1965 to Montgomery, AL, which quickly led to the mushrooming of the civil rights movement into an international mass movement.

But Amelia Robinson's efforts for justice and civil rights began long before 1965. From the 1930s, she and her husband, S.W. Boynton, fought for voting rights and property ownership for African-Americans in the poorest rural areas of AL, where she worked as Home Demonstration Agent for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and he as County Agent. Bill Boynton gave his life for this cause, dying young of a heart attack induced by the years of hard labor and harassment his work brought on. His death led to Bernard Lafayette setting the first mass meeting to honor his work with voting rights.

Amelia & Sam Boynton

During the 1960’s, Mrs. Robinson's home and office became the center of Selma's civil rights battles, used by Dr. King and his lieutenants, by Congressmen and attorneys from around the nation, to plan the demonstrations that would lead eventually to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In 1964, she was the first female African-American ever to seek a seat in Congress from Alabama, and the first woman, White or Black, to run on the Democratic ticket in the state.

On July 21, 1990, Mrs. Robinson was awarded the Martin Luther King, Jr. Freedom Medal, honoring her lifelong commitment to human rights and civil rights.

Today, in her 90’s, Mrs. Robinson is a vibrant leader, touring the nation and the world, speaking for the Schiller Institute on behalf of the principles of civil rights and human rights whose cause she has championed for more than five decades.

“To give African Americans the vote, has cost worry, blood, sweat, jobs and lives. It is a privilege we should have had all the time. It is one we should use regardless.”

“A vote less people is a hopeless people.”

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“No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what G_D has prpepared for those who love Him.” —1 Corinthians 2.9

REVEREND F. D. REESE Rev. F.D. Reese is the pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church. It was this veteran civil rights leader who helped to organize the local teachers and who initially invited Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to come to Selma to lead the voting rights demonstrations of 1965. Reese remembers Bloody Sunday, he says that the police literally went down the line of marchers, toppling the them over as if you topple bowing pins in a bowling alley. They withdrew the billy clubs and began to beat heads. I saw blood flowing. Pandemonium broke out in the crowd. There was a state of disbelief that this kind of violence was happening in these United States of America. They withdrew gas canisters and lobbed them over into the crowd.

And if you've ever been in tear gas you get desperate for fresh air. Then they began to beat heads. I got beaten on the way back across the bridge and going back to Brown Chapel Church in Selma.

While in the sanctuary the telephone rings, Dr. King called me, he was in Atlanta, Georgia. He said, “I understand you had a little trouble down there in Selma,” over the telephone. I said, “Dr. King, that's an understatement you making.” I said “we had a whole lot of trouble here.” He said, “I sent a call over the country to ask those who would to come to Selma to assist the people of Selma in their quest for the right to vote.” Later that night, while we were still in the sanctuary, about nine o'clock, a group had chartered a plane from New Jersey to Montgomery and got a bus to Selma. They walked into that sanctuary and said we have heard the call of Dr. King; we have seen on the television screen what happened across that bridge; and we are here to lend our bodies and our assistance to the people of Selma. That was one of the most exhilarating and inspiring moments of the day because now you had the feeling there were others who were concerned about your plight in Selma, Alabama.

Two weeks after Bloody Sunday, Reverend Reese, Reverend King, and 3,000 others crossed the bridge in a successful march that began at Selma's Brown Chapel AME Church. By the time they reached the steps of the state capitol, 54 miles away in Montgomery, they had grown to 50,000 strong. A federalized National Guard protected them at each step along their eastern route on U.S. 80.

PRAISE, HONOR AND GRATITUDE TO

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THE NONVIOLENT VANGUARD IN SELMA, AL REVEREND BERNARD LAFAYETTE Lafayette attended the American Baptist Seminary in Nashville, Tennessee. He became an advocate of nonviolent direct action and a leader in the Nashville sit-in movement in the early 1960s. Lafayette was a charter member of the SNCC. In 1961, he was instrumental in continuing the Freedom Rides when they seemed on the verge of halting because of vicious white violence in Alabama.

Bernard, as an experienced organizer went to the SCLC office for a coordinating assignment, but there were none. Then someone told him that Selma was the only place left checked on the map that hadn’t been taken, but that no one wanted to go there because it was too dangerous. They had decided not to send anyone there. Bernard went anyway.

He began talking to young brothers and sisters on the streets about freedom and working with The Boynton’s. His life was threatened many times. The same night that Medgar Evers was killed he was supposed to have died at the hands of some white men in a car, on the side of the road. He had stopped to help, outside the place he was staying when a gun was pulled on him. His neighbor came out with a gun and Lafayette refused to allow him to protect him with violence, because he felt that it would damage the movement. He was more committed to the nonviolent movement than to the preservation of his own life. He laid the groundwork as a vanguard for the successful Selma, AL right-to-vote campaign.

He was also the first of the leading southern civil rights activists to turn to organizing in Chicago. In 1964, he was recruited to work for the Chicago office of the American Friends Service Committee. He began working on the city’s West Side and energized local residents to mobilize against lead poisoning. Lafayette's presence in Chicago was decisive in luring James Bevel to Chicago in 1965 to become program director for the West Side Christian Parish and to launch the successful Chicago Open Housing Movement.

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Nothing splendid was ever achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside of them was superior to circumstances. —Bruce Barton

COLIA LAFAYETTE I joined the NAACP at Tougaloo College and became special assistant to Medgar W. Evers, field secretary for the NAACP. I am the founder and first president of the North Jackson NAACP Youth Council which is now infamous for initiating the 1963 mass movement at Jackson under the leadership and guidance of Medgar Evers and our advisor, John Salter. Anyone interested please call me at 610-532-1817.

In June 1962, I resigned my job with the NAACP and joined with Mississippi SNCC under the leadership of Robert P. Moses. We worked in Jackson, Hattiesburg (Forest County), Sun Flower County, Greenville on projects that were directed towards helping local Mississippians get registered to vote. One has to know that it is near impossible to work in a rural state under the feet of oppression and not work on related issues of the peoples.

In November, 1962, I met and married my first love, Bernard LaFayette, Jr., SNCC Field Secretary. In February, 1963 Bernard and I moved to Selma AL, where he served as director of the SNCC Black Belt Alabama Voter Project and I continued as SNCC field secretary. The project was headquartered at Selma but we had responsibility for developing voter registration and direct action projects in the seven Black Belt Counties. While at Selma, I was appointed by James Forman, executive secretary of SNCC, to assist with the Birmingham, Alabama Movement under the leadership of Dr. Martin L. King. It was in Birmingham that I took one of the worst beatings of my career in the civil rights struggle.

Three fire houses assaulted me for what seemed forever on May 8, 1963.

In 1964, I was privileged to be a part of the birth of the Southern Organizing Committee at Nashville, Tennessee where Bernard and I were attending school at Fisk and giving birth to our first son, James Arthur. Nashville was the culminating point for the early years of civil rights in the South. Beyond lie Chicago, New York and national politics. By early 1973, I returned to my home state Mississippi and worked on a number of other projects including the editorship of the Jackson, Mississippi Advocate.

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“Innocent death, body bags and coffins are the scourge result of war: preemptive war, defensive war, vindictive war, war on terror, stealth warfare, criminal warfare --- all war. Somehow we must allow our hearts to beat free, and we must love our way through it.”

—John Black Lee

JAMES FORMAN October 4, 1928—January 10, 2005

He was born and reared in Chicago, IL. In 1958, Forman became involved in the Civil Rights Movement in the South when he covered the Little Rock, Arkansas school desegregation crisis for the black newspaper, the Chicago Defender.

Through a program organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), Forman also helped provide food and clothing to 700 Fayetteville, Tennessee sharecropper families who had been evicted for registering to vote.

Forman, believed it was important to have an organization work full time on the problem of segregation and discrimination, so he moved south and joined SNCC in 1961. He became the organization’s executive secretary where he helped unify the split between members who advocated direct action versus registering voters. In his leadership role, Forman organized transportation, housing, and food for organizers and helped them get out of jail. He also raised funds for SNCC’s direct action campaigns.

Forman traveled to Africa in 1967 to study African leaders’ efforts to end colonialism; he wanted to know whether their methods could be used to help American blacks. Two years later, his “Black Manifesto,” which demanded reparations for slavery from white churches and Jewish synagogues, was adopted at the Black Economic Development Conference in Detroit. Other civil rights leaders have echoed this call for reparations in recent years.

In 1969, Forman’s first book, "Sammy Younge, Jr.: The First Black College Student to Die in the Black Liberation Movement" was published and was followed three years later by his autobiography, “The Making of Black Revolutionaries.” Throughout his life, Forman prolifically wrote books and magazine and news articles.

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“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

—Reinhold Niebuhr

TABERNACLE BAPTIST CHURCH "Home of the First Mass Meeting for the Voting Rights Movement" In 1963, Reverend Bernard Lafayette drove to Birmingham most days to help Diane and James Bevel plan the teenage marches that would end the city's protection of its Jim Crow heritage in May. Branch explained: The thunderous breakthrough in Birmingham made him uncomfortable away from his new post some hundred miles to the south, and Lafayette returned to Selma most evenings that week to sit in vigil at tiny, segregated Berwell Infirmary, where a last debilitating stroke did not keep Sam Boynton from proselytizing whenever conscious. "Are you a registered voter?" he called out to strangers walking down his corridor. "I want you to go down and register. A voteless people is a hopeless people." [Pillar, p. 81-82] Following Sam Boynton's death in May 1963, Lafayette wanted to hold a memorial service, but had a hard time finding a church willing to sponsor the event that church leaders knew would really be a voting rights rally. The service finally took place at Tabernacle Baptist Church on May 14, with over 350 people in attendance. Dallas County Sheriff Jim Clark and his deputies, strict enforcers of Jim Crow laws, also attended, armed with guns and a court order that they claimed allowed them into the church to guard against insurrection.

SNCC's James Forman was the featured speaker during the 3-hour service, addressing the crowd on "The High Cost of Freedom." Branch summarized his speech: Forman said it was good that the white officers were there to deprive [attendees] of cheap courage. If they wanted to shout amen to the mission of Sam Boynton, they should do so in front of the sheriff who stood in its way.

"Someday they will have to open up that ballot box," said Forman. A crescendo of enthusiasm made a number of elders cringe for the reaction of Sheriff Clark.

After the service, the crowd leaving the church found an angry white mob, including many "teenagers wielding freshly lathed table legs from a nearby furniture company." Sheriff Clark and his deputies, to the surprise of those leaving the church, tried to disperse the crowd, but without success: As Negroes huddled in panic, fearing arrest if they stayed and attack if they moved, a decisive peacemaking authority arrived in the person of the football coach from Selma High School, who jumped from his car and pointed out his current and former players, telling them to go home. [Pillar, p 84]. The drive for voting rights was underway.

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“I do not want the peace that passeth all understanding. I want the understanding that bringeth peace.”

—Helen Keller

REVEREND L. L. ANDERSON A Selma Minister with a global vision, he was in the spot light boldly defying faces that had successfully kept blacks from voting for 100 years after the passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments. To hold a mass meeting in one’s church was an invitation to violence, ridicule and abuse. He withstood that hate and abuse. Tabernacle Baptist Church was the way station of the movement. Rev. Anderson was the conductor of the station, standing against the odds and insisting that the church was a place of social salvation. For taking such a stand, he was given a 10 year sentence on a manslaughter charge for his involvement in an unavoidable car accident in 1959. His case was appealed to the Supreme Court of the U.S. Represented by Thurgood Marshall, now a Supreme Court Justice, Anderson’s conviction was reversed due to the systematic exclusion of blacks as jurors during his trial in Selma. The threat of jail did not deter Rev. Anderson’s involvement.

When Dr. King and Ralph Abernathy were jailed in Selma in 1965, Andrew Young asked Rev. Anderson to head the march to the Dallas County Court House. When asked to turn back by local authorities, the co\crowd sat down in the street and held a two week vigil from Brown Chapel to the first Baptist Church. People came from all over the country to participate.

Anderson was one of the few Selma citizens whose acclaim spanned the Black Belt. He went to jail in nearly every Black Belt county during the late fifties to early sixties. He married Pauline Ginkins from one of the most historical black families in Selma.

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“The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.”

FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH First Baptist Church, played a pivotal role in the Selma, Alabama, marches that helped lead to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The members of First Baptist Church allowed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to use their church as the planning site and organizational headquarters of the Selma campaign. First Baptist Church, constructed in 1894 in the Gothic Revival style by a local black architect, Dave Benjamin West, is considered one of the most architecturally significant late-19thcentury black churches in the state of Alabama.

First Baptist Church is located at 709 Martin Luther King, Jr., Street, Selma, AL

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“The Lord is my sheperd , I shall not want.�

BROWN CHAPEL A.M.E. CHURCH Both the building and the members of Brown Chapel AME Church played pivotal roles in the Selma, Alabama, marches that helped lead to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The starting point for the Selma-to-Montgomery marches, Brown Chapel also hosted the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) for the first three months of 1965.

During the sixties the church became known throughout the world as the headquarters for the voting rights struggle. When the Bishop of the Ninth District was asked to close the doors of the church to the Movement, Reverend Lewis presented an argument that caused the Bishop to not only change his mind about removing him from Brown Chapel, but also caused the Bishop to become a staunch supporter of the movement.

REVEREND P. H. LEWIS Dr. Martin L. Ing, Jr., was invited to Selma, AL to be the keynote speaker on January 2, 1965 for Emancipation services by the Dallas County Voters League under the leadership of F. D. Reese. Many ministers were asked to allow the services to be held at their churches and all received to violate an injunction issued by Judge James Hare that prohibited meetings to discuss the 1964 Civil Rights Bill. Reverend Lewis defied that order and opened the doors of Brown Chapel where he was pastor. Dr. King stood before a crowd of 700 at Brown Chapel challenging the order as he launched the voting rights initiative: Today marks the beginning of a determined, organized, mobilized campaign to get the right to vote everywhere in Alabama. If we are refused, we will appeal to Governor George Wallace. If he refuses to listen, we will appeal to the legislature. If they don't listen, we will appeal to the conscience of the Congress . . . . We must be ready to march. We must be ready to go to jail by the thousands . . . . Our cry to the state of Alabama is a simple one. Give us the ballot!

[Pillar, p. 554-555] A native of Wilcox County, Alabama, he was a graduate of Camden High School, Daniel Payne College and Payne Theological Seminary in Birmingham, AL.

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QUESTIONS TO ASK TO DETERMINE WHETHER SOMETHING IS REALLY WORTH KNOWING ● Is this something I really need to know? ● Does it make me a better person? ● Will it save me trouble later if I learn it now? ● Does it tell me something important I didn’t already know? ● Does it help me remember what I’ve known all along but forgot? ● Will it straighten out my dilemmas, confusions, misperceptions, and paradoxes? ● Will it empower me in some way? ● Will it help me better understand myself and my relation to the world? ● Will it bring me closer to being like my Higher Self? ● Will this be important one day, even if it seems not as applicable right now? ● Does this free me from manipulation that happens solely because I’m unaware of it? ● Is this at all relevant to helping me understand and do what I am here to do? ● Does this in any way assist me in being who I really am? ● What would happen if I went without knowing it?

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“Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.”

—Mahatma Gandhi

The Father of the Nonviolent Right To Vote Movement

Reverend James Luther Bevel October 19, 1936—December 19, 2008

In a nonviolent movement...you have to give people an honorable means and context in which to express and eliminate their grief and speak decisively and succinctly back to the issue. Otherwise, your movement will break down in violence and chaos.

—James L. Bevel

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Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.

—Saint Augustine

The Mother of the Nonviolent Right To Vote Movement

Diane Nash May 15, 1938 - Present Diane Nash was born in Chicago, IL. While a student at Fisk University she began attending nonviolent civil disobedience workshops led by the Rev. James Lawson. At age 22, she became the unofficial leader of the Nashville sit-ins that desegregated lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee, inspired by sit-ins in February in Greensboro, North Carolina. In April 1960 Nash helped to found SNCC, and quit school to lead its direct action wing. In 1961, under her leadership the Nashville Student Movement took over the responsibility for the Freedom Rides from Birmingham, Alabama, to Jackson, Mississippi. The rides had been conceived by the Congress of Racial Equality, but after severe attacks, CORE's leader James L. Farmer Jr. decided to cancel them. Nash argued that, "We can’t let them stop us with violence. If we do, the movement is dead."

She was a co-author with her former husband Rev. James Bevel, of the Selma 1965 Right-To -Vote Proposal which became the 1965 Selma Movement, and greatly aided in the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. President John F. Kennedy appointed her to a national committee that led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

She worked for the SCLC under Martin Luther King, Jr. from 1961 to 1965, and served as an organizer, strategist, field staff person, race-relations staff person and workshop instructor.

Nash later questioned SCLC because of its dominance by males, especially clergymen. After 1965, she broke ties with SNCC when it departed from its original nonviolent principles.

She is the mother of two children, Sherrilyn and Douglas Bevel.

“Freedom is people realizing they are their own leader.”

“Something is wrong when people follow a single leader ... that has never resulted in freedom for black people.”

“Anytime you have a lot of people thinking they need one leader to tell them what to do, it’s a social illness.”

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WHO IS JAMES LUTHER BEVEL? "We would have never gone to Selma, and there would not have been a Voting Rights Bill today if James Bevel had not conceived of the idea" "Jim was the originator of the idea of the march from Selma to Montgomery. Jim Bevel is the author of that." "Dr. King could not have done the things he did unless he had a James Bevel."

—Dr. Ralph David Abernathy "My former husband and I . . . deliberately made a choice. We weren't going to stop working . . . until Alabama Blacks had the right to vote."

—Diane Nash “Nobody knows it but. James Bevel said, “Let’s have a salt march to the sea.” I said, What are you talking about?” He said, “Let’s March On Washington.”

— Ambassador Andrew Young “I was inspired by Jesus, Malcolm X, James Bevel, and Martin Luther King Jr.” —Reverend Jesse L. Jackson "James Bevel called the march to Montgomery. I know because I was there when he conceived it."

—Dr. Bernard Lafayette “I went to a meeting at this church, and they announced about this important mass meeting, something we wasn’t use to, and said James Bevel would be speaking that night. James Bevel did speak and everything he said, you know made sense.

— Fannie Lou Hamer “The pattern was always the same, first the local ministers spoke, then Bevel and then King...Bevel was the most rousing speaker. He was a firebrand and got the audience riled up...James Bevel was an orator without peer.”

— Charles Fager As a historian who has focused on James Bevel's career in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, I'd like to correct the data referring to Bevel as "a top lieutenant of Martin Luther King Jr." Rather than being any type of underling, Bevel and King held a meeting in 1962 and agreed to work as equals. From that point on James Bevel initiated, directed, and strategized SCLC's major movements, as well as teaching their participants the science and art of nonviolence and how to carry it out.

The ongoing but discredited habit of giving James Bevel less credit than historically accurate remains interesting.

Imagine Madison and Adams forever praised but Jefferson not mentioned, or Gehrig without Ruth, or Paul McCartney without a fellow musician/songwriter named John. This still remains true about Bevel and King, although the truth has emerged. Historian David Garrow affirms much of it, and even Taylor Branch, in his book "At Canaan's Edge" confirms it when he quotes King as saying about the ill-fated Memphis actions: "You don't like to work on anything that isn't your own idea. Bevel, I think you owe me one."

For accurate summaries of James Bevel's work, see my papers on the internet or obtain my 1984 paper, with '88 addendum, in David Garrow's 1989 book "We Shall Overcome Volume II".

—Randy Kryn, December 5, 2008 “The Bevel story does revise the history of the civil rights movement and it needs to be told.”

—Robert St. John in a letter to Randy Kryn "I don't think we would have had a movement without him. . .He played a very important role, and that role was translated into a successful movement" — Ambassador Andrew Young

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“You were like an angel to me...God sent you to me to talk about a day of atonement.”

—Minister Louis Farrakhan “We were trying to map out some strategy about what we were going to do to retaliate, and that’s when Rev. Bevel came and stood up on the car to speak to us. He said that we were brave in the dark, we were going to shoot somebody in the dark or hit somebody on the head in the dark. He challenged us to so something in the light, if we had the guts. He said we could take that energy and go to the bus station and buy a ticket in the main waiting room which was on the white side. He said we could take that energy and go buy a Coke in the restaurant where it was suppose to be open to the public. That was in 1961, when the Freedom Rides were just coming into Mississippi.”

— Stranger At The Gate, A Summer In Mississippi, Tracy Sugarman “James Bevel is a young Baptist minister who has been involved in the civil rights movement since the lunch counter sitins in Nashville, TN in 1960. He quickly became known for his abilities as an organizer, particularly of youth, and his eloquence as a speaker. In 1962, he joined SCLC as a close aide of Martin Luther King, Jr., until the latter’s assassination in 1968.

As a civil rights leader, Bevel has received little publicity, though he has the charisma to have been on the front pages of newspapers all around the world. But he has never sought publicity or projected his own personality into the public arena.”

—Julius Lester, Evergreen Magazine, May, 1971, p.4 "I'd say 98% of the plans and activities in Selma were Bevel's. The Selma Movement was Bevel's baby."

—Reverend James Orange "Even the March on Washington was Jim Bevel's idea" —Dr. Bernard Lafayette "He was a great philosopher, an unbelievable philosopher."

“Bevel could do more with young people than any human being on the face of the earth.”

— Reverend Hosea Williams “James Bevel made sacrifices and contributions that can’t be denied or fathomed by many of us..I hope we as conscious people understand that there is a cyclical generational sickness that has taken hold of our communities...The intelligent way to approach it is not to blame the victims for the institutionalization of their sickness, but rather to eradicate the system that produced victims and the sickness which undermines the vitality, selflessness and indomitability of the human spirit.”

—R2C2H@ Tha Artivst

“Because of the nature of man as spirit, mind, emotion and body and the reality of nature as space, energy, elements and motion, a just constitutional democratic republic of necessity must have four active branches of government, the legislative, the executive, the judicial and the people (precinct council) as a organized force to present on a consistent bases, their legitimate needs, problems, interest and will.”

—James L. Bevel

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It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat."

—President Theodore Roosevelt

JAMES L. BEVEL BRIEF BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH As a student in Nashville, TN, faced with the inequities of an unjust social order, and having been called to the ministry by the Spirit of God, James Luther Bevel had to decide whether or not he could be true to his calling and continue to put up with injustice. He studied the teachings and work of Yeshua/Jesus and Gandhi, and got with other young people who felt similar to him and began to move nonviolently to lift the burdens from their people.

The history of James Bevel is recorded in numerous books, magazines, interviews and papers. He was born in Ittabena, MS, on October 19, 1936, to Illie and Denise Bevel. He was one of sixteen children. In 1959, he became Pastor of the Chestnut Grove Baptist Church, Dixon, TN. 1960 he was an organizer of the Nashville Sit-In Movement (which led to desegregation of lunch counters); 1961 chairman, Nashville Student Movement and director, Open Theater Movement (which led to desegregation of theatres); initiated the continuance of the Freedom Rides under the auspices of SNCC (the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) after CORE ( Congress of Racial Equality) called them off because of violence (led ICC/Interstate Commerce Commission ruling against segregation in Intrastate Commerce); graduated from American Baptist Theological Seminary, Nashville, TN; director of SNCC Mississippi Delta Project; 1962 developed Ruleville and Greenwood, MS Voter Registration Project led to Fannie Lou Hammer joining the movement); 1963 joined SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference) at the invitation of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and became Director of Direct Action and Nonviolent Education. Organized students to participate in “D” Day demonstration where masses of students became involved in the Birmingham Movement (led to passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964); initiated the March On Washington; 1965 developed and directed the Selma Right-To-Vote Movement (led to passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965); received the Rosa Parks Award from SCLC, along with his wife Diane Nash; 1966, he developed and directed the Chicago Open Housing Movement and tenet union, Chicago, IL (led to Supreme Court Ruling Against Segregation In Housing); 1967, he took a leave of absence from SCLC and became director of The Mobilization To End The War In Vietnam and persuaded Dr. King to join (led to draft resisters movement and United Nations protest demonstration of 1/4 million people). 1994, co-initiated the largest single gathering in one place in American History--the 1995 Million Man March (Day of Atonement).

A man of many talents, James L. Bevel was also noted for his lyrical abilities. As a composer of freedom songs, Bevel's most popular works were: "Dog-Dog" (1959), "Why Was The Darky Born" (1961), and "I Know We'll Meet Again" (1969). This last song is a sentimental testament to Bevel's, friend, and colleague, the late Martin Luther King, Jr. With King when he was shot in 1968, Bevel saw his leader gunned down. James Earl Ray was the man arrested, 258

indicted, and convicted of King's murder. Bevel believed that Ray was innocent. He even went to the jail-house and told him so, even though Ray rejected his help and refused to let him into his cell. Bevel told Ray that King was assassinated by capitalists threatened by King's mobilization of the poor or by the military-industrial complex which was aghast at King's denunciation of the Vietnam War and his perceived left wing shift.

James Bevel has been married four times and has sixteen children and numerous grandchildren. He was married to Diane Nash, Patricia Churchill, Helen L. Edmond and Erica Henry.

In 2008, James L. Bevel was convicted of incest, in Leesburg, VR. Here was the brilliant architect of the Selma Right To Vote Movement and strategist for most of the nonviolent movements of the 60’s, stuck in the slave conditioning of incest.

Keep in mind that on the plantation slaves did not have the luxury of going to other plantations to secure a mate, they had to release their sexual energy with family members (incest) and this conditioning like many others has been passed down from generation to generation. James Bevel is simply indicative of a problem that has yet to be addressed and how deeply it is rooted in the lives of African American males in the south. Though he fought valiantly to regain his humanity through the various movements he initiated and participated in order to overcome the mandate of destruction of his manhood (“the purpose for the revision of this constitution is to destroy the manhood of the Negro citizen through to success.”

Mississippi Constitution revisionist) in the end he was only met with humiliation. Though he was able to uproot many of the laws that enslaved him, he was incapable of eradicating the conditioning of slavery that created criminals out of otherwise Children of G_D. This work is still left undone.

“A flawed diamond is more valuable than a perfect brick.”

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TIMELINE OF JAMES L. BEVEL, 1936 - 2008 1936-51

Born October 19th to Illie and Denise Bevel in Ittabena, Mississippi, on Joe Pieu’s Plantation. He had seventeen siblings. Attended Palo Alto St. John Christian School Moved to Cleveland, OH, and attended Raleigh Junior H. S. and graduated from East Technical High School 1956 Received B. A. from the American Baptist Theological Seminary, Nashville, TN 1957 Licensed to preach 1959 Ordained into the ministry.

1959-61 Pastor, Chestnut Grove Baptist Church, Dixon, TN 1960 Attended class on nonviolence taught by Reverend James Lawson 1960 Co-organizer, Sit—In Movement, Nashville, TN (which led to desegregation of lunch counters); 1961 Chairman, Nashville Student Movement and director, Open Theatre Movement (which led to desegregation of theatres); 1961 Co-initiated continuance of Freedom Rides under the auspices of SNCC (the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) after CORE called them off (led to ICC Ruling Against Segregation in Interstate Commerce) 1961 Chairman of the Nashville Freedom Riders 1961 Co-organized SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) Graduated from the American Baptist Theological Seminary, Nashville, TN; Director of SNCC Mississippi Delta Project; 1962 developer, Ruleville and Greenwood, MS Voter Registration Project.

1961 Field Secretary in Mississippi for SNCC 1961 Co-organized the Mississippi Free Press along with Paul Brooks and Medgar Evers.

1962 Director of the Mississippi Project out of which came COFO and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.

1962 Married Diane Nash and had two children., Sherrilyn and Douglas. They divorced in 1968.

1962 Joined SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference) in response to a request by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 1962 Wrote the original proposal for the Mississippi Delta Ministry Project 1962 Recruited Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer and others to join the movement.

1963 Became the Director of Direct Action and the Director of Nonviolent Education for SCLC. 1963 Architect of the 1963 Children's Crusade in Birmingham, Ala. Originated the idea for “D” Day, which consisted of student demonstrations where masses of students became involved in the Birmingham Movement to make it a success (led to passage of the Civil Rights Act); 1963 Gave birth to the idea of a March on Washington, although he did not participate.

1965 Co-wrote with Diane Nash the original proposal for the Selma Right-To-Vote Movement 1965 Developed and directed the Selma 1965 Right to Vote Movement (led to passage of the Voting Rights Act); received the Rosa Parks Award for Selma Movement from SCLC. He is called the father of Voting Rights.

1966 Developed and directed the Chicago Open Housing Movement and tenet union, Chicago, Illinois (led to Supreme Court Ruling Against Segregation in Housing); 1/27/1967 Took a leave of absence from SCLC and became Director of the Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam (led to draft resisters movement and U. N. protest demonstration of 1/4 million people).

1968 Co-organizer the Poor People’s Campaign 1969 Announced that James Earl Ray was an innocent scapegoat and did not kill Dr. M. L. King, Jr. and persuaded SCLC to defend him under the leadership of Reverend Ralph David Abernathy.

1969 Reported that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. visited him, and he asked Dr. King the following. “In that you said we as a people would get to the Promised Land, where is the roadmap? At which point Dr. King provided him with the Six Institutional Development Process “Roadmap to the Freedom Land.”

1969 The Coalition to End the Murder of Black People, Chicago, IL, after the death of Michael and Johnny Soto.

1970 Strategized the movement to get Black History put into the curriculum in schools on the Westside of Chicago, IL. 1970 Co-founded with Herman O’Neil the House of MAN (Making A Nation) Baltimore, MD. 1970 Married Patricia Ridegenal, his second wife. They were divorced in 1972.

1971 Worked with Reverend Curtis Burrell, Director of the Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization (K.O.C.O.) to address gang violence on the south side of Chicago.

1972 Disillusioned by the denial of his work in the movement and all credit going to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he received a compilation of books, magazines, and newspaper articles attesting to his work in the civil rights and nonviolent movement as researched by Helen L. Edmond.

1972 – 06 Participated with Helen L. Edmond in her recording hundreds of hours of lectures, institutional (church, business, government, clinc, home and school) meetings, commentaries on the movement, sermons, private sessions and more.

1973 Mounted a campaign with Helen Edmond to get President Richard Nixon out of the White House, in Washington D. C. 1973 Began work on outlining and developing the Six Institutional Development Process (given to him by Dr. King after his death) through a continuous lecture series. At this time he also wrote the Nonviolent Clinical Process.

1974 Member of New Age Truth, Chicago, IL with Dr. David M. Berry (80 year old metaphysician whose famous quote was, “People would do better, if they knew better.”).

1975 Organized urban people to pursue industrial development through agriculture, Nashville, TN 260

1975

Worked with Reverend Maxwell of Nashville, TN to create a hands-on learning program for teaching fresh fruit and vegetable growing and urban marketing for urban citizens.

1977 Moved into The Lorraine Motel Memphis, TN (where Dr. King was assassinated) and maintained a prayer vigil, and initiated a movement to give James Earl Ray the accused murderer of Dr. King a fair and impartial trial.

1977 - 80 Director and Co-founder with Helen L. Edmond and Marcellus Brooks of the Nonviolent Human and Community Development Research Institute, Nashville and Memphis, TN. Engaged in food production and sponsored classes in institutional development.

1978 Co-Pastor, Bethel Baptist Church, Brooklyn, NY 1978 Co-founder, the Coffeehouse, Manhattan, NY with Reverend Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick and Mathew Jones.

1978 Moved to Bronx, NY with members of The Farm, (founded by Steven Gaskin headquartered in Summertown, TN), to receive midwifery service for his wife Helen Edmond.

1980 Director of the Coalition of Church, Citizens and Organizations for Public Education (COPE), Cleveland, OH 1980 – 82 Co-Director of Organofarms, Hiram, OH with Reverend Al Couch, Marcellus Brooks, Helen Edmond, Reverend Margaret Mitchell, Elzy Richardson, Gary Morton and Karen (Imani) Hardy. Engaged in organic food production serving churches in Youngstown, Cleveland and Akron, OH, with fresh fruits and vegetables.

1983 Married Helen L. Edmond. They had five children Shalay, James Jr., Jamese, AmiRa and Enoch. They continued to work on their original marriage proposition, the creation of a nonviolent society until his death.

1983 Began providing interviews with Randy Kryn a historian and researcher.

1984 Ran for Congress 7 th Congressional District in Chicago, IL. Bevel won 33% of the vote on the Republican ticket.

1985 Co-founder C.A.M.P. (Carver Agricultural Marketing Project), Chicago, IL w/Helen L. Edmond and Marcellus Brooks` 1985 Co-Pastor, South Shore Community United Church of Christ, with Reverend Archie Hargraves, Chicago, IL 1985 Co-founder S.E.E.D. (Students for Education and Economic Development), with Yessie Yehudah and Phillip Bradley Recruited Irma Jean Kohn and Melvin Delks for community organizing on the Westside of Chicago.

1986 National Advisory Board, American Freedom Coalition.

1987 Co-organizer of CAUSA with Reverend Michael Jenkins, Dr. Ralph Abernathy, Reverend A. L. Dunlap and others.

Initiated the idea for a conference to end gangs based on the premise that, “Gangs are guys and gals who don’t know government.” This led to Melvin Delk’s organizing various gangs throughout Chicago, IL to unite for a common goal of political empowerment.

1988 Journeyed to South Africa, to help negotiate the release of Nelson Mandela, as a member of the All African Congress.

1989 Organized the National Committee Against Religious Bigotry and Racism, with Dr. Ralph David Abernathy.

1990 Worked with Phillip Bradley and Ellen Shivers to establish Six Institutional Process in Washington, DC 1990 International observer, "Citizens Fact-Finding Commission to Investigate Human Rights Violations of Children in Nebraska.

1991 Moved his family to Omaha, NE to investigate a child abuse ring. Former Nebraska State Senator John DeCamp, “At first I thought that Rev. Bevel must be crazy, or a radical trouble-maker. Why would a middle-aged man with a family to support take off and move to Nebraska in the middle of winter, to take up a cause that could guarantee him nothing but grief, and might get him killed? But as I watched him work and saw his dedication, I learned more about faith, hope, charity and truth from this one individual, than from all the priests, pastors and rabbis I have known. Rev. Bevel cared about one thing - children. Children were being abused and were going to be abused, unless something was done.”

1991

Board member of The Malcolm X Memorial Foundation, in Omaha, NE with Mrs. Rowena Moore, Johnny “Jet” Rodgers and others. The foundation holds the deed to the childhood birth site and surrounding area of Malcolm Little.

1992 Vice presidential running mate with Lyndon LaRouche. He was by far the most famous person who ever ran for vice president. The LaRouche-Bevel ticket opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the GATT proposal because they are colonialist, radical free trade doctrines that are designed to destroy the last remnant of economic independence remaining to farmers and the labor movement.

1994 Chairman of the annual, Declaration of Independence Co-Signer's Convention, Philadelphia, PN 1995 Developed idea for the Day of Atonement for the Million Man March, with Minister Louis Farrakhan 1997 Married Erica Henry. One daughter, Jamerica, was born from this union.

2004 - 08 Member of REACH, Inc, with Bishop Luke Edward in Eutaw, AL 2003 – 08 Consultant and Spiritual Advisor, Peaceaholics, Washington, D. C. 2005 Worked to establish “Day of Atonement” commemoration in Selma, AL with Reverend Joseph Spears, Melvin Delk, Helen Edmond, Erica Henry, Valencia Humes and Rev. Michael Henson.

2008 Convicted of incest in Leesburg, VR. (This case shows how GOD can use anyone, even an incestuous person to bring about change for the good. Many people engage in incest, but none have done what James L. Bevel did).

2008 Bevel went to live with the ancestors on December 19th in Springfield, VR. He died from complications from pancreatic cancer. He was buried in a canoe crafted by artist Billy Caradine and Mary Greer, in Eutaw, AL. Minister Lewis Farrakhan gave the eulogy at a service attended by many notables and common folk.

James Bevel fathered the following knownchildren. Bonny Shellman (Betty Biggins), Don Glenard Bevel-El (Barbara Jean Talley), Jacqueline Harris (Evelyn Harris ), Chevara Orrin (Sue Orrin), Bacardi L. Jackson (Sue Orrin), Segena Ponder (Annelle Ponder), Masavia N. Greer (Mary Greer), Stephen Jackson (Stormy Jackson)

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NO CHOICE BUT TO WRITE His rage was uncontrollable. He paced back and forth, cussing, swearing, enraged beyond belief. Tears swelled up in the corner of his eyes. He questioned, “how could anyone do this, how, why?”

His wife could not console him because she to was pushed to anger verging on rage. Usually sedate and calm, she was beyond herself with the thought of revenge. “We’ve got to do something,” she cried.

“Yeah, find those murdering bast__ds and kill them,” he exclaimed. “We can find them and put an end to their murderous plots forever,” he said.

This went on for some time as Diane and Jim laid out a plan to find and kill the men responsible for setting the bomb at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church that killed four little girls on September 15, 1963 in Birmingham, AL. Finally a light broke through as they observed their little girl Sherrilyn playing. They looked at each other.

Anger had turned to pain but reason found its way in. “If we find those responsible and kill them, then who will protect our daughter from others plotting to do the same or worse?” Jim asked. “We will be in jail and others, just like those cowards will be free to continue blowing up churches with little girls in Sunday school. We have to come up with a plan that will solve this problem, Diane said in agreement. Yes, we have been talking about it, but now we just have to do it, we can’t let this go on any longer, Jim said. “We have to think up a plan that will protect Black people throughout the south from this type of hatred.” Then Jim flashed with an insight, as he began strategizing a solution that would solve the problem and satisfy his wife. “What?” Diane asked.

“Diane, we have to make the right to vote a law that is protected by the Federal government throughout the south. Black people have got to be able to vote into office sheriffs, mayors, governors and judges who will protect their right’s, and the Federal government will have to step up and assure these rights,” he said.

Diane’s blood shot eyes, from crying lightened. She heard what she felt in her heart was a real solution.

“Okay, yes, of course we have been doing all these small local movements, now we have to do a movement that guarantees Black people voting rights across the board. Yes I’ll get the paper and a pen. Let’s put it down and start to work on it right now.”

And so began the most far reaching plan to protect the right of Black people throughout the South. Within one year of their writing what would become the infamous Selma Right-To-Vote Movement, President Lyndon Baines Johnson would sign into law “The Voting Rights Act” and victory was eminent.

Some forty + years since this heroic loving couple wrote the historic Right-To-Vote Proposal, to the masses they are still unknown, but their legacy lives on in the lives of all of those who have benefited from their courageous sacrifice. Don’t be misled by movies and other propaganda. Know the truth and the truth will set you free.

This day say a prayer of thanksgiving to the Bevel’s and let G_D continue to bless us to go forward in a spirit of nonviolence to create a world where all know freedom, justice, peace and equality.

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PROPOSAL FOR THE RIGHT TO VOTE

September 15, 1964 By

James L. Bevel and Diane Nash

Reverend James L. Bevel and his former wife Diane Nash receive the Rosa Parks award, from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., for having initiated and worked to make a success of the 1965 Selma, AL Right-To-Vote Movement.

Following is the original first draft of the proposal that James Bevel and Diane Nash presented to SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference), after the church bombing in Birmingham, AL, where four little girls were killed, while attending Sunday school.

This proposal was turned down by all civil rights organizations. Bevel worked for one year to convince the board of SCLC to adopt the proposal. Bevel, Diane and James Orange, moved to Selma to implement the program before adoption by the organization.

It was their persistence, perseverance and effectiveness that finally persuaded the SCLC board to adopt the Selma Right To Vote Program as an official program of SCLC.

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PROGRAM FOR ACTION IN ALABAMA SOUTHERN CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE (SCLC) Alabama Movement for Political Enfranchisement INTRODUCTION: In the building of a movement from the point where we are now, there are certain steps and activities that must be carried out.

Listed below are some activities which, if carried out, would unite the people of Alabama, prepare them for suffering, in a prolonged nonviolent campaign, appeal to the conscience of white people in Alabama and the nation, and keep the opponents and participants informed. Such a campaign would not allow the objective to become obscured. It would eventually lead to the education and enfranchisement of nearly all people outside of Alabama to become active in the cause.

This program will only be effective if it is carried through to its conclusion.

ADULT PREPARATION The meeting for all of the Alabama affiliates that will be held on March 4 and 5 will serve as the imitation for the project. At this meeting an action program should be outlined for the affiliates and adopted by them.

The office has to keep in mind that the affiliates by and large are not action orientated; therefore it is unreasonable to expect that once an action program is submitted to them that they would automatically go back home and carry it out. Since past experience has taught us that students are the ones who usually provide the man power, the home office must keep in mind that our main responsibility is reaching, organizing and preparing the students in Alabama for action with the assistance of the adults, of course.

II. STUDENT PREPARATION Field secretaries should start contacting high school and college students and organizations introducing them to and getting their commitment to the program. The students should be organized into groups electing their leaders and starting training programs. They should work with adult groups wherever possible.

There should be several state-wide or regional student meetings for the purpose of building cohesion and enthusiasm.

III. COMMUNITY PREPARATION The white and Negro communities should be reached to the farthest extent to which we are capable‌ A. People to people tours by Dr. King, Rev. Abernathy, and Rev. Shuttlesworth should be taken. There should be three kinds of meetings in each community: 1) a meeting with students & adult leaders 2) a student mass meeting 3) a regular mass meeting B. Letters to white and Negro ministers and other strategic leaders should be mailed regularly, constantly defining to them the issues and the movement.

C. Pamphlets, leaflets, stickers, buttons and paid newspaper advertisement should be freely used.

D. Mass meetings should be going on in almost every community. The right to vote as a fight should be kept constantly before the people the affiliates can accept the major responsibility for this

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IV. NEGOTIATION A. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and all of its affiliates and all organizations within the state should send a letter to Mr. Wallace and all appropriate state officials akin; that all laws be repealed and tactics stopped that tend to discourage and disenfranchise any citizens who are 21 years of age. An effort to contact these officials and talk with them personally should be made.

B. Another letter should be sent to the state board of elections and county boards of election and county registrars, asking them to register any legal resident 21 years of age who applies.

C. President Johnson should be requested in writing to insure voting rights for anyone 21 years old who is a resident of his locate and to promptly send federal officials to an area where testimony is given to the effect that any 21 year old citizen is being denied the right to vote. The federal official should be empowered to register any person who is being illegally denied.

V. DEMONSTRATIONS There are two types of demonstration that we probably should consider: mass demonstrations in one city and demonstrations in many places simultaneously.

The advantages of concentrating in one city are: 1. The romance of leaving home to go demonstrate would detract more Negro males.

2. The news media could cover more thoroughly and effectively one city than many.

3. Extensive coverage would tend to prevent brutality, or if it occurred it would be well covered.

4. Because we lack many well trained leaders it would also help in maintain discipline.

5. It would be more dramatic to have 5 or 6 thousand people in jail in one city rather than in many cities across the state in smaller numbers.

The advantage of demonstrations in many places are: 1. They would directly involve more communities.

2. They would keep the brunt of the entire resources of the state from falling on one place; it would split their forces.

3. They would help keep the state off balance in trying to anticipate what will happen next and where.

4. More leaders would probably be developed.

It seems to me that both of these approaches can be used at different times.

Although the kinds of demonstrations will be varied (Picketing, sit-ins, mass-marches on the capitol, etc.) the results will probably be jail-ins, therefore, it is important to involve large numbers of people who are committed to staying in jail for at least 4 or 5 months. It should also be noted that once the leaders get out of jail the morale drops and people get restless and want to get out also. Because so much energy, money, time and effort are dissipated in arranging bonds, the movement loses its soul force. It also loses the opportunity of holding the nations attention and pricking the conscience of the opponent and the nation.

VI FINANCES AND NATIONAL ACTION It’s a known fact that once real action starts, people begin to raise money in the north and they hold large mass rallies for the movement. The rallies should also be used to get people involved at a much deeper level. Since we will be demonstrating in the south for the right to vote, it would be easy to inspire people to put on mass voter education and voter registration drives in large urban centers. There should be literature (pamphlets, etc) prepared by the movement that will help direct voter education in the north.

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TITHING The concept of tithing as expressed by the Jewish prophets was that man should at least five ten per cent of his earning back to the source that gave him whatever he had earned. So the prophets reasoned that God gave food, then ten per cent should be given back to God. This concept was also carried into business if as well.

Therefore, if a man harvested ten bushels of wheat, he was expected to save ten per cent for seed. That is, he was to replant at least one tenth of his harvest. This of course meant that farmers would always have new crops.

This concept of tithing should be adopted by any nonviolent movement or organization. The organization should put at least ten per cent of its earnings back into the source that produced it. If the young people of Alabama, because of their nonviolent action and commitment made it possible for an organization to earn a certain amount of money, then that organization should put at least ten per cent aside to be used for putting the weapon of nonviolence back into the hands of other young people in Alabama. If this was done then the organization would never have to worry about “FLUNKING.” The organizations that worry about flunking in a tough situation or worry about whether the people will respond in a time of crisis are those organizations that ask “wherein have we robbed Him?” Of course the answer is in “tithing and offering”, and therefore the organizations have become impoverished for they lack the responding nonviolent human resources in which they have failed to re-invest.

If it becomes necessary for Dr. King, Rev. Abernathy to remain in Alabama over a period of time, Wyatt Walker, and CT Vivian could take the major responsibility of raising funds.

It would be helpful if Bayard Rustin and Walter Fauntroy organized mass marches in Washington (Capitol) and New York (UN).

VI.

IMPLEMENTATION OF PROGRAM A. Headquarters in Montgomery or Birmingham should be set up almost immediately. The office should be responsible for: 1. Coordination the staff.

2. Getting out mailings and other literature and correspondence 3. Materials, such as pamphlets, films, projectors, books, etc.

B. Staff Several of the field secretaries should be sent to Alabama to work full time. Their jobs should be carrying out the adult, student and community preparation as se forth in I, II, and III of this memo.

The field secretaries should be responsible for setting up the meetings for Dr. King, Rev. Abernathy and Rev. Shuttlesworth

CONCLUSION: We should expect to be vigorously involved in the struggle of this campaign for at least eight months. We should keep in mind that the objective of this particular battle is enfranchisement of Negro people in Alabama; therefore, the most important part of this battle is to actually see that obstacles are removed and to get members of Negroes in Alabama registered… This is our responsibility. Only then will the staff be free to go home. We must keep in mind that unless we can in fact get Negroes registered, we cannot stop bombings of churches, unjust court proceedings, police brutality, etc. We must also keep in mind that unless large numbers of Negroes get registered, there will not be the climate for peaceful, large scale school integration, integration of public commendations and employment of Negroes on many city, county and state jobs.

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The Proposal for The Right To Vote This farmable copy of this historic document is available for purchase.

Send a money order for $12.99 to: Edmond Publication, 652 E. 89th Place, Chicago, IL 60619 Please allow 5-10 days for delivery.

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Staff of the Director of Direct Action & Nonviolent Education for SCLC Reverend James L. Bevel Reverend James Orange Reverend Richard Boone

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“The moment the slave resolves that he will no longer be a slave, his fetters fall. Freedom and slavery are mental states.”

—Mahatma Gandhi

REVEREND JAMES ORANGE Rev. Dr. James Edward Orange, was hired by the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as one of the first field staffers.

Orange was instrumental in mobilizing youth throughout the civil rights movement, and making a significant impact on the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Orange was instrumental in the election of Nelson Mandela as President and has continued to help with transportation needs in South Africa. Currently the Birmingham, AL native serves as the Community and Religious Coordinator for the AFL-CIO, Southern Region in Atlanta, GA. At a meeting at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, in Birmingham, AL, the Rev. James Bevel, director of direct action for the (SCLC), began telling a group, many of whom were high school or college students, how they were to behave if they were confronted by the police or arrested. Orange asked, “who was going to get arrested.” "We are," Bevel replied. "You are." "That's when I learned that those empty benches had been reserved for people who had volunteered to go to jail, if necessary, in the fight against Jim Crow," Orange said, a broad smile crossing his face. "But there was no tuning back." And, as far as Orange is concerned, not then and not since.

James Orange was on Bevel’s executive staff and he joined Bevel and his wife Diane in moving to Selma, AL, in 1964, to begin work on securing the right to vote. They worked without the support of SCLC, at first. Eventually, SCLC made the work they were doing official, and the rest is history.

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“The genuine desire to better oneself leads one to accept the personality as it is now.”

—Eva Pierrakos

REVEREND RICHARD BOONE Born July 7, 1937, in Lowndes County, Alabama. As a youth, he was angry at the way white people treated his family and decided to get a motorcycle and an AK-47 in order to kill white folk.

Boone met James Bevel who helped to redirect his energy through nonviolent workshops, where he was introduced to the writings of Tolstoy, Gandhi, Bondurant, and Reich. Boone worked both as an organizer for SNCC and as a field director for SCLC while he was a student at Alabama State University (1960-61). After several encounters at ASU, he led a movement to take over the school; the school was under student occupation for about a week, Boone was later dismissed from the university and enjoined by federal courts from attending any college in Alabama.

Between 1963 and 1964, Boone worked with SCLC in Birmingham, Dothan, Anniston, Gadsden, Mobile, and Tuscaloosa, AL. He also worked in Barnesville, GA, Louisville, TN, and on the Anti-Riot Team in Rochester, NY. Upon receiving a summons from Dr. King to travel from Dothan to Tuscaloosa, AL, Boone experienced divine providence when two new tires blew out in the car that he was traveling in with Bevel and Rev. Harold Middlebrook. A good Samaritan drove them to Tuscaloosa, confounding a Klan gathering that had rallied to kill the civil rights workers as they drove past. Because the Klan expected them to arrive in a different vehicle, they were able to escape detection and this saved their own lives.

In 1965, Boone served as the Administrator of the Selma Right-to-Vote Movement, working in Selma, AL and Marion, AL as well as many other Black Belt counties in Alabama. He organized the Alabama Action Commission in 1967, which ended segregation in downtown Montgomery by holding demonstrations until employment and the police force were integrated.

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James L. Bevel and the Nonviolent Right To Vote Movement Newspapers ▪ Books ▪ Magazines Personal Testimonies Our Direct Action Department, under the direction of Rev. James Bevel, then decided to attack the very heart of the political structure of the state of Alabama and the Southland through a campaign for the right to vote.

—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Precinct Council, government of, for and by the people is the new frontier.”

—James L. Bevel

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“Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.”

—–Benjamin Franklin

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., President of SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference), had heard about the successful leadership of the young nonviolent student leader, the Reverend James Luther Bevel, a member of SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee). “...the Reverend James Bevel, already an experienced leader in Nashville, Greenwood and other campaigns.”

Why We Can’t Wait, Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King invited Reverend Bevel to join the staff of SCLC in 1962 and in 1963 Bevel received the title of Director of Direct Action and Director of Nonviolent Education. As director of direct action, Bevel was responsible for formulating and strategizing action programs for SCLC as in Birmingham, AL. “James Bevel was organizing the youngsters for the marches. In early May, at a critical juncture when King wavered because of pressure from the Kennedy’s to hold off demonstrations, Bevel ignoring King’s wishes slipped the children out of a church and marched them downtown to jail in the most brilliant maneuver of the campaign.”

CORE, August Meir & Elliott Rudwick The introduction of Birmingham’s children into the campaign was one of the wisest moves made. It brought a new impact to the crusade and the impetus that we needed to win the struggle. Jim Bevel had the inspiration of setting D Day, when the students would go to jail in historic numbers.

Why We Can’t Wait, Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King reveled in the situation. He complimented Jim Bevel for originating it and referred to it as “inspiration.”

The Days of Martin Luther King, Jr., Jim Bishop When the little girls were killed in a Birmingham church bombing, Reverend Bevel decided that it could not be ignored, because he could see the inter-relatedness of the bombing and the movement actions being carried out in Birmingham. He decided to step up the action of the nonviolent movement. His overriding thought was to provide Black people with a tool that they could use to nonviolently protect themselves. He decided that getting the southern Black people the right-to-vote would go along way in providing this protection. On the day of the bombing, he and his wife Diane Nash drew up a plan for getting the right to vote. He sent his wife Diane NashBevel to present the proposal to Dr. King, asking for his and SCLC’s support for such a plan.

"My former husband and I . . . deliberately made a choice. We weren't going to stop working . . . until Alabama Blacks had the right to vote."

Diane Nash-Bevel interview in Voices of Freedom, p. 173 As reported in several sources, immediately after a bomb in Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church killed four young girls attending Sunday School on September 15, 1963, Rev. Bevel and Diane Nash, doing movement work in North Carolina at the time, wrote up a plan for an Alabama Project. This plan would direct the anger and hate over the murders into a very quick Southern wide strategy to obtain the right to vote. Jim Bevel telephoned key people in SCLC, SNCC, the NAACP and CORE after Nash had already left to present their plan to Dr. King--calling them to explain the reasoning of his simpler and more effective plan-- but none of these groups or any others would join it.

So Bevel, Nash, and Birmingham activist James Orange started to organize the Alabama Project. SCLC's national staff did not join it until over a year later, when they finally agreed to work on the Alabama Project and it became known as the Selma Voting Rights Movement.

Randy Kryn: Movement Revision Research Summary Regarding James Bevel “King’s SCLC gave serious consideration to a national civil disobedience campaign (the right to vote proposal) drafted by Reverend James L. Bevel and his wife Diane Nash-Bevel, Field Secretary of SNCC.” House Divided, Lionel Lokos

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“Every atom belonging to you as well belongs to me.”

—Walt Whitman

The SCLC endorsed the call for a nationwide boycott, but a week later was forced to reverse itself when virtually every other civil rights group rejected the idea.

House Divided, Lionel Lokos After several months, Reverend Bevel decided to move on the plan without the consent of Dr. King or SCLC. He took some of his staff to Alabama and started organizing people and resources to bring the plan to fruition.

Bernard and Colia Lafayette came to Selma, in February 1963 to begin a voter education effort. Throughout the spring their monthly Dallas County Voters League clinics drew an average of forty people, and by mid-June they were able to draw seven hundred people to a mass rally at which James Bevel of SCLC spoke.

Protest At Selma, David Garrow “SNCC had been working in Selma, AL for two years, with local leaders like Mrs. Amelia Boynton and the Reverend James Bevel of SCLC. When Dr. King came to Selma in February (of 1965) fresh from winning the Nobel Peace Prize, he not only aroused local people to their highest point, but brought nation and world attention to Selma.”

SNCC: The New Abolitionist, Howard Zinn Although Selma had been declared" off limits" as an organizing district by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference earlier, Amelia Robinson, with her husband, S. William Boynton, had labored for the right to vote in that area for over thirty years prior to the campaign of 1964. Upon this base, James Bevel, Bernard Lafayette, Hosea Williams and others built that campaign, which became the "Gettysburg" of the movement.

Mrs. Amelia Boynton Robinson Our Direct Action Department, under the direction of Rev. James Bevel, then decided to attack the very heart of the political structure of the state of Alabama and the Southland through a campaign for the right to vote. Planning for the voter registration project in Selma started around the seventeenth of December, 1964, but the actual project started on the second of January, 1965. Our affiliate organization, the Dallas County Voters League, invited us to aid and assist in getting more Negroes registered to vote. We planned to have Freedom Days, days of testing and challenge, to arouse people all over the community. We decided that on the days that the county and the state had designated as registration days, we would assemble at the Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church and walk together to the courthouse. More than three thousand were arrested in Selma and Marion together. I was arrested in one of those periods when we were seeking to go to the courthouse.

The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. As director of nonviolent education, James Bevel had the responsibility of educating and demonstrating nonviolence.

But at one, the Ward Four meeting held in the back of Brown Chapel, they got a reception from an SCLC staff member named James Bevel. Bevel was on Dr. King’s executive staff, and was in charge of the SCLC workers in the city; although short and unimposing in appearance, he was one of King’s most eloquent and fiery spokesman known especially for the vigor and force of his denunciation of racism. He also knew of the maneuvering going on among the city Whites and was ready to play on it. Before a small dumfounded audience, Bevel stood up and ordered the deputies to leave. One of them raised a camera to take his picture and he angrily told him to stop and repeated the order to leave. The deputies were wary of getting involved in such surrounding, and they left. The news of this unprecedented act of defiance quickly spread around the city.

Selma, 1965, Charles Fager Past experiences had taught Bevel that once a campaign was started, it had to be completed. He had come to Selma, with his staff to gain the right to vote, realizing that they would be offered everything but that. He however, was resolved.

In February 1965, here and throughout Alabama’s midsection, quiet was not the case. Nearby Selma with a population of about 50 percent black, was the epicenter of the Civil Rights struggle at the time and was way beyond tense. That was thanks, in large part, to Dallas County’s fire-headed sheriff, Jim Clark, and the blatantly 273

"It is weakness rather than wickedness which renders men unfit to be trusted with unlimited power."

— John Adams, 1788

unconstitutional court orders of state Circuit Judge James Hare — such as banning public assemblies of three people or more.

The Death of Jimmie Lee Jackson, John Fleming, The Anniston Star “...the injunction represented a major attempt by the White leadership to head off the demonstrations in Selma. It contained what seemed to be real concessions, which would open up the voting rolls to larger numbers of Black citizens. Even the SCLC workers weren’t sure at first what its impact would be. Andy Young told the people at Brown Chapel, when they heard it was imminent that, “In every battle there are many rounds, and this round may have come to an end. We may have a little breathier.” With fifteen thousand eligible people in Dallas County, what the process set up by order amounted to was several more years delay in getting them registered, several more years in which the whites could apply their quiet form of coercion and intimidation, at which they were so experienced to keep people out of the courthouse and off the voting rolls.

James Bevel who had tossed the deputies out of a ward meeting, was the main preacher at the mass meeting that night, and he was in a combative mood! The order, he said, “may make it more difficult for us to do some of the things we have done before, and we might be cited for contempt of court. But I don’t mind being cited for contempt because Negroes were born under an injunction in Alabama. If Judge Thomas plans to connive around with letters of the law in order to deny us our rights, he has a bad dream coming. We mean to vote and have representation in government, and we will settle for nothing less.

I’m saying here and now,” he finished, “that we must be prepared to fight and die for everything that is ours. And there is going to be rabble rousing all over Alabama until we get the right to vote.

Selma, 1965, Charles Fager Bevel took SCLC to Selma with one goal in mind, to win a strong federal voting rights law that would provide for executive branch enforcement of southern Blacks constitutionally guaranteed right-to-vote. Again and again they were offered everything else.

Over the weekend there was quiet negotiations between Black and White leaders over the use of an “appearance book.” A number of the local leaders, including Reverend Reese, were momentarily persuaded that the opening of the appearance book a week early would constitute an important sign of good faith on the part of the Whites, and the Whites believed that the Black leaders had agreed to end demonstration once it became available.

Selma, 1965, Charles Fager The instituting of an appearance book was not the equivalent of federal protection of voting rights and to end demonstrations or take a breather would have left the Black people at the mercy of the already riled up Klu Klux Klan and the White Citizens Council.

But things didn’t work out as the Whites had hoped. The SCLC staff in the city particularly James Bevel, argued vehemently that the appearance book was just another White man’s trick, a delaying tactic like so many others and no concession at all. On Monday morning, February eighth, they held a press conference to denounce it, and to call for the holding of registration in other locations as well, the appointment of deputy registrars, some of whom would be Black and the elimination of all voting requirements except age and residence. Bevel said he would lead a group to the courthouse to make explicit their boycott of the book.

Selma, 1965, Charles Fager As a result of the visibility that came to Reverend Bevel when he would not go along with other Blacks concessions when they were fooled by the White man’s tricks, he was severely beaten and jailed on the day of the appearance book protest.

James Bevel...had been beaten insensibly by sheriff’s deputies and had sustained a concussion of the brain. Bevel was chained to his bed.

Selma, 1965, Charles Fager 274

"Freedom is never an achieved state; like electricity, we've got to keep generating it or the lights go out."

—-Wayne LaPierre

Not only was Bevel chained to his bed, but he was watered down and stripped of his clothes and caught pneumonia. His wife serving him divorce papers caused his inhumane treatment to come to light, as her lawyer found Bevel near death.

The first real causality of the Selma movement was the shooting and subsequent death of Jimmie Lee Jackson. His murder threatened to destroy the nonviolent movement, as people began to arm themselves.

After Jackson died in Selma on Feb. 26, some mourners made their way to Cager Lee’s house, Jackson’s grandfather. Among those paying respects that day were a couple of towering figures of the Movement, Bernard Lafayette and James Bevel, who had been working in the trenches in the Black Belt for some time.

The Death of Jimmie Lee Jackson, John Fleming, The Anniston Star Bevel mustered the strength to ask Cager Lee if he was prepared to march again. The old man, although still bandaged from the beating at Mack’s replied with an “Oh, yeah.”

Pillar of Fire, Taylor Branch The Black community had armed themselves in Marion, and were ready to kill some policemen or White people. I (Bevel) convinced them that they should march instead and that , that would keep the question of the right to vote before the nation and would force President Johnson not to join the southern White folks in crushing the movement under the pretense of upholding law and order. This would have caused a restriction of travel and thus we would not have been able to keep the people at the courthouse. This was a tactical maneuver in the question of the right to vote, aimed at bringing the whole state government and the rest of the nation into the movement.

Interview with James Bevel, by Helen L. Edmond James Bevel spent sometime walking around outside the Torch Motel where he was staying, agonizing over the problems of the movement, especially those involved in making their cries for justice and protection from state sanctioned brutality more vivid and inescapable for the watching nation. Suddenly he had an idea that he felt would bring home the situation as nothing they had tried before had; they would not only march in Montgomery, they would march to Montgomery, starting in Marion where Jackson had been shot, through Selma where Clark had jailed them and down US Highway 80, through Lowndes County where no Blacks were registered at all, fifty miles to the state capitol itself, where Wallace would not be able to ignore them.

Zion Chapel Methodist Church in Marion was packed solid on Sunday, February 28, for the first of several memorial services for Jackson. The people were treated to a brilliant sermon by James Bevel, who was laying the groundwork for his new idea of a march all the way to the state capitol. “There was a decree of destruction against Black people in Alabama,: Bevel went on, “but we can not stand any longer to see it implemented.” “I must go see the king!” he cried again and again and the answering shouts from the people grew to a full throated chorus of approval. His intuition about their readiness was correct: “We must go to Montgomery and see the king!”

“James Bevel...told the crowd that, “Any man who has the urge to hit a posse man or a state trooper with a pop bottle is a fool. That is just what they want you to do. Then they can call you a mob and beat you to death.”

Bevel reached for the Bible and eventually turned to Esther 4:8 where Esther is warned of an order to destroy the Jews and is charged by Mordecai to seek out the king “to make supplication to him and entreat him for her people.”

Selma, 1965, Charles Fager The king, Bevel was making clear, was George Wallace.

Pillar of Fire, Taylor Branch 275

“The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.”

—–John F. Kennedy, 1963

Dr. King confirmed. that Bevel’s plan for a march to Montgomery had become official Selma, 1965, Charles Fager The historic march to Montgomery is known to all with the initial police brutality and the pouring out of the nation in support of Black people being granted their right to vote. President Lyndon Baines Johnson preached the historic “We Shall Overcome” speech and signed the Voting Rights Act on August 6, 1965, into law. With the conclusion of the march to Montgomery, the next phase of the Alabama Project as outlined by Bevel was to begin.

"Dr. King's speech [in Montgomery] was impressive as usual, but the remarks of James Bevel got closest to the whole point of the struggle. Waving up at the capitol, Bevel said, 'Those police up there on the steps know we belong inside. Thirty-four percent of the seats in there belong to us. We don't want these steps. We want the capitol.'"

Black Activism, Robert H. Brisbane.

“For Bevel , the march to Montgomery was not the end of the SCLC Alabama Project, but only the beginning. But once the march was completed, Bevel returned to this original plan. In fact, in light of the momentum developed by the march, he decided its sights should be raised; the Black citizens of Alabama should not settle for simply a federal voting law, he felt, they should demand the impeachment of Governor Wallace, the resignation of both houses of the state legislature, and a new, federally supervised election for all state offices. To reinforce the impact of the mass arrest in Montgomery, Bevel wanted SCLC to institute a nationwide boycott of the states industries and products, to add economic chaos to political disruption as the campaign heated up. The weekend after the rally at the capitol, Dr. King announced that he would call for a boycott of Alabama products and industries; and ask the federal government to withdraw its funds from program in the state.”

Selma, 1965, Charles Fager The Constitution guarantees all American citizens the right to elect its leaders. Those state officials holding office prior to the passage of the Voting Rights Act did not encompass the vote of Black people in Alabama, thus the need for a new election arose. A new election would have caused the federal government to address itself to the mental and emotional damage done to Black people as a result of political, educational and economic disfranchisement. At which point massive government education programs, voters registration programs and mental health programs would have been implemented to aid people in being able to responsibly and intelligently cast their votes.

To this day over forty years after the Voting Rights Act, no legislation has come forth to assist Americans to heal, from the trauma of slavery (murder, lynching, castration, sexual abuse, homelessness, etc.) racism, or disfranchisement.

The mayor of Selma in 1965 was Mayor Joe Smithermen served as mayor until 2003, maintain the racist policies in new ways. In an interview with local Selma residents it was reported that people were encouraged to keep their children out of school and receive crazy checks. One young lady told me and others gathered in Selma, that her mother use to beat her when she voiced a desire to go to school. She became a resident of a mental institute.

A young man I interviewed told me that he had received a high school diploma and he did not know his consonants and his vowels. It appears that the denial of an education was used to keep the people of Alabama from progressing. Had Bevel’s plan to elect all new public servants been implemented Mayor Smithermen may not have served for forty more years and the people may have been able to move forward towards true democracy in the state of Alabama.

But there was resistance to this program within SCLC, led principally by Hosea William. Williams urged Dr. King to give hi command of all the SCLC field staff, including those in Alabama, to help implement SCOPE. SCOPE was given a budget of $480,000. This meant putting an end to Bevel’s Alabama Project.

Selma, 1965, Charles Fager 276

“Evil is powerless if the good are unafraid."“ —–Ronald Wilson Reagan, 1982

As a result of Bevel’s Project being scraped, Alabama Blacks remained under the racist politics of the White government structure. The Mayor of Selma Joe Smitherman, a devout segregationist, elected in 1964, remained the mayor for forty years afterwards, and never worked in the interest of Black people, leaving them struggling to make ends meet. The movement and the focus left Alabama, and the Black people were further punished for their participation.

With the passage of the Voting Rights Act, the voting rights struggle appeared to be over, and it was just a matter of reaping the harvest. In truth, it was just another beginning as some local whites devised one scheme after another to deny African Americans effective participation in the political process. From 1965 to 1984, a series of techniques were employed to reduce the potential number of officials who would be elected by the Black registered voters such as threatening those receiving public assistance, locating voting places in hostile areas, switching to voting machines, buying votes, illegal use of absentee ballots, requiring all voters to reregister and re-identify, working African Americans longer hours on voting days and subjecting them to hostile voter registration and poll officials, setting short and sporadic registration days, and short voting days.

In spite of these efforts, African Americans made continuous, steady progress so that the governing bodies and boards of education of five of the eight predominantly African American counties in the West Alabama Black Belt were black controlled. It took nineteen years of powerful struggle to accomplish this feat. Every scheme had been met and overcome. There was only one scheme left: Put the leaders in jail!!!

It was an uphill battle. To some the situation looked hopeless; eight local leaders facing 210 felony charges of “voter fraud.”

The first trial of Albert Turner, Evelyn Turner and Spencer Hogue resulted in 85 verdicts of innocence. They all cried, along with lawyers and supporters. In trial after trial the verdicts were of innocence. Spiver Gordon was convicted on four of 36 counts by an all white jury. These convictions were eventually thrown out by a Federal Appeals Court. The ordeal of the Black Belt 8 is just one story of the struggle for the right-to-vote. There are many others.

The Blackbelt 8, Bloody Sunday Newsbook, Voting Rights Museum SCLC’s SCOPE Project did not turn out nearly as well as its sponsors had hoped. Everybody was waiting for the bill to be passed...with almost a half million dollars to play with, SCLC’s legendary disorganization became an industry in SCOPE Selma, 1965, Charles Fager ..in 1965 the Voting Rights Law was passed and then permitted to languish with only fractional and half hearted implementation.

Where Do We Go From Here, Martin Luther King, Jr. ...in 1965 the President was prepared to implement measures leading to full equality but waited in vain for the civil rights movement to offer the programs. The movement is depicted as absorbed in controversy, confused in direction, venal toward its friends and in such turmoil it has tragically lost its golden opportunity to attain change today.

Selma, 1965, Charles Fager When the 1965 Voting Rights Law was signed, it was proclaimed as the dawn of freedom and the open door to opportunity. What was minimally required under the law was the appointment of hundreds of registrars and 277

thousands of federal marshals to inhibit southern terror. Instead, fewer than sixty registrars were appointed and not a single federal law officer capable of making arrests was sent into the South. As a consequence the old way of life, economic coercion, terrorism, murder and inhuman contempt has continued unabated.

Selma, 1965, Charles Fager One is led to wonder what would have been the state of Black people in the South and America had Bevel’s proposal to overturn the existing officials and have new elections had been carried out. This would have called for the consistent application of pressure on government officials until all of the rights of Black people were protected. In addition Selma, AL would not have been under the mayoral direction of Mr. Smithermen for thirty-eight more years, reinforcing the status quo.

Bevel went to Chicago, where his brilliant strategic mind found a more promising situation, and began laying the groundwork for Dr. King’s massive Open Housing campaign there in the summer of 1966.

Selma, 1965, Charles Fager "Rev. James Bevel, who directed the voter registration drive in Selma for the (SCLC), had come to Chicago . . . He subsequently became King's Chicago project director."

Lionel Lokos, House Divided, p. 234, 1968

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BEYOND THE VISUAL “I expose slavery in this country because to expose it is to kill it. Slavery is one of those monsters of darkness to whom the light of truth is death.”

—Frederick Douglass

“One of the hallmarks of freedom is an inexhaustible search for the truth.”

—Myeka

In the beginning was the “Word’” or sound vibration, and MAN (male/female) became living souls.

In the beginning was the “Call” or sound vibration, and the people marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge and the right to vote became law of the land.

Most people start there understanding of the Right-To-Vote Movement with the visual picture of people crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, AL. The movement for the right to vote was a series of events that took place over many years. Many people were involved. The successful execution of a movement to secure the right to vote was implemented by the strategic mind of Reverend James Luther Bevel, Sr. THE “CALL” The “Call” for a march from Selma, AL to Montgomery, AL was made on February 28, 1965, in Zion United Methodist Church in Marion, AL, during the first memorial service for Jimmie Lee Jackson. Reverend Bevel in his sermon spoke about the need to take Jackson’s body to the capitol to lay at the feet of the governor. He said he needed time to think about this so he would march from Marion to Montgomery and later revised it to be from Selma to Montgomery. The response was the historic march on March 7, 1965.

“Those who understand the positive use of speech become the healers of man; they sympathize with the troubles of their fellow human beings; they seek out ways in which they can be of service.”

—The Rootlight Team

THE “CALLER” James Luther Bevel, born October 19, 1936 in Ittabena, Mississippi to Illie and Denise Bevel. James Bevel’s contribution to the removal of the impediments to freedom is monumental in its scope. His contributions have been largely overlooked by the public as he choose to remain in the background and push others like Dr. King towards the limelight for strategic reasons.

This allowed him to effectively initiate movements, organize local people, strategize nonviolent actions, educate those who would participate in various movements and advise other leaders.

James Bevel is the “who” as it relates to the Selma Right-To-Vote Movement. It was Bevel and his former wife Diane Nash that wrote the historic Alabama Project that became the Right-To-Vote Movement in Selma, AL. For this they received the highest award from SCLC and Dr Martin L. King, Jr., The coveted Rosa Parks Award.

The Alabama Project was initially rejected by King and other leaders. In spite of this Bevel forged ahead and moved his 279

staff to Selma, where Reverend Bernard Lafayette had already begun laying the groundwork to obtain the right to vote.

Bevel was inspired by the four little girls who had died in the church bombing in Birmingham, AL. He wanted people to have a means of protection under the law so that this terrorist tactic could be eliminated. At a midway point when violence threatened to impede the nonviolent movement as a result of the brutal murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson by a state trooper, causing locals to arm us with the intention of killing white folks in retaliation, Bevel called for a march from Selma to Montgomery, AL to divert the rage in the masses and to have a talk with the governor.

Others drew straw to determine who would lead the historic march across the bridge and John Lewis won. It is this march across the bridge that is affixed in the minds of the masses because of the extreme violent onslaught of the people crossing the bridge for the first time.

The “Call” and “Response” made on February 28, 1965, at Zion United Methodist Church in Marion, AL is not recognized as a historical fact of importance, and yet without it, there would have been no march from Selma to Montgomery and no Right To Vote Act. It is of utmost importance that people understand how nonviolent movements begin, are maintained and how strategies are formulated. This is relevant information for future generations who might find themselves in similar situations. The truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth is sufficient to free mankind from the superstitions, lies, false beliefs, erroneous errors, hearsay, false teachings, overlooked facts, propaganda, historical blunders, media manipulations and self seeking that so often disguises itself as truth. Truth crushed to the ground will ever rise to the top., Know the truth and it alone will set you free.

Help place a monument a Zion United Methodist Church, in Marion AL to honor the call and the caller of the Selma to Montgomery march and the subsequent Right To Vote Act. Make your donation payable to: The Committee for Truth In History.

http://www.wix.com/truthinhistory/now

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The nonviolent movement is about becoming conscious. —Reverend James L. Bevel

JIMMIE LEE JACKSON 1938—1965 Jimmie Lee Jackson was born in Marion, Alabama. Upon graduating from high school his plans were to move to the North for a better life, but those dreams were shattered when his father died. While running the farm and felliing trees for six dollars a day, Jimmie Lee wanted to see a real change in his hometown. He began participating in demonstrations to protest the unfair treatments of Negroes For over four-years, Jimmie Lee had gone to the voting registrar's office in Marion, often accompanied by his elderly grandfather. A federal court had ordered the county to open its registration to all regardless of race, but each time Jimmie Lee and his grandfather went to the courthouse, the registrar used one stratagem or another to prevent their becoming voters.

Voting registrars throughout Alabama and the Deep South in those years kept blacks from registering through delay, deception and deceit. The registrar might claim to be out of application forms when a black person approached the desk. Completed forms would disappear or be disqualified for the slightest error. The registrar would ask a series of complex questions about government - so-called "literacy tests" - and arbitrarily flunk black applicants. So, while two of every three residents in Perry County, population 17,000, were black, only 300 had been allowed to register.

On February 18, 1965, about 9:30 pm Jimmie Lee, his grandfather, Cager Lee, and his mother, Viola Jackson were participating in a nighttime demonstration in Marion which was a very dangerous thing to do, but they were only allowed to march at night because it wouldn't disturb the businesses.

As part of his civil rights work for the SCLC in Alabama, Reverend James Orange was arrested and jailed prior to his conviction in 1965 for contributing to the delinquency of minors by enlisting them to work in voter registration drives.

He was part of Reverend James L. Bevel’s direct action staff and was assigned to Perry County, AL. His detention in Perry County, Alabama, sparked fears that he would be lynched, and a protest march was organized to support him Nearly 400 people jammed into the church that February night. They sang and prayed. They heard from people who had been beaten and jailed for marching to the voting registrar's office in nearby Selma.

While they were in church, Col. Al Lingo, the commander of the Alabama State Troopers, took direct command of 50 troopers and deployed them in the streets. Standing at twenty-foot intervals along the sidewalk adjacent to the church, the troopers were in riot gear -- helmets strapped in place, long black nightsticks held lengthwise at chest level.

The people planned to walk from the church to the city jail, a block away, where a young civil rights organizer who had been arrested that morning was incarcerated. They planned to sing, kneel and pray, then leave. Pledged to nonviolence, none were armed.

I was a was cold night with a full moon. People began filing out of the church. Reporters, photographers and TV cameramen could see the church on the southeast corner of the square but were effectively penned in by the police.

About a hundred had exited the church when they heard the voice of Sheriff T.O. Harris, amplified over a loudspeaker: "This is an unlawful assembly. You are hereby ordered to disperse. Go home or go back in the church." James Dobynes, a church minister, called out: "May we pray before we go back?"

Harris did not respond. Suddenly, all the streetlights went out. Within seconds, reporters began to hear wood cracking against bone, thudding into flesh, people screaming. Using their clubs, two state troopers began beating the minister, 281

who had gone to his knees to pray.

Local white thugs joined in the melee, attacking churchgoers as well as reporters and photographers. NBC reporter Richard Valeriani was clubbed and suffered a bloody head wound. Someone slugged UPI photographer Pete Fisher while others took his camera and smashed it on the ground. Other photographers had their cameras sprayed with black paint. As a result, not one photo of this bloody police riot was taken.

The church's doorway was jammed. People could not go back; so, they began to run, seeking refuge in a neighboring funeral parlor, homes and other buildings close to the church. Jimmie Lee tried to guide his mother and 82-year-old grandfather to safety, but a trooper knocked the older man to the ground. Jimmie Lee picked him up and carried him into Mack's Cafe, where a dozen or more people had sought sanctuary. On Col. Lingo's orders, state troopers charged into the cafe and began swinging their clubs, smashing the light fixtures, spewing glass throughout the room until all that was left was one bare bulb in a far corner.

One trooper knocked Viola Jackson to the floor. When Jimmie Lee sprang forward to shield his mother, the trooper grabbed Jackson and pushed him into a cigarette machine. Without warning, a second trooper, James Bonard Fowler, drew his revolver and shot Jackson twice in the abdomen. The powder burns on Jackson's torso indicated the unarmed man had been shot at point-blank range The streets were completely surrounded by police and state troopers.

As he escaped from the cafe the troopers chased him up the street beating him until he dropped. It was two hours later before Jimmie Lee was taken to Good Samaritan Hospital in Selma, Four days later, Col. Lingo walked into the hospital. He was in full uniform, lightning bolts on his service cap, silver eagles on his collar, a warrant in his hand. He read aloud the state's charges against Jackson: assault and battery with intent to murder a peace officer. On Friday, February 26, eight days after he was shot, Jackson died of a massive internal infection.

The Call For A March From Selma To Montgomery Account by Dr. Bernard Lafayette As ministers both of us (James Bevel and Bernard Lafayette) felt it was important to make a pastoral call to the family of the slain Jimmy Lee Jackson, to have prayer with them and give them spiritual encourgagement. The family was really down, as Jimmy was a young man who was the bread winner for the family and was now dead. He had a sister, a wife, and mother who had been beaten, and his grandfather had a large knot on the top of his head from being beaten.

Before leaving the Jackson’s, Bevel asked the family, “What do you think we should do?” Bevel asked, “Do you thing we should continue to march?” Cager Lee Jackson said, “Oh yes, we have to march now, I have nothing to lose, I’ve lost everything I had.” So Bevel said, “If we march would you march with us?” He said, “Yes, I’ll march.”

So on our way back from the Jackson’s house in Perry County, AL, Bevel said, “I’m going to march, but I’m going to march all the way to Montgomery.” He asked, “Do you think I’ll get anyone to march with me?” I said, “I’m just one person, but I’lll march with you.”

So Bevel at the mass meeting that very same night made the announcement that he was going to march all the wat to Montgomery. He asked, “How many people are going to march with me?” The whole church stood up.

Aftermath of Jimmie Lee Jackson’s Murder Violence was being planned by many blacks in Perry County. Every male in Alabama is basicly a hunter, and Bevel and Lafayette got word that bullets were being purchased from neighboring states. Blacks were planning to kill in retaliation for the murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson. Bevel’s idea for a march was partly in response to this plan for violence that would derail the nonviolent movement for the right to vote. He knew that the people were angry as he himself was. So inorder to dissapate the anger, the march from Selma to Montgomery would be just the remedy. As director of the 282

nonviolent right to vote movement he had to create a strategy that would keep voting rights as the main agenda and headline, not to be replaced by violent disruptions and headlines like state trooper shot. These type of healines would take the focus off of the goal which was to get black people the right to vote..

Sunday, March 7, 1965, "Bloody Sunday" At 1:00 P.M. as 600 peaceful marchers approached the bottom of the Edmund Pettus Bridge they were met by Alabama state troopers and local deputies.

The marchers were preparing to march from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery, Alabama which is the state capital. They were marching the 54 miles in protest to the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson and unfair voter registration practices.

When ordered to end the march by state troopers, the marchers were given three minutes, but within one and half minutes they were attacked by dogs, beaten with billy clubs, tear gas, and chased by the posse.

As the marchers were being attacked the ABC television network was there to film the march not knowing that it would become violent. The ABC television network immediately stopped the present show to introduce to the country the brutality that was taking place in Selma, Alabama. This day became known as "Bloody Sunday.

Second March Tuesday, March 9, 1965, "Turnaround Tuesday" After the brutal attack on the Selma marchers, Dr. King sent a telegram around the country asking for ministers of all faiths to come to Selma, Alabama to march to Montgomery, Alabama.

While waiting for the judge's decision to march, Dr. King received word that the judge had denied the march to take place on Tuesday, and it would be Thursday before a decision would be announced.

With 1,500 people of all races waiting to march Dr. King made a decision to continue the march. As the marchers were singing "Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Round" when they reached the bottom of the Edmund Pettus Bridge once again they were met by the Alabama state troopers.

When the marchers were ordered to end the march, Dr. King and the marchers knelt down, prayed, and walked back to Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church. Dr. King made a decision to discontinue the march because he did not want violence to happen as it did on "Bloody Sunday."

Because Dr. King and the marchers turned back and marched to the church this became known as "Turnaround Tuesday." Later that evening three white ministers were attacked and beaten with a iron pipe. Rev. James Reeb was badly injured and later died from a blow to the head. The death of Rev. Reeb gained national attention. President Johnson introduced the Voting Rights Bill.

Third March Sunday, March 21, 1965 After the death of Rev. Reeb, Governor Wallace flew to Washington DC to meet with President Johnson. He claimed that the state of Alabama did not have enough manpower to protect the marchers along highway 80. President Johnson then ordered the Alabama National Guardsmen to protect the marchers from Selma to Montgomery.

Later that day President Johnson made a speech to the nation about the "Bloody Sunday" event. Many Negroes felt that it took the death of a white minister for the President to become concerned about the movement and not the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson.

Finally, Judge Frank Johnson gave permission for the march to take place after viewing the "Bloody Sunday" news tape.

He then ordered Governor Wallace not to interfere with the march.

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On Sunday, March 21, 1965, about 3,500 people with the nation watching left Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church marching and singing to the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

To protect the marchers about twelve planes and helicopters flew over the marchers. Once the marchers covered seven miles, as ordered by President Johnson only 300 were allowed to walk highway 80. The other 2,000 marchers were taken back to Selma by Alabama railways.

Montgomery Alabama Thursday, March 25, 1965 Around noon over 25,000 marchers had lined the streets of Montgomery in front of the capitol because they were not allowed on the steps of the capitol. Governor Wallace sent a message at about 2:00 PM to say that he would meet with a delegation, but they must be Alabamaians.

Dr. King delivered one of his most powerful speeches about the injustices done to the Negro people in Alabama. After this great speech a group of 18 Negroes and 2 whites attempted to give a petition to Governor Wallace, but his executive secretary tried to accept the petition, so Rev. Joseph Lowery refuse to place it in his hands.

Around 6:00 PM the marchers were transported back to Selma by buses, trains, and cars. They were advised to leave the city of Montgomery before dark.

On that evening Viola Liuzzo was driving from Montgomery heading back toward Selma and was killed by klansmen.

Criminal Charges Against Killer A grand jury declined to indict Fowler in September 1965, identifying him only by his surname: Fowler.

On 10 May 2007, 42 years after the crime, James Bonard Fowler was charged with first degree and second degree murder for the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson and surrendered to authorities.

On 15 November 2010, Fowler pled guilty to manslaughter, and was sentenced to six months in jail. Perry County commissioner, Albert Turner Jr, called the agreement “a slap in the face of the people of this county.

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In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery? —Saint Augustine

ZION UNITED METHODIST CHURCH Adjacent to the town square, Zion United Methodist Church was a focal point for civil rights meetings in the Sixties.

The night march that ended with the shooting of Jimmie Lee Jackson started at this church.

The church is located at 3087 Pickens St, the corner of Pickens & Martin Luther King Drive, in Marion, AL. On the night of February 18, 1965, around 500 people left Zion United Methodist Church in Marion and attempted a peaceful walk to the Perry County Jail about a half a block away where young Civil Rights worker James Orange was being held. The marchers planned to sing hymns and return to the church. Police later stated they believed the crowd was planning a jailbreak The site still lacks a marker noting that the call for the march from Selma to Montgomery was made at this location.

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“Blessed are the peacemakers.”

CHARLES FAGER Known as Chuck Fager, he is an American activist, an author, an editor, a publisher and an outspoken and prominent member of the Religious Society of Friends. He is known for his work in both the 1960s Civil Rights Movement and in the Peace movement. His written works include religious and political essays, humor, adult fiction, and juvenile fiction, and he is best known for Selma 1965: The March That Changed the South, his in-depth history of the 1965 Selma Voting Rights Movement, and a memoir, Eating Dr. King's Dinner.

Fager moved to Atlanta, Georgia in late summer 1964, and soon became active in the Civil Rights movement. In December 1964 he joined the staff of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), first in Atlanta and then in Selma, Alabama. He was part of the 1965 voting rights campaign there organized and directed by James Bevel. During that time Fager was arrested three times and spent one night in a jail cell with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Fager left Selma in early 1966. He had obtained status as a conscientious objector to the military draft, and was required to perform two years of alternative service. This service was performed first at Friends World Institute later Friends World College based in Long Island, New York, and then completed at the New York City Department of Social Services (the Welfare Department).

He later participated in several peaceful protests against the Vietnam War. During that time he was arrested twice.

In 1968, he signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War. At the beginning of 2002, he moved to Fayetteville, North Carolina, to become director of Quaker House, which has been a front-line Friends peace witness project there since 1969. As part of this work, he has been a member of the planning group which became QUIT: the Quaker Initiative to End Torture, as well as a founding member of NRCAT: The National Religious Coalition Against Torture. http://quakerhouse.org/

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"Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good."

—–Gandhi

VIOLA LIUZZO On March 7,1965, Viola and Jim Liuzzo were watching the 11 o’clock news when they saw the first film clips of state troopers attacking Selma marchers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Enraged by the brutal attack, the Michigan mother of five got into her car and came to Selma to assist with the struggle. On the evening of March 25,1965, while transporting marchers back and forth between Montgomery and Selma, on a lonely stretch of road in Lowndes County, a carload of Klansmen pulled up alongside Liuzzo’s Oldsmobile and fired two bullets into Liuzzo’s skull. President Johnson was outraged at Mrs. Luizzo’s murder, and ordered Congress to start a complete investigation of the Ku Klux Klan.

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“Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in His law doeth he meditate day and night. —Psalm 1

REVEREND JAMES REEB James Reeb was born in Wichita, Kansas. As a Unitarian Universalist minister, Reeb was active in the civil rights movement, and encouraged his parishioners to do the same. With his wife and four children, he lived in poor black neighborhoods where he felt he could do the most good. Until a few months before his death, he had been Assistant Minister at All Souls Church in Washington, D.C. A member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Reeb took part in the Selma to Montgomery protest march in 1965. While in Selma on March 9, Reeb was attacked and beaten by a white mob armed with clubs. He suffered massive head injuries, and died in a Birmingham hospital two days later. His death resulted in a national outcry against the activities of white racists in the Deep South, although some expressed indignation that it took the death of a white man to incite such a national outcry. This is to be compared with the case of Jimmie Lee Jackson, who was shot dead by police in Marion, Alabama two weeks earlier while protecting his mother from a beating; his case attracted much less national attention.

President Lyndon B. Johnson declared the events in Selma "an American tragedy," which, he said, should strengthen people's determination "to bring full and equal and exact justice to all of our people." Johnson's voting-rights proposal reached Congress the Monday after Reeb's death.

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"When the rights of just one individual are denied, the rights of all are in jeopardy!"

— Jo Ann Roach

J. L. CHESTNUT December 16, 1930 – September 30, 2008

Chestnut was born in Selma, and attended law school at Howard University. He returned home as Selma's only black attorney, and represented civil rights demonstrators at trial there when the Selma movement began in the 1960s.

A Story To Be Forever Remembered “It was the worse day of my life. I did not believe America could ever be saved. I saw a sea of law enforcement officers, at least 200, on the other side of the Edmund Pettus Bridge. They were arguing over who was in charge. I saw Marie Foster, John Lewis and others crest the bridge. They came face to face with the might of Alabama stretched out across the 4-lane highway. Suddenly a white voice barked out, “Turn around. Go back to your church. This is as far as you will be permitted to go!” John Lewis kneeled as if to pray. The others behind him began to do likewise. From somewhere in the cluster of law enforcement, a tear gas canister hit the pavement and exploded. In that moment there was absolute bedlam. It was worse than the war and I was a veteran. I saw grown men on horse back wielding Billy clubs the size of baseball bats and splitting the heads of women and children like they were watermelons. One could hear ribs cracking as horses trampled on their bodies. I dropped the telephone that I was on to inform the NA.A.C.P. Legal Defense Fund of what was happening. I pulled Mrs. Boynton, who was almost unconscious and bleeding, off the road. John Lewis was lying in the street 3 feet away from me with 3 concussions and bleeding like a stuck hog. People were crying out in pain and in fear. It was a Bloody Sunday.” (Live Account by J.L. Chestnut).

The background of this horrific day, as told by J.L. Chestnut, beginning with the earliest struggles for human and civil rights, starting with the enslavement of African people. Many of these enslaved Africans were brought to the Alabama Black Belt to work the rich farmland. This background is made up of freedom fighters like C. J. Adams who was one of the few blacks to become an officer in the U.S. army, during his time. When he retired to Selma and became a notary public, he was the closest thing black Selma had to a lawyer. He opened his office in the Black Community Center on Franklin St. He helped 100’s of black soldiers with the G.I. Bill and helped others get social security at a time when this was taboo. Adams was a one man N.A.A.C.P. He was as rare as Martin Luther King, Jr. was in his time, according to Atty. Chestnut. When he walked downtown he did not smile and grin with white folks. He wanted to teach Blacks that you could stand up and survive. He was framed (criminalized) by the white leadership twice. He left Selma in 1947 after getting out of jail the second time when he was elderly. He was an early inspiration to the Boynton’s. He lit the fire for Freedom in Selma.

The Boynton’s took that flame and organized the Voter’s League. Mrs. Margaret Moore and Marie Foster as well as others joined the early struggle for voting rights in Selma. They met once a month for years to have serious discussions to increase the numbers of black registered voters. It was remarkable and prophetic that their determination lasted so long because had they not been in place, simply having conversations about voting and sending a couple of people to vote for years, there would have been no one to invite Dr. King to Selma. Many of the older members of the League didn’t want King to come, but Amelia Boynton and Marie Foster sided with the younger people, including Rev. Reese, who wanted to invite King.

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After sending the invitation King was hesitant about coming to a rural place like Selma, where people were still living on plantations. He also wasn’t sure that there was the same type of figure as Bull Connor in Selma. They had to convince him that they had his match in Jim Clark in Selma. Joe Lowery made a joint decision in Birmingham that they would all come to Selma. King did not want to abandon Marie Foster and Amelia Boynton. King came to Selma in early January 1965.

While the Boyntons were working on voting rights as far back as 1945, Albert Turner and others had been working on voting rights in Perry County, AL. Jimmie Lee Jackson was killed in Perry County by a state trooper during a night march to protect James Orange who had received death threats in jail. Jimmie Lee Jackson’s death upset people so much that some suggested that they take his “unembalmed” body to the State Capitol and leave his body on George Wallace’s desk. It was finally decided to have the Selma to Montgomery March.

The Civil Rights lawyers went to federal court to get Judge Frank Johnson to declare that they had a constitutional right to march from Selma to Montgomery. A whole host of white lawyers were opposing the right to march, saying that it would stop any meaningful commerce. Chestnut let the people know that the NAACP Legal Defense Fund did not want the march to take place without the Federal Courts approval. Mrs. Boynton and Mrs. Marie Foster said they weren’t going to wait on the courts; they were going to march anyway. Albert Turner, who was a kind of field marshal for Dr. King, Jr., advised that the people wait for the Federal Courts to approve the march. John Lewis, Albert Turner, and Marie Foster were determined to defy the federal and state court as well as the NAACP legal Defense Fund, to lead the march. After Bloody Sunday, the Judge did order that they had a constitutional right to march. People came from all over the country to march. King lost some prestige, by marching to the bridge, praying and then turning around. This was called Turn Around Tuesday. Soon thereafter the Selma to Montgomery march commenced. People marched through the rain and the pain until making it to Montgomery, AL where Martin Luther King, Jr. made his famous, “How long, Not long” speech.

When J. L. Chestnut Jr. had decided to give up on America, he could not have known that all across the nation Americans had watched this outrage on television, deciding that this was not “their America.” President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had a week earlier told King that the nation would not stand for 2 Civil Rights Bills in two years, saw the beating and changed his mind. He suddenly was before a joint session of Congress demanding that they pass a Voting Rights Bill without delay. He ended his speech to Congress with the anthem of the movement, “We Shall Overcome.”

In August of 1965 the Voting Rights Act passed. Dallas County went from 70 registered voters to 10,000 in less than 6 weeks. Hands that had only been allowed to pick cotton began to pick presidents overnight.

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“I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. " —Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

PRESIDENT LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON

At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama. There is no Negro problem. There is no southern problem. There is no northern problem. There is only an American problem. Many of the issues of civil rights are very complex and most difficult. But about this there can and should be no argument. Every American citizen must have the right to vote...Yet the harsh fact is that in many places in this country men and women are kept from voting simply because they are Negroes... No law that we now have on the books...can insure the right to vote when local officials are determined to deny it...

There is no Constitutional issue here. The command of the Constitution is plain. There is no moral issue. It is wrong--deadly wrong--to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country. There is no issue of States' rights or National rights. There is only the struggle for human rights.

—President Lyndon B. Johnson Introducing the Voting Rights Act to Congress, March 15, 1965

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PRESIDENT LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON “WE SHALL OVERCOME.”

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 292

“Those who profess to favor freedom, yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.�

-- Frederick Douglass

LUCY FOSTER She was born on October 5, 1929, in Shiloh, Alabama. Lucy's undergraduate college years were spent at Selma University in Selma, Alabama, and at all-Black Miles College in Fairfield, AL, where she met Hugh L. Foster, whom she would later marry. She decided to go to graduate school at the University of Alabama. She knew that getting into the school would be a struggle. She and a friend approached the NAACP for help. Thurgood Marshall, Constance Baker Motley, and Arthur Shores were assigned to be her attorneys. While they started laying the groundwork for her case, she worked as a secretary, among other jobs. Court action began in July 1953. On June 29, 1955, the NAACP secured a court order restraining the university from rejecting Lucy and her friend based upon race. The University of Alabama was thereby forced to admit them. Two days later, the court amended the order to apply to all other African-American students seeking admission to the university. On February 3, 1956, twenty-sixyear-old Lucy enrolled as a graduate student in library science. (Her friend had reconsidered the situation.)

On the third day of classes, Autherine Lucy faced mobs of students, townspeople, and even groups from out of state.

"There were students behind me saying, 'Let's kill her! Let's kill her!' " she said. The mobs threw eggs at her and tried to block her way. A police escort was needed to get her to her classes, and even from within the classroom, she could hear the crowds chanting. That evening, Lucy was suspended from the university. The university's board stated that the action was taken for her safety and that of the other students. The NAACP lawyers did not accept the suspension, however. They filed a contempt of court suit against the university, accusing the administrators of acting in support of the white mob. They were forced to withdraw them. The suit was used as justification for expelling Lucy from the school In 1989, she Lucy entered the University of Alabama to earn a master's degree in elementary education.

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Love + Truth + Freedom = Responsibility Fear + Lies = Enslavement = Apathy

MARIE FOSTER I decided to become involved in the Civil Rights Movement because the race relations were so bad in Selma . I had a vision that we could do something about the biased conditions in Selma, throughout the state, and someday throughout the world. Mr. & Mrs. Boynton had formed the Dallas County Voters League, so I worked faithfully beside them.

One of my most effective contributions to the movement was promoting and assisting in the Citizenship Classes. It was at these classes that we taught people how to get registered to vote and how to make their vote count. We went door to door to every known minister in town with leaflets for them to read in their churches.

On Bloody Sunday, the most noted march in the history of the Voting Rights’ Movement, I was beaten. It was hard for me to believe that such vicious actions were taken to stop us from practicing our right of freedom of speech and self determination.

I’m a faithful believer in God. My life was threatened on numerous occasions and I received very offensive telephone calls from the Ku Klux Klan. But this did not break my spirit or focus. Long before Dr. King, we had a vision to change these things through the power of the ballot. I would like to be remembered as a person who did good and empowered people, through my work, to help themselves.

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LOCAL HEROES & HEROINES FROM ALABAMA Annie Cooper I moved back to Selma to take care of my 98 year old mother. I started working at Dunn Rest Home where I had a private patient. During that time SNCC had come to town and was trying to help people get registered to vote. When I got off work one day I went to get in line with the people at the courthouse who were trying to get registered to vote.

The owner of Dunn Rest Home began walking the line to see if any of his employees were trying to get registered. He looked right in my face. The next morning I received a telephone call as I was preparing to go to work. It was one of my friends calling to inform me I had been fired for trying to register to vote.

I began attending mass meetings every day. One day shortly after I had been fired from my job I received a telephone call from Mrs. Amelia Boynton asking me to attend a meeting at a local black doctor’s home.

When I went to the meeting they asked me why I had been fired. I told them. They drew up a petition and presented it to the workers at Dunn Rest Home to sign. The petition stated that if I was not given my job back they would walk-off their jobs. They got 42 signatures on the petition and all 42 of those people lost their jobs because I had lost mine. Even worse no other white person would hire any of us. They were told not to hire us unless they wanted the white community to stop coming into their businesses. I finally found a job at the Torch Motel and continued attending the mass meetings. When we went to the courthouse to try and register to vote, we

found that white people would go out to the rural areas of the county and bring in white people to register to vote. They would give them chairs to sit in and we would have to stand.

One day we were standing in line at the courthouse trying to get registered. Jim Clark and his deputies came up. Mr. Baker who was over the transportation department started kicking and beating this young man who hadn’t done anything wrong. But the young man did not try to fight back. I peeped over someone's shoulder to find out what was going on. I said, “He’s kicking him!” One of the ladies who was standing there told me to be quiet. I said, “We’re not in slavery time here. Nobody’s afraid of them.” I didn’t even know Jim Clark was behind me. He grabbed me and started manhandling me. I lost my senses and began fighting him back. It took his deputies to pull me off of him. I was arrested. When Clark got me in an alley and away from the demonstrators he hit me in the head with a billy club, cursed me and put me in the back of his patrol car. All the way to the police station he kept asking me how much is that “damn Martin Luther King paying you?” He cursed and called Dr. King names. I began to sing. They kept me in that jail for 11 hours. They sent Dr. Dinkins to check on me. I would tell people today that it’s no time to relax. We’ve got to be together to do anything.

Mayor John Jackson Growing up in Lowndes County during the Civil Rights Movement involved balancing the radical perspectives of SNCC (Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee under the direction of Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown with the perspective of Rev. Dr. King Jr. There was continuous harassment and direct threats in Lowndes County formed the belief that non-violence was not an effective tool. At an early age this belief was challenged when John was on his porch with a shotgun and a pistol trying to defend his home in a shoot-out with whites from his area. He subsequently got in his car and followed the shooters when they unloaded 19 gunshots into his vehicle. At this moment John had a divine experience seeing an image of God smiling upon him. The next day investigators asked who was dead but not one bullet touched John’s body. From this day, he was never afraid to stand up for his beliefs. At an early age he convinced his father to allow Stokley and others to use a house the family owned so they would not be killed going from Selma to Lowndes County. From this location, history was made.

Violence continued in Lowndes County and adults who got involved in the movement lost land, property, and resources.

Many people were afraid to become involved but received courage from the young people who came from SNCC. 295

During this time it was difficult to get 6 or 7 adults to participate in the movement. When a black home was shot, a white home was shot. When a black church was bombed, a white church was bombed. This made the strategy of nonviolence extremely acceptable as an alternative to this conflict. When Robert Kennedy, the Attorney General for the United Sates ordered protection for people crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge, lives were saved. Based on this experience John became the first black Alabamian conscientious objector to refuse to go to Vietnam based on the principles of non-violence.

Charles Mauldin One day Charles Mauldin was shooting the breeze with his buddies near Selma University, their hang out spot, when Bernard Lafayette started talking to them about freedom. Bernard Lafayette was a SNCC (Student Non – Violent Coordinating Committee) field organizer who had gone to headquarters in Atlanta looking for an assignment and was told that all the other places were gone, except Selma which was too dangerous; he accepted the challenge. Before Charles new it he had been elected president of the Dallas County Youth Voter’s League, an organization led by great local leaders like The Boynton's and Marie Foster to get the right to vote. Charles had answered the call of another organizer, John Love, the first black man he had ever seen with an Afro, to join the movement and get people registered to vote.

Charles was at every demonstration leading up to the victory, the passing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Recently, fellow student leaders told him that they picked him as president because they knew he would always attend the meetings and run the meetings efficiently.

He remembers the mass meetings and the terrible pressure resulting in headaches from the daily marches to the courthouse to get people registered to vote. He remembers the forced march to camp Selma (near where the Phoenix School is) when white dominated Selma Police Department forced children, with cattle prods to march. He remembers the Berlin Wall where they stood up all day and night in order to wear out the Alabama state troopers. He remembers Dr. King, Andrew Young, and the fire of Willie Ricks (aka Mukasa), who actually coined the term Black Power. He believes in the power of Non – Violence because he saw how it helped to change all of America. Mauldin stated, "It isn’t very dignified to say I am going to let someone hit me over the head and I’m not going to fight back, but when my 7 year old daughter told me how courageous she thought we were I almost cried."

Today Mauldin is doing his part to preserve the history and its lessons for another generation of young people who did not have to live through Jim Crow as the Vice – President of the National Voting Rights Museum. He believes that we can all do our part in any way we choose to- as doctors, lawyer, astronauts- what ever dreams we have can be a help to our community.

Barbara Howard She has been apart of the Movement for Civil and Human Rights for as long as she can remember. So when organizers like Rev. Orange and James Bevel rolled into town, Barbara was already tired of going into stores like H.L. Greens and staring at those big fat juicy hotdogs that she couldn’t have. It was much too hard for this smart young woman, who had skipped two grades, to understand why she couldn’t have one of those hotdogs just because she was black. So when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s field organizers made the call for young people to help integrate the stores and movie theaters in Montgomery, she was glad to stand up and be counted. She insisted that her friends join with her, like Ella Bell who was elected to the State Board of Education. Day in and day out she worked with other students to transform segregated Montgomery, Alabama into a place "where we could just be treated like human beings." So on the day that the marchers from Selma were to arrive she and her other siblings (her mom was now a single widow with 8 children) turned St. Jude out. They ran through the school telling students that they better not be sitting in class while the movement was going on right outside. This resulted in her whole family getting suspended from school. When asked about whether or not she was ever scared she stated that she knew it was dangerous but "SNCC prepared us through trainings on Non – Violence, we were ready, I don’t remember any fear."

Barbara Howard did not stop when King, Bevel, Orange, and others left town. She took her greatest lesson from the Non – Violent Movement- unconditional love- and put it to work in her church, work, and community. She worked out 296

of the home of Virginia and Clifford Durr’s, two of few whites in Montgomery who stood up, at the Southern Courier, a paper dedicated to the aims of the Freedom Movement. She went on to work for the Montgomery Improvement Association. She has remained active to this day. She said tearfully, thinking about those who marched from Selma to Montgomery and the hopes and dreams they carried with them, that "Every time we open one door they (whites) close another door… We shouldn’t even have to deal with issues like the expiration of the 1965 Voting Rights Act expiring in the 21st Century. There should be an amendment to the Constitution to make sure that no other people’s voting rights will ever be violated in America."

Princella Howard Before the Civil War ever started there was a group of 12 black men who organized a secret society called the Knights of Liberty. Led by Moses Dickson, they trained thousands of Black men in this secret military dedicated to the end of slavery. Princella Howard Dixon’s story begins with this secret force of freedom fighters who halted their first advance to join in with the Civil War that was just about to break out. Her father was the leader of the benevolent organization that sprung from the secret military and was heavily involved in the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Her passion for freedom continued to be nurtured at age 8 when her mother would ask that she teach the customers in her beauty shop from the Highlander Citizenship School book. Before she knew it she was a teenager being thrown out of St. Jude’s Honor Society for organizing students from all the Black area schools, inviting them to after school rallies on her campus. She organized students to integrate the local businesses. Andrew Young of S.C.L.C. named her the youngest field state representative, at age 16, giving her a staff of 5 to manage. She remembers distinctively coming to Selma from Montgomery with James Orange for one of the early mass meetings to see if people were really ready to fight for the Right to Vote in Selma. That was one of the most amazing experiences of her life. It was dark outside, when suddenly they opened the door to the church and everyone was down on their knees facing the door. The spirit of God was overwhelmingly present in the people, she knew immediately they were ready.

Charles Bonner One of the foot soldiers that joined the ranks in the fight for justice at the tender age of 16. There were many reasons he chose to participate in the movement. He wanted to go in the front door of restaurants, he wanted to be treated fairly like white people, and he wanted justice for all people. It was not easy to be in the movement then and his family was afraid that he might be killed.

According to Charles, "the principles of non-violence produced a superior moral authority that eliminated fear." Today, Mr. Bonner knows that the purpose of these efforts featuring the use of non-violence was the only way to produce this lasting social change. The youth of his period were exposed to spirituality in freedom songs, moral values from church meetings, and the practice of unconditional love as taught by Jesus, Gandhi, and Dr. King that would ensure victory.

The youth of his day were also inspired to academic excellence though exposure of Stokely Car-Michael and philosophical treatises on important strategies. This produced a desire for learning and justice that has not been quenched in any way.

Today, as the principle for the law offices of Charles A. Bonner, Charles believes that our youth are greatly neglected and they need a movement for this generation. As a veteran of the movement, he is certain that the strategies learned while he was young can help the youth today. He believes that civil rights veterans should organize around the principles of non-violence while working in concentrated segments of the community. There are many issues we need to address including education, constitutional rights, the Voting Rights Act, youth homicide, and unemployment. The greatest deterrent to this progress is the current administration which he believes is morally bankrupt. We need a change in leadership in this nation. People like Nelson Mandela could help us go from greed to compassion. Our current administration is unacceptable. We should march against the war in Iraq, jobs, health care, and rampant police brutality.

The only way this can be done is through the practice of non-violence. Charles A. Bonner continues to wage the battle for justice by focusing on police brutality in his law practice.

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JoAnne Bland My siblings and I were raised by my maternal grandmother and my father. We were raised in G.W.C Homes (the projects). In 1961, I was eight years old when my grandmother took us to our first mass meeting.

After that mass meeting we started hearing and talking about freedom and the right to vote. SNCC began to organize the young people, not just the teenagers, but everybody. We started singing about freedom and hope and things started coming together.

On Bloody Sunday my sister Lynda and I participated. Up until this day, marching was fun to me. When the column stopped, I was in the middle of the bridge. I could not see or hear what was happening. Normal procedure would have been to kneel and pray. Then turn around and go back to the church. We waited for the front to go down. Instead we heard gun shots and people screaming. We thought #the people in the front of the line were being killed. We tried to flee. It was too late. The front was upon us. With them came the men on horseback, swinging long clubs, hitting anyone close to them. The tear gas got into my eyes and lungs. I could not breath. I could not see. When the air cleared I saw a horse running full speed toward a lady who was obviously dazed. It ran over her like she wasn’t standing there. The last sound I heard on the bridge was the sound of her head hitting the pavement. I fainted.

I woke up on the other side of the bridge in the back of a car with my sister Linda hovering over me and crying. Her face was covered with blood. She had been beaten on the bridge and received wounds that required stitches. Linda and I hugged up together and started home. When we got back to the projects, the police were everywhere. Nobody could believe the magnitude of the violence. The violence went on all night long. A few days later I participated in the second march now called “Turn Around Tuesday”. After Bloody Sunday our parents were very angry. They decided that they needed to join us. I also walked the first and last leg of the final march.

We didn’t see ourselves as heroes then, or even making history. We didn’t think about things like that. Today I am the Director of The National Voting Rights Museum where we gather and preserve the history of the Civil Rights Voting Rights Movement. I think that is proper.

Bennie Ruth Johnson Crenshaw In 1965 (my senior year of high school) I was arrested for my participation in the Civil Rights Movement and spent three weeks in jail. My stay in jail in 1965 made an everlasting impression on my life. One of the SNCC leaders was beaten in front of us because he did not say “yes sir” to a jailer. I remember the cells were filthy with unsanitary bathrooms. The white jailers would come into the cellblock of the females, hoping to see them improperly dressed. The food, as I recall, was beans and bread everyday, and we were not allowed to take baths. Upon my release from jail, the movement had escalated to the point of the Selma to Montgomery March, which was to occur on the day of my release, March 7, 1965. I had missed a lot of the planning for the march because of the time I spent in jail.

I made a sacrifice then and I have continued to fight injustice and inequality wherever I have found it to exist. With the same energy and tenacity of 1965, I entered the political arena and was elected as Councilwoman of Ward Seven in Selma, Alabama. I seek to fully represent and educate those I am elected to serve, however, I realize this responsibility takes courage and strength. One of my favorite quotes to seize this moment in time would be a quote by Robert F. Kennedy, entitled “Courage” “Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change.”

Veronica Smith I was born on May 19, 1952 in Selma. I remember we were told what the movement was about and what we could do if we wanted to be involved in it. We were told it was about making things better for ourselves. I began staying out of school to participate. After a while the only time I went to school was to get other children involved. Little by little we 298

were closing the schools down. We went to mass meetings, passed out leaflets and went through training to learn how to protect ourselves if we were beaten. It was exciting but it was also for a purpose. I didn’t want that colored and white thing there anymore. After we began boycotting the stores something happened one day that knocked me off of my feet.

My mother and I went into a store and for the first time in my life I heard a white person say, “Yes ma'am” to my mother.

As we marched I could see all the white men standing around us with guns and billy clubs. These were white men who had come to all of our houses like the insurance man and the milk man. They were standing there fighting against us.

Mattie Atkins There are many people who marched for our right to vote but very few as sincere as Mattie Atkins. She was one who witnessed and participated in the events directly preceding Bloody Sunday. A resident of Marion Ms. Atkins recalls marching around the courthouse 7 (Seven) times per day until the fateful day of February 18, 1965 when a state trooper shot Jimmy Lee Jackson. At the time of this incident Mrs. Atkins was a 27 year-old mother of five children who was dedicated to marching. She recalls the difficulty of getting parents to participate but felt compelled for her own direct participation. Today, she quietly resides in Marion but feels it is still important for our people to remain active. In 1978, she was the first lady elected to the Perry County Board of Education. She served for 6 years. Each year she makes it a point to return to Selma and march over the Edmund Pettus Bridge with her children.

Willie Neal Avery As a young child Mattie was determined to see the way blacks were treated changed. She fundamentally believed in the idea of equality and learned that you do not accept know for an answer. She is a young woman with quiet determination who believes that if you do not stand for something, you will fall for everything. Despite being jailed in a women’s prison for simply marching in front of the courthouse, Mrs. Avery was released to do it again. She learned that if you are persistent enough and dedicated enough you can produce change. If marching was good enough for Joshua, it is good enough for her. She believes that marching would benefit our people today who, in some instances, are worse off then they were in the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s. In her opinion, we allow personality differences to keep us from focusing on what is important to produce change. Today’s challenge with inequality is more challenging because the “Greenbacks” (money) buys us off and we sell each other out. Her clarity, professionalism, and commitment make Mattie Neal Avery a person all people should acknowledge with respect. Thank you for marching for all of us.

P. H. Lewis A native of Wilcox County, Alabama. He is a graduate of Camden Academy High School, Daniel Payne College, and Payne Theological Seminary of Birmingham. He pastored the following churches: Miles Memorial A.M.E. Church, Tuscaloosa; Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church, Selma; and Bethel A.M.E. Church, Mobile, where he as served the past 40 years.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was invited to Selma, to be the keynote speaker on January 2, 1965 for Emancipation services by the Dallas County Voters League under the leadership of Reverend F.D. Reese. Many ministers were asked to allow the services to be held at their churches, all refused to violate an injunction issued by Judge James Hare that prohibited meetings to discuss the 1964 Civil Rights Bill. Reverend Lewis defied that order and opened the doors of Brown Chapel.

During the sixties, the church became known throughout the world as the headquarters for the voting right struggle.

When asked by the Bishop of the Ninth District to close the doors to the Movement, Reverend Lewis presented an argument that the Bishop not only changed his mind about removing him from Brown Chapel, he also became a staunch supporter of the movement.

He is married to Alice Grady Lewis and they have three sons and four grandchildren.

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Albert Turner He was one of the very rare black men that went to college and graduated during the early 60's. Upon returning to Marion, AL, he went to register to vote. He took the test and failed. The test was administered by a white man with a 5th grade education. Turner was so upset he immediately joined the N.A.A.C.P. They would obtain literature to prepare blacks to pass the test. When whites found out about their work they changed the system to make sure no blacks could pass the test. They began engaging the Department of Justice, organizing people in this small town to send over 300 letters to them requesting that they send lawyers to put an end to the racist tests. This was dangerous work during those times. Whites often made the lives of Black leaders miserable and would even threaten and kill them. The Turners persisted. Albert Turner even quit his job to work for the movement full time after S.N.C.C. and S.C.L.C. came in to help them organize direct action campaigns. Albert Turner was one of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s field marshal's. The Turners help to found the Perry County Civic League. They were also apart of Marion's force that made the Selma to Montgomery March possible. If there had been no Marion, there could not have been the Selma to Montgomery March. Long after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, the Turners provided the major leadership transforming Perry County's political landscape. Since Albert Turner's death, Evelyn and their son Albert Turner, Jr. have continued the work of the Perry County Civic League along with the people of Marion.

The Black Belt 8 With the passage of the Voting Rights Act, the voting rights struggle appeared to be over, and it was just a matter of reaping the harvest. In truth, it was just another beginning as some local whites devised one scheme after another to deny African Americans effective participation in the political process. From 1965 to 1984, a series of techniques were employed to reduce the potential number of officials who would be elected by the black registered voters such as threatening those receiving public assistance, locating voting places in hostile areas, switching to voting machines, buying votes, illegal use of absentee ballots, requiring all voters to re-register and re-identify, working African Americans longer hours on voting days and subjecting them to hostile voter registration and poll officials, setting short and sporadic registration days, and short voting days.

In spite of these efforts, African Americans made continuous, steady progress so that the governing bodies and boards of education of five of the eight predominantly African American counties in the West Alabama Black Belt were black controlled. It took nineteen years of powerful struggle to accomplish this feat. Every scheme had been met and overcome. There was only one scheme left: Put the leaders in jail!!!

It was an uphill battle. To some the situation looked hopeless; eight local leaders facing 210 felony charges of “voter fraud.�

The first trial of Albert Turner, Evelyn Turner and Spencer Hogue resulted in 85 verdicts of innocence. They all cried, along with lawyers and supporters. In trial after trial the verdicts were of innocence. Spiver Gordon was convicted on four of 36 counts by an all white jury. These convictions were eventually thrown out by a Federal Appeals Court.

The ordeal of the Black Belt 8 is just one story of the struggle for the right-to-vote. There are many others.

John Hewlett Hewlett helped start the Lowndes County Freedom Organization. A small group of courageous men got together and decided they were determined to vote. One minister, Pastor Harrelson, simply spoke about the right to vote in church and the local whites threatened to kill him. Hewlett and others helped him to escape from Lowndes County. The minister never came back. Hewlett, stayed the dangerous course towards voting rights. They eventually helped win voting rights for themselves and fellow citizens. He also helped to lead the integration of Lowndes County in August of 1965. He and others went so far as to initiate an all Black political party. The Lowndes County Freedom Party whose symbol was the Black Panther. This party help to inspire young freedom fighters all across the nation. Kwame Toure, aka Stokely Carmichael said in the book Black Power, that the future of the Black Belt lay in the hands of people like John Hewlett.

Even today, young people like Cliff and April Albright are inspired by his work in the 60's as they are founding a Freedom Party in Selma, Alabama.

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Bessie Mc Means Born and raised on a farm in Lowndes County, Alabama, Bessie McMeans didn’t have a good job, she did house work and worked with the movie theater. A mother of nine (9) children, she successfully put them all through college. Two of her children are school teacher, one a cosmetologist and one a truck driver..

When the civil rights workers came to Lowndes County, they were not welcomed. They had a hard time finding a place together for meetings. Bessie made arrangements for them to meet in Ft. Deposit, Alabama at her house. She always felt that she could take care of herself.

More than fifty(50) people attended the meeting at her house. She also remembered that she had receive many threats and experienced a cross burning. She had some protection (a gun) because she didn’t have a husband to protect her nor her children. They had to be in the house at night without any lights on because of the threats.

There was fear in the community for some people and many people feared for their jobs. They were afraid to vote. The civil rights worker had a black cat sign to represent them. She remembers Carmichael working with the people in Lowndes County. She was motivated by her nine (9) children to join the Voter’s Right Struggle.

Sheyanne Web & Rachael West As young children during the height of the Selma Right-To-Vote Movement they went on to write a book, Selma, Lord Selma, that depicts what they experienced. The book was later made into a movie by Disney named Selma, Lord Selma.

These two young women were in the heart of the battle of voting rights as children and they went to mass meetings, and marched with Dr. King and others, sometimes against the wishes of their family.

Bruce Carver Boynton He was born in Selma, Alabama. He graduated from Fisk University at the age of eighteen and Howard University School of Law at eh age of twenty-one. In his senior year of law school he became the first of the student “sit-inners” who protested racially segregated lunch counter facilities by being arrested in the Trailway Bus Station in Richmond, Virginia. As a consequence he was not allowed to practice law in the State of Alabama for six years while the Alabama State Bar investigated his arrest.

Since his admission to the Alabama Bar, Boynton has practiced law in Selma and Washington, D.C., where he has represented civil rights activist around the state and many poor and unpopular persons of various races. He also has been involved in several cases concerning the racial redistricting of city and county governments, including the case that created a majority Black Selma City Council. He is the son of the late S.W. Boynton and Amelia Boynton.

Margaret Moore An English teacher at the all black R. B. Hudson High School, Mrs. Moore touched and made a difference in the lives of many of Selma’s youth as an English teacher at R.B. Hudson High School. Many of her former students would invite her to visit them in various cities in the country to proudly show her their achievements. Often-times influenced by her sayings: “Be the Best of Whatever You Are”; “Whatever the Mind can Conceive the Hands can Achieve”; “If only you are a Ditch Digger, be the best Ditch Digger there is.”

Mrs. Moore displayed extraordinary courage in the all Black R.B. Hudson High School. She taught black history and black pride in her English class before the start of the “Black Pride Movement” of the late sixties. She encouraged students to march and fight for the right to vote. By word and example, Mrs. Moore gave courage and inspiration to her students to resist the passivity of fear and to pursue the substance of things hoped for and evidence of things unseen-all in the name of freedom.

Mrs. Moore was one of the first few Black teachers who marched to the courthouse day after day to stand in line in the 301

cold in order to register to vote. She was also among those early participants in the “Movement” who crossed Edmund Pettus Bridge on “Bloody Sunday” and was beaten back by Sheriff Jim Clark and other “law enforcers.” These scenes are documented in the series “Eyes on the Prize.”

She was the first to let in the early stages of the Movement, many people, especially professionals were afraid to make a public stand for fear of job reprisals, but Mrs. Moore stood tall and firm.

Mayor James Perkins James Perkins was 12 years old when Bloody Sunday took place. He is the city of Selma’s first Black Mayor, elected in 2002. He is the son of two of Selma’s active community leaders, Etta Perkins, a nurse, and James Perkins Sr., a retired educator.

Perkins graduated from Parrish High School, earned a degree from Alabama A&M, and then started his own computer consulting firm in Downtown Selma. In 1984, he married Cynthia Page, a parent facilitator in the Selma Public School system.

Dissatisfied with the slow pace of desegregation in Selma, Perkins ran for Mayor and lost to incumbent mayor Joe Smitherman, 70, a former devout segregationist who had been in office since 1964 .

Marie Foster, a loyal Perkins supporter, who was one of those beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, was shocked by the defeat. Perkins ran again in 1996, this time facing another Black opponent and Mayor Smitherman. The face-off between two Black opponents split the vote and Smitherman survived again. The third time proved to be the charm for Perkins, who received a whopping 57 percent of the vote to Smitherman's 43 percent.

Selma's current unemployment rate--12 percent--is three times the state and national averages. The city's population has been on a steady decline since the 1978 closing of the Craig Air Force Base (current population: 21,000).

"Selma has been touted as the hate and racist capital of the world. But as it relates to race relations, Selma's probably better off than Chicago," Perkins argues. "But we've been forced to live with ours. The world forces us to look at ours, and the world puts ours on the pedestal."

Perkins says he wants to put the ominous events of the Edmund Pettus Bridge into perspective: It is a part of Selma's history, the nation's history, but it will no longer be the first thing people think of when they mention his city.

"The problems that are going on all across the country are going on in Selma," Perkins explains. "But we will make Selma the Mecca of Reconciliation."

To The Unknown Foot Soldier Where ever you are we want to know your story. We cherish your commitment. Please contact us, and schedule an interview. A lot of blood was senselessly shed. Tell us about your trials and struggles or those of a beloved family member.

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“The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self.”

—Albert Einstein

THE POWER OF ONE STANDING In February of 1965, Reverend Lorenzo Harrison stood in the pulpit of Mt. Carmel Baptist Church in Gordonville, a rural area of Lowndes County. He spoke strongly about the necessity of Black people voting in Lowndes County.

The next fourth Sunday, robed Klansmen showed up, surrounded the church, threaten to burn it down with the entire congregation inside. This minister refused to back down on the need to vote. The Klansmen circled the church for hours.

When Reverend Harrison finally left Mt. Carmel Church that Sunday, he did not return for fear the entire congregation might be killed. Before he left, he urged Deacon John Hulett and others to continue to stand for the right to vote in Lowndes County. And John Hulett, inspired by the stand of Reverend Harrison, stood in the face of great danger to challenge those denying him and others the right to vote. Reverend Harrison also inspired others to stand in the White Hall area of Lowndes County such as Jesse Farrior, William Cosby, Matthew Jackson, Elzie McGill, and Frank Harrison.

At the time, not one Black person was registered to vote in Lowndes County. Now 7,002 of 9,497 registered voters are African American and 40 of 61 elected officials are African American. When one stands, it causes another to stand, who then causes others to stand and so on. That’s the power of one standing.

Throughout history, the power of one standing has manifested itself time and time again. State Senator Hank Sanders There are many ways to stand. Rosa Parks stood by sitting down. By sitting, her stand caused a whole people to stand by walking. In the process, she helped change the City of Montgomery, the State of Alabama, the United States of America and indeed the world. There are other examples too numerous to name.

I want to explore the power of one standing in the Voting Rights Movement in the West Alabama Black Belt. There are many well-known Black Belt leaders produced by this Voting Right Struggle. They, however, were rarely the first to stand, illustrating the power of one standing.

Lonnie Brown, an insurance agent served overseas in the United States Military. When he returned to Wilcox County, he was determined to vote because he had thrice earned the right: (1) by birth in this country; (2) by service in the military; and (3) by military service in a foreign country.

Powerful local whites were absolutely determined that neither Brown nor any other Black person would register or vote in the county. So he stood, attempting to register to vote and urging others to stand by doing the same.

As Brown made his rounds selling life and burial insurance, he urged black citizens to insist on their right to vote. To stop him, twelve large landowners wrote a joint letter barring him from entering upon their plantations to sell insurance or for any other purpose. They also insisted that the Black owned insurance company fire him.

These efforts did not stop Lonnie Brown from standing so whites shot into his home in an effort to kill him and his family. That’s when the insurance company decided to transfer him from Wilcox County to Mobile County. His standing, however, inspired others to stand such as Monroe Pettway, Willie Ed Pettway, Timothy Myers, and Roman Pettway.

At the time Lonnie Brown first stood, there was not one African American registered to vote in Wilcox County. Now 6,609 of 9,298 registered voters are African American and 33 of 58 elected officials are African American. That’s the power of one standing.

In Dallas County, C. J. Adams stood. Adams had a quiet dignity about himself. He was short, very dark and appeared educated but no one knew where he went to school. He pushed hard and openly for the right to vote. He also vigorously urged blacks to buy and own land.

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Because Adams stood so strongly, powerful whites framed him. They claimed he improperly notarized a signature.

When he got out of prison, Adams continued to stand. Therefore, they framed him a second time. By then, he was almost 80. He was forced to leave Selma but he refused to stop standing. He continued to stand as he went to Detroit, Michigan.

Because Adams stood, Amelia and Samuel Boynton stood. Because Adams stood, Marie Foster stood. Because Adams stood, John D. Hunter stood. Because Adams stood, Earnest L. Doyle stood. And so on. At the time, there were 51 African Americans registered to vote in Dallas County. Because one stood, causing others to stand, 18,504 of the 29,351 registered voters in Dallas County are African American and 19 of 48 elected officials are African American. That’s the power of one standing.

Reverend S. L. Johnson, a minister at the Oak Grove United Methodist Church, stood in Perry County. In 1961, he stood in this church, urging African Americans to register and vote. They stood as they met about voting and other civil rights. While Reverend Johnson was threaten, he could not be fired or the like because he lived in the parsonage and was supported by the church. Since they could not hurt him economically, they attacked his church members. Many of those living on the Webb Plantation were summarily evicted from their homes because they attended voting rights meetings.

In spite of recriminations, the movement grew because Reverend S. L. Johnson stood. Because he stood, Willie Nell Avery stood, Mattie Atkins stood, Albert Turner stood and others stood.

Because one stood, 6,134 of 8,729 registered voters in Perry County are African American and 20 of 39 elected officials are African American.

John Head stood. When no one else was standing in Greene County, he stood. People said, “He is a man who is a man!” John Head lived in the Tishabee Community. He farmed his own land, served as a deacon at St. Matthews Church and manufactured spirits on the side.

AL State Senator Hank Sanders

Head felt that everyone should be able to vote. He spoke out over and over. Even though he was threatened, he continued to stand and speak out. Because John Head stood, William McKinley Branch stood, John Chambers stood, Vassie Knott stood, Annie Brown stood, and others stood.

Green County had three black registered voters at the time. Because Head stood, 6,016 of 7,468 registered voters are African American and 45 of 53 elected officials are African American. That’s the power of one standing.

Elmer Hawkins stood in Sumter County. A teacher at Livingston High School, she encouraged Blacks to vote. She also championed school desegregation and fairness in Farmers Home loans. She stood in spite of the fact that teachers were among the most vulnerable persons in the community. Their very livelihood depended on the white controlled school board. Her job was repeatedly threatened.

Powerful whites had to have some theory to explain Hawkins fearlessness. When Blacks stood up to whites without fear, they were often labeled as “crazy.” Hawkins was called crazy. Even some blacks said she was “crazy” because “she went too far.”

Yet Elmer Hawkins stood. Because she stood, others stood. Wendell Paris stood, Leonard Hatter stood, Tommy Jackson and others stood. Because one stood, Sumter County, which had no African American registered voters at the time, now has 6,763 of 9,265. And 50 African American of 74 elected officials. That’s the power of one standing.

Reverend J. J. Simmons stood in Hale County in the fifties. Pastor of New Hope Baptist Church in Sawyerville, he was determined to register to vote. There were 49 Blacks registered in Hale County and powerful whites were determined there would not be any more. Simmons continued to go to the courthouse every first and third Monday taking others with him and demanding to be registered to vote.

Reverend Simmons was repeatedly threatened but he continued to stand up and speak out. He was called all kinds of names but he stood with pride. Once a big burly male registrar threatened to hit Theresa Burroughs, a 19-year-old female accompanying Simmons. Reverend Simmons calmly said, “If I was you, I wouldn’t do that!” The bully immediately backed off.

They eventually registered Reverend Simmons, Theresa Burroughs and several more. Because Reverend Simmons stood, others stood. Because they stood, 6,526 of 11,169 registered voters in Hale County are African American and 26 of 50 elected officials are African American.

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Carrie Johnson stood. She was blessed not to have to stand alone for Thelma Craig and her brother, William Harrison, stood with her.

There were two African American registered voters when Carrie Johnson insisted on registering. She and others were forced to take a “literacy test” and pay a $1.50 poll tax. It was a very difficult test. Once Mrs. Johnson passed, she secretly took the test and taught it to others. Some were so determined that they took the test over and over again. One, Oliver Pringer, took the test 81 times. He knew he was not failing the test but they failing him. His example inspired others to stand for the test.

During this struggle, crosses were burned in the front yard of the homes of William Harrison and Thelma Craig but all continued to stand. Because Johnson, Craig and Harrison stood, others stood such as Martin Ruffin, Virginia Cole and Jesse Dixon.

Because Carrie Johnson and others stood, the three African Americans registered to vote in Choctaw County has grown to 4,377 of 10,300 and 15 of 61 elected officials are African American. That’s the power of one standing.

Lena Frost stood in Marengo County. She was a courageous widow in her fifties living by herself. For years, she had worked as a domestic. She had been mistreated in so many ways, she was just fed up and decided to stand. She said that she had been denied so many things in her life she just had to vote.

Frost urged others to fight for the right to vote. Hers was one of the few cars available to ferry blacks to and from the voting register’s office in Linden some 16 miles from Demopolis. She also carried black people to and from mass meetings.

Frost’s most courageous action was allowing civil rights workers to stay in her home. This was very dangerous.

Powerful whites felt intensely about this. Frost was often threatened. Whites would ride by her house and shout threats or obscenity. She, however, continued to stand. For along time she was the only person in Marengo that allowed civil rights workers to stay in her home.

Because Lena Frost stood, Malloy Jones stood, Ann Braxton stood, Robert Jones, Jr. stood, Carl Jones stood, Henry Haskins stood, Ervin Harris and others stood. Because Lena Frost Stood, 7,267 of 14,547 registered voters are African American and 18 of 67 elected officials are African Americans.

Our history is greatly distorted by media focus on a few African American leaders while leaving out the many others who stood, often alone. Most of those well known for standing would never have stood if one had not stood who is now virtually unknown. We have a duty to keep alive the history of those unknown souls who demonstrated the power of one standing. This is my small contribution to keeping such history alive.

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“Our destiny changes with our thought; we shall become what we wish to become, do what we wish to do, when our habitual thought corresponds with our desire..”

—Orson Swett Marden

FAYA ROSE SANDERS TOURE Founder of the National Voting Rights Museum A Harvard-educated Civil Rights activist and litigation attorney who has worked on some of the highest-profile civil rights cases to come before the courts. Touré—who spent most of her career as Rose Sanders until she decided to step away from her "slave name" in 2003—was the first African-American female judge in Alabama and was part of the winning legal team in Pigford vs. Veneman, the largest civil rights case in history. This case led to the payment of a billion dollars in damages to black farmers by the U. S. Department of Agriculture. In addition, Touré is founder of the National Voting Rights Museum in Selma, Alabama, and a founding partner in the law firm of Chestnut, Sanders, Sanders, Pettaway & Campbell, LLC. Intensely passionate about her activism and legal work and the needs of the black community, Touré has founded learning and cultural centers, political and legal organizations, and community initiatives that have benefited Alabamians for three decades. She uses her many talents to further her message and is a prolific songwriter and playwright, as well as the host of a weekly radio show, Faya's Fire http://www.wbfzfmradio.com/.

Touré was born Rose M. Gaines on May 20, 1945, in Salisbury, North Carolina. Her parents, the Rev. D. A. Gaines and Ora Lee Gaines, taught their six children to conserve so they would have something in life to give back to their community. Training the children by word and deed, Rev. Gaines didn't always adhere to protocol, but he got the job done. "He was a trained minister who didn't always fit the image of what society expected," Touré said in an interview with Contemporary Black Biography (CBB). She notes similar traits in her own personality. Touré has the courage to follow her own drumbeat. She speaks frankly on controversial matters of race, injustice, and education, but said in her CBB interview, "I'm not fearless. I just won't let others define me."

Touré's community work began at an early age when she organized kids in the neighborhood. Through her teens, however, she remained unsure about what she wanted to do with her life. After graduation from George Clem High School in 1962 she entered Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina, graduating Summa Cum Laude in 1966. Still unsure where her career path would take her, she completed a law degree at Harvard in 1969 and was awarded the Herbert Smith Fellowship. That led to an assignment the following year at the National Welfare Rights Organization and the Columbia Center on Social Welfare Policy and Law. In 1971 she worked briefly for the Legal Services Corporation, and opened the law firm of Chestnut, Sanders, Sanders, Pettaway & Campbell, LLC the following year along with her husband, Alabama State Senator Henry Sanders. In 1982 Touré was hired by the Emergency Land Fund for the Department of the Agriculture to conduct a study of black land tenure and document land loss by African Americans.

Through the years Touré's legal skills led her to several major cases. In one important case she teamed with noted attorney Johnnie Cochran to seek reparations from corporations who profited from slavery. Seeking academic reparations for African-American students for what she calls "400 years of mis-education and discrimination" is one of Touré's latest projects. She is also preparing a case on behalf of black women who suffered sexual abuse during slavery. It challenges current laws that, Touré said, "do not offer equal justice from sexual assaults and misconduct towards black women."

"The chronic violence and crime in our community is not an accident or coincidence but a historical consequence of years of dishonest and vastly unequal education that has crushed the spirit and hope of our children.”

“Only an inferior nation would continue for another century to provide an inferior education to the majority of her children. Only an inferior "thinking" people would continue to accept their inferior status once the light of truth and knowledge uncovers the key to their true liberation.”

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THE NATIONAL VOTING RIGHTS MUSEUM & INSTITUTE The National Voting Rights Museum & Institute was organized and developed by participants and supporters of the Voting Rights Movement of the 1960's to document accomplishments and struggles of those Americans dedicated to the attainment and retention of equal treatment under the law for all Americans. The struggle to gain voting rights did not begin or end at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma Alabama, on March 7, 1965; it began with the birth of our nation and continues today in efforts to remove all barriers to voting. The National Voting Rights Museum & Institute, the only facility of its kind in the world, opened its doors in 1993, as a permanent memorial to the struggle to obtain voting rights for disenfranchised African Americans. The mission of the Museum is to collect, preserve and display artifacts and exhibits, which document and portray the history of voting rights in America.

Among the many historical exhibits, visitors will get a taste of artifacts as they are taken through the "Footprints to Freedom" room. This room includes molded cast footprints of many who marched from Selma to Montgomery. The "Selma Room," also known as the "Marie Foster" room is where visitors view such items as voting records, worn clothes of persons beaten during the march and a host of photos. The Women's Suffrage Room houses the largely unknown contributions of African American women who secured the voting rights for half the population. The Living History Exhibit is dedicated to dedicated to those who served as foot soldiers/participants in the voting rights activity in Alabama, and an "I Was There" wall exhibit allows Museum visitors to contribute historical notes that echo their particular involvement. Serving over 1,000,000 people since its inception, these graphic visual exhibits document the struggles and triumphs of African Americans on the journey toward freedom for all Americans.

Voting is the cornerstone of the democratic society of which we all take part. It is one of the most important gains acquired during the Civil Rights Movement. The National Voting Rights Museum & Institute offers America and the world the opportunity to learn the lessons of the past to assure we will not make the same mistakes in the 21st century.

There is no one place where the past and present struggles and future possibilities can be studied, felt, and remembered like that of the National Voting Rights Museum & Institute. Therefore, our purpose is our mission: A Museum and Institute that chronicles and preserves the historical journey for the right to vote that began when the seeds of democracy were first planted by the "founding fathers" in 1776. As such, the struggle for justice and democracy is a never-ending one. Each generation will have its barriers to overcome and its stories to share. The Museum is committed to collecting and sharing these stories, struggles, and victories for generations to come.

Though the Voting Rights Struggle is rich in memorabilia and documentation, the National Voting Rights Museum & Institute plays an intricate role in enhancing the knowledge of the public through the following: Annual Re-enactment of “Bloody Sunday�

Black Belt Heritage Tours Personal Collection Exhibits Living History Projects Community Forums 6 Hwy 80 East Selma, Alabama 36701 www.nvrm.org Phone: (334) 418-0800

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ANNUAL RE-ENACTMENT OF “BLOODY SUNDAY” BRIDGE CROSSING JUBILEE Each year during the first week in March, the National Voting Rights Museum & Institute in conjunction with 21st Century Youth Leadership Movement, Wallace Community College Selma, the City of Selma, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference sponsors the Bridge Crossing Jubilee. The Annual Bridge Crossing Jubilee is held the first full weekend of every March to commemorate “Bloody Sunday", the March from Selma-to-Montgomery, and the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

In 1993, the National Voting Rights Museum & Institute had its first Bridge Crossing Jubilee. Since then the notoriety of the Jubilee has spread across the country and abroad because of the increasing numbers of tourists visiting Selma, Alabama. As a result, tens of thousands of tourists visit Selma the first week in March each year for the opportunity to participate in the Jubilee. They come to hear the personal stories of people who participated in the movement, celebrate and commemorate the Voting Rights Struggle, the March from Selma to Montgomery and to meet and talk with famous Americans, The Jubilee which takes place the first weekend in March at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, is attended by 30,000 or more people! It is a street festival of music, art and history. In addition, the Jubilee is the celebration and commemoration of the right to vote and March from Selma to Montgomery. It also serves as a reunion for many of the Voting and Civil Rights participants.

As the eyes of the world focuses on Selma we want ‘The Jubilee’ to: Be a forum for discussion of the irrepressible power of democracy, Be an opportunity to teach the powerful lessons which Selma represents, and to show how far we have come and how far we hope to go, TOGETHER,

the world just

Be an opportunity to teach the powerful lessons which Selma represents, and to show the world just how far we have come and how far we hope to go, TOGETHER, Be a chance to capture the memories of those who suffered the birth pains, of the voting rights movement while they are still with us.

And, above all, it will be a time to celebrate the irrepressible spark that drives men and women of all colors and creeds to strive for freedom against all odds and in the face of all adversities.

For information about upcoming Jubilee’s write: NVRM1965@Gmail.com

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“Defend EVERY ONE of your rights. When any one is given up none of the rest can last.”

—Rick Gaber

CHURCHES & ORGANIZATIONS In The Struggle For Human Dignity SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee)

SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference)

CORE (Congress of Racial Equality)

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

NAACP Legal Defense Fund

Dallas County Voters League

Alabama Improvement Association

Perry County Civic League

Brown Chapel AME Church, Selma, AL

Tabernacle Baptist Church, Selma, AL First Baptist Church, Selma, AL Zion United Methodist Church, Marion, AL 309

“The time is always right to do what is right.”

—Martin Luther King, Jr.

WHAT IS THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT? The Voting Rights Act was adopted in 1965 in response to discriminatory practices used by the state and local election authorities to limit the ability of people of color to elect representatives. By making these practices illegal, the act seeks to give all Americans a fair chance of electing representatives. The Voting Rights Act has been used by communities across the country to challenge unfair election rules, and create more inclusive governments. The Act prohibits discrimination against African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans and Native Americans. Since 1964, the number of black elected officials nationwide has increased from 300 to more than 9,100.

Section Two prohibits laws and practices that dilute the effectiveness of votes cast by racial and ethnic minorities. In particular, Section 2 prevents states and municipalities from engaging in practices designed to make it difficult for racial minorities to elect candidates of their choice. It is enforceable nationwide, empowering both the Department of Justice and citizens to sue jurisdictions for unfair practices anywhere in the nation. The burden of proof in a Section 2 case lies with the challengers. To prove discrimination, they must show that members of the minority community generally vote for the same candidates, while the majority community generally opposes those candidates, and that the minority community has a large enough share of the vote to elect a candidate under a single-member district system. Since 1982, there has been no need under Section 2 to prove that a voting system was intended to discriminate, simply that it has a discriminatory effect.

Section Five only applies to certain areas of the country with histories of suppressing minority voters via literacy tests.

These areas are known as “covered jurisdictions.” Section 5 states that all covered jurisdictions must obtain approval (called “preclearance”) from the U.S. Attorney General or the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia before any new electoral statutes are enacted or any new electoral practices administered. Section 5 acts as a safeguard against changes that might weaken the voting strength of minority voters, since under it the covered jurisdiction has to prove that any proposed change will not reduce these voters’ ability to elect a candidate of their choice. Section 5 applies to all of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas; and most of Virginia, 4 counties in California, 5 counties in Florida, 2 townships in Michigan, 10 towns in New Hampshire, 3 counties in New York, 40 counties in North Carolina, and 2 counties in South Dakota.

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“Nonviolence is not inaction ... It is not for the timid or weak ... Nonviolence is hard work.

It is the willingness to sacrifice. It is the patience to win.”

—Cesar Chavez

UNITED STATES VOTING TIMELINE When the Constitution was written, only white male property owners (about 10 to 16 percent of the nation's population) had the vote. Over the past two centuries, though, the term "government by the people" has become a reality. During the early 1800s, states gradually dropped property requirements for voting. Later, groups that had been excluded previously gained the right to vote. Other reforms made the process fairer and easier.

1790 1790 Only white male adult property-owners have the right to vote.

1800 1810 1810 Last religious prerequisite for voting is eliminated.

1820 1840 1850 Property ownership and tax requirements eliminated by 1850. Almost all adult white males could vote.

1855 Connecticut adopts the nation's first literacy test for voting. Massachusetts follows suit in 1857. The tests were implemented to discriminate against Irish-Catholic immigrants.

1860 1870 The 15th Amendment is passed. It gives former slaves the right to vote and protects the voting rights of adult male citizens of any race.

1880 1889 Florida adopts a poll tax. Ten other southern states will implement poll taxes.

1890 Mississippi adopts a literacy test to keep African Americans from voting. Numerous other states—not just in the south—also establish literacy tests. However, the tests also exclude many whites from voting. To get around this, states add grandfather clauses that allow those who could vote before 1870, or their descendants, to vote regardless of literacy or tax qualifications.

1900 1910 1913 The 17th Amendment calls for members of the U.S. Senate to be elected directly by the people instead of State Legislatures.

1915 Oklahoma was the last state to append a grandfather clause to its literacy requirement (1910). In Guinn v.

United States the Supreme Court rules that the clause is in conflict with the 15th Amendment, thereby outlawing literacy tests for federal elections.

1920 1920 The 19th Amendment guarantees women's suffrage.

1924 Indian Citizenship Act grants all Native Americans the rights of citizenship, including the right to vote in federal elections.

1930 1940 1944 The Supreme Court outlaws "white primaries" in Smith v. Allwright (Texas). In Texas, and other states, primaries were conducted by private associations, which, by definition, could exclude whomever they chose. The Court declares the nomination process to be a public process bound by the terms of 15th Amendment.

1950 1957 The first law to implement the 15th amendment, the Civil Rights Act, is passed. The Act set up the Civil Rights Commission—among its duties is to investigate voter discrimination.

1960 1960 In Gomillion v. Lightfoot (Alabama) the Court outlaws "gerrymandering."

1961 The 23rd Amendment allows voters of the District of Columbia to participate in presidential elections.

1964 The 24th Amendment bans the poll tax as a requirement for voting in federal elections.

1965 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., mounts a voter registration drive in Selma, Alabama, to draw national attention to 311

African-American voting rights.

1965 The Voting Rights Act protects the rights of minority voters and eliminates voting barriers such as the literacy test. The Act is expanded and renewed in 1970, 1975, and 1982.

1966 The Supreme Court, in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, eliminates the poll tax as a qualification for voting in any election. A poll tax was still in use in Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia.

1966 The Court upholds the Voting Rights Act in South Carolina v. Katzenbach.

1970 1970 Literacy requirements are banned for five years by the 1970 renewal of the Voting Rights Act. At the time, eighteen states still have a literacy requirement in place. In Oregon v. Mitchell, the Court upholds the ban on literacy tests, which is made permanent in 1975. Judge Hugo Black, writing the court's opinion, cited the "long history of the discriminatory use of literacy tests to disenfranchise voters on account of their race" as the reason for their decision.

1971 The 26th amendment sets the minimum voting age at 18.

1972 In Dunn v. Blumstein, the Supreme Court declares that lengthy residence requirements for voting in state and local elections is unconstitutional and suggests that 30 days is an ample period.

1980 1990 1995 The Federal "Motor Voter Law" takes effect, making it easier to register to vote.

2000 2003 Federal Voting Standards and Procedures Act requires states to streamline registration, voting, and other election procedures.

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"...There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. ... Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter.

From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government.”

—–Daniel Webster, June 1, 1837

THE EFFECT OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT The most basic right of a citizen in a democracy is the right to vote. Without this right, people can be easily ignored and even abused by their government. This, in fact, is what happened to African American citizens living in the South following Civil War Reconstruction. Despite the 14th and 15th amendments guaranteeing the civil rights of black Americans, their right to vote was systematically taken away by white supremacist state governments.

Soon after passage of the Voting Rights Act, federal examiners were conducting voter registration, and black voter registration began a sharp increase. The cumulative effect of the Supreme Court's decisions, Congress' enactment of voting rights legislation, and the ongoing efforts of concerned private citizens and the Department of Justice, has been to restore the right to vote guaranteed by the 14th and 15th Amendments. The Voting Rights Act itself has been called the single most effective piece of civil rights legislation ever passed by Congress.

The following table compares black voter registration rates with white voter registration rates in seven Southern States in 1965 and 1988:

Voter Registration Rates (1965 vs. 1988) March 1965

November

1988 Black Gap Alabama 19.3 6.6 Georgia 27.4 7.1 Louisiana

White

Gap

Black

White

69.2

49.9

68.4

75.0

62.6

35.2

56.8

63.9

31.6

80.5

48.9

77.1

Adapted from Bernard Grofman, Lisa Handley and Richard G. Niemi. 1992. Minority Representation and the Quest for Voting Equality. New York: Cambridge Press, at 23-24/

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“Some may find the implications of being naturally free frightening. There may be an overpowering psychological "wimp" in our mind that blinds us to our freedom. If so, the next step is to overcome that wimp.” “In almost every land, those with the courage to assert their freedom seldom need to fight or hide - for the predators live off the easy prey.”

—Frederick Mann

Authentic Freedom It's not real independence if another owns the key For she who knocks on doors needs those inside to hear her plea It's not authentic freedom with an overseer there For he who cannot come and go must always live in fear It's not actual adulthood if you can't make your own choice For she who has the final word is she who owns your voice Autonomy's not absolute if others mind the purse and freedom's not a thing a simple check can reimburse And ownership is just a farce without a deed to touch no asset's yours to save you when you find you're in a clutch You can't say that you're in control if not behind the wheel down any road of whim your life's direction's theirs to steal You just can't say you're walking when those crutches stop your fall I'd give up walking upright bound, if free I'd have to crawl. © Walt F.J. Goodridge The Passion Prophet http://www.passionprofit.com/

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[The purpose of the Constitution is to] “keep the government off the backs of people.”

—Justice William O. Douglas

VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 1965 As a result of intimidation, violence, and racial discrimination in state voting laws, a mere 3 percent of voting-age black men and women in the South were registered to vote in 1940. In Mississippi, under 1 percent were registered. Most Blacks who did vote lived in the larger cities of the South.

By not having the power of the ballot, African Americans in the South had little influence in their communities. They did not hold elected offices. They had no say in how much their taxes would be or what laws would be passed. They had little, if any, control over local police, courts, or public schools. They, in effect, were denied their rights as citizens.

Attempts to change this situation were met with animosity and outright violence. In the 1950s, the civil rights movement developed. Facing enormous hostility, Black people in the South organized to demand their rights guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution. They launched voter registration drives in many Southern communities.

Medgar Evers, the Black veteran stopped by a white mob from voting, became a civil rights leader in his native Mississippi. Because of his civil rights activities, he was shot and killed in front of his home by a White segregationist in 1963.

But through the efforts of local civil rights leaders like Evers, about 43 percent of adult Black men and women were registered to vote in the South by 1964. That same year, the 24th Amendment was ratified. It outlawed poll taxes in federal elections. (The U.S. Supreme Court later ruled that all poll taxes are unconstitutional.)

White supremacists, however, still fiercely resisted voting by African Americans. Black voter registration in Alabama was only 23 percent, while in neighboring Mississippi less than 7 percent of voting-age blacks were registered.

Selma, Alabama -- located in the very "Heart of Dixie" -- had served as the munitions arsenal of the Confederacy during the Civil War. A century later, in 1965, Selma's stubborn and rigorous enforcement of the South's segregation laws -especially its systematic denial to Negroes of their voting rights, where only 2% of eligible Blacks were registered to vote -- made it a logical target for joint action by SNCC and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).

Sheriff James Clark epitomized the forces of bigotry in Selma, On March 7, 1965, about 600 Black and White civil rights protesters passed through Selma and began to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge spanning the Alabama River. They were met on the other side by a large force of Alabama state troopers, who ordered the marchers to return to Selma. When the marchers refused to turn back, the troopers attacked, some on horseback, knocking down people and beating them with clubs. This was all filmed by TV news cameras and shown that evening to a shocked American public.

The Selma march pushed the federal government to pass legislation to enforce the right of Black citizens to vote. A few days after the violence at Selma, President Lyndon Johnson introduced the Voting Rights Act of 1965 before a joint session of Congress. Johnson declared, "it is not just Negroes, but it's really all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice."

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The Voting Rights Act, signed into law by President Johnson on August 6, 1965, suspended literacy and other tests in counties and states showing evidence of voter discrimination. These counties and states also were prohibited from creating new voter requirements that denied citizens their right to vote. Moreover, in the areas covered by the act, federal examiners replaced local clerks in registering voters.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 ended the practices that had denied African Americans the right to vote in Southern states. Registration of Black voters in the South jumped from 43 percent in 1964 to 66 percent by the end of the decade.

This represented an increase of more than a million new African American voters who could finally claim their right to vote.

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"Liberty without learning is always in peril and learning without liberty is always in vain.� —John F. Kennedy

EFFECTIVELY VOTING As a result of disfranchisement, African American people were unable to develop a natural set of values and principles by which to live. As a result they did not and do not (to this day) understand what constitutes their health, interest, rights and needs. In order to vote, this comprehension is necessary, for the lack of this vital wisdom leaves one vulnerable to those who can trick and manipulate one to sell their vote for momentary pleasure or what seems to be in their best interest, but what does not solve problems, or alleviate suffering. This is how black people lost the right to vote once gained after the Emancipation Proclamation.

Since the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., much money was allocated through the poverty program to correct the wrongs done to African Americans, females and poor people. The greater portion of that money was mismanaged and misappropriated by black leaders who did not work for the interest of black people during the movement, and thus did not gain an understanding of what constitutes the health, interest, rights and needs of the broad collective of African Americans from the poorest to those well-off. Nor do they understand what a constitutional right is and how to effectively write proposals and legislation in the interest of the people.

The evidence of this is that since the 1965 Voting Rights Act was enacted, not one piece of legislation has been presented on the local, county, state, national or international level in the interest of African American people. By and large African American leaders and politicians have gotten their votes much like white southern democrats did, that is by developing a constituency as a result of talking about what whites did and are not doing, but they have not advance the health, interest, rights and needs of African American people, nor have they supported those who have and do advance such issues.

More than anything African American people need to heal from the abuses that they endured during chattel slavery, so that they can get their natural humanity back. Once this is done, African people will be able to think and to use their thought process to develop nonviolent institutions that enhance their well-being. This would create a permanent work economy and would eliminate welfare, the military and prisons, because conflict arises when people fight over wants and try to maintain their secondary drives (smoking, drinking, drugs, lusting...) that operate against their interest and that of the nation. These drives come about when a person is not actively engaged in carrying out their God given vocation and thus must substitute for the energy build-up and anxiety that comes from not being fully operative or capable of supplying their real and essential needs of food, clothing, shelter, transportation, communication tool making and energy conversion.

The Nonviolent Clinical Process was written to address these issues and is available for any person who is willing to invest their time, energy, and resources in healing themselves and the people. —Myeka

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“Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.”

—Albert Schweitzer

THE POWER OF THE VOTE As we sit in audiences or in our homes and contemplate the state of affairs around us, we must be mindful of the power of the vote. Our actions and inactions consist of the votes we cast, as to whether things stay the same or change.

When a person doesn’t go to the poll or says nothing, they are voting just as much as if they were to raise their voice in agreement or protest. Voting and the right to vote calls one to be accountable for the conditions that exist. In fact, the state of the social affairs is an indicator of the kind of votes that have been cast.

In a recent meeting, it was interesting to note that when a resolution was read, two people spoke to the need for having a written copy of the resolution to study before voting on it. Two other people stated that we should just adopt the resolution and make revisions as we go along. Let’s look at these two positions.

The first position represents responsible voting. These two people said in essence that before they cast a vote, they needed to know what they were voting for. When a person takes this position, they are serious about supporting with their life that which they vote and lend their power to. It is indicative of a person who when presented with a candidate to represent them in a public office says, “I need to know about you and what you stand for, and if I agree with it.

Moreover, I need to know if you can represent what I stand for and what is important to me. Now this position is reasonable and responsible.

The second position is a very irresponsible position, because when you vote for something, you are actually saying that you agree with it. You don’t vote for what you don’t agree with and then hope to change it later. This position is irresponsible and grows out of apathy and ignorance. These people were willing to go along with anything that is proposed, supposedly in the interest of saving time. If we look at how long it would take to revise something, that is incorrect, however, we would realize that this position is never correct.

Before we cast our votes, let us be responsible by asking the question, is this person, issue… something that I agree with, and if it is not, then with hold your vote and work to imbue the person, issue… with what comes from Love in your heart, because Love finds a way to be constructive.

We have been in a war in Iraq. Many people cryied out against the president and his administration as if they did not vote him into office and agree to go to Iraq and declare war. It’s easy to create a scapegoat and not take personal and social responsibility.

Many said that the war in Iraq was primarily about securing oil. Let’s look at that point of view. Americans use a lot of oil. Oil goes into running our cars, heating our homes, making plastics and much more. To the degree that the American people continue to demand oil, they are agreeing with the war in Iraq. Every time an American purchases gasoline, they are voting for continuance of the war.

When Americans vote not to be in Iraq, they will let automobile makers know in no uncertain terms that within a year, they want vehicles that run on a fuel that does not depend on oil, and that is safe to the environment and that has a minimal cost. Likewise, those who already have vehicles will demand that conversion kits be made available so that their vehicles no longer need oil based products.

Americans would demand that presidential candidates support this position and present ways and means to get this done.

People who do this will be voting to end the war in Iraq, without complaining, protesting or blaming anyone. We live in a world that runs on supply and demand. As long as we demand oil, the president is obliged to do whatever is necessary to provide it.

So vote. Vote with your life. Vote to end war, vote to heal the environment, vote to heal yourself, vote to end homelessness, vote to end child abuse, vote to end mis-education, vote to educate all males and females to be able to make their first choice of whether to achieve or avoid conception, vote to end injustice, vote to be free. The right to vote is a sacred right, use it judiciously to secure the health, protect the rights, foster the interest and fulfill the needs of all.

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"Vinegar in freedom tastes better than honey in slavery."

-- Old Serbian Proverb

YOUNG VOTERS THE FUTURE DEPENDS ON YOU! Sometimes, young people think that their single vote doesn’t matter. They do not see how actions of elected officials affect their lives. The fact is, by voting for the candidates whose views reflect your own and by voting on issues that are important to you, you control your own future.

When you turn 18, you officially begin your adult life. You are faced with new responsibilities and important decisions regarding college education, career, financial security and quality of life.

The decisions you make in the voting booth will be some of the most important decisions you will ever make. The actions of the people you elect to represent you in government will directly affect your life.

The choices elected officials make can determine such things as: the amount of taxes you pay; how those taxes are spent; the stability of the economy, safety at school and at home; health care, the environment; and costs of living, whether our country will be at war, the judges who will preside in the courtrooms.

Most Commonly Asked Questions That Every Voter Should Know: Q. Does one vote really make a difference?

A. One vote can make ALL the difference. Never assume that an election is bound to go one way or another. Every vote counts!

Q. How much does it cost to register?

A. There is no charge to register and vote.

Q. How many days before an election must I register in order to vote?

A. Your voter registration application must be postmarked or hand-delivered to the county Voter Registrar 30 days before the election.

Q. Where do I vote?

A. Polling places are listed in your local newspapers in the weeks before the election or call the Board of Elections.

Q. What is "early voting?"

A. "Early voting" is a way to cast your ballot before Election Day either in person or by mail.

In person By mail – If you will be: (1) out of the county during early voting and on Election Day; (2) age 65 or older; (3) sick or disabled; or (4) confined to jail, call the Elections Administrator in charge of the particular election and ask them to send you an application for a ballot by mail.

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Q. If I am in college, should I register in my hometown or in my college town?

A. Either – whichever you consider your permanent residence.

Q. If I don’t know about a candidate or a candidate’s views, should I vote anyway?

A. Take time to learn the candidate’s stance on major issues. Check the local newspaper or other media for the candidate’s views. Call the candidate’s campaign office and ask for position papers.

If you don’t vote, you let someone else make your decision for you.

Q. Do I have to vote for every item on the ballot?

A. No. You may not leave any part of your ballot blank.

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The man or the institution, therefore, that withholds knowledge from a child, or from a race of children, exercises the awful power of changing the world in which they are to live, just as much as though he should annihilate all that is most lovely and grand in this planet ofours, or transport the victim of his cruelty to some dark and frigid zone of the universe, where the sweets of knowledge are unknown, and the terrors of ignorance hold their undisputed and remorseless reign.

—Horace Mann

SHIRLEY ANITA ST. HILL CHISHOLM November 30, 1924 – January 1, 2005 She was a Congresswoman, representing New York's 12th Congressional District for seven terms from 1969 to 1983. In 1968, she became the first black woman elected to Congress. On January 25, 1972, she became the first major-party black candidate for President of the United States and the first woman to run for the Democratic presidential nomination (Margaret Chase Smith had previously run for the Republican presidential nomination). She received 152 first-ballot votes at the 1972 Democratic National Convention.

In the 1972 U.S. presidential election, she made a bid for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. She survived three assassination attempts during the campaign. George McGovern won the nomination in a hotly contested set of primary elections, with Chisholm campaigning in 12 states and winning 28 delegates during the primary process. At the 1972 Democratic National Convention, as a symbolic gesture, McGovern opponent Hubert H. Humphrey released his black delegates to Chisholm, giving her a total of 152 first-ballot votes for the nomination. Chisholm's base of support was ethnically diverse and included the National Organization for Women. Chisholm said she ran for the office "in spite of hopeless odds... to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo." Among the volunteers who were inspired by her campaign was Barbara Lee, who continued to be politically active and was elected as a congresswoman 25 years later. Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem attempted to run as Chisholm delegates in New York.

From 1977 to 1981, during the 95th Congress and 96th Congress, Chisholm was elected to a position in the House Democratic leadership, as Secretary of the House Democratic Caucus.

Throughout her tenure in Congress, Chisholm worked to improve opportunities for inner-city residents. She was a vocal opponent of the draft and supported spending increases for education, health care and other social services, and reductions in military spending.

In 1970, she authored a child care bill. The bill passed the House and the Senate, but was vetoed by President Richard Nixon, who called it "the Sovietization of American children".

In the area of national security and foreign policy, Chisholm worked for the revocation of Internal Security Act of 1950.

[17] She opposed the American involvement in the Vietnam War and the expansion of weapon developments. During the Jimmy Carter administration, she called for better treatment of Haitian refugees.

—Excerpted from Wikipedia

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“I would say that I am a nonviolent soldier. In place of weapons of violence, you have to use your mind, your heart, your sense of humor, every faculty available to you ... because no one has the right to take the life of another human being.”

—Joan Baez

REVEREND JESSE LOUIS JACKSON October 8, 1941—Present

Born in Greenville, South Carolina, Jesse Jackson graduated from the public schools in Greenville and then enrolled in the University of Illinois on a football scholarship. He later transferred to North Carolina A&T State University and graduated in 1964. He began his theological studies at Chicago Theological Seminary but deferred his studies when he began working full-time in the Civil Rights Movement with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He was ordained on June 30, 1968 by Rev. Clay Evans and received his earned Master of Divinity degree from Chicago Theological Seminary in 2000.

Reverend Jackson began his activism as a student in the summer of 1960 seeking to desegregate the local public library in Greenville and then as a leader in the sit-in movement. In 1965, he became a full-time organizer for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He was soon appointed by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to direct the Operation Breadbasket program. In December of 1971, Reverend Jackson founded Operation PUSH (People United to Serve Humanity) in Chicago, IL. The goals of Operation PUSH were economic empowerment and expanding educational, business and employment opportunities for the disadvantaged and people of color.

Reverend Jackson’s two presidential campaigns broke new ground in U.S. politics. His 1984 campaign registered over one million new voters, won 3.5 million votes, and helped the Democratic Party regain control of the Senate in 1986. His 1988 campaign registered over two million new voters, won seven million votes, and helped boost hundreds of state and local elected officials into office. Additionally, he won historic victories, coming in first or second in 46 out of 54 primary contests. His clear progressive agenda and his ability to build an unprecedented coalition inspired millions to join the political process.

In 1991, Reverend Jesse Jackson was elected Senator of Washington, D.C., advocating for statehood for the nation’s capital and advancing the “rainbow” agenda at the national and international levels. Since then, he has continued to promote voter registration and lead get-out-the-vote campaigns, believing that everyone should be encouraged to be a responsible, informed and active voter. He has spearheaded major organizing tours through Appalachia, Mississippi, California and Georgia.

Reverend Jackson married his college sweetheart Jacqueline Lavinia Brown in 1963. They have five children: Santita Jackson, Congressman Jesse L. Jackson, Jr., Jonathan Luther Jackson, Yusef DuBois Jackson, Esq., and Jacqueline Lavinia Jackson, Jr. —Excerpted in part from, http://rainbowpush.org/pages/jackson_bio

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LEGACY OF A MOVEMENT PRESIDENT BARACK H. OBAMA August 4, 1961—Present Barack H. Obama is the 44th President of the United States. With a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas, President Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961. He was raised with help from his grandfather, who served in Patton's army, and his grandmother, who worked her way up from the secretarial pool to middle management at a bank.

After working his way through college with the help of scholarships and student loans, President Obama moved to Chicago, where he worked with a group of churches to help rebuild communities devastated by the closure of local steel plants.

He attended Harvard law school, where he became the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. Upon graduation, he returned to Chicago to help lead a voter registration drive, teach constitutional law at the University of Chicago, and remain active in his community.

Barack Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996, succeeding State Senator Alice Palmer as Senator from Illinois's 13th District, which then spanned Chicago South Side neighborhoods from Hyde Park-Kenwood south to South Shore and west to Chicago Lawn. Barack Obama was reelected to the Illinois Senate in 1998, defeating Republican Yesse Yehudah in the general election, and was reelected again to another term in 2002. In January 2003, Barack Obama became chairman of the Illinois Senate's Health and Human Services Committee when Democrats, after a decade in the minority, regained a majority. Obama resigned from the Illinois Senate in November 2004 following his election to the U.S. Senate.

President Obama's years of public service are based around his unwavering belief in the ability to unite people around a politics of purpose. In the Illinois State Senate, he passed the first major ethics reform in 25 years, cut taxes for working families, and expanded health care for children and their parents. As a United States Senator, he reached across the aisle to pass groundbreaking lobbying reform, lock up the world's most dangerous weapons, and bring transparency to government by putting federal spending online.

He was elected the 44th President of the United States on November 4, 2008, and sworn in on January 20, 2009. He and his wife, Michelle, are the proud parents of two daughters, Malia, 12, and Sasha. —From White House website

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FIRST LADY MICHELLE OBAMA January 17, 1964—Present Wife of the 44th President of the United States and mother of Malia and Sasha's. She is a product of the Chicago public schools. She attended Whitney Young High School, Chicago's first magnet high school, where she was a classmate of Jesse Jackson's daughter Santita. The round trip commute from the Robinsons' South Side home to the Near West Side, where the school was located, took three hours. She was on the honor roll for four years, took advanced placement classes, a member of the National Honor Society and served as student council treasurer.[4] Obama graduated in 1981 as the salutatorian of her class. Mrs. Obama studied sociology and African-American studies at Princeton University. After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1988, she joined the Chicago law firm Sidley & Austin, where she later met the man who would become the love of her life.

After a few years, Mrs. Obama decided her true calling was working with people to serve their communities and their neighbors. She served as assistant commissioner of planning and development in Chicago's City Hall before becoming the founding executive director of the Chicago chapter of Public Allies, an AmeriCorps program that prepares youth for public service.

In 1996, Mrs. Obama joined the University of Chicago with a vision of bringing campus and community together. As Associate Dean of Student Services, she developed the university's first community service program, and under her leadership as Vice President of Community and External Affairs for the University of Chicago Medical Center, volunteerism skyrocketed.

Promoting Service and working with young people has remained a staple of her career and her interest. Continuing this effort now as First Lady, Mrs. Obama recently launched the Let’s Move! campaign to bring together community leaders, teachers, doctors, nurses, moms and dads in a nationwide effort to tackle the challenge of childhood obesity. Let’s Move! has an ambitious but important goal: to solve the epidemic of childhood obesity within a generation.

Let’s Move! will give parents the support they need, provide healthier food in schools, help our kids to be more physically active, and make healthy, affordable food available in every part of our country.

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PARTIAL LIST OF ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF PRESIDENT BARACK H. OBAMA 2008—2011 ETHICS • Ordered the White House and all federal agencies to respect the Freedom of Information Act and overturned Bush-era limits on accessibility of federal documents (2009) • Instructed all federal agencies to promote openness and transparency as much as possible (2009) • Placed limits on lobbyists’ access to the White House (2009) • Placed limits on White House aides working for lobbyists after their tenure in the administration (2009) • Signed a measure strengthening registration and reporting requirements for lobbyists (2009) • Ordered that lobbyists must be removed from and are no longer permitted to serve on federal and White House advisory panels and boards (2009) • Companies and individuals who are delinquent on their taxes or owe back taxes are no longer allowed to bid for federal contracts (2009) • Initiated the “e-Rulemaking Initiative” (in cooperation with Cornell University) to allow for online public “notice and comment” of federal laws and initiatives (2010) • Issued the “Open Gov Directive” ordering all Cabinet departments to promote transparency and citizen participation in their policies (2010) • Signed extensions on banning lobbyists from serving on agency boards (2010) • Developed the “Don Not Pay List” with data on contractors and recipients of federal funds who are deemed to be ineligible because of fraud and abuse (2010) GOVERNANCE • The White House website now provides information on all economic stimulus projects and spending, along with an unprecedented amount of information on our government (2009) • Ended the Bush-era practice of circumventing established FDA rules for political reasons (2009) • Ended the Bush-era practice of having White House staff rewrite the findings of scientific and environmental regulations and reports when they disagreed with the results (2009) • Limited the salaries of senior White House aides (salaries cut to $100,000) (2009) • Has been holding open meetings with Republican leaders, although they complain of a lack of access and information (2010) • Signed the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act (2010) * Note: To curb wasteful spending • Tasked federal agencies to develop plans for disposing of unneeded real estate and then to eliminate unnecessary or non-economical lands, properties, etc. (2010) NATIONAL SECURITY • Phasing out the expensive F-22 war plane (which wasn’t even used in Iraq/Afghanistan) and other outdated weapons systems (2009) • Cut the expensive Reagan era missile defense program, saving $1.4 billion in 2010 (2009) • Cancelled plans to station anti-ballistic missile systems in Poland and the Czech Republic (2009) • Replacing long-range, expensive missile systems with more efficient smaller systems (2009) • Increased US Navy patrols off the Somali coast in response to pirating (2009) • Established a new cyber security office and appointed a cyber security czar (2009) • Ordered the first nation-wide comprehensive cyber threat assessment (2009) • Instituted a new Nuclear Posture Review, revising US nuclear deterrence policy to encourage more nations to join the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (2010) • Executive orders to block payment, transfers, exports, etc… of individuals and organizations support the regimes of North Korea, Iran, Somali pirates, and other foreign threats (2010) • Presidential Memoranda to extend certain provisions of The Trading with Enemies Act which was to expire in September 2010 (2010) • Signed bill for southwest border security and increased funds and agents on the Mexican border (2010) • Signed the Comprehensive Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act to deal with foreign regimes like Iran and North Korea (2010) IRAQ & AFGHANISTAN • Began the phased withdrawal of US troops from Iraq (2009); continuing the withdrawal (2010) • Changed the US military command in the Afghan conflict (2009) • Tasked the Pentagon to reorganize US policy in Afghanistan; the new policy includes 30,000 additional troops deployed, priority training of Afghan forces, developing agriculture and infrastructure, limiting aerial bombing, etc. (2009) • Ordered the Pentagon to send additional helicopters to assist US Marine units and Special Forces in Afghanistan (2009) • Increased unmanned drone strikes on Taliban and al-Qaeda targets in Afghanistan (2009) • Ended the Bush-era “stop-loss” policy that kept soldiers in Iraq/Afghanistan longer than their enlistment date (2009) MILITARY & VETERANS • Ordered the Pentagon to cover expenses of families of fallen soldiers if they wish to be on site when the body arrives back in the US (2009) • Ended the Bush-era “blackout” imposed on media coverage of the return of fallen US soldiers (2009) • Ended the Bush-era “black out” policy on media coverage of war casualties (2009) * Note: Full information is now released for the first time in the War on Terror • Ordered better body armor to be procured for US troops (2009) • Funding new Mine Resistant Ambush Vehicles (2009) • Improved housing for military personnel (2009) • Initiated a new policy to promote federal hiring of military spouses (2009) • Ordered that conditions at Walter Reed Military Hospital and other neglected military hospitals be improved (2009) • Began the process of reforming and restructuring the military to a post-Cold War, modern fighting force (2009) • Ended the Bush-era practice of awarding “no-bid” defense contracts (2009) • Improved benefits for veterans as well as VA staffing, information systems, etc. (2009) • Authorized construction of additional health centers to care for veterans (2009) • Suspended the Bush-era decision to purchase a fleet of Marine One helicopters from suppliers in favor of American made helicopters (2009) • Ordered a review of the existing “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gays in the military (2010) • New GI Bill for returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan (2009) • Signed bill providing assistance for caregivers of veterans wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan (2010) • Eliminated co-payments for veterans who are catastrophically disabled (2010) • Fulfilled campaign promise to have combat troops (90,000) out of Iraq by August 31, 2010 (2010) • Established a new interagency task force to assist veterans owning small businesses (2010) * Note: The efforts include promoting federal contract opportunities, improve access 325to loans and capital, mentor assistance programs, etc.

• Signed The Families of Fallen Heroes Act, which covers the moving costs of immediate family members of those lost in service (military, intelligence, and security personnel) (2010) • Eliminated the threat of Osma bin Laden (2011) FOREIGN POLICY • Closed the Bush-era “secret detention” facilities in Eastern Europe (2009) • Ended the Bush-era policy allowing “enhanced interrogation” (torture); the US is again in compliance with Geneva Convention standards (2009) * Note: Obama has permitted some controversial interrogation techniques to continue • Restarted international nuclear non-proliferation talks and reestablished international nuclear inspection protocols (2009) • Reengaged in the treaties/agreements to protect the Antarctic (2009) * Note: These were suspended under Bush • Reengaged in the agreements/talks on global warming and greenhouse gas emissions (2009) * Note: These were suspended under Bush • Visited more countries and met with more world leaders than any president in his first six months in office (2009) • Banned the export of cluster bombs (2009) • Overturned Bush-era plans to increase the US nuclear arsenal (2009) • Authorized the Navy SEALS operation that freed by force the US shipping captain held by Somali pirates (2009) • Restored the US commitment to the UN population fund for family planning; overturned the ban on providing funds internationally for family planning (2009) • Instituted a new policy on Cuba, allowing Cuban families to return “home” to visit families (2009) • Extended an offer of engagement (free from sanctions and penalties) to Iran through December 31, 2009 (Iran did not accept the offer) (2009) • Sent envoys to the Middle East and other parts of the world, reengaging in multilateral and bilateral talks and diplomacy (2009) • Authorized discussions with North Korea and the private mission by former president, Bill Clinton, to secure the release of two Americans held in prisons (2009) • Authorized discussions with Myanmar and the mission by Senator Jim Web to secure the release of an American held captive (2009) • Renewed loan guarantees for Israel (2009) • Signed the USIFTA trade agreement with/for Israel (2009) • Authorized a $550m advance for Israel (six months prior to the scheduled date) in order to accommodate Israeli’s economic and financial needs (2009) • Continued agreements with Israel for cultural exchanges, immigration, etc. (2009) • Spoke on Arab television, spoke at an Egyptian university, and met with Arab leaders in an effort to change the tone of US-Arab relations (2009) • Ordered the US to finally pay its dues to the United Nations (2009) • Attended the Summit of America’s meeting in Trinidad and Tobago (2010) • Dispatched several envoys and initiated talks with numerous nations (2010) • Signed a nuclear limitation treaty with Russia (2010) • Hosted nuclear non-proliferation summit for several nations (2010) • Executive Order to establish support offices in the State Department to assist the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan (2010) • Presidential Memoranda to continue drug interdiction support with Columbia (2010) ECONOMY • Increased infrastructure spending (roads, bridges, power plants…) (2009) • Authorized the US auto industry rescue plan and two GMAC rescue packages (2009) • Authorized the housing rescue plan and new FHA residential housing guarantees (2009) • Authorized a $789 billion economic stimulus plan (2009) • Instituted a new rule allowing the public to meet with federal housing insurers to refinance (in as quickly as one day) a mortgage if they are having trouble paying (2009) • Authorized a continuation of the US financial and banking rescue plans initiated at the end of the Bush administration and authorized TARP funds to buy “toxic assets” from failing financial institutions (2009) • Authorized the “Cash for Clunkers” program that stimulated auto sales and removed old, inefficient, polluting cars from the road (2009) • Convened a “jobs summit” to bring experts together to develop ideas for creating jobs (2009) • Ordered the FDIC to beef up deposit insurance (2009) • Ended the Bush-era policy of protecting credit card companies (2009) • Authorized the federal government to make more loans available to small businesses and ordered lower rates for federal loans to small businesses (2009) • Placed a 35% tariff on Chinese tires and a few other products such as pipes after China was found to be illegally “dumping” exports below cost (2009) * Note: Clinton, Bush I, and Reagan all refused to “get tough” on China’s predatory trade practices; Bush II refused four times during his presidency • In November 2009, Obama extended unemployment benefits for one million workers and expanded coverage for some existing homeowners who are buying again (2009) • Credit card companies are prohibited from raising rates without advance notification or arbitrarily if customers are paying bills on time (2010) • Signed a bill to extend unemployment benefits set to expire (2010) • Signed historic Wall Street reform bill (2010) * Note: Designed to reregulate and end abusive practices and promote consumer protections • Signed the HIRE Act to stimulate the economic recovery (2010) * Note: The bill includes: tax cuts for small businesses who hire someone unemployed for at least two months; small businesses can write off their investments in equipment this year; etc.

• National Export Initiative established to enhance federal support (technical assistance, training, trade missions, etc.) and coordination efforts to help US businesses export products and services (2010) • Initiatives to promote a “Wireless Broadband Revolution” (2010) * Note: Among other things, broadband is finally being considered as necessary infrastructure, with efforts to expand use, access, and spectrum…

• Expanded agricultural credit to farmers during current economic crisis (2010) • Signed bill - US Manufacturing Enhancement Act (2010) • Signed bill - Single Family Housing Mortgage Insurance (2010) TAXES • Negotiated a deal with Swiss banks to permit the US government to gain access to records of tax evaders and criminals (2009) • Ended the Bush-era policy of offering tax benefits to corporations who outsource American jobs (2009) * Note: The new policy promotes in-sourcing investments to brings jobs back to the US • Signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act which provides small tax cuts for 95% of “working families” (2009) • Convened an advisory board that is looking into simplifying the tax code (2009) • Ordered the closing of offshore tax safe havens (for individual and business tax evaders) (2009) • Reduced taxes for some small businesses to stimulate the economic recovery (2009) • Extended the Home Buyers Credit for first-time home buyers (2009) • Proposed doubling the child tax credit (2010) • Called for the repeal of the capital gains tax for small businesses (2010) • Proposed rolling back the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans (2010) BUDGETING • Ordered 326 all federal agencies to undertake a study and make recommendations for ways to cut federal spending (2009)

• Ordered a review of all federal operations to identify wasteful spending and practices (2009) • Established a National Performance Officer charged with saving the federal government money and making federal operations more efficient (2009) • Overturned the Bush-era practice of not listing certain federal programs in the federal budget (2009) (2010) * Note: Bush did this (so did Reagan) in an effort to hide programs and make the budget look smaller; such “off budget” items are now included in the annual budget • Full appropriations for war are now included in the budget (2009) (2010) * Note: Bush did not list many of the appropriations for Iraq, Afghanistan, and War on Terror • Funds for emergency appropriations are now included in the budget (2009) (2010) • Proposed a three-year freeze on federal discretionary spending beginning in 2011 (2010) • Is in the process of cutting 120 federal programs identified as either wasteful or unnecessary (2010) • Established a bipartisan commission on fiscal responsibility, staffed by House and Senate members and private citizens, tasked with submitting proposals to balance the budget (2010) * Note: In the face of Republican opposition, the powers of the commission were watered down • Established a bipartisan commission on the future of Social Security, tasked with submitting proposals to preserve and strengthen Social Security (2010) * Note: In the face of Republican opposition, the powers of the commission were watered down • Cut $20 billion from federal budget and has pledged to cut at least this much every year (2010) • Ultimately decided to cancel planned new presidential helicopter fleet and stick with marine One (2010) • Freezing all discretionary spending for next three years, except on national security (2010) • Presidential Memoranda to freeze discretionary awards, bonuses, etc. for federal political appointees (2010) • Beginning to use “Pay-As-You-Go” (Pay-Go) to offset budget expenditures with budget cuts or revenue enhancements (2010) HEALTHCARE • Removed Bush era restrictions on embryonic stem-cell research (2009) • Federal support for stem-cell and new biomedical research (2009) • Expanded the SCHIP program to cover health care for 4 million more children (2009) • Established an independent commission to make recommendations on slowing the costs of Medicare (2009) • Reversed some of the Bush-era restrictions that prevented Medicare from negotiating with pharmaceutical firms for cheaper drugs, allowing government to again competitively bid (2009) * Note: Obama had promised to lift all restrictions but, while he did negotiate with drug companies for them to lower their costs the deal only lifted some restrictions • Expanding government vaccination programs (2009) • Issued new disease prevention guidelines and priorities for the CDC (2009) • Authorized the FDA to finally begin regulating tobacco (2009) • Tasked federal labs to prioritize research on and deployment of H1N1 vaccines (2009) • Asked multiple congressional committees to bring forward a healthcare reform bill; held dozens of public hearings and town halls on the issue (2009) (2010) • Established a new council on National Prevention, Health Promotion, and Public Health to be chaired by Surgeon General and charged with promoting healthy lifestyles and integrative healthcare (2010) • When accusations to the contrary arose, an Executive Order was signed to reaffirm that federal funds are not to be used for abortion services (2010) • Historic healthcare reform bill signed - $940 billion over 10 years (2010) * Note: 32 million additional Americans will receive healthcare coverage and costs will be lowered for most Americans, but many of the goals are phased in over four years Components of the bill Miscellaneous: - Illegal immigrants are not eligible for insurance or subsidies - By Executive Order, such federal funding can’t be used for abortion - The federal government will assist states by covering all of the increased expenses of expanding Medicaid coverage (90% of costs after 2020) ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT • Removed a ruling that now allows individual states to enact automotive fuel efficiency standards above federal standards (2009) • Offered attractive tax write-offs for those who buy hybrid automobiles (2009) • Overturned Bush-era rule that weakened the Endangered Species Act (2009) • Announced plans to purchase fuel efficient American-made fleet for the federal government (2009) • Ended the Bush-era policy of not regulating and labeling carbon dioxide emissions (2009) • Signed a measure requiring energy producing plants to begin producing 15% of their energy from renewable sources (2009) • Announced that the federal government would reengage in the long-delayed effort to clean up “Superfund” toxic waste sites (2009) • Announced the long-term development of a national energy grid with renewable sources and cleaner, efficient energy production (2009) * Note: Much of Obama’s energy reform was killed by Senate Republicans • Proposed a new refuge for wild mustangs (2009) • Cancelled several Bush-era mountain-top removal and mining permits (2009) • Reengaged in international treaties and agreements to protect the Antarctic (2009)* Note: Bush had withdrawn from such efforts • Asked Congress for an energy reform and “cap and trade” bill (2009) * Note: The Congress failed to pass such a bill • Developing plan to lease US coastal waters for wind and water-current energy production (2009) • Overturned Bush-era policies that allowed uranium mining near national parks such as the Grand Canyon (2009) • Expanded the Petrified Forest National Park (2009) • Signed the Omnibus Public Lands Management Act that protects millions of acres of scenic, historic, and recreational lands and trails (2009) • Requiring that government buildings and facilities be retrofitted to save energy costs (2009) * Note: These green retrofits are moving very slowly • Authorized studies in several western states to determine how to support large-scale solar installations (2009) • Attended the Copenhagen talks and, after the talks were stalled, negotiated an international (voluntary) agreement on reducing carbon emissions and raising funds to assist developing nations in offsetting carbon emissions (2009) • Banned importation of pythons in response to a growing population of pythons damaging the Florida Everglades (2009) • Committing the federal government to increasing research and use of renewable, clean energy sources such as wind, biomass, etc. (2009) • Executive orders establishing a federal initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in all federal operations (2009) (2010) • Called for exploring the possibility of additional off-shore oil drilling in the Gulf, Atlantic, and off Alaska (but not in ANWR) (2010) • Agreed to consider increases in nuclear energy production and requested a study on the feasibility of nuclear power plant construction (2010) • Increased investment in clean energy projects (2010) • Executive Order to develop a new strategy for and commitment to ocean and lake resources, and for scientific research on water quality (2010) RIGHTS • Instituted enforcements for equal pay for women (Lilly Ledbetter Bill) (2009) • Appointed Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina, to the Supreme Court (2009) • Held the first Seder in White House (2009) • Appointed a diverse Cabinet and diverse White House staff (2009) • Spoke at the annual dinner of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights organization (2009) • Signed the327 first major piece of federal gay rights legislation that includes acts of violence against gays under the list of federal hate crimes (2009)

• Reversed the Bush-era practice of politicizing Justice Department investigations and prosecutions against political opponents (2009) • Pushing for some of the 9/11 perpetrators to be tried in federal court (2009) • Signed an extension of the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Bill to provide federal research and support for treating the disease (2009) • Allowed the State Department of offer same-sex benefits for employees (2009) • Proposed that the Pentagon repeal the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy; placed a “freeze” on current efforts to remove alleged homosexuals from the military (2009) • After eight years of neglect, the Justice Department and EEOC are again enforcing employment discrimination laws (2009) • Convened the White House Tribal Nations Conference, inviting representatives from 564 federally-recognized Indian tribes (2009) • Provided increased school projects for Indian lands and increased funds for the Indian Health Service (2009) • Signed an Executive Order mandating that his Cabinet develop plans to work with and consult Indian tribes on issues impacting Indian lands (2009) • Commissioned a study to develop alternatives to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (2010) • Called for federal agencies to look into recognizing gay partnerships in terms of benefits (2010) • Signed an Executive Order for the President’s Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities (2010) • Increased funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (2010) • Signed Executive Order to promote the federal government as a “model employer” when it comes to hiring the disabled (2010) • Programs to assist Spanish speakers with the US Census (2010) • Elena Kagen appointed to Supreme Court (2010) • Tasked all federal agencies to develop new strategies to address HIV/AIDS (2010) • After organizing studies on the topic in 2009, tasked the Pentagon to eliminate “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (2010) • Signed Fair Sentencing Act (2010) * Note: The Administration continues to deescalate marijuana interdiction and raids; increased dramatically the amount of cocaine one must possess to be sentenced to jail; eliminated mandatory sentencing for first-time drug abusers and simple possession EDUCATION • Authorized construction funds for high-speed, broadband Internet access in K-12 public schools (2009) • Increased funding for school construction (2009) • Increased funding available for student loans (2009) • Expanded the national youth service program (2009) • Streamlined the federal student loan process to save $87 billion over the next 10 years (2009) • Changed the rule to allow students struggling to make college loan payments to refinance their loans (2009) • Beginning discussions with Congress for education reform (2009) * Note: Much of Obama’s education reform has been sidelined by opposition in Congress • Initiated a “Race to the Top” competitive federal grant program for states who develop innovative policies (2009) • Instituted a “judgment review” allowing families with student loans to petition to have their current financial status determine the loan rather than the previous year’s finances (2009) • Launched “Educate to Innovate,” a public/private partnership making $236 million available for science, mathematics, and technology education programs (2009) • Proposed capping the maximum amount students must pay on student loans (as percentage of their income) (2010) • Proposed reducing student loan obligations for individuals going to work in community and public service jobs (2010) • The federal government will offer direct student loans, cutting out the cost of private banks (“middle man”) who increase the costs in order to make a profit (2010) • Increased investment in technologies for schools/education (2010) DISASTER RESPONSE • Ordered a review of hurricane and natural disaster preparedness (2009) • FEMA once again reports directly to the president (2009) * Note: Bush removed FEMA (prior to the Hurricane Katrina disaster) from this status • Demonstrated an immediate and efficient response to the floods in North Dakota and other natural disasters (2009) • Ordered that funds be released and red tape be streamlined for the ongoing Hurricane Katrina recovery effort in the Gulf Coast (2009) • Timely and massive relief effort in response to the January 2010 earthquake and ensuing humanitarian crisis (2010) • After the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a freeze was placed on new deep water projects (2010) • Executive Order to establish new security measures to minimize accidental release of bio and chemical agents; new strategies for public health and bioterrorism response (2010) • Established a national commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon spill to examine facts and report a plan of action; new efforts to prevent offshore spills (2010) • After a slow start in responding to the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the White House is promoting a long-term plan to reconstruct the damaged Gulf and negotiated with BP the establishment of a multi-billion dollar trust fund for victims of the spill (2010) • Extended national flood insurance program for those in need during current economic crisis (2010) OTHER INITIATIVES • New federal funding for science and research labs (2009) • Signed national service legislation; expanded national youth service program (2009) • Increasing opportunities in AmeriCorps program (2009) • Instituted a new focus on mortgage fraud (2009) • Ordered the DEA to stop raids on medical marijuana usage (2009) • Ordered a review of existing “mandatory minimum” prison sentencing (2009) • Signed an order to limit airport tarmac delays and the time passengers had to sit in the plane/on the tarmac during delays (2009) • Restored the EPA to “Cabinet level” status (2009) * Note: Bush removed the EPA from this status • Beginning discussions with Congress for comprehensive immigration reform (2010) • Commissioned expert panels and reports from NASA; announced a new direction for human space flight that involves funding a new heavy lift-launcher and jettisoning the Ares 1 program; boosting NASA’s budget by $1 billion in 2011 (2010) • Ordered a ban on text-messaging for all commercial truck and bus drivers (2010) • Signed bill – FAA Air Transportaiton Modernizatin and Safety Improvement Act (2010) ADDITIONAL • The Obamas paid for the renovations of the private living quarters in the White House with their own money rather than using the funds provided to all new first families (2009) • The Obamas reused many Christmas ornaments from previous White House trees rather than buy new ones (2009) • The Obamas used LED energy-saving lights on White House Christmas tree (2009) • Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize; donated the award money for the prize to several charities (2009) • Planted a garden for the White House’s vegetables and flowers (2009) • Installed a swing set/playground for the Obama daughters and children of White House employees (2009) • Held over 150 public town halls, press conferences, interviews, etc. in first year in office (2009) • Less than 30 days of vacation in first year in office (2009) * Note: Official numbers are not readily available on such things, but this seems to be a new record low.

—Excerted in part from, http://b4bmorenews.blogspot.com/2010/09/new-244-accomplishments-of-president.html

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THE HEALING OF A NATION BEYOND WHITE SUPREMACY

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SPIRITUAL PARASITES THE PLAGUE OF SLAVERY 400 years of the most dehumanizing experiences known to man has left scars that run deep and that are passed on from generation to generation. Slavery’s offspring affected all of us. None are exempt.

Here is an explanation of what happens and how you can get relief.

'Spiritual Parasites' propagate themselves through the agency of directed, violent, emotional transference, in a word: abuse. An individual becomes infected with a Spiritual Parasite through transference from a host (perpetrator) during the victimization of abuse, whether this abuse be sexual, physical or the complex of emotional/mental/verbal abuse. A spawn of this Parasite passes from the host to the victim. It latches into the solar plexus, and can be felt by the victim as if one had received a blow, akin to that of having one's breath knocked out of them. After hooking itself into the center of one's Power base, the Parasite draws upon the victim's life force, feeding on the new host's vitality. The victim, meanwhile, becomes weaker and more debilitated as time goes on, having lost vast amounts of energy to the Spiritual Parasite.

As the Spiritual Parasite feeds, it grows, containing the life force stolen from the new host in a 'sack' (All these processes, though described in physical terms, are non-physical, the Spiritual Parasite itself being of a non-physical nature.). This sack grows to full extension, during which time the spawn is maturing to its propagation cycle. As it reaches maturity the Spiritual Parasite extends two tendrils, tentacles, as it were, one into the victim's Will, usurping it, the other deadening the person's moral integrity. Once the sack has reached fullness, and the Parasite maturity, the False Will of the Parasite takes over, directing the individual to commit an act of abuse. This occurs as an instinctual mechanism which the individual perceives as the presence of something foreign within the body. Just as if someone had eaten contaminated food, this instinct seeks to expel the intrusive substance. The Spiritual Parasite uses this biological mechanism to time its own propagation. During the commission of the act of abuse, the perpetrator has no discernment of right or wrong, their moral integrity having been deadened, nor are they aware of what they are doing, their Will having been usurped by the Spiritual Parasite. During the act of abuse, the perpetrator feels a great sense of release as the sack deflates, rushing, as it does, into the new victim, carrying with it the spawn into a new host. The perpetrator, having had this immense release, then realizes what s/he has just done, and swears up and down that they would never do this to anyone, that it is 'not me' who committed this act of horror. Having their moral conscience back on line now, as well, the perpetrator is filled with shock, self-loathing and remorse, promising that they will never do such a thing again. The Spiritual Parasite itself, however, has not been expelled, only its spawn. The originating Parasite now feeds, grows, and cycles through again and again, causing the person to become a repeat offender. —Jade Wahoo Grigori, Shamanic Perspective Of Abuse, And Its Treatment, http://www.shamanic.net

When we truly understand the above, we will understand the need for healing and seek it out so that we can connect with our Source and operate from a Will that is un-tampered with and from our own inner moral authority, which is Divine. Then and only then can we move forward and create a life that breeds success and not the Humpty Dumpty drama of sex and money that destroys the most brilliant careers that we set out to create for ourselves.

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“Freedom entails responsibility and because this is so, another can never be responsible for your freedom.”

—Myeka

HEALING OR PUNISHMENT The dark ages, colonialism, childish dependency, slavery in the Americas, racism, sexism, and other violent expressions, has left all of us psychologically scarred. As females/mothers have lived and operated from ignorance and illness (for over 5,000 years of oppression), they have left these scars on generations of their descendants. Our present generation is yet to address healing. Slave mothers can only leave slave tendencies on their offspring (the new slavery is a prison inmate). Instead of healing we continue to prescribe to the archaic ways of punishment. Instead of seeking the cause of error, which inevitably leads to ignorance and illness, we have chosen to erect prisons, insane asylums, use ostracism, embarrassment, shame and guilt as weapons against each other.

The nonviolent revolution has taken place, and we have yet to attune ourselves to this new vibration. The doors of opportunity have swung open through the use of nonviolence, and they have been slowly closing because we have neglected to take the time to acknowledge our illnesses and our ignorance, the only two viable enemies to mankind.

Present day healing practices have done little more than turned us over to the drug industry with its prescription drugs, which acclimate us to take drugs of all types. We have been offered little more than talk therapy that never gets to the cause of the many problems which are inevitably emotionally based. We have followed every manner of guru, charismatic leader, religious leader and teacher, hoping to free ourselves from the guilt and shame of our thoughts, deeds and actions, to little avail, only to realize that they too are plagued. We are inundated with sexual perversions that do not allow us to create fulfilling relationships, as our demons haunt us day and night.

Slavery was a time of rampant sexual abuses (rape, pedophilia, castration, sadism, masochism, etc.) and the abusers nor the abused ever received any type of therapy. Today we are told that sexual predators are incapable of healing. They have become the scourge of our society. If this is so, then our nation is doomed to repeat the Abu Garib prison torture, and our prison will continuer to turn out sexual deviants and predators.

Our closets are filled with untold hidden lies and schemes that are aimed at controlling, manipulating and conquering others, in hopes of escaping from our own emptiness and feelings of worthlessness. We have sought to meet all the prescriptions of the society from finishing high school, to getting a college degree, a good paying job and respectable position in society. The hippies have become yuppies, women have left the home and children have become latchkeys.

Yet we can’t escape the ignorance and illness of our mothers. Having made our mothers sacred cows, we are afraid to look at her teachings, examples, toxic emotions and erratic thoughts as the source of our disconnectedness from nature and the life stream. We have inherited our mothers fears, hatred, anger, lusts and lies and now we are challenged to confront them in our self.

Yeshua ben Joseph (Jesus) once said, “Physician heal thyself.” so we are all called to be self-healers. This means taking responsibility for our thoughts, words and deeds. With low self-esteem we want to hide and be in denial that something is wrong, but we must develop the courage to fight the enemy within, and stop looking for enemies outside of ourselves.

The greatest war is the one you wage on your own ignorance. The time is slowly fading for the people of planet earth to correct their ills. Destruction draws near. Take personal responsibility for change.

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To believe there are no solutions for the problems that plague us is to embrace a dead-end philosophy. We can heal ourselves and we must. True liberation demands that we give up any and all structures that deny us the flexibility to explore and discover the source of our complete restoration.

With our heart as our guide and a willingness to forgive ourselves and others for violations, we shall overcome. We present in the following pages a revolutionary new healing technique that you can learn to apply to yourself to eliminate fear-based emotions. —Myeka

"A human being is a part of the whole, called by us Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest-a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty." —Albert Einstein

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“A society and its individuals are measured by the ideas they uphold.”

—Guy Damian-Knight

THE NONVIOLENT CLINICAL PROCESS —By Reverend James L. Bevel

The Nonviolent Clinical Process is designed to assist you in removing the blocks to truth and love, which keep you in a state of internal and external violence. The Nonviolent Clinical Process with its Toxic Emotion Release Technique (TERT) is designed for males and females of all ages, as a tool for discovering the authentic self and for the achievement of wholeness and selfhood, which leads to real and lasting peace. The problems of violence will not be resolved until: 1) our child rearing practices change to produce people with high self-esteem instead of deep core fear, guilt and shame. 2) Adults commit to their inner healing work, which involves healing the wounded aspects of the self that resort in fear, hate and violence when threatened.

The Nonviolent Clinical Process is the creation of Reverend James Luther Bevel, the Father of the American Nonviolent Movements of the 60’s (http://my.cybersoup.com/natural/bevelbio.html). It is a replica of the social process that was used during major civil rights campaigns to gain freedom and justice for people of color, now applied to the individual to gain liberation from fear-based emotions that keep one in a state of perpetual violence directed towards self (the effects being disease and ill-ness) and others (the effects being the war of the sexes, races and nations). Both processes (the social and individual) grew out of his internal struggle to free himself from the burdens that chattel slavery laid at his feet as an Indigenous Native, African, and Caucasian American male, causing him to develop movements, campaigns and a clinical process to right the wrong that was done to him. The Nonviolent Clinical Process is a psychological process for healing the emotions in order that love can flow, so thoughts can be created for the conscious development of nonviolent institutions that foster the health, facilitate the interests, protect the rights, and fulfill the needs of all people. It is a process whose time has come.

INTRODUCTION Violence is a symptom reflective of mental and emotional disorder. This disorder comes about when a person cannot translate inner feelings and promptings into thoughts, then translate thoughts into a meaningful language that develops a plan that is then translated into a meaningful language that develops a plan, that is then translated into the acquisition of work skills and tools that creates a meaningful work process that enhances life, and fulfills real human needs.

The only true experience a human being has is in the now, as time, space, elements and motion happen, even though the person has the mental power to recall the past and project into the future. The ability to experience the present tense through the human body is dependent upon the activation of all the senses. We can only interpret reality based on what is now known. The senses that allow for this experience are those of feeling, sound and thought. Most people, however are only aware of the senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, while the other three senses are not brought to consciousness and used in the process of living. When the awareness is focused on eight senses, it is at this point that we become aware of our potential for self development, creativity and purpose. We thus, conclude that violence is the result of eight sense people operating on only five (or less) senses, relegating them to the physical realm.

The purpose of The Nonviolent Clinical Process, is to help people become consciously aware of their eight senses and how to effectively and meaningfully use them to solve problems of violence in themselves, their families, their communities, the nation and the world. Until an adult person is actively caring for his/herself, and aiding in a process of human and community development, the person cannot be considered well, because a void exists that allows for secondary activities.

The human being is both the subject and object of life happening and each person must get to know themselves in this manner. Man as subject and object, must have the ability to completely act with enough verbs and adverbs to describe the action and enough adjectives to use as tools in times of trouble.

The acquisition of language skills is thus primary to the process of human development and health. Language is 333

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mathematical in that it is logical when spoken in truth with love. Native Americans had a saying about the melanin deficient race, “they speak with forky tongue, and have a hard heart.” The “forky tongue” signifies a person who says one thing and does another, or a liar, and the “hard heart” means one who is incapable of feeling, that is one who is out of touch with their inner being and their own creative powers. A person in such a condition is driven to survive at the expense of others. As a result these people tell and live lies in order to subdue other creative people who have created things that allow them to live happy, fruitful, abundant, harmonious lives. The “forky tongued-hard hearted” person in their inability to create, must thus steal, murder, pillage, rape and destroy, for they are incapable of creating that with brings peace and the fulfillment of real needs.

The ability to speak a language (create sounds) is dependent upon a persons ability to tune into self and speak from the heart, and not from memorizing words and their meanings The word language comes from “land—gauge” which is the ability to accurately ascertain what one needs in terms of that which is provided by our land (food, clothing, shelter, transportation, energy, communication and tools), in order to carry on a work process. Language is thus logical, reasonable, truthful and loving and without a language, it is impossible to discuss the past, plan for the future, or discuss the present in a meaningful way except in fear-based emotional terms.

Music another sound produced by man has the quality of rhythm, which is also a quality inherent in nature. The body harmonizes with music through dance or motion. Those people who are incapable of maintaining harmony and rhythm with music are usually the same people who are incapable of speaking a truthful language. They are also incapable of harmonizing with the rhythm of nature and thus create destruction in terms of air and water pollution, soil, erosion, ozone layer depletion, endangered species, destruction of the rain forest and diseases and epidemics of various proportions.

The present society has been incapable of harmonizing with nature or people of other cultures. As a result the plans, actions and outcomes of this society lead to the social problems plaguing the world.

Violence is the result of not having the ability to translate feelings into thoughts and so secondary thoughts are created that are ill-motivated, the language is distorted, the plans are incomplete, and then schemes are developed that violate the health, interest, rights and needs of self, other and the environment.

We conclude then, that the social behavioral disorders in us and in our environment are the result of not having the necessary conflict resolution skills, and the self and community development skills that are needed to create meaningful work processes. We, therefore discover ourselves living in a reality with beliefs and desires but without the insight and ability to fulfill basic and real needs, without violating or being violated. We can only react to violation and in turn violate.

The Nonviolent Clinical Process, is a complete process for eradicating violence. If you would like more information, please send a self-addressed, stamped envelope and a donation to Edmond Publication, 652 E. 89th Place, Chicago, IL 60619.

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"When fear is destroyed, All misfortune and sickness will vanish."

—Holy Sutra, Song of the Angel

FREEDOM AWAITS HEALING WHAT IS INTERNALIZED OPPRESSION? We know that every hurt or mistreatment, if not discharged (healed), will create a distress pattern (some form of rigid, destructive, or ineffective feeling and behavior) in the victim of this mistreatment. This distress pattern, when restimulated, will tend to push the victim through a re-enactment of the original distress experience either with someone else in the victim role or, when this is not possible, with the original victim being the object of her/his distress pattern.

Racism is a form of oppression that has been systematically initiated, encouraged, and powerfully enforced by the distress patterns of individual members of the majority culture and their institutions. ANEW (African, Native, European and World) people have been the victims, the primary victims in the country, of every form of abuse, invalidation, oppression, and exploitation known to mankind.

Examples of internalized racism appear everywhere, for example: • Racism has made us think of ourselves or each other as stupid, lazy, unimportant, or inferior.

• Racism has made us criticize or verbally attack each other, using the racist messages of our societies, or allow others in our group to do so.

• Racism has made us physically attack or kill each other, playing out our rage about racism at one another.

• Racism has made us put our individual well-being last.

• Racism has made us unable to think about our physical and emotional health, making us vulnerable to heart disease, high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, HIV/AIDS, ulcers, and more.

• Racism has made us criticize and beat our children in misguided efforts to "discipline" them and keep them from openly displaying esteem or pleasure in themselves (attempting to make them less vulnerable to racism, but instead leaving them more beaten down and enraged).

• Racism has made us feel hopeless, despairing, and angry, which can make us vulnerable to the lure of alcohol and other drugs for "relief" from those feelings, even though we know that this does additional harm to ourselves and our families.

• Racism has made our various racial groups fight with each other over what seems like a scarcity of resources.

• Racism has made us fight each other in gangs.

• Racism has made some of our group join racist institutions and take part in carrying out their racist policies against our own and other people.

• Racism has made us feel disconnected from other members of our group, or divide or categorize each other by behaviors or lifestyles, believing that some of us are "better" or "more legitimate" than others and that what some others do is "not part of" our culture.

• Racism has made us place higher value on members of our group who appear more white, and denigrate those who have darker skin, kinkier hair, or other "less white" features. We also do the reverse--we target those with lighter skins as not being "black enough," not legitimate persons of color.

It is important to understand these attitudes and actions and take steps to end them and to heal the damage done to us by racism.

This mistreatment has installed heavy chronic distress patterns upon us as a people and as individuals. We are in no way to blame for the initiation and installation of these patterns. It is clear that historically we have been denied the conditions necessary (for example, the safety) to discharge this distress. It is also evident that from the days of slavery to the present, we have not been in any position to re-enact these patterns upon our oppressors.

The result has been that these distress patterns, created by oppression and racism from the outside, have been played out in the only two places it has seemed "safe" to do so. First, upon members of our own group - particularly upon those 337

over whom we have some degree of power or control, our children. Second, upon ourselves through all manner of selfinvalidation, self-doubt, isolation, fear, feelings of powerlessness, and despair.

Internalized oppression is this turning upon ourselves, upon our families, and upon our own people the distress patterns that result from the racism and oppression of the majority society. As part of our liberation work, we know that we must seek out and direct the attention of ourselves and the world to the strength, intelligence, greatness, power, and success of our people and our culture. We must also constantly seek and root out those features of our present cultures that have been imposed by responses to racism and that keep us trapped in that oppression today.

The perpetuation of internalized distress patterns is the only thing that stands in the way of our coming together and taking the lead in ending all racism, oppression, and exploitation. Knowing this can be done, only patterns of despair and powerlessness stand in the way of our acting on this certain knowledge.

Suzanne Lipsky (originally appeared in the RC journal Black Re-emergence No. 2)

http://www.rc.org/

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“The emotions are titanic forces which sway the lives of men, driving them to good and evil. They are the most powerful of all human agencies, and have been well described as giants fighting for the bodies and souls of mankind.”

Frontispiece: The Anatomy of Emotion, Edward William Lazell, 1929

EMOTIONAL MASTERY Neither the 2,670 page Cecil Textbook of Medicine nor the 4500 page Oxford Textbook of Medicine list the word ‘emotion’ in their extensive indexes despite the clearly recognized influence our emotions have on our physical and mental health.

What are emotions? According to Mayer, there is evidence that emotions are a motor activity as well. Emotions, then, bridge thought, feeling, and action – they operate in every part of a person, they affect many aspects of the person, and the person affects many aspects of the emotions. Candace Pert, PhD (a research professor at the Georgetown University Medical Center) says, “Emotions are the glue that holds the cells of the organism together in the material world, and in the spiritual world they're the glue that holds the classrooms and the society together. That's why they are so interesting, because they're on a material level – the molecules of emotion as I've studied them as a scientist – and they're in the spiritual realm as well. Richard R. Pavek (founder of SHEN) says, “Emotion appears to be a metaphysical (nonbiological) experience paralleled by biological or physical responses and by mental or psychological processes. Individual emotions appear to changes in frequency in the biofield that permeates and affects the entire human body including the brain and radiate outward to affect others.” Wilhelm Reich, says, “the word emotion means Energy in MOTION.” Myeka says, “Emotions are psycho-chemical codes that allow homo-sapiens to experience their environment, express thoughts, create language and engage in actions designed to fulfill need.”

Emotions are ruled by the moon as the are fluidic in nature. Emotions like water can take the form of a solid (stuck emotion), liquid (free flowing emotions like love and joy), or gas (emotional release of toxic emotions which are often expressed as a yawn, burp, fart, deep breath or laughter). Because of the watery nature of emotions they can exist on all planes (past, present and future). The moon governs water as can be seen in its influence on the tides of the oceans, the moon cycle of females, the planting cycle of crops, and emotional fluctuations of emotionally disturbed people.

Emotions can either drive the intellect or drive the body. When toxic emotions (lust, greed, fear, etc.) drive the body it leads to irrational, ill-motivated and harmful activities. When the heart generated emotion of love drives the intellect it leads to integration of all eventualities and acceptance of life happening. When the emotions are driven by the body it leads to mechanical, robotic functioning that is heartless and devoid of caring.

Emotions ignored (present society model) leaves one vulnerable and subject to exploitation, manipulation and abuse.

Emotions must be understood and mastered if a person is to live a life of valor and purpose. The mastering of emotions means gaining a strategy for eliminating toxic emotions and fostering and enhancing positive emotions. The strategy must be self-applicable as the individual must gain control over self. Once the strategy is known, ones emotions need never be stuck in the past, and language and actions will be productive and life enhancing. These are a few strategies that have been made available in the last fifteen years. Some of them are EFT: Emotional Freedom Technique, RET (Rapid Eye Therapy), TAT: Tapas Acupressure Technique, SHEN Therapy, and Self-hypnosis. By learning, utilizing or connecting with a practitioner of one or more of these techniques, a person can gain self-mastery of their emotions and learn to live in the present.

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“When you make the very first step toward giving up the idealized self, you will feel a sense of liberation as never before.”

—Eva Pierrakos

The following self-healing techniques are designed to get you started in healing your emotions which affect all of you; spirit, mind and body. These are simple techniques that you can apply. Classes are available on the world wide web and there are YouTube Video’s available for some. Just Google in the name. There are many more techniques available for helping you to get tuned-up. Some are EMDR, Resonance Repatterning, HeartMath, Reiki, SHEN, Shamanic Healing, Matrix Energetics, Clinical Hypnotherapy, Vippasana Meditation and more. If you need a referral please email me at

HEALING YOUR EMOTIONS EFT: Emotional Freedom Technique DISCLAIMER: EFT is a gentle and easy to use technique, and has to date yielded remarkable results for relieving psychological, emotional and physical distress.

While there have been no distressing side effects reported to date, this does not mean that you will not discover side effects for yourself. IF YOU INTEND TO USE THESE TECHNIQUES, YOU MUST AGREE TO TAKE FULL REPONSIBILITY FOR YOURSELF AND OTHERS WHILE APPLYING THEM. You may wish to consult a trained EFT practitioner like myself. If you continue reading through this page and apply these techniques, you are agreeing to take full responsibility for yourself and others when applying the EFT technique, and shall neither hold Gary Craig, myself nor anyone else associated with EFT responsible for any adverse side effects or outcomes. If you agree to the above disclaimer, you may continue on...

1. Start by rubbing the sore spot, thinking of the situation and stating the setup phrase: Even though ........ I deeply and completely accept myself or Even though ............. I choose to................ (do this 3 times) 2. Tap on each point, repeating the main part of the phrase: 3. Breathe deeply in and out at the end.

Repeat steps 2 and 3 until you feel your unwanted reaction to the setup phrase has reduced. If you feel you need to change the wording in the setup phrase then go back to step 1, otherwise continue with steps 2 and 3.

Sample: Even though I am afraid to love myself, I deeply and completely accept myself. or I choose to forgive myself and love and accept myself.

Top of the head: Where the babies soft spot is.

Eyebrow-EB: on the end of the eyebrow (the end closest to the nose) Side of eye-SE: on the bone at the edge of the eye (the side closest to the ear and about level with the tear duct) Under eye-UE: on the centre of the bone under the eye (in line with the pupil) Under nose-UN: between the nose and upper lip Chin-CH: midway between the bottom lip and the point of the chin Collarbone-CB: where the collarbone and breastbone meet, about an inch down from the end of the collarbone (closest to the middle of the chest) Under arm-UA: on the side of the body, about 4 inches below the armpit, in line with the nipple.

Below the nipple: Men: 1" below the nipple, Women: where skin meets chest wall (not shown on chart) Thumbnail-TN: level with the bottom of the nail on the side of the thumb (if the hand is spread out palm down it's on the edge furthest away from the fingers) Index finger-IF: on the side of the index finger, level with the bottom of the nail (if the hand is spread out palm down it's on the edge closest to the thumb) Middle fingerMF: level with the bottom of the nail on the side of the middle finger (if the hand is spread out palm down it's on the edge closest to the thumb) 340

Little finger-LF: level with the bottom of the nail on the side of the little finger (if the hand is spread out palm down it's on the edge closest to the thumb) Karate chop-KC: on the fleshy part of the little finger side of the hand, where you would do a karate chop Gamut (optional): on the back of the hand, about half an inch behind the middle of the knuckles of the ring and little fingers. Tap on the Gamut point while holding your head level and steady. Tap with your eyes closes then with eyes open. Look hard left and down, look hard right and down. Move your eyes in a full counter-clockwise circle and then in a full clockwise circle. Hum about 5 notes of a song, count 1-2-3-4-5, hum 5 notes of a song.

Repeat steps 2 and 3 until you feel your unwanted reaction to the setup phrase has reduced. If you feel you need to change the wording in the setup phrase then go back to step 1, otherwise continue with steps 2 and 3.

Break state after each round, perhaps having the client/self stand up and move around a little or even look out of the window.

For more information or to set up a seminar or private session. Rush2freedom@gmail.com These points are on both sides of the body and it doesn’t matter which side you use.

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EFT FOR SELF-ESTEEM TO END ENSLAVEMENT A. Social programming - illusion Society has falsely programmed us to believe that our self-worth is dependent on external factors. As a result we tend to doubt our self-worth and loose our self-esteem.

1. Because you were born with dark skin.

2. Because you are born female in a culture which gives more importance to males.

3. When others criticize or reject you. (Belief: I am worthy and will be loved only when others accept and love me.)

4. When others are more able than you at certain tasks or more endowed with certain qualities. (i.e. Skin color, intelligence, wealth, home, appearance, artistic ability, speech, sports, cooking, professional success, their children’s success, being attractive to the opposite sex, making friends, disciplines, "spiritual" activities.) (Belief: I am worthy and will be loved only if I am better than others are concerning ______).

5. When you have made a mistake. (Belief: I am worthy and will be loved only when I do not make mistakes).

6. When you do not have the results you believe you should have had after some effort. (Belief: I am worthy and will be loved only when I succeed / when others recognize my success).

7. When others attract more attention, esteem and respect in a group situation (Belief: I am worthy and will be loved only when I am more important than others to others).

8. When you do not have someone who loves you exclusively, in ways that he or she does not love anyone else. (Belief: I am worthy only when I have someone who loves me exclusively).

9. When you are not perfect. (Perfect appearance, never make mistakes) 10. When you do not get many things done in one day. (Belief: I am worthy and will be loved only when I do and accomplish many things) 11. When you are not "strong" or when you show "weakness."

(Belief: I am worthy and will be loved only when I am strong and show no weakness) 12. When others do not agree or are not satisfied with you (especially parents or spouse). (Belief: I am worthy and will be loved only when others agree with me and are satisfied with me.)

13. When others ask you for help and you do not say "yes", or respond. (Belief: I am worthy and will be loved only when I say yes and will lose their love if I say no) 14. When others have offered more to you than you have offered to them. (Belief: He who gives is worthier than he who receives is.)

15. When people do not trust you or confide in you. (Belief: I am worthy and pure only if others trust me.)

16. When people lie to you or use you or laugh at you.

(Belief: I am worthy and will be loved only if I am respected and I lose my self-worth when others do not behave properly towards me.)

17. When others are able to manipulate you or are not as conscientious as you are. (Belief: I lose my self-worth when I 341

work more than others or when I work for them, without receiving back what I should.)

18. Because your parents did not want a child and you felt that you were a burden to them.

Note: Forgiving and loving ourselves does not mean that we allow ourselves to do whatever we want regardless of whether it is unjust or unethical. We need to recognize our inherent spiritual nature, but at the same time seek to align ourselves with our highest values and ethics. This should be done steadfastly but also with as much love and understanding towards ourselves as possible.

Employing EFT Follow the diagram as you tap with your fingers on the points.

In the case of false social programming or false conclusions from childhood or traumatic experiences, we can use these affirmations.

A.1. Even though I feel (the emotion) _______ (abused, invalidated, oppressed, exploited, self-doubt, isolated, fearful, powerless, despair, rage, anger, indignation, frustration, shame, mistrust, intolerant, impatient, embarrassed, ridiculed, humiliated attacked, guilt, self-rejection, unworthiness, belittled) when/ because _____ (reason), I deeply and profoundly love myself.

A.2. Even though until now I have felt (the emotion) _______ (abused, invalidated, oppressed, exploited, self-doubt, isolated, fearful, powerless, despair, rage, anger, indignation, frustration, shame, mistrust, intolerant, impatient, embarrassed, ridiculed, humiliated attacked, guilt, self-rejection, unworthiness, belittled,) when/ because _____ (reason), I now realize that, as an expression of the divine, my being itself is my self-worth and is independent of external factors.

B. I choose (want, deserve, allow myself, accept, realize that it is in my benefit) to be free from this (emotion) ___.

C. Reminder Phrase = (The emotion) ____ when / because ____ (reason).

EFT is a highly effective method for managing toxic emotions, pain, and reprogramming. I got my on the job training (working with volunteer EFT Master Practitioners), using it to assist survivors of Hurricane Katrina located in emergency encampments in Alabama. It helped to immediately relieve the trauma, stress and fears and give relief so that they could become present and make future plans, rather than regret the past.

I use it daily as there is always something to tap about. I tap on everything. If you need assistance, EFT can be done over the telephone, so give me a call (202) 527-9798. I also provide training sessions for groups. —Myeka

O that every tender heart could be made acquainted with the sorrows of the poor enslaved Africans! O that every sympathetic ear could hear their agonizing groans. Then would the energies of our nation arise and demand their relief. But their sufferings are unknown; they far transcend the highest description that can be given by the pens of mortals!

Eternal Sovereign of the sky, Wilt thou not hear the negro's sigh?

Wilt thou not break his galling chains, And ease him from his dreadful pains?

Yes, mancipators all must feel Thy vengeance like a racking wheel, That on them shall forever turn, Long as thy ceaseless wrath shall burn! —JAMES H. DICKEY 342

USING EFT FOR FORGIVENESS IN FOUR QUADRANTS It's been said that holding on to negative emotions such as anger, sadness, disappointment, fear, jealousy, etc is like holding hot coals. The person holding them always gets burned! Here's a way to DROP THOSE COALS! One of the presuppositions of NLP is that, “People always do the best they can with the resources they have available at that time.” Accepting this presupposition makes it much easier to forgive people who have disappointed us.

Failure to forgive those who disappoint, harm, or otherwise “trespass” against us can lead to a multitude of negative results. They can include: increased stress, psychosomatic aches, pains, and ailments, weakened immune system, irrational reactions, and so many more. What happens if we fail to remove a small splinter and disinfect the area in a timely manner?....discomfort, infection, gangrene, amputation, and possibly even death.

“Forgiveness in Four Quadrants” describes forgiving the offender for harming us, and then forgiving them for the effects their act caused us. We then forgive ourselves for the harmful reaction to the event and finally forgive ourselves for allowing the negative reaction to have affected our lives.

It is not necessary to do each quadrant individually. Combining the first two quadrants is easy and logical. Quadrants three and four can also easily be combined. That allows the process to be accomplished with only two set-ups.

The following two case-study examples of how I have used “Forgiveness in Four Quadrants” with different presenting problems illustrate the process. For anonymity, I will call the clients, Jane, Tom, and Dick. Because I don't record my sessions, the set-up phrases and comments are not verbatim, but are as close as I can remember them.

“Forgiveness in Four Quadrants Bridge Phobia”.

I was in the process of asking her, “If you were to imagine being out on a bridge, how uncomfortable would you be?” What are the feelings and emotions about the event and that led to tapping to forgive her father and herself. We tapped using the following set-up phrases that just came intuitively.

1 st quadrant: “Even though my Dad was really stupid when he threw me off the bridge, I forgive him...he was doing the best he could do.”

2 nd quadrant: “Even though my Dad's stupidity caused me massive problems for 35+ years, that's okay, I forgive him.”

At this point there was a significant reduction in her feelings toward her father, but other issues surfaced, and that led to what I now call quadrants three and four.

3 rd quadrant: “Even though I was really scared about being thrown off the bridge, that's okay, I was only reacting like most kids would. I forgive myself for not trusting my stupid Dad.” 4 th quadrant: “I forgive myself for allowing this fear to interfere with my enjoyment of life for the last 35 years.

I've been doing the best I could do.”

Forgiveness in Four Quadrants Eliminating Panic Attacks .

Tom confided that when he was eight years old, his fourteen-year-old cousin had assaulted him. He had never told anyone. In addition to the fear, guilt and shame from the event, he also felt guilty for not telling his parents when a couple of other kids reported the cousin.

We worked through quite a few issues and then finished with “Forgiveness in Four Quadrants” 1 st quadrant: “Even though my cousin was a perverted criminal who took advantage of me, just an innocent kid, that's okay, I forgive him.”

2 nd quadrant: “Even though his actions have caused me guilt, fear, shame, and all kinds of problems, I can still forgive him. In fact I deserve to forgive him so I can get on with my life, free from these past problems.”

3 rd quadrant: “I forgive myself for having kept this secret all to myself and not allowing loved ones to help me resolve the conflicts I felt. I was just a little kid and didn't know better.”

4 th quadrant: “ I forgive myself for allowing the guilt, shame, and fear from that violation of trust, violation of law, and violation of my innocence to have so negatively impacted my life, and I can let it go.

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EF&H RELEASING TRAUMATIC STRESS © 2001 Richard Ross. All rights reserved.

The “EF&H Releasing Traumatic Stress” process can be used to relieve the trauma of recent events following 9/11, or it can also be used to release the emotional charge around ANY past traumatic experience.

This gentle, yet deep, process very quickly results in a shift in energy accompanied by a profound sense of peace and relaxation. emotionalfreedom @richardross.com 505.828.3527 ● http:/www.emotionalfreedom.com Here's the technique: While you do this process, tune into the unwanted feeling, and/or memory, that is particularly stressful to you.

1. Locate a tender, or sensitive spot on left side of chest. For most of us it is beneath the collarbone and above the breast area on the left side. Find the spot on yourself by pressing, using one or two fingers, around this area until you find a spot that is more tender, or sensitive than the area around it. While rubbing that spot continuously in a small circle, repeat the following out loud: “Even though there’s a part of me that feels angry and helpless about what happened, I deeply and completely love and accept myself.”

“Even though I think this has been a terrible thing, I choose to be at peace now.”

“Even though I don’t yet understand the meaning of what happened, I’m open to finding some good in all of this.”

2. Tap lightly on the inside end of either eyebrow, end near bridge of nose, with one finger tip, and repeat out loud "I release any programming from my past that caused me to react in this way.”

Then, while your finger tip still is touching that point, take one deep slow breath in and out.

3. Tap lightly on outside side of either eye, on bone near temple and repeat out loud "I release all the anger I have about what happened".

Then, while your finger tip still is touching that point, take one deep slow breath in and out.

3. Tap lightly under either eye on bone, and repeat out loud "I release any fear I’m feeling because of what happened".

Then, while your finger tip is still touching that point, take one deep slow breath in and out.

4. Tap lightly under nose (above upper lip) and repeat out loud "I let go of any confusion or embarrassment I have around what happened".

Then, while your finger tip is still touching that point, take one deep slow breath in and out.

5. Tap lightly under bottom lip (in crease before chin begins) and repeat out loud "I release any shame I have because of what happened".

Then, while your finger tip is still touching that point, take one deep slow breath in and out.

6. Now take a moment to breathe deeply, reflect again on the traumatic event, and notice how much calmer you are.

Give thanks for the healing that has happened.

I hope you find this exercise helpful. Please let me know how it worked for you, and if there is any further way that I can support you.

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RET QUICK RELEASE TECHNIQUE www.rapideyetechnology.com Here is a simple yet effective quick stress relief process you can do for yourself to get a sense for Rapid Eye Technology.

Just follow the simple directions here. Please keep in mind this is a SIMPLE demo without a trained RET technician.

Doing a session with a RET technician is the only real way to determine if RET will work for you.

Approach 1—Self-administered Control 1. Identify something that is stressing you. Keep it simple - maybe something recent. For more stressful material, or to do more than this simple process, seek a technician in your area to work with.

2. While thinking about what is stressing you, gauge how much you feel it on a scale of 0-10 with 0 means not at all and 10 means totally stressed out.

3. Cast your eyes back and forth in a zigzag pattern while moving the zigzag slowly up and then down and then up again and down again. Do this until you feel like you can't do it anymore or like you really want to blink.

4. Blink hard 3-4 times 5. Take three deep breaths, letting each out all at once in a sigh.

6. Gage again how you feel on the same 0-10 scale and notice the difference in the way you feel.

7. Repeat the process to de-stress more or to process another issue.

To deal with more stressful material we suggest you contact a RET technician in your area. http://rapideyetechnology.com/selfcare.htm

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BELLY BUTTON CORRECTION If, for any reason, flow in the body's energy system is disorganized or reversed, we don't function well and aren't likely to respond well to energy-work - or life! It's like having some or all of the batteries in the energy system put in backwards or not making clear contact with the next batteries in the sequence. Remedy: For confused or switched polarity, the "Belly Button Correction" (BBC) is the fast and effective remedy. This exercise really turns things around, polaritywise. It turns the body's energies toward healing and positive functioning.

Press the fingers of one hand firmly on your navel and keep them there.

2. Rub under your nose with the index finger of the other hand for 6 to 8 seconds.

3. Rub under your lower lip for 6 to 8 seconds.

4. Extend fingers and thumb to massage both collarbone points for 6 to 8 seconds.

5. Massage your tailbone for 6 to 8 seconds.

6. Reverse hands and repeat the procedure (optional, but recommended!).

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SELF-IDENTIFICATION TECHNIQUE

By Myeka Change Self Therapy This technique is used to neutralize negative charges from other people. This is a very simple technique, so simple that you may ignore it at first, but the results are amazing.

When you find something to criticize in someone, clearly define for yourself what it is that you don’t like. Next turn your attention to yourself and identify the same characteristic in yourself. Work on healing that aspect of self within and it will disappear outside of you as a negative charge.

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THE STEPS OF TAPAS ACUPRESSURE TECHNIQUE (TAT) Before starting each problem you want to clear, either ask the body if it’s OK to work on this now via a muscle test or bio-energetic field test, or pray or make an intention that "If it’s time for this to heal now, then let it be so" or whatever means that in your own words.

How to do the “TAT” pose: With one hand, lightly touch the tip of the thumb to the area 1/8 inch above the inner corner of your eye.

With the fourth finger (ring finger) of the same hand, lightly touch the tip of the finger to the area 1/8 inch above the inner corner of the other eye.

Both finger tips are now on either side of the bridge of your nose.

Place the tip of the middle finger at the third eye, a point midway between, and about ½ inch above, eyebrow level.

You now have all three fingers lightly touching the three points.

Now place your other hand on the back of your head, with the palm touching the head so the thumb is resting at the base of the skull just above the hairline. The palm cradles the occipital bone.

Both hands should be resting gently. No pressure is necessary.

At each step stay in the pose up to 4 minutes, or until there is a shift in the energy, then go on to the next step.

The first thing to clear up is the following statement: "I deserve to live, and I accept love, help and healing." Do all the Steps of TAT about that. You only need to do it once ever.

Here are the instructions for each TAT Step given in the form of you working with another person. If you are not working with another person, you can briefly write and/or briefly reflect on “what happened” after doing each step.

To immediately gain relief from traumatic stress, identify the most stressful part of the trauma for you. This is what you will be focusing on in each of the following steps. You can repeat all the steps for the next most stressful part of the trauma the next time you do TAT until nothing remains that is still stressful for you.

Step 1—Put your attention on the most stressful part of the trauma and do the TAT pose. What happened?

Step 2—Put your attention on "It happened, it's over and I'm OK" and do the TAT pose. What happened?

Step 3—Put your attention on either: "All the origins of this trauma are healing now" or "God (or whatever name you use), thank You for healing all the origins of this trauma" and do the TAT pose. What happened?

Step 4—Put your attention on either: "All the places in my mind, body and life where this has been a problem/ resonated/been held/been stuck (your choice) are healing now" or "God, thank You for healing all the places in my mind, body and life where this has been a problem/resonated/been held/been stuck" (your choice) and do the TAT pose.

What happened?

Step 5 Put your attention on either: "All the parts of me that got something out of having this problem are healing now" "God, Thank You for healing all the parts of me that got something out of having this problem." What happened?

or

Step 6 Put your attention on "I forgive everyone I blamed for this problem, including God and myself" and do the TAT pose.

What happened?

Step 7 Put your attention on "I ask forgiveness of everyone I hurt because of this problem" and do the TAT pose. What happened?

Review After you’ve completed the TAT Steps, put your attention on the most stressful part of the trauma (your Step 1 image).

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Check and see if there’s anything about that part of the trauma that still bothers you. If there is, put your attention on that and do the TAT pose for a couple of minutes. Continue in this way until there is nothing about it that hurts you, troubles you or feels stuck. You will know you’re done because when you think about that part of the trauma, you feel free and at peace.

Keep your TAT work to a maximum of 20 minutes per day actually in the TAT pose.

Drink several glasses of water on the days you do TAT. When you are done with your work, I recommend that you give thanks.

I don’t believe that TAT itself does the healing. I believe that it is God, Divine Love, or the natural energy of life that does the healing. TAT opens the gateway for the healing to occur.

Tapas Fleming http://www.tat-intl.com/

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STIMULATES ENERGY FLOW AND BALANCE IN THE WHOLE 14-CHANNEL MERIDIAN SYSTEM Tapping or gently slapping three special acupressure points stimulates energy flow and balance in the whole 14-channel meridian system (M. Gandy, 1998). This quick three-point intervention works like a jump-start to the meridian system.

Crown of Head - Tap gently with the flat of your hand on the mid-line at the top of your head, about 1 ½ inches forward from the actual crown. Tapping this point stimulates all Yang meridians, distributing energy downward to lower parts of your body.

Inner Wrist - Slap sharply 3 fingers above your inner wrist crease on each forearm to stimulate all Upper Yin channels.

The polarity of yin energy is opposite to yang. Yin meridians tend to distribute energy upwards. The Inner Wrist points send yin energy to the upper part of your body.

Inner Ankle - Slap sharply 4 fingers above the point of your ankle on the inside of each leg. From this point, you stimulate all Lower Yin meridians. Your Inner Ankle points send yin energy upward, thus serving all lower areas of your body. This finishes balancing yang and yin polarities.

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WAYNE COOK POSTURE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTfOMTmnjjI Sit in chair with spine straight. Place right foot over left knee, wrap left hand around right ankle, right hand around ball of right foot, breathe in thru nose and let breath lift body, at same time pull leg toward you creating a stretch repeat 4-5 times then switch to other foot. Uncross legs and form a pyramid with hands, rest thumbs on third eye just above bridge of nose, breath slowly in mouth and out nose while thumbs separate and move across forehead pulling skin. Bring hands back to the third eye position slowly bring hands in front of you pulling them into a prayerful position while breathing deeply.

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HOW TO RELEASE FEAR http://www.RevolutionScape.com Here is the exact way of doing that, step-by-step: Step 1: Draw whatever you fear into the Here, Now. For example, let us assume that you are worries about losing your job or your spouse. That is a future event. Now, pretend that it has happened already. That instantly eliminates your having to dodge it, to avoid it. It enables you to stop fighting to avoid it happening. So, close your eyes and completely pretend it has happened already. That which you fear is no longer in the future, but it has now happened already.

Step 2: Feel the feelings you would feel assuming it has happened.

Is it shame, anger, vulnerability, grief, embarrassment? What feelings would you feel if it happens? As you draw the future into the present and fully pretend it has happened allow yourself to feel absolutely everything that you imagine you would feel if that which you fear actually happened. Whatever it is you are avoiding feeling if that which you fear were to happen, feel it now.

Step 3: Accept it and yourself.

This is the key step. Now that it has happened, accept things as they are, and accept yourself as you are. Stop dodging, pretending or trying to change life. Just accept. Look inwards and say, "Jane (or whatever your name is), you are a worthy, good, acceptable person as you are, even as these things have happened, and I am proud to be you and happy to know you and spend my life with you. I accept you as you are, and I accept life as it is, and I accept these feelings as they are."

Step 4: Embrace the unknown.

One of the key features of fear is that you are afraid of what will happen if that which you fear comes to be. Solve this problem by simply embracing the unknown. Admit that life is larger than what you know, and that what you don't know isn't a dangerous thing necessarily, even though your fears may tell you it is. The unknown is your friend. Tell yourself that even if you don't know what lies in the unknown, and you will never know until you pass through it, you will be able to go through it OK, even if you don't know how. Life will just happen. Feel the fear but do it anyway.

If you follow this formula you will be amazed at its effectiveness. Just try it on the little fears at first and practice and practice and practice until you can easily apply it on any fear of any size at any time, automatically. Practice makes perfect. At first it may be hard but in time you will become fearless.

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CELL PHONE RADIATION SHIELD! Introducing The World's First FREE http://freeshield.net/FreeShield20081019.pdf .

CieAura http://helenedmond.cieaura.com Here you will find many non-evasive products to enhance your health. They include EMF Cell Pone Radiation patches for your phone and much more.

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THE SEVEN STEPS TO QUIETING YOUR MINDAND OPENING YOUR HEART TO INNER WISDOM By choosing to learn The Seven Steps To Quieting Your Mind you have made the choice to enhance your life and to allow more health, love and joy to flow through your Heart. The following steps will guide you in quieting your mind and listening to the wisdom of your Heart Step One: Breathe Deeply Begin by taking a nice deep cleansing breath in... breathing in life, energy and abundance...

As you exhale release any stress, strain or tension from your body...

Release any thoughts, feelings...and just allow yourself to relax…

Step Two: Place your Awareness within your Heart As you continue to breathe deeply, gently shift your focus from your head into your Heart and take a few moments to dwell here in this place of inner peace… Your place of Peace…

Step Three: Breathe Deeply Into This Place Breathe as deeply as you can into this place of peace...Your Heart.

Feel your Heart expand... soften... and relax...

Feel your lungs expand, your entire body filling with life, every cell and in between every cell... feeling fully alive!

Feel the unconditional love that lives in your Heart…

Feel the trust of your open Heart Step Four: Connect with the Wisdom that Lives in Your Heart Gently place your right hand over your Heart...

Ask "What does my Heart want for me, now, in this moment?”

"What does my Heart long for?"

Listen for the answer... be open to whatever form of communication you may receive Step Five: Trust Trust the answer that you receive...

This is your inner wisdom speaking to you...Your higher self...

Your place of Truth This Truth will never fail you!

Step Six: Follow Your Truth Follow your Truth to the extent that it feels right for you...

Visualize yourself following your Truth...

Feel the feeling you have when you follow your Truth...

Breathe into this feeling and embrace it fully...

Step Seven: Let It Go Surrender to a Higher Being...The Divine...

Know that you have done all you need to do and the rest of the details will be handled…

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DISTORTED THINKING CHECK LIST Language and its meaning are highly important in creating our emotional reactions and sensations. Clues that we’re employing distorted and upsetting thoughts can be found in emotions that are intense, uncomfortable, enduring, and attention grabbing. Automatic & habitual, distorted beliefs occur without reason or reflection. Here is a checklist of words and phrases we find in distorted thinking.

Awfulizing: Here we make inconveniences or uncomfortable situations into disasters, catastrophes, something awful, horrible, or terrible. When awfulizing we magnify our problems and fail to notice the positive or the neutral in our experience. Awful, horrible, and terrible generally imply 100% negative experiences. Very few experiences are fully awful. Believing a situation is awful will make it feel that way. Most so-called awful experiences could be made much worse. If you awfulize you could see your experience as “inconvenient”, a “hassle”, or “uncomfortable”. “Difficult” & “tough” also work better.

Typical awfulizing words: “awful”, “horrible”, “terrible”, “disaster”, “holocaust”, “the worst”, “doom”, “total hell”, “catastrophe”, “the pits”.

To test your situation to see if it is really awful–ask the following questions: Does feeling awful actually prove the situation is awful?

Does your belief create your feelings of awfulness or horribleness?

What is your exact prediction? Specifically what will happen?

If you believed the event was inconvenient, would you feel differently?

Is this event as horrible as I believe it is? Or is it very uncomfortable or inconvenient?

Is there anything positive or neutral in your situation? A valuable learning experience?

How long will your situation last? Can you cope with it?

How is a disadvantage or inconvenience awful?

Could this situation be made much worse?

Is this circumstance difficult or unbearable, unpleasant or devastating, uncomfortable or intolerable?

Is there evidence that would dispute this belief?

If the worst occurs, can you consider other options or plans of action? Could you cope with it?

How does your difficulty compare with: (1) Being roasted slowly? (2) Dying gradually and agonizingly from a rare disease? (3) Seeing loved ones paraded into slavery? (4) Being tortured slowly by terrorists?

Is your situation truly awful or is it an inconvenience?

Test your “awful” thoughts with the previous questions and if they fail the questions, convert your thoughts to “inconvenient”, a “hassle”, or “uncomfortable” or “difficult” or “tough”. Then practice thinking and feeling them until they become habitual and natural.

Can’t Stand-It-itis: Here we use evaluations like: “I can’t stand it.” “It’s too much.” “I can’t take it.” “It’s driving me out of my mind.” “It’s overwhelming me.” “When will this ever stop?” “Life must be easy.” With these phrases we make uncomfortable and frustrating circumstances into unbearable ones. “Can’t stand it-itis” resides at the core of impatience and frustration intolerance. If you’re doing something that better be done and you feel extremely frustrated, you might think: “I can stand it.” “It’s not too much.”

“I can take it.” “I can hang in there.” “I’ve stood it before.” “Much of life is challenging–I can put up with it.”

Typical can’t stand it-itis phrases are: “I can’t stand it.” “I can’t take it.” “This’s driving me crazy.” “I’m being overwhelmed.”

“When will this ever end?” “This’s killing me.” “I’m going out of control.” “Life should be easy.”

See if you can really stand your situation by answering these questions: Could you stand it? Have you stood it before?

Have you coped with a similar situation?

Could you stand it for 2 million dollars or some other valued reward?

If your brain is healthy–can you really go crazy or would you just get upset?

Have you ever lived without it?

What would be the easiest part of this situation to bear? The second easiest part to bear?

Where’s the evidence that it’s too much?

Can you stand it for a minute at a time?

If a miracle happened and you could stand and cope with this situation, what would you notice about this situation? How would you feel about this situation?

If your “can’t stand it-itis” fails to pass some of the previous questions, then change your thoughts to: “I can stand it.” “It’s not too 350

much.” “I can take it.” “I can hang in there.” “I’ve stood it before.” “Much of life is challenging–I can put up with it.” Keep practicing your new thoughts until they feel natural and become habitual.

Shoulding: Here we elevate desires and preferences into arbitrary and ironclad laws such as shoulds, musts, oughts, got to’s, and deserves. Shoulding offers us little choice, creates pressures, and leads to anger, guilt, and shame. With shoulds we create new rules and play Jehovah with ourselves and others. If we are shoulding, we better use: “want”, “prefer”, “desire”, “would strongly like”, or “better do”.

Understand that everything is always as it should be. You may not enjoy the present, yet you better accept the idea that everything required to create current reality was done. The present should have occurred as it is now.

It is unrealistic and playing god to believe that reality should not have happened the way it happened. Reality is as it exists. Every prerequisite was met. To demand “it” should not have taken place will upset you and buy you 2 problems for the price of 1. And by demanding “it” should not have occurred, you fail to accept what happened.

If we don’t like the present, we may alter it if possible and prevent what occurred from happening in the future.

Reasonable “shoulds” refer to current reality and can be observed clearly by others. Unreasonable “shoulds” are based on the idea that things should occur because we demand they do. Not based on present observations, unreasonable shoulds are often grounded in the notion that what is correct for us is right for everyone. Example: Mensing’s truths should work for everybody.

Typical should phrases: “I should.” “They must.” “The world ought.” “I’ve got to.” “They have to.” “They deserve.”

To test your “should” laws & rules–ask the following questions: What law in the universe says you must or they should?

What evidence is there that you or they must or should?

Who or what creates this commandment?

Would a want or a preference give you or them more of a choice?

Does being demanding and unyielding motivate you or others?

How would you talk a friend out of this must or should?

Are there others who don’t share your “should” rule?

Do you down yourself or others for not living up to your demanding rule?

Is your should rule humane?

Would you apply this same rule to someone you loved or was a friend?

Is this belief based on facts or is it reflexive and negatively judgmental?

Where is it written that what you want, you must get?

What are the advantages and disadvantages in choosing to prefer or want over shoulding or musting?

If your beliefs fail to pass the previous questions, then change your beliefs to wants, preferences, and desires. Practice your new beliefs until they feel natural and habitual.

Labeling: Here we over generalize with the “verb to be” about ourselves, others, things, events, & the world. Example: “I’m no good.” “I’m worthless.” “I’m a failure.” “They are slobs.” “New York is a totally sick place.” “Everything is no good.” By over generalizing with “labeling” we, they, or it becomes one behavior, trait or quality.

Example: I failed a geometry test–I’m a failure. Or they behaved badly–they are bad.

Sometimes we might label the world, things, and events with an over generalized tag. Example: Philadelphia is a snake pit. Or my job is the pits. Obviously Philadelphia and jobs contain far more than negative qualities. If we label, it’s better to choose labels that carry the notion that we and everything in this world are multi-faceted and contain many, many positive, neutral, and negative qualities.

Recommended labels for the self: “I’m a multi-faceted person.” “I’m a person with many positive, neutral, and some negative qualities.” “I’m human with a wide range of qualities.” These labels apply to others as well.

Recommended labels for things, events, and the world: “It is multi-faceted.” “It has many positive, neutral, and negative qualities.”

If you are labeling, ask yourself the following questions: Do you have millions of traits & behaviors? Are some negative, positive, or even neutral?

How can you just be one or a few traits & behaviors?

Can you choose not to rate yourself by a gross over generalization?

Is viewing yourself as just one or a few traits an over generalization?

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List some of your many positive & neutral traits & behaviors.

Is it arbitrary to assign points to a trait or a behavior? How many points do you get added or subtracted for fallen arches?

If your beliefs fail to pass the previous tests, and then convert your beliefs to labels like: “I’m a multifaceted human with many positive, neutral, and negative qualities and traits.” “Others are multifaceted humans with many positive, neutral, and negative qualities and traits.” “The world is multifaceted with positive, negative, and neutral qualities and traits.” Practice the new beliefs until they feel natural and become habitual.

Negative predictions/Fortune telling: You predict the future will provide failure or danger. “I’ll screw things up and I’ll fail.” “I won’t get employment.” “She’ll drop me like a hot potato.”

What exactly is your prediction? When and where will it happen?

Is there any evidence that it won’t happen or that it will happen?

Is the evidence good?

Could you survive and accept this prediction even if the worst happened?

Isn’t it always possible that something good or bad could happen to me?

Have you ever made incorrect predictions previously?

What is the worst, best, and most probable outcome?

Write out three possible outcomes in detail.

If your beliefs fail to pass the previous tests, then convert your beliefs to: “I’ll do my best to raise the probability of a positive outcome although I have no guarantee of anything good, neutral or bad happening.” Practice the new beliefs until they feel natural and become habitual.

Negative hindsight/Should’ve done better in the past: Here we believe we should’ve done better or said the right thing. “I should’ve known better.” “I should’ve never said that.”

Some questions to check out negative hindsight: Did I really know better at the time?

What exactly was my regret?

Does having negative hindsight motivate me to do better now or am I just chastising myself?

What’s the evidence for and against my negative hindsight?

What’s the quality of that evidence?

Should you know what to do or say every time? Is that humanly possible?

Can you really foretell how things turnout or never make errors?

Did you make a good choice given the information and how you felt at that time? Didn’t your choice seem right or mostly right at that time?

How does making a mistake magically turn you into a negative label?

Would it be more beneficial to find a way to do better next time instead of pounding on yourself with a negative label?

What did you learn from the event? Can you do better the next time you run into similar circumstances?

If your beliefs fail to pass the previous tests, then convert your beliefs to: “I really didn’t know better.” “I did the best with what I knew at the time.” Practice the new beliefs until they feel natural and become habitual.

Needing non-necessities: Here we employ words like need, must have, got to have, require, and can’t do without. Our desires and wants become elevated into needs and dire necessities (water, food, oxygen etc.) for living and for happiness. Feelings of desperation and craving are set off by needing non-necessities. Overcome this challenge by knowing you desire or want what you don’t truly need. Better use words like: “want”, “desire”, “prefer”, & “would strongly like.”

If you have been needing non-necessities, ask yourself the following questions: Would you die if you did not get it?

Is this truly necessary for survival or enjoyment?

Is this an important as food, oxygen, & protection from the elements?

Could you find pleasure doing something else or being with someone else?

Does your feeling of desperation or craving actually prove you need something or do they reflect your belief that you “need” something?

Is this something you need or something you want?

Can you accept yourself and treat yourself in a loving & caring manner?

If your beliefs fail to pass the previous tests, then convert your beliefs to: I prefer, I want, or I desire. Practice the new beliefs until they feel natural and become habitual.

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Absolutizing: With this challenge we employ words like always, never, all the time, forever, totally, continually, not ever, eternally, unceasingly, absolute, incessant, Completely, entire, whole, and unrelenting.

Absolutizing words mean 100% of the time with no exceptions. Often these words are linked to anger, depression, and impatience.

Example: Victor is “never” on time. Or Sally “always” gets it wrong.

If we are absolutizing we better use more accurate words like: “frequently”, “infrequently”, “sometimes”, “often”, “a good deal of the time”, “every once in awhile”, “intermittently”, and “partially”. These words lead to less upsetting emotional responses.

If you are absolutizing, ask yourself the following questions: Does this happen sometimes, frequently, or even infrequently?

What percentage of the time does this occur?

What would the frequency of occurrence appear like on a gauge?

Is it really the entire situation or just a part or a percentage of it?

You mean always, in every single instance?

Does it ever stop? Has it ever stopped before?

If your beliefs fail to pass the previous tests, then convert your beliefs to: “frequently”, “infrequently”, “sometimes”, “often”, “a good deal of the time”, “every once in awhile”, “intermittently”, and “partially”. Practice the new beliefs until they feel natural and become habitual.

Mind reading/Jumping to conclusions: We assume we know another’s intentions, thoughts, motivations, and feelings without them actually telling us or against their protests. When we jump to conclusions we base our conclusions on slim or no evidence. Trying to read another’s mind or making inferences based on little evidence are samples of this kind of thinking. Example: She loves me because she smiled at me. Another form of mind reading is assuming that others should be able to read your mind and know what you’re thinking, feeling, and intending without you having to tell them.

If we tend to jump to conclusions, better examine our evidence closely or make sure we have enough. Better yet is to ask specifically what the other person is thinking, feeling, or intending. Otherwise we run the risk of seeing them in a distorted fashion. We may project others from our past onto mind read persons or we may project our own thoughts, feelings and intentions.

Problems with mind reading may start when we: Make conclusions based on past behavior.

Make conclusions based on the assumption of what we would think and feel in the same position.

Make a conclusion on what you desire the answer to be.

Make a conclusion on insufficient evidence or data.

Make a conclusion based on cultural stereotypes or personality differences.

Make a conclusion based on misperceiving what you see or hear.

Ask yourself these questions when you assume you know what the other person is feeling, thinking, and intending: Is what you believe they’re thinking or feeling something they actually told you?

What’s the evidence that this is going to happen or are you going on an untested assumption?

How do you specifically know she or he thinks or feels this way?

Is it possible that these might be your own thoughts and feelings and not his/hers? Or do these thoughts and feelings seem like they belong to someone else in the past?

Describe in specifics what you believe they believe.

Have you ever been wrong at mind reading before?

What’s the evidence for and against reading another’s mind?

How do you know they disapprove you?

How might you feel and behave differently if you didn’t practice mind reading?

Are there any thought distortions you’re using to support your assumption that you know what they’re thinking, feeling, or intending?

Is there a pattern of thinking others don’t like you?

If you mind read, stop doing it and ask the other person what they’re thinking, feeling, or intending.

Impossible-izing: Here we make difficult tasks into impossible tasks by using words like too difficult, too hard, impossible, unbelievably hard, too much, can’t, and not a chance. Ask yourself if you could complete the task with the help of a support team, machines, or computers. Perhaps the task could be completed if you had new information. Further, could you complete the task if you just stuck with it or knew you would receive 2 million dollars or some other valuable reward? How would the task look to you if you broke it down into small manageable units rather that an overwhelming whole? Is it really impossible if you did it step by step?

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Remove “too” from difficult, hard, and much. Replace “can’t” with can and will do.

If you are impossible-izing, we better use words such as: “can”, “possible”, “possible with help”, “difficult”, “hard”, “manageable”, and “strong possibility”.

If you are impossible-izing, ask yourself the following questions: Can you view the task in small manageable units and do it step by step?

Could you do it for 2 million dollars or some other valued reward?

Could you complete the task if your life depended on it?

Could you do the task if you had more information, a brain trust, computer support, large machinery, a team, or some other form of assistance?

Is it really impossible? Has anyone accomplished this before?

If you previously made mistakes, does it hold that you will always make the same mistake?

Was a previous failure just an unwanted result or learning experience on the way to your goal?

If your beliefs fail to pass the previous tests, then convert your beliefs to: “Can”, “possible”, “possible with help”, “difficult”, “hard”, “manageable”, and “strong possibility”. Practice the new beliefs until they feel natural and become habitual.

Deservingness: With this challenge we believe we have a license from the universe that entitles us to get what we desire. Typical deservingness words are: deserve, special, merit, worthy of, right to, should have, mandate, or must get. Such thoughts fire up entitlement and anger. We may want or desire something, yet that does not prove we merit it. If you believe you deserve, better use words like: “want”, “prefer”, “desire”, or “would strongly like to have”.

If you have the challenge of deservingness, ask yourself: Where did you get the license?

Does the universe single you out as a special case?

Where is the proof that you deserve?

Are you ordained, exempted, or certified special? By whom or what?

What happens if the person you are dealing with also has a special license?

Who or what creates your deservingness?

Where is it written in the Bible that you are a special case?

If your beliefs fail to pass the previous tests, then convert your beliefs to: “Want”, “prefer”, “desire”, or “would strongly like to have”. Practice the new beliefs until they feel natural and become habitual.

Unfair and Unjust: Believing others act unfairly or unjustly toward you, is buying the notion that everyone shares the same vision of fairness or justice. Observe labor/management disputes. Both sides often believe their wants are fair and just, yet their visions are seldom in agreement. Demanding fairness or justice is another form of shoulding or deservingness. Typical unfair and unjust words are: unfair, unjust, isn’t right, inequitable. If we are employing unfair and unjust, we better use words like: “prefer”, “want”, “desire”, and “would strongly like”.

If you employ unfair & unjust thinking, ask yourself the following questions: Does everyone share the same view of justice or fairness?

Is there a universal rule of justice that everyone recognizes?

Have you observed people or parties disagree over what’s right, fair, or just?

Why must others hold your view?

If your beliefs fail to pass the previous tests, then convert your beliefs to: “Prefer”, “want”, “desire”, and “would strongly like”.

Practice the new beliefs until they feel natural and become habitual.

Overgeneralizing: Here several instances of a category are seen as an entire category. Over generalizing comes in two basic flavors.

(1) An event happens and we conclude it will occur again & again. Example: I got fired, I’ll always be fired. (2) You evaluate yourself, another person, or the world by one or a few traits. Example: I got rejected, I’m a reject.

If you over generalize, focus on: (1) Frequency of occurrence. This will give you a more realistic view. (2) That you recognize everything and every person possesses positive, neutral, and negative qualities.

Here are some questions you can ask: Are you or they just one trait or several, or many like most people?

Just because it happened once before, does it follow that it will ALWAYS happen?

How often does this happen?

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How would the frequency of happening appear on a gauge set from 1 to 20 with 1 being “not happening” and 20 “happening all the time”?

What do you specifically predict about another’s behavior?

What’s the evidence for and against this belief? What’s the quality of that evidence?

Do others see this situation the same way?

If you see evidence of overgeneralization in your beliefs notice the actual frequency of occurrence. This will give you a more realistic view. Recognize everything and every person possesses positive, neutral, and negative qualities.

Viewing only the negative: This mindset has us seeing only the negative while filtering out the positive. Example: My administrative assistant did 7 really helpful things for me today, yet I only recall her failure to take a message when someone called.

If you sometimes view only the negative, practice looking at what good or neutral things happen in your life. You may want to make daily lists for several weeks to remind yourself of what is positive and neutral.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself: Did positive or neutral things happen?

If someone else was watching this situation, what positive or neutral things might they notice?

What’s the evidence for and against noticing only the negatives?

What’s the quality of that evidence?

Would others see this situation the same way?

Notice what’s positive and keep a daily record of it.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of viewing only the negative?

What information are you ignoring or denying?

What happens to you if you acknowledge positives and neutrals?

What would happen if everyone adopted a code of viewing only the negative?

Make a habit of viewing the neutral and the positive as well.

Black and white thinking: Events are seen in black and white only with no neutral shades of gray. Or we see either/or situations, all or nothing, or one way or the other. These kinds of thinking signal we are not recognizing middle grounds, gray zones, average, or neutral areas. Most events don’t occur in black or white or all-or-nothing terms without middle grounds.

A black and white thinking example: If he’s not a good guy, then he’s a crook. Or if my performance wasn’t great, then it stunk. If your thinking sometimes goes to blacks and whites, look at average, middle grounds, neutral, and gray areas.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself: Is there something average going on here?

Do you notice a middle ground?

How about a gray area?

Does this impose inhuman standards?

Can you define exactly what your labels are? (Loser, worthless, great guy, superman). Where does your label actually fit on a scale between 1 and 20?

How much of the time is the negative label true?

What is the evidence for and against this kind of thinking?

How would you prove black and white thinking is incomplete?

If your beliefs fail to pass the previous tests, notice: “Average, middle grounds, neutral, and gray areas. Practice the new beliefs until they feel natural and become habitual.

Faultfinding: Here we hunt for someone or something to blame. Example: If I didn’t send Cecil to art school I’d be a millionaire. In faultfinding we generally believe in one cause and one effect. Actually, if we look at a situation from different perspectives we can find multiple causes and multiple effects. Faultfinding is a serious waste of time that hampers finding solutions. Often when faultfinding is applied to a person, we label that person and defocus from the behaviors that require change. The human brain is a wonderful device. It can come up with tons of causes, effects, and reasons after the fact. Fault finding, when applied to people, creates anger and guilt. It wastes energy better spent on solutions and changes in behavior.

If you sometimes find fault, blame the entire universe for 2 seconds, then focus on what requires change.

Here are questions we can ask ourselves: 355

What were some of the other possible causes?

Would someone else see someone or something else to blame?

Is there a solution to find, rather then spend time blaming?

What is your specific blaming statement?

What is the evidence that supports your belief? What is the quality of it?

Considering possible causes of the event, what is the percentage of blameworthiness shared by the person(s), situation, mechanical failure, gravity?

Was dumb luck involved?

Remember refocus on finding solutions and taking action where required.

Nixing the positive: Here we explain away positive events. Example: I would not have passed the test unless I got lucky. Or winning the Nobel Prize was nothing much–I had terrific lab equipment. If you tend to nix the positive, practice accepting what good comes your way. Note how your efforts were involved in the positive outcome.

Here are questions to ask yourself: What was your responsibility for this good thing happening?

Can you begin to notice the good things you did?

What is the evidence for and against nixing the positives?

Would you count these qualities or behaviors as positives if someone you really loved, liked, or admired had those qualities or behaviors?

What specifically are you discounting?

Keep a record of positives in a daily log. What do you notice after 7 days?

Accept what good comes your way. Be aware of how your efforts were involved in a positive outcome.

Gut Thinking/Emotional Reasoning: Here you base your evidence on your surface feelings. Feelings can be as distorted as the beliefs, images, and thoughts creating them. Feelings are not facts nor are they deeper intuitions. Your feelings mirror your attitudes and if your attitudes are distorted, you can guarantee your evidence will also be distorted. Example: I feel in my bones this isn’t going to be my year. Or I feel like I’m going to get assassinated if I go to next week’s Shriner’s meeting.

Examples of gut thinking: I feel stupid. It feels like nothing will ever change. The tense knot in my stomach proves she’s not right for me.

If you tend to gut think, check out the beliefs behind your feelings. Look at the evidence.

Examine your specific gut thought: What’s the difference between an emotion and a fact?

What’s the evidence for and against gut thinking? What’s the quality of that evidence?

What advice might you offer a friend who relied on their emotions to decide about reality?

Here are some questions to ask yourself: Because something feels true or real, does that make it true or real?

Where’s the evidence that because something feels real, that it is real?

Haven’t people felt and believed the Earth is flat and that the Sun revolved around the Earth?

Are not our gut feelings spawned by what we believe? Can beliefs be false or distorted?

If your beliefs fail to pass the previous tests, notice: How anxiety or down feelings are created by anxious beliefs and down beliefs.

They are only evidence of you thinking anxious and down thoughts.

Expanding: Here we exaggerate small weaknesses or defects. Example: Making an error on the spelling bee was a disaster! Or my left nostril is slightly larger than the other–it destroys my face.

Here are questions to ask yourself: Is this an exaggeration?

Am I making this larger than it actually is?

How might others view this?

Notice your exaggeration.

Contracting: Here we minimize assets or diminish the positive. Example: Winning the Super Bowl 3 years straight was nothing much. Or sure she’s brainy, but she never uses it. If we contract the positive, let us accept what is positive and enjoy it.

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Am I minimizing what I do?

How might others view this?

Notice what is positive.

Perfectionism: We believe we can be perfect and live up to a superhuman standard. This thinking does not account for our innate tendency to make errors. Example: I should perform flawlessly and never make mistakes.

If you tend toward perfectionism, recognize you are a fallible human who can only do his or her human best. You do not need to be perfect to accept yourself and treat yourself in a loving and caring manner.

Here are some questions to ask yourself: What law in the universe says you must be perfect or perform perfectly?

Are not mistakes valuable learning experiences?

Can you learn from your mistake and do it over?

Accept yourself and do your human best.

Permanent conditions: Taking a temporary or time limited situation and transforming it into a permanent condition.

Examples: I lost my job–I’ll never work again. She shot my proposal down–I’ll never be married. He/she has always been that way; he/she will never change. They’re too old and set in their ways.

Questions to ask yourself: Have I ever dealt with something like this in the past and did it change?

Isn’t this a time-limited situation?

Is this a failure or is it feedback about my progress?

How permanent is this situation?

Could things change?

Is there a specific behavior that can be changed?

Personalizing is a distortion where we: (1) Interpret innocent comments, questions, and behavior of others as an attack on ourselves, our abilities, our appearance, what we own, and personal worth. Example: Betsy tells Mary that her hair looks great today. Mary concludes her hair looked terrible previously. (2) We take personally random events and view them as attacks on us. Example: “That my dog got out of the yard proves I’m a bad pet owner.” (3) We attribute a large portion of blame to ourselves without noticing that certain events may also be caused by others. Example: My job ended because I failed.

Personalizing leads to hurt, anger, guilt, lost opportunities to connect with others, and an inability to notice other folks' points of view. To end personalizing it helps to learn to accept ourselves and to notice the distortion “personalizing”.

When we notice we’re personalizing, we can ask ourselves questions like: What evidence or ideas make you believe this?

Is there such a thing as dumb luck?

Does taking things personally motivate you?

What’s the evidence for and against personalizing? What is the quality of that evidence?

Could their comments be meant positively? What did they specifically say?

What’s the evidence that their comments or laughter were aimed at you? Could it have been about someone else?

Are we hyper alert for others disapproving of us? Are we vigilant for or expecting negative evaluations from others?

—by Steve Mensing, excerpted from the book: Your Emotional Power, www.Emoclear.com

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Nature has built into us an agenda for an intelligent unfolding of our biological and post-biological lives.

Her agenda takes place through a simple, unvarying formula: the agenda within must be given a corresponding model from without to bring about our individual structure. Her inner agenda holds all possibilities for our experience of a self, world and reality, but the particular experience we will have depends on the models we are given. For example, speech, is considered the greatest human achievement, but none of us learned language, in the sense of school learning. If we take our infant from say, a German mother and place him with a French mother, his outer model for language development will be French. All nature asks of language is that language be given to the infant-child at the appropriate time. All language is arbitrary; any language will do…Nature cannot program for failure, such as our failure to find a suitable model at the appropriate time. Her stages unfold on her own schedule, for optimal development we need appropriate stimuli at the appropriate time.

We develop our sense of being individuals by interacting with our world and with specific models of individual people. Once we can maintain the integrity of our awareness and move into these inner fields of open potential, we can enter into the final section of nature’s agenda: development of autonomous awareness. Autonomy means self-sufficiency. Only when we are no longer dependent on our bodies and the outer world for sustenance are we truly autonomous.

Our biological development has been seriously disrupted through our ignorance of any goal or direction for post-biological development. We have created an all pervasive cultural dysfunction. Having no concept of normal functioning, we propose as a model for our children our own dysfunctional state; thus dysfunction is mirrored back from every direction. Taking our abnormality as our norm, we look on human life as a sequence of mounting crisis, disasters and problems.

If your years up to now have been a bad dream, all we are asked to do is leave that dream behind. The post-biological path to maturation is a process of waking up. In no way are we required to go back into that dream and straighten out its mess. Once we make the shift to the new agenda, we can walk away from that dream (nightmare) with impunity.

—Joseph Chilton Pearce, From Magical Child To Magical Teen

Freedom is impossible so long as we think of the outer world and its elements, as the source or basis of our realities. It is only when we learn that the foundation of our realities lies within that we find ourselves on the road to individual freedom and consciousness, no longer able to take the role of victim of circumstances. How long have we heard of the "Kingdom within" without really understanding what this means? Free will is not a "given." It must be earned, and the price of consciousness and free will is the death and rebirth of the current ego.

—Edwin C. Steinbrecher

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Nonviolence is a way of life.

Often mistaken for being the absence or opposite of violence, Nonviolence is, rather, a systematic framework of both conceptual principles and pragmatic strategies to reduce violence and promote positive peace at the personal, community, national, and global levels.

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Without conscious apprehension, even if a thing exists, it is as if it did not exist.

—Anonymous

WHY VIOLENCE? Violence is a symptom reflective of mental and emotional disorder. This disorder comes about when a person cannot translate inner feelings and promptings (life energy) into thoughts, then translate thoughts into emotions that create a meaningful language (communication) that fosters and develops a plan that is then translated into the acquisition of work skills and tools that creates a meaningful work process that allows a person to initiate, develop, maintain and administrate institutions that enhances life, and fulfills real human needs.

The only true experience a human being has is in the now, as time, space, elements and motion happen, Even though we have the mental power to recall the past and project into the future, our ability to experience the present tense through the human body is dependent upon the activation of all the senses. We can only interpret reality based on what is now known. The senses that allow for this experience are those of feeling, sound and thought. Most people, however are only aware of the senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, while the other three senses are not brought to consciousness and used in the process of living. When the awareness is focused on eight senses, it is at this point that we become aware of our potential for self development, creativity and purposeful living. We thus, conclude that violence is the result of eight sense people operating on only five (or less) senses. This causes us to be incapable of fully directing our life energy, thus creating a blockage or back-up that becomes explosive as our thoughts are turned inward and create toxic emotions.

The purpose of a nonviolent clinical process, is to help people become consciously aware of their eight senses and how to effectively and meaningfully use them to solve problems of violence in themselves, their families, their communities, the nation and the world. Until an adult person is actively caring for his/herself, and aiding in a process of human and community development, the person cannot be considered well, because they are engaged in secondary activities that do not enhance the process of conscious human and community development.

The human being is both the subject and object of life happening and each person must get to know themselves in this manner. Man as subject and object, must have the ability to completely act with enough verbs and adverbs to describe the action and enough adjectives to use as tools in times of trouble.

The acquisition of language skills is thus primary to the process of human development and health. Language is mathematical in that it is logical when spoken in truth with love. Native Americans had a saying about the melanin deficient race, “they speak with forky tongue, and have a hard heart.” The “forky tongue” signifies a person who says one thing and does another or a liar, and the “hard heart” means one who is incapable of feeling, that is one who is out of touch with their inner being and their own creative powers. A person in such a condition is driven to survive at the expense of others. As a result these people tell and live lies. They seek to subdue creative, free flowing people who are capable of creating things which have allow them to live happy, fruitful, abundant, harmonious lives. The “forky tongued-hard hearted” person in their inability to create, must thus steal, murder, pillage, rape and destroy, for they are incapable of creating that with brings peace and the fulfillment of real needs.

The ability to speak a language (create sounds) is dependent upon a persons ability to tune into self and speak from the heart, and not from memorizing words and their meanings. The word language comes from “land—gauge” which is the ability to accurately ascertain what one needs in terms of that which is provided by our land (food, clothing, shelter, transportation, energy, communication and tools), in order to carry on a work process. Language is thus logical, reason360

able, truthful and loving and without a language, it is impossible to review and discuss the past, plan for the future, or discuss the present in a meaningful way except in very toxic emotional terms.

Music another sound produced by man has the quality of rhythm, which is also a quality inherent in nature. The body harmonizes with music through dance or motion. Those people who are incapable of maintaining harmony and rhythm with music are usually the same people who are incapable of speaking a truthful language. They are also incapable of harmonizing with the rhythm of nature. Thus they create pollution of the air and water, soil erosion, ozone layer depletion, endangered species, destruction of the rain forest and diseases and epidemics of various proportions. The present society has been incapable of harmonizing with nature or people of other cultures. As a result the plans, actions and outcomes of this society lead to the social problems plaguing the world.

Violence is the result of not having the ability to translate feelings into thoughts, thus secondary thoughts are created that are ill-motivated, the emotions are toxic, the language is distorted, the plans are incomplete, and then schemes are developed that violate the health, interest, rights and needs of self, others and the environment.

We conclude, that the social behavioral disorders in us and in our environment are the result of not having the necessary emotional healing techniques, conflict resolution skills and the self and community development skills that are needed to create meaningful work processes. We, therefore discover ourselves living in a reality with beliefs and desires but without the insight and ability to fulfill basic and real needs without being violated but only reacting to violation and in turn violating.

—Reverend James L Bevel and Helen Bevel

"One must never look to the things that ought to change. The main question is how we change ourselves. It is often tragic to see how blatantly a man bungles his own life and the lives of others yet remains totally incapable of seeing how much the whole tragedy originates in himself, and how he continually feeds it and keeps it going. It is a common illusion to believe that what we know today is all we ever can know. Nothing is more vulnerable than scientific theory, which is an ephemeral attempt to explain facts and not an everlasting truth in itself." —Carl Jung

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"All people are a single nation.� —The Holy Koran

DECLARATION OF FREEDOM Stop telling lies.

Stop seeking the approval of others.

Stop being seductive.

Stop begging and pleading.

Stop believing that you have no power.

Stop acting like a weakling.

Stop hoping and wishing.

Stop letting men make decisions for you.

Stop distrusting other females.

Stop preferring males over females.

Stop imitating or fearing masculinity.

Stop whining and complaining.

Stop reacting.

Stop being silent and passive.

Stop ignoring things.

Stop tolerating in order to be liked Stop looking to others for answers and solutions.

Start being truthful.

Start demanding and commanding respect.

Start being integerous.

Start confronting.

Start using the power you have.

Start projecting strength.

Start doing.

Start making decisions for yourself.

Start joining with other females to create empowering institutions Start valuing females.

Start empowering femininity.

Start demanding that your needs be fulfilled, your rights upheld.

Start responding.

Start speaking out.

Start being attentive.

Start refusing to go along to get along.

Start looking at yourself for answers and solutions.

Stop pretending.

Start being real with yourself and others.

Stop conforming.

Start reforming.

Stop following the crowd.

Stop trying to control and change others.

Stop acting like you know what is best for others.

Stop devaluing yourself.

Stop listening to music that puts you down.

Stop being phony and selling yourself.

Stop judging others.

Stop gossiping.

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Start following your own drum beat.

Start controlling and changing yourself.

Start studying yourself and knowing what is best for you.

Start valuing yourself.

Start writing your own music that empowers and uplifts you.

Start refining yourself and magnetizing what and who you need.

Start understanding others differences and respect them.

Start discussing possible solutions to problems.

363 C. T. Vivian

“Grant no power to government you would not want your worst enemies to wield against you.”

— "Smokin'" Joe Freeper

MAN AS GOVERNMENT In order to intelligently participate in your ward, city, county, state, nation or United Nations, you must responsibly participate constitutionally in your precinct. Paying taxes and casting ballots are empty irresponsible acts if these are to the exclusion of precinct responsibility and accountability. The voter and tax payer cannot hold an elected official accountable if they don’t have the knowledge and means to hold themselves accountable.

Freedom is not a gift that can be given by another, nor is it something that can be won by murder or war. Freedom is a gift to those who have the faith to accept their definition and purpose as man (male/female) and the courage to face the lies and perversities that developed in the self as a result of having denied their true definition and purpose.

The precinct council is made up of the people in the precinct who come together to take responsibility for God’s definition and purpose for man, and to address the health, interest, rights and needs of themselves and each other in democratically run institutions and communities. The precinct council will have six major institutions and communities.

The precinct council will have six major committees and as many subcommittees as is necessary to address all of the questions, issues, problems and needs of the people in the precinct.

The primary purpose of the precinct council is to create a sane, peaceful, and knowledgeable populace in the precinct.

The policy of the precinct is to be set by the general body, and the polices will be experimented with, in the appropriate community institutions (Worship center, government, business, clinic, home and school).

Because of the nature of problems in the inner cities and because of the devastating effect historical and present day tyranny has had on each of our development, it is recommended that people who vote to constitute a precinct council enroll in a “Nonviolent Clinic.”

The precinct council is man’s expression of love for God, self and fellow man. For if we love God, we will seek to know and do the will of God, and we will seek to carry out the purpose for which we were created. If we love our children and neighbors, then truly we must create order and contexts so that constructive work and cooperation can go on.

The tyrannical forces are always competing with each other for military dominance over each other and people, however, we are called to serve God and the health, interests, rights and needs of all, and we must not get involved in supporting tyranny in any form.

As we build our precinct councils, the clearer it will become to all tyrants of the futility of this misguided misconduct, for as it is written, “When the perfect is come, the imperfect will pass away.” We need not fight the imperfect, we need to manifest the perfect.

—Reverend James L. Bevel

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"Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never, -- in nothing great or small, large or petty -- never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."

—Winston Churchill

FREEDOM & RESPONSIBITY The fight for freedom, is the story of all civilizations and people. Other than the histories of sciences, industries and business development, the primary history of mankind evolves around the fight for freedom.

In most cases, those who fought for freedom instituted exactly what they were fighting against. That is to say, a political, educational, economic, military system that violates the ecology, the people, and compromise the integrity of those who are authorities of the new system. Apparently, those who fight for freedom never quite understand exactly what freedom is, or they never really study to know the source of tyranny and oppression.

Freedom is lost by an individual to the exact degree to which the person compromises or contradicts the definition and purpose of their being. Tyranny and oppression emerge to the degree to which two or more compromised and contradictory people attempt to relate.

When any individual refuses to honor their definition and purpose and refuse to honor the definition and purpose of another person, instantaneously, that person becomes a liar, and no liar can comprehend “constitutionality.”

Constitutionality is the sum total of all law that sustains man in a state of integrity, and allows man (individually and collectively) to attain to definition and purpose. With the loss of constitutionality, an individual becomes an animated personality without the ability to comprehend their own or anyone else’s health, interest, right and needs. The lying individual (void of definition and purpose) is thus the source of tyranny and oppression.

In a tyrannical relationship, the person with superior physical and material strength is perceived by most to be the source of the tyranny. This however is not necessarily true, because tyranny is only possible when two or more people who disrespect their own definition and purpose and the definition and purpose of each other and/or others consummate a relationship.Given this reality, no person can be oppressed by another, because no one can force another to enter a dishonest relationship. Entering into a dishonest relationship is a voluntary act that stems from a lack of self-respect.

We oftentimes offer compassion to people who are victims of their own tyranny and should help them overcome the tragic circumstances in which they find themselves, however we should never become sympathetic towards one person in a tyrannical relationship and angry towards the other just because one is male or female, rich or poor, old or young, black or white. We must be conscious of the fact that both are void of constitutionality, and both need help in overcoming the lie which comes about when they refuse to honor their own definition and purpose and that of others.

When you become responsible enough to help people who are bound by tyrannical relationships to dissolve them, and then help them to develop constitutional relationships, you will indeed be a “freedom fighter.”

In the world of man, that which is not science is of no value. What is often referred to as science is really mechanical magic. Mechanical magic is a concept used by tyrants to manipulate matter and weak people into tyrannical relationships. If any person is to be free, that freedom must be the result of the knowledge and application of the science of nonviolence.

Very little is done for freedom, for freedom must always begin with a person getting rid of the lie that fosters their personality. Once the lies that foster personality are resolved, then the individual can understand their own health, interest, rights and needs and that of others. The person can then see how to fulfill their and others health, interest, right and needs, individually and collectively, without compromising their integrity or violating others.

Void of the science of self-government, no person or nation can have peace, health, freedom or natural wealth.

—Reverend James L. Bevel

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"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."

— Ronald Reagan

THE LAWS GOVERNING A NONVIOLENT MEETING 1. At the meeting, anyone is allowed to speak. They can only discuss what they and their Creator intend to do. They cannot discuss the misconduct and misfortune of other people, unless they show how that misfortune and/or misconduct creates separation, and unless they explain what they did or are doing to cause reconciliation in the situation, i.e., discuss a healing method for every disorder and misconduct. Otherwise it will be classified as gossip.

All flattery is pseudo gossip, an attempt to sophisticate gossip.

2. All references to history should be to prove that there is an intelligent life force that has created all things to live in harmony with each other on earth. (If historical references don’t prove the above then the person has a false sense of history which should not be allowed.)

3. Each person must willing to honestly discuss their position, disposition and proposition.

4. The person speaking must be willing and open to let anyone at anytime question their motives and intentions.

5. If one is not prepared to speak under these terms, they must listen, and be contemplative, for they are not yet ready to speak.

6. The songs and music must be the same as the speech.

7. Prayers must be within the framework of the Lord’s Prayer and David’s 23rd Psalm. The Lord’s Prayer is a private request and the 23rd Psalm is the public expression of it. Any prayer vibrations less than this is an outside show to an unfriendly world.

—Reverend James L. Bevel

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"Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."

— Winston Churchill

PRECINCT COUNCIL THE NEW FRONTIER It is in fact truth that sets people free, and any lie not detected, error not corrected and any liar not suspected are the enemies of truth, freedom and justice.

Any person asked how many branches of government do we have, will respond three, which is the patented lie. This is the lie that has kept the American people enslaved to tyrants for two hundred years, victims of chattel slavery, disenfranchisement, racial segregation, wage slavery and discrimination. These irrational practices are possible and new and even worse social abuses will manifest as long as the people believe that there are only three branches of government.

Because of the nature of man as spirit, mind, emotion and body and the reality of nature as space , energy, elements and motion, a just constitutional democratic republic of necessity must have four active branches of government, the legislative, the executive, the judicial and the people (precinct council) as a organized force to present on a consistent bases, their legitimate needs, problems, interest and will. As long as the people do not know or understand themselves as the fourth branch of government, they will be a foolish crowd that is polled, manipulated and intimidated into all kinds of irrational actions that are against their health, interest, rights and needs.

Man (male/female) is a four dimensional being of spirit, mind, emotion and body. The universe in which man lives is a four dimensional reality consisting of space, energy, elements and motion. Therefore, in order for man to comprehend their health, interest, rights and needs and to appropriate their gifts, skills, talents and time to cooperate with each other in the enterprise of being fruitful and multiplying, there has to be a four dimensional government system that allows love, truth, equity, justice and other principles to be a functioning administrative reality. It follows therefore, that a one, two or three dimensional government can not appropriately serve the needs of four dimensional beings living in a four dimensional universal system.

The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s culminated in the 1965 Right To Vote legislation. This legislation removed the last vestige of disenfranchisement from every segment of the American community. While this legislation gave great opportunity, it also has created a crisis that is even greater. By enfranchising a large segment of the American community who do not have a theological or constitutional base (manhood or nationhood consciousness), we have allowed for the exercising of privileges without the responsibility for freedom. The franchise in the hands of a people who have no theological, constitutional or industrial base is a danger to a constitutional democratic republic.

The disenfranchisement of one segment of the American community, effectively disenfranchises the whole community as it was prior to 1965. This disenfranchisement blinds the total American community to manhood and nationhood consciousness.

It allows the republican aspect of the government to develop while stifling the democratic aspect. While representative government is doing very well, people’s involvement in government is doing poorly.

It must be remembered that America is a constitutional democratic republic, with a system of law that allows the people to lawfully govern their own affairs. It is not, however, a system of law predicated on the assumption that the majority rules, neither is it predicated on the assumption that the elected officials rule. It is the law itself that establishes the rule.

Therefore, we have America, a constitutional democratic republic system of law that allows people to govern their own affairs, however, it is a lack of the people’s involvement that allows special interest groups to lobby and put undue pressure on the elected officials without the counter balance of a process to allow the people to keep continually before the law

makers the constitutional interests, rights, and needs of the people. The people pay taxes, vote, and complain, but the 367

people do not have a legitimate context or mechanism within which to formulate their own authentic constitutional rights, interests, and needs and subsequently to have these rights, interests and needs presented to the law makers and law making bodies. In this sense, the democratic aspect of the government is lacking. In order to address this need, we the people in order to form a more perfect union shall organize precinct councils in every precinct in order to address the questions, issues, problems and needs in each precinct and collectively as precinct council organizations present the formulated needs, interests and problems to the appropriate law maker and law making body for appropriate action.

The basis for the precinct council is manhood and nationhood consciousness, and the responsibility that derives there from. Manhood consciousness is accepting the fact that man is created in the image and likeness of God. When this fact is accepted and no one is related to based on anything less than this fact, then manhood consciousness evolves. This manhood consciousness leads to nationhood consciousness, the fact that God created man for a purpose, and that this purpose is attained and maintained under a system of constitutional law.

From manhood and nationhood consciousness comes the responsibility to legislate, adjudicate, execute and administrate our health, interests, rights and needs by asking questions, getting answers, making decisions and doing work. We then evaluate to determine whether the work done did in fact fulfill the needs, foster the health, facilitate the interest and protect the rights of the people.

The precinct council being a constitutional democratic republican body is there to address the problems, questions, issues and needs of the people.

—Reverend James L. Bevel

“Constitutionality is the sum total of all law that sustains man in a state of integrity, and allows man (individually and collectively) to attain to definition and purpose. With the loss of constitutionality, an individual becomes an animated personality without the ability to comprehend their own or anyone else’s health, interest, rights and needs. Freedom is lost by an individual to the exact degree to which the person compromises or contradicts the definition and purpose of their being.”

—Reverend James L. Bevel

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“Unless man is committed to the belief that all mankind are his brothers, then he labors in vain and hypocritically in the vineyards of equality.”

—Congressman Adam Clayton Powell

NONVIOLENT PRECINCT COUNCILS The United States of America, is characterized by self-government. That self-governing process was primarily born out of strong religious convictions that manifested in voluntary social responsibility through the early town meetings. The actions taken at these town meetings clearly demonstrated that the people involved were indeed self-governing in their communities.

Much that is good in America’s heritage and traditions stems from this form of grass-roots government which has served to benefit both the welfare of the local community and the rights of individuals in the community. It is this concept of responsible self-government that has helped America to become a powerful nation and a world leader.

There is however a darker aspect to our nation. These include all inequalities and schisms caused by sex, class and race.

It is these inequalities and schisms that have manifested themselves in non-constitutional relationships, economic exploitation and militarism. Moreover, the principle of self-government has not been scientifically taught in our primary and secondary schools, causing young to people grow up without any real knowledge of the governing process at this most critical and basic level.

In addition, self-government has not been constitutionally instituted in our precincts, the primary political unites in our society. Thus it is no surprise that without the essential knowledge of self-government and the mechanism for participation in it being a operational reality, that the community can neither exercise its responsibility effectively or hold its elected officials accountable.

The goal of a Nonviolent Precinct Council is to develop indigenous self-governing leadership at the precinct level as a form of empowerment of the people in order to heal the schism and inequalities.

The initiating of the Nonviolent Precinct Council is a further expansion of the noble view of the rights of man to all people. For inherent in the gift of rights is the duty of responsibility.

The Nonviolent Precinct Council, is the means by which people can be institutionally responsible for their rights and needs as they become a legitimate, legally sanctioned constitutional democratic organization in the precinct through which citizens can address every social problem and fulfill every social need.

Precincts are the smallest political unit in our constitutional democratic republic. They serve primarily as units through which we organize political parties and cast ballots for political candidates and issues, however, based on our present crisis, the precinct must become a place where the citizens volunteer their gifts, skills, talents, intelligence, goodwill and time to address their immediate and broader community needs and problems within a governmental structure.

Nonviolent Precinct Councils cannot be established by public relations schemes. They must be established by education and community organization. This reality necessitates a character and community development institute, because people must become principled and apply principals to achieve desired results.

As the noble view of the rights of man was expanded in this country in the Nonviolent Right-To-Vote Movement, new knowledge was generated and the participants maintained obedience to the law of love (principle). This adherence brought new truth, or rather old truth that could not and can not be comprehended by those who compromise the definition of man and contradict the purpose of man on earth. It is this non-comprehension and contradiction of the definition and purpose of man that has historically kept democracy from working and manifesting justice for all.

The Nonviolent Precinct Council is based on the social need of man and is driven by the integrity of those involved in honestly serving and addressing the needs and problems in the precinct for the right reason. The precinct council cannot run or operate on sectarian belief. It can only run by the application of principles.

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One must ask the question: If truth indeed frees man, why am I and others not free? The next question is: Can an untruthful person know truth? When a person is the subject of life happening (conscious) then the subject has to be truthful unto the self and in relationship to all other selves and things in order to really know truth. Another question is: What has kept mankind generally and me specifically from knowing and exercising truth?

The founding fathers came to the conclusion, as did Yeshua ben Joseph (Jesus), that life was a right given by GOD. The founding fathers however felt, as did Cain, that they had the right to take life under certain circumstances. Those people who fought for freedom and rights in the movement of the 60’s and who did not assume that taking another life was their right, gave to the world new options, opportunities and alternatives that those who assume it is right to take a life cannot comprehend. Yet, as a result of their dedication, commitment and work, the world changed and there is a great need to gain this comprehension.

The Nonviolent Precinct Council, derives from that discipline and knowledge that comes as a result of fighting but not taking life. “Not by might, but by my spirit says the Lord.” The Nonviolent Precinct Council as a constitutional, democratic, cooperative republic is the hall mark of a free, healthy, intelligent, prosperous and peaceful people.

There are two things that man must have in order to be confident, courageous and fruitful: 1) a right relationship with GOD, and 2) a right relationship with community. Without these two, a home is not possible. The relationship with GOD is the foundation of faith. The relationship with nonviolent institutions of church (temple, mosque, etc.), government, business/industry, clinic, home and school is the foundation and substance upon which we are able to build.

The doors of opportunity were swung open by using nonviolence. In order to maintain the gains of the Nonviolent Civil Rights Movement, nonviolence must be comprehended and utilized in the development of institutions and the Nonviolent Precinct Council provides us with the means and method for ending all violations and contradictions at every level of society and human endeavor, and thus its time has come.

—Reverend James L. Bevel

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"People who think of government as the institution to entrust with enough power to right all the world's wrongs seem to never consider that they must thereby give it enough power to do wrong to all the world's rights. In fact, they seem NEVER to consider what the founders always thought was obvious: that the 'good guys' will NOT always be in charge!"

—Bert Rand

WHAT IS A PRECINCT COUNCIL? • A precinct council is the lowest level of government. It is comprised of the people at the local precinct level.

• A precinct is a bi-partisan form of government, at its most basic level.

• The purpose of the precinct council is to organize the people in the precinct to determine their needs, issues and interest.

• The precinct council then drafts legislation to address the needs, issue and interest of the people.

•The

precinct then grooms candidates from the republican and democratic parties to represent their legislation at the ward, city, county, state, national and international level of government.

•The precinct council is thus the heart of the people’s government.

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“In matters of principle, stand like a rock.” "...that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

— Thomas Jefferson

SELF KNOWLEDGE VS. SELF CONCEPT Constantly, we are challenged by men of wisdom to know ourselves. For without self-knowledge nothing else can be known. For all knowledge must be the extension of self-knowledge.

We do not exist in history, we exist in our biology, and from the biology comes the psychology, and from the psychology comes the ecology, and from the ecology comes the sociology, and from the sociology comes the anthropology, and from the anthropology comes the theology. So to the degree that we are ignorant about our biology, to that degree we are ignorant about the remaining ologies. When we do not have self knowledge, we can not express knowledge about the other ologies, we can only express opinions or beliefs.

The expressions of opinions and belief comes from our self concept. Self knowledge is the knowledge of what Man, He and She is in space, energy, motion and elements as they live in obedience to God. Our self concept is our image of ourselves as we perceive ourselves in society.

Self concepts make us compete with others. It makes us defensive, arrogant and resentful. It makes us brag and showoff. It keeps us trying to prove that we are worthy to others. It keeps us constantly fearful of failure. When we become slaves to our self-concepts, we fall prey to every advertiser and salesman who can detect an aspect of our insecurity.

Self-knowledge gives us knowledge of our Source (God). It gives us knowledge of our purpose and the knowledge to carry out our purpose. Self knowledge gives us real confidence for the confidence is anchored in self knowledge and reality. Self knowledge causes us to know our needs and the needs of our family, race, community and world. Self knowledge causes us to educate ourselves to initiate, develop, maintain and administrate our six human and community institutions. Self knowledge gives us the knowledge of other’s, thus we have the insight to cooperate and share, for the good of our and others health, interest, rights and needs.

The struggle to know the self, our Source, our purpose and the means for carrying out our purpose is what gives us our authenticity. It affirms our commitment to truth.

—Reverend James Luther Bevel

We fear to know the fearsome and unsavory aspects of ourselves, but we fear even more to know the godlike in ourselves.

—Abraham Maslow “He who knows others is clever; He who knows himself has discernment.”

—Lao-Tzu As we raise our consciousness and activate our light body, we realize we are our own creators made, or making ourselves, in the image and similitude of the one Creator. Indeed, since in a hologram the part contains the whole, we are the one Creator. By learning this truly transformative lesson, we return to unity consciousness while mastering physicality.

In other words, we achieve god-realization as the light of soul descends into a divine or soul body healed of duality and freed from the instructional cycle of karma.

—Conscious Healing: Book One on the Regenetics Method , by Sol Luckman Knowledge of the self is the mother of all knowledge.

—Kahlil Gibran A humble knowledge of oneself is a surer road to God than a deep searching of the sciences.

—Thomas Kempis

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“Seek ye first the kingdom of G_D.”

THE KNOWLEDGE OF SELF KNOWLEDGE of self is the key to the knowledge of God, according to the saying: "He who knows himself knows God,"[1] and, as it is Written in the Koran, "We will show them Our signs in the world and in themselves, that the truth may be manifest to them." Now nothing is nearer to thee than thyself, and if thou knowest not thyself how canst thou know anything else? If thou sayest "I know myself," meaning thy outward shape, body, face, limbs, and so forth, such knowledge can never be a key to the knowledge of God. Nor, if thy knowledge as to that which is within only extends so far, that when thou art hungry thou eatest, and when thou art angry thou attackest some one, wilt thou progress any further in this path, for the beasts are thy partners in this? But real self-knowledge consists in knowing the following things: What art thou in thyself, and from whence hast thou come? Whither art thou going, and for what purpose hast thou come to tarry here awhile, and in what does thy real happiness and misery consist? Some of thy attributes are those of animals, some of devils, and some of angels, and thou hast to find out which of these attributes are accidental and which essential.

Till thou knowest this, thou canst not find out where thy real happiness lies. The occupation of animals is eating, sleeping, and fighting; therefore, if thou art an animal, busy thyself in these things. Devils are busy in stirring up mischief, and in guile and deceit; if thou belongest to them, do their work. Angels contemplate the beauty of God, and are entirely free from animal qualities; if thou art of angelic nature, then strive towards thine origin, that thou mayest know and contemplate the Most High, and be delivered from the thraldom of lust and anger. Thou shouldest also discover why thou hast been created with these two animal instincts: whether that they should subdue and lead thee captive, or whether that thou shouldest subdue them, and, in thy upward progress, make of one thy steed and of the other thy weapon.

The first step to self-knowledge is to know that thou art composed of an outward shape, called the body, and an inward entity called the heart, or soul. By "heart" I do not mean the piece of flesh situated in the left of our bodies, but that which uses all the other faculties as its instruments and servants. In truth it does not belong to the visible world, but to the invisible, and has come into this world as a traveler visits a foreign country for the sake of merchandise, and will presently return to its native land. It is the knowledge of this entity and its attributes which is the key to the knowledge of God. THE ALCHEMY OF HAPPINESS, BY AL GHAZZALI, The Knowledge of Self, http://www.sacred-texts.com/isl/tah/tah05.htm

Know Thyself and Thy Father God Allah.

Prophet Noble Drew Ali, The Moorish Science Temple of America

Be interested in yourself beyond all experience, be with yourself, love yourself; the ultimate security is found only in self-knowledge. Be honest with yourself and nothing will betray you.

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

To reach Nirvana one must reach Self-Knowledge, and Self-Knowledge is of loving deeds the child.

—H.P. Blavatsky

Know yourself! Then you will know everything.

—Sri Sathya Sai Baba

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan, the proper study of mankind is man.

—Alexander Pope

There is a person with whom you spend more time than any other, a person who has more influence over you, and more ability to interfere with or to support your growth than anyone else. This ever-present companion is your own self.

—Dr. Pamela Butler, Clinical Psychologist To thine own-self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day.

Thou can'st not then be false to any man.

—Hamlet. Act I. 373

Nothing splendid was ever achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside of them was superior to circumstances. —Bruce Barton

IT’S NEVER ABOUT THE OTHER During an upset between two individuals, it may appear that one is creating hurt or pain for the other by a look, a word, a tone of voice. What is really happening: the one who seems to be bringing the pain is a messenger. This messenger is a mirror for the other to look at something within himself/herself that has not as yet been faced and embraced. It is far easier to blame another than to face the shadow within oneself. To acknowledge the truth that everything outside of ourselves is a reflection of what is going on inside oneself is to acknowledge that there is nothing going on outside of ourselves.

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Peace does not come rolling in on the wheels of inevitability. We can't just wish for peace. We have to will it, fight for it, suffer for it, demand it from our governments as - if peace were God's most cherished hope for humanity --- as indeed it is." —William Sloane Coffin, Jr.

FREEDOM IN NONVIOLENCE It is understandable that an oppressed people or person when newly freed by law would desire to have what the former oppressor gained as a result of their oppression. In fact the hallmark of achievement that the oppressor displays is the highest aspect of the oppressed persons reality. Not knowing freedom the oppressed person naturally volunteers himself to the oppressor by seeking to participate in the institutions built during the oppressive years.

The oppressed has a built in desire to be accepted and approved by the oppressor. This is what equality is equated as for the oppressed, who still carry the emotional scars of slavery and the mental shackles. The oppressor became a sort of godlike figure for the oppressed in that they had and have the freedom of mobility denied the oppressed and most of all the ability to interact with nature to secure there basics life needs. From the perspective of the oppressed, the oppressor has great powers of creation which have been denied them. The oppressed when no longer under the oppressor seeks to have the things that the oppressor creates from nature rather than a direct relationship with nature, especially if the formerly oppressed person was forced to interact with nature like in plantation work for the benefit of the oppressor.

The newly freed person in seeking approval and acceptance from the former oppressor and is incapable of realizing that true freedom is an inward state and seeks no approval or acceptance from any other free agent. Free agents are selfregulating, self-defined and self-accepted and engage with nature in a way that they can secure the basics of life food, clothing, shelter, transportation, communication, tools and energy from nature, needing no handouts or giveaways from the former oppressor.

When the newly freed accepts the tenets of nonviolence, he/she will realize that the institutions of the former oppressor do not serve their health, interest, rights and needs in that they were setup to initiate, develop and maintain their oppression. Thus the nonviolent student and practitioner seeks to create new institutions that fulfill their needs, protect their rights, secure their interest and attain and maintain their health.

The oppressor was incapable of creating institutions that advanced freedom, justice and equality for all in that he violated the definition and purpose of man by engaging in the enslavement of another for the purpose of satiating greed.

The definition and purpose of man thus violated handicapped him and left him in a state of physical animation, incapable of principled thought and just conclusions and he is thus beset with problems and his institutions are of no benefit to the newly freed person.

The newly freed must on their own initiate, develop, maintain and administrate institutions that protect and foster their definition and purpose as individuals and a collective. Whereas the oppressor only related to the newly freed as a body that they could use for labor, sex and sport, they must of necessity activate the other components of their Being in order to experience true freedom. Man (male/female) is spirit, mind, emotion and body which activates within space, energy, elements and motion. The consideration of and the act of activating the other three aspects of personhood may initially cause fear and trepidation for the newly freed in that he/she is so use to and habitually conditioned to seek direction and permission from the former oppressor, and experiences fear of repudiation and punishment for thinking a thought outside of the confines of the former oppressor.

When America disposed of British rule, it no longer sought to impose the institutions of Britain on itself. Americans had to create a government for themselves and all the other institutions needed to sustain life in a meaningful manner. They no longer sought the approval of the British and began making decisions for themselves. There were two main carry over’s that Americans took from their British inheritance and that was slavery and the English language. By not disinheriting slavery, Americans lost the ability to create a true democratic/republic. They instead created a slave state, because that is all they knew as British citizens. Today the consequences of this action is that millions of descendants of slaves and the cohabitation between the master and slaves remain in a state of mental, emotional and spiritual slavery, incapable of advancing beyond the state of being a physical body only seeking pleasure and comfort, and having no sense of responsibility for advancing the creative goodwill and thoughts of a free person. As a result a slavery 375

recidivism has set in, whereby descendants of slaves unconsciously seek to be enslaved as in prisons and personal and social relationships.

Unlike the first Americans, the descendants of slavery never sought to establish there own institutions. Instead we sought to assimilate into what the slave masters had set-up which could only reinforce our enslavement. We made the European our role model and sought and seek to emulate him and his way of life, the very way of life that led to our enslavement in the first place. As a result the prison industrial complex is no more than a form of recycled slavery.

Slavery has crippled America. It has stunted the growth of its people for in truth no one is free until everyone is free.

American's didn't care about others freedom, they just wanted to proclaim their own and trample on the freedom of others who are unable to defend themselves.

Slavery was more than an economic scheme to deprive people of free agency, and use their physical labor to amass economic advantage. Slavery was also a debauchery and denied free agents the right to live principled lives thus they became enmeshed in lying, stealing, raping, trickery, manipulation, superstition, and imitation. These states are what appear when free agents are denied their free agency by another free agent. Free agents have needs that have to be fulfilled and when these needs cannot be fulfilled in an honorable and just manner then the above mannerisms rise to the top and become the means to an end. These unprincipled ways of gaining ones needs are still operating in the majority of the descendants of enslaved people. In addition these actions are fueled by shame and anger.

The descendants of slave owners still operate from arrogance, a sense of self importance and a know it all ism and are themselves trapped in the physical realm, as there only reality. This has become there comfort zone. They are fueled by guilt. Both are frozen in fear and the game continues. In the meantime America decays from within, leaving her vulnerable to attack from external forces.

Why is this scenario as it is? It must be understood that mothers are the purveyors of culture or enslavement. The mother transmits to her unborn fetus her fears, her shame, her lust, her lies and her enslavement or freedom. To understand this better the following excerpt from LunaQueen, The Journey From Lunatic To LunaQueen will suffice.

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“Liberty, is one of the most precious gifts heaven has bestowed upon Man. No treasures the earth contains or the sea conceals can be compared to it.

For liberty one can rightfully risk one's life.”

— Miguel Cervantes

NONVIOLENCE: THE TIME HAS COME In a world overrun with violence at every level, it is the science of nonviolence that offers the most promise for solving problems, and yet many say even after the evidence that nonviolence does not work. Who are these naysayers? They are those enmeshed in ignorance, fear and hatred for self and others. For in truth you can not hate another unless you first hate yourself, thus providing a place to give birth to hatred. They are those whose perception has been clouded by violence from within and without. They are the victims of slavery who have not done as the master taught, “Physician heal thyself,” thus they bear the offspring of slavery time and again.

In recent years people of African descent here in America had the opportunity to learn the science of nonviolence after it was successfully used to gain for them civil rights and the right to vote. Given the power and precedence that this science produced, these people choose to turn their backs on nonviolence and began to worship a personality (Dr. King) who advocated the tenets they rejected. They declared themselves violent and choose to promote and practice black power as a reaction to white power and preceded to utilize and deface the opportunities afforded them as a result of the application of nonviolence. It stands to reason that if nonviolence is the method used to open the door of opportunity, that it would take nonviolence to keep the door open. As a result of the wholesale denial of the truth about nonviolence, we find that within a twenty year span of time, that many of the gains that were a direct result of the application of nonviolence have been lost, simply because people refused to take serious the science of nonviolence and learn it and use it to maintain and administrate those gains.

Today people of African descent and women are immersed in violence that permeates every area of there lives. They do not know how to interact with each other on a personal level save for violent means. Practically every institution today is imbued with some form of violence. This is because people have held a belief in an external enemy whom they believe they have to be violent with, and so when they had an opportunity to learn nonviolence they projected that Dr. M.L. King, Jr. was a fool for advocating that they be nonviolent. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was not a fool, he was a scientist who realized that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” He realized that people had to remove fear, hatred, anger and revenge feelings before they could rebuild their lives, otherwise they would reduplicate the past. They didn't realize that they had no way of relating to family, associates and neighbors void of violence. They inherited violence from slavery, and they maintained their inheritance.

Nonviolence as a science is still available as a means for the obtaining of peace of mind and peace on earth. Its tenets are simple, its application effective and its legacy is rich with achievement.

Yes European slavers did hold African descendants down, but what we fail to realize is that in order to hold someone down, you lose your free mobility and creative goodwill and inspiration are numbed. The European slavers were not free as long as they engaged in slavery for in truth no free person would ever want to own a slave. Those who enslaved and denied people their basic human rights are just as much enslaved as the oppressed. So both are ill and both must heal.

Neither is a role model for the other in spite of appearances. European people can not be free as long as they engage in slavery, whether it is chattel slavery, wage slavery or prison slavery. Those who enslave and deny people their basic human rights are just as enslaved as those they oppress thus both are ill and ignorant.

Instead of seeking healing solutions and advancing lifestyle alternatives to violence, people of African descent and women decided to emulate and reduplicate the status of the European male who appeared to have been a great achiever and possessor of what they wanted for themselves. Thus he became their role model. It is a simple truth that your ends and your means must be congruent. This simple truth however eludes most people who are illogical and unreasonable.

From their state of illogic and unreasonableness, it appears that a person can obtain success and peace through violent means. This is not possible, for as it states, “If you live by the sword, you shall die by the sword, and an eye for and eye and a tooth for a tooth leaves every one blind and toothless.”

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The violent person is ineffective in solving problems, but effective in creating them. Violent people perpetuate problems.

All violent revolutions have led to the development of new violent regimes, because violence begets violence.

The reality is that nonviolence is the only method available to mankind for the solving of personal and social problems that will lead to a peaceful resolution. Why is this so? In order to understand the why of this statement, one must first understand what nonviolence is and isn’t. Nonviolence has for the most part been interpreted by violent people, however a violent person can only seek an understanding of nonviolence from a nonviolent person, which few are willing to do.

Nonviolence for the most part has been interpreted by violent, cowardly people.

What is violence? Violence is the application of fear based emotion, and negative attitudes and dispositions to the solving of personal, social and ecological problems. Violence is thus the domain of the reactionary and destroyer.

What is nonviolence? Nonviolence is the application of love-truth-thought to the solving of personal, social and ecological problems. Nonviolence is thus the domain of the thinker and creator. Nonviolence in application causes a person to think through all of the options that are available for the solving of particular problem. Whereas violence in application causes a person to reduplicate a behavior that has previously been acted out and thus creates a greater problem.

Nonviolence demands that the practitioner step outside of the problem in order to see it from all perspectives, even the perspective of the perpetrator, in order to understand the root cause. By seeing a problem from 360°, a workable solution can be developed and implemented that can eradicate the problem. Thus the practitioner of nonviolence is free to move on to the next problem. It is said that “Mathematicians love problems,” and so it is with nonviolent practitioners, for they never run from problems or attempt to deny that they exist, but rather acknowledge, define and work to find solutions that work. This does not mean that the solutions are readily available, however there is always a solution to any problem and one must be diligent in discovering it.

America the home of the brave and the land of the free, is a nation that was built on violence. The Native and Black American Maafa and slave trade was the most violent epic in the history of mankind, and the violence perpetrated has not been corrected. The sons and daughters of former slave owners and the sons and daughters of former slave, have yet to create a new contract based on reconciliation, forgiveness, healing and an agreement to create a future void of violence.

This is the only way that Americans can live out her great creed that “All homo sapien babies are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights of life, liberty, health, and the pursuit of happiness. “Happy is the person who has wisdom and understanding (education).” (Book of Wisdom) The study of nonviolence is an absorbing and fascinating trek into the world of possibility thinking. It affords its students and practitioners the luxury of creating a world where they can live in peace and harmony with their fellow Earthians. The violent left to themselves will destroy themselves, for the law is you reap what you sow. Therefore if we sow the seeds of nonviolence, we can only reap a harvest of peace.

For the nonviolent student and practitioner there are only two enemies and they are ignorance and the illness it creates and to that end we create clinics and schools to heal and educate. People are never enemies for they are reflections of the self projected externally to teach a lesson. Let us be diligent in picking up the tool of nonviolence and usher in a world of Peace On Earth Goodwill Toward All Life Forms.

“It’s either nonviolence or nonexistence.”

—Dr. Martn Luther King, Jr.

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"True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring." —Martin Luther King, Jr.

YESHUA BEN JOSEPH The Sermon On the Mount Treatise On Nonviolence {5:1} And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him: {5:2} And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying, {5:3} Blessed [are] the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. {5:4} Blessed [are] they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. {5:5} Blessed [are] the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. {5:6} Blessed [are] they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. {5:7} Blessed [are] the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. {5:8} Blessed [are] the pure in heart: for they shall see God. {5:9} Blessed [are] the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. {5:10} Blessed [are] they which are persecuted for righteousness sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. {5:11} Blessed are ye, when [men] shall revile you, and persecute [you,] and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. {5:12} Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great [is] your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you. {5:13} Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men. {5:14} Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. {5:15} Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. {5:16} Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven. {5:17} Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. {5:18} For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. {5:19} Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach [them,] the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. {5:20} For I say unto you, That except your Art by Daniel ben Israel righteousness shall exceed [the righteousness] of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. {5:21} Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: {5:22} But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. {5:23} Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; {5:24} Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift. {5:25} Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. {5:26} Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing. {5:27} Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: {5:28} But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. {5:29} And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast [it] from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not [that] thy whole body should be cast into hell. {5:30} And if thy right hand offend thee, cut if off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not [that] thy whole body should be cast into hell. {5:31} It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement: {5:32} But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery. {5:33} Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not 380

forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths: {5:34} But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God’s throne: {5:35} Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King. {5:36} Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black. {5:37} But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. {5:38} Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: {5:39} But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. {5:40} And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have [thy] cloke also. {5:41} And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. {5:42} Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away. {5:43} Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. {5:44} But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; {5:45} That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. {5:46} For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? {5:47} And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more [than others?] do not even the publicans so? {5:48} Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. {6:1} Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven. {6:2} Therefore when thou doest [thine] alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. {6:3} But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: {6:4} That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly. {6:5} And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites [are:] for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. {6:6} But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. {6:7} But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen [do:] for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. {6:8} Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him. {6:9} After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. {6:10} Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as [it is] in heaven. {6:11} Give us this day our daily bread. {6:12} And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. {6:13} And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen. {6:14} For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: {6:15} But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. {6:16} Moreover when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. {6:17} But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face; {6:18} That thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret: and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly. {6:19} Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: {6:20} But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: {6:21} For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. {6:22} The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. {6:23} But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great [is] that darkness! {6:24} No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. {6:25} Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? {6:26} Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? {6:27} Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? {6:28} And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: {6:29} And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. {6:30} Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, [shall he] not much more [clothe] you, O ye of little faith? {6:31} Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? {6:32} (For after all these things do 381

the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. {6:33} But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. {6:34} Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day [is] the evil thereof. {7:1} Judge not, that ye be not judged. {7:2} For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. {7:3} And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? {7:4} Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam [is] in thine own eye? {7:5} Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.{7:6} Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you. {7:7} Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: {7:8} For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. {7:9} Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? {7:10} Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? {7:11} If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him? {7:12} Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets. {7:13} Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide [is] the gate, and broad [is] the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: {7:14} Because strait [is] the gate, and narrow [is] the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. {7:15} Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. {7:16} Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? {7:17} Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. {7:18} A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither [can] a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. {7:19} Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. {7:20} Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. {7:21} Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. {7:22} Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? {7:23} And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. {7:24} Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: {7:25} And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock. {7:26} And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: {7:27} And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it. {7:28} And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine: {7:29} For he taught them as [one] having authority, and not as the scribes.

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"Lead me from death to life, from falsehood to truth."

"Lead me from dispair to hope, from fear to trust."

"Lead me from hate to love, from war to peace."

"Let peace fill our heart, our world, our universe."

—Prayer of Peace - Satish Kumar - adapted from the Upanishads:

NONVIOLENCE AS A CHRISTIAN PRINCIPLE The principles found in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) formulated by Jesus the Christ guided the direction and decisions of the movement. Here is an outline of these principles which have the power to transform unjust American policy without the use of violence.

Matthew 5:11-12 Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so men persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Matthew 5:21-22 You have heard that it was said to the men of old, ‘You shall not kill; and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that every one who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother shall be liable to the council, and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be liable to the hell of fire.

Matthew 5:38-39 You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist one who is evil. But if any one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also…

Matthew 5:43-44 You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…

Matthew 6:14-15 For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

Matthew 7:3-5 Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?

Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye?

You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.

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“Always remember that nothing, ever or anywhere belongs to you. On the contrary, everything is God’s property, and from His property you receive something only for your actual needs, corresponding to you task.”

—Initiation, Elsiabeth Haich pg. 181

NONVIOLENCE Nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people.

Nonviolence seeks to win friendship and understanding.

Nonviolence seeks to defeat injustice, not people.

Nonviolence holds that suffering can educate and transform.

Nonviolence chooses Love instead of hate.

Nonviolence believes that the universe is on the side of justice.

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“It may be long before the law of love will be recognised in international affairs. The machineries of government stand between and hide the hearts of one people from those of another.”

—Mohandes Gandhi

Gandhi’s Contribution The career of Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948) marked a watershed in the development of the nonviolent struggle. In leading the struggle for India’s independence, Gandhi was the first to combine a variety of tactics according to a strategic plan in a campaign of explicitly nonviolent action, and the first to conduct a series of campaigns toward long-term goals. Deeply religious, practical, and experimental in temperament, Gandhi was a shrewd, tireless, and efficient organizer who united cheerfulness with unshakable determination. He was not only a political strategist, but a social visionary. Gandhi’s nonviolence had three main elements: 1) self-improvement (the effort to make oneself a better person), 2) "constructive program" (concrete work to create the new social order aimed at), and 3) campaigns of resistance against evils that blocked the way forward, such as the caste system and British colonial exploitation. Gandhi’s success in linking mass action with nonviolent discipline showed the enormous social power this form of struggle could generate. It is through nonviolent direct action campaigns in the tradition of Gandhi that most people in the U.S. have become aware of nonviolence and nonviolent methods. In fact, despite the many violent aspects of American history of which we have become increasingly aware in recent years, the U.S. has its own native tradition of nonviolence.

Why Nonviolence? Introduction to Nonviolence Theory and Strategy Written in 1978 by Bob Irwin and Gordon Faison;

“The moment the slave resolves that he will no longer be a slave, his fetters fall. Freedom and slavery are mental states.”

—Mahatma Gandhi

Question to Gandhi: What do you think of western civilization?

Gandhi’s reply: I think it’s a great idea. Let’s work on that.

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"The power to make decisions on behalf of others is an act of service, not a testament to sovereignty.”

— I Ching Hexagram 19; Line Six in the third place

NONVIOLENT METHOD OF ACTION Nonviolence is not simply a method of action which is not violent. Broadly speaking, it means taking action that goes beyond normal institutionalized political methods (voting, lobbying, letter writing, verbal expression, strikes) without injuring anyone. Nonviolent action, like war, is a means of waging conflict. It requires a willingness to take risks and bear suffering without retaliation. On the most fundamental level, it is a means by which people discover their social power. Nonviolent action takes three main forms: 1) protest and persuasion, 2) non-cooperation, and 3) intervention.

The first category includes such activities as speechmaking, picketing, petitions, vigils, street theater, marches, rallies, and teach-ins. When practiced under conditions of governmental tolerance, these methods can be comparatively insignificant; when the views expressed are unpopular or controversial, or go against government policy, even the mildest of them may require great courage and can have a powerful impact.

The second category involves non-cooperation. In the face of institutional injustice, people may refuse to act in ways which are considered "normal"—to work, buy, or obey. This largest category of nonviolent action includes refusal to pay taxes, withholding rent or utility payments, civil disobedience, draft resistance, fasting, boycotts and strikes. Noncooperation can effectively halt the normal functioning of society, depending on the type of action employed and how widespread its use becomes.

Third, there is nonviolent intervention, which can be defined as the active insertion and disruptive presence of people in the usual processes of social institutions. This can include sit-ins, occupations, obstructions of "business as usual" in offices, the streets, or elsewhere, and creation of new social and economic institutions, including the establishment of parallel governments which compete with the old order for sovereignty. These methods tend both to pose a more direct and immediate challenge than other methods described, and bring a quicker success or sharper repression.

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“When we adopt the viewpoint that there is nothing that is not part of us, that there is no one who exists who is not part of us, that any judgment is self-judgment, that any criticism is self-criticism, we will wisely extend to our self an unconditional love that will be the light of the world.”

—Henry Palmer

FOUR PRINCIPLES OF NONVIOLENCE I will not violate your dignity.

I will not compromise my dignity.

When I make a decision, it will be to serve everybody, even my enemy.

When I act, my actions will be to serve everybody’s health, interest, rights and needs.

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SOME GENERAL METHODS FOR CHANGING SOCIETY

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“Freedom is the ability to act in love, without fear, from the eternal essence of your being.”

—Myeka

STEPS IN A NONVIOLENT CAMPAIGN 1 ) Investigate. Get the facts. Clear up any possible misunderstanding right at the start. If an injustice clearly has been done, be equally certain exactly who or what is to blame for it. The complexity of society today requires patient investigation to accurately determine responsibility for a particular injustice. The ability to explain facts rather than just relying on rhetoric will win support and prevent misunderstandings.

2 ) Negotiate. Meet with opponents and put the case to them. A solution may be worked out at this point. It is possible that your opponents have a grievance which you didn’t know about. Now is the time to find out. If no solution is possible, let your opponents know that you intend to stand firm to establish justice. Let them know, however, that you are always ready to negotiate further.

3) Educate. Keep campaign participants and supporters well-informed about the issues, and spread the word to the public. This may involve issuing simple but carefully prepared leaflets. It may also call for street theater, informal street speaking, door-to-door personal visits, phone calls and press releases. Talk to the editors of local newspapers and to government officials. Always stick to the facts, avoid exaggeration, be brief and show good will. Remember that the attitudes of local people about your campaign can have an important effect on its outcome.

4) Demonstrate. Picketing, vigiling, mass rallies, and leafleting are the next steps. All of these make more impact on your opponent, the public, the press, and law enforcement officials, if conducted in a well organized manner. Those who are demonstrating should be well informed, cool headed, able to endure heckling and to withstand possible violence without panic and without resorting to violence in return. It is most important to maintain discipline at this stage, and to “keep cool under fire”.

5) Resist. Nonviolent resistance is the final step, to be added to the first four as a last resort. This may mean a boycott, a fast, a strike, tax resistance, a nonviolent blockade or other forms of civil disobedience. Planning must be carefully done, and nonviolence training is essential. Discipline must be firm to avoid making your resistance vulnerable to violent provocation. Every provocation must be answered calmly and without retaliation. The general public as well as the direct action participants themselves can be moved more favorably by a well organized, orderly expression of resistance. A crucial part of nonviolent resistance is the willingness to suffer the consequences. You are saying, in effect: “I am so determined to right this injustice that I am willing to suffer to bring about change,” instead of the more common and less effective reasoning: “I am so determined to right this injustice that I’m going to make my opponent suffer for it.” The willingness to accept and absorb violence and suffering can often be the cutting edge for change. When properly carried out, actions of resistance build a position of moral clarity which will strengthen your own courage and create widespread respect for your campaign.

6) Be patient. Meaningful change can not be accomplished overnight. Like the building of a cathedral, it requires years of work. To deepen one’s analysis of injustice and oppression means to become aware of how deeply entrenched are the structures which produce them. These structures can be eliminated, but this requires a long-term commitment and strategy. Individual actions are much more effective if they are integrated in a nonviolent campaign which may have to continue not only for months but for years. Along the way, there will be many experiences of failure and temptations to give up. No action should be perceived as a “do-or-die” situation for your campaign. These principles were first developed in the context of the struggle for civil rights in the U.S. for which it was written and published by the American FOR at the request of Dr. Martin Luther King. The present version has been slightly revised for international use by the International FOR, which is a transnational and interreligious movement committed to nonviolence as a principle of life and liberation.

Taken from American Peace Test , Nonviolence Trainers’ Manual, January 1987, p.13

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NONVIOLENT ECOLOGICAL CONSCIOUSNESS There has been an increasing awareness of environmental issues in recent years; however, to achieve sustainability in all systems people must develop an ecological consciousness. Respect for organisms and their habitats, responsibility for actions, and the implementation of sustainable processes are fundamental elements critical to the development of a healthier environment and ecological consciousness. To develop ecological consciousness there are various steps to consider:

= Education at all levels = Creation of enthusiasm = Instillation of the desire to act through dynamic participation Personal responsibility acquires a significant purpose as it stems from the realization of the importance of organisms. By acknowledging that all components of our lives are interconnected creates a conscious desire to rehabilitate environmentally degraded systems. Through these preliminary stages progressive changes will occur resulting in the blossoming of a sustainable economy.

To determine if the fundamental elements of ecological consciousness have been integrated into your personal environment, products of these ideals can be investigated. A sustainable system ensures that ecological integrity is preserved and enhanced. Attitudes and values can be measured through physical, biological, and chemical indicators.

Realization of Problem

Responsibility of Actions

Implementation of Sustainable Processes

Birth control pill residue in water supply

Learn fertility awareness methods

Use of pesticides and artificial fertilizers Excess non-reusable cutlery and dishes Commuting Students eating too much unhealthy food Excessive use of energy Global warming AIDS Desertification Depletion of tropical rain forests Industrial waste Marine contamination Nuclear safety Air pollution Water pollution Immigration Monsanto’s Monopoly of Seeds

Eliminate chemical use Recycle Minimize use of motorized vehicles Reduce production of deep fried food Implement energy saving devices

Make Procreative Choice Education a primary educational requirement Plant native vegetation Replace with reusable cutlery and dishes Create need for cycling and walking Create community gardens on campus Turn off electricity when not in use

The most alarming of all man's assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials. This pollution is for the most part irrecoverable; the chain of evil it initiates not only in the world that must support life but in living tissues is for the most part irreversible. In this now universal contamination of the environment, chemicals are the sinister and little recognized partners of radiation in changing the very nature of the world--the very nature of its life. —Rachel Carson

Those who take action at the symptomatic level and do not consider the underlying problem are still in the first stages of developing ecological consciousness, and are not able to visualize the full complexity of the situation which is vital to establishing sustainable ecosystems. Ascertaining the actual source of a problem and rectifying it is exemplary of the final stage of ecological consciousness. Currently there are numerous examples of environmental problems that need to be addressed and amending these conditions can be approached in various ways. The method in which problems are resolved indicates the level of environmental consciousness that participants are at. It is only when those involved display a high level of respect, responsibility, and motivation that true sustainability can be achieved and maintained.

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DAILY PRINCIPLES TO LIVE BY We include daily principles to live by in this program because principles never change, they are always there, and they bring things into being..

Webster defines principles as: The ultimate source or origin of something; a fundamental truth, law or doctrine upon which others are based. An essential quality, element or constituent, especially one that produces a specific effect; a necessary faculty; a natural or original tendency; a motivating force upon which others depend; the law of nature by which a thing operates.

“The principles you live by create the world you live in; if you change the principles you live by, you will change your world.”

—Blain Lee By meditating, defining and understanding principles, we learn to be free to choose, and be responsible for the choices we make. When we accept responsibility for our choices, we accept the situations we find ourselves in or we change it.

Our Constitution grants us the right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, which are all principles that guarantee our Freedom. Freedom means that we are afforded the right and opportunity to choose what we will and will not do.

With freedom comes the responsibility to take care of one's self. It is the freedom of choice that carries with it the responsibility to accept the consequences of the choices made. If we refuse to make or accept responsibility for our choices, then we abdicate our responsibility to another, and the result is a loss of freedom. This is where slavery, subjugation and oppression have there origin. Because we live in the world with other people who also have freedom to make choices, we must incorporate other principles of living so that our choices do not clash or create conflict. So we learn to treat others with dignity, respect and justice, because this is what we want for our self. By applying the principles of dignity, respect and justice, we are able to develop a way to consider each others perspective, and choices, and come to understandings and agreements.

The road to adulthood is paved in principles. No matter how old one may be, without principles to guide one's life, traces of childhood remain. These traces of childhood are paved with “what I like and don't like,” what I want,“ “my opinion,” should’s or shouldn’ts, musts, oughts and have tos,” and all the fear, guilt and shame we can find ourselves entrenched in, because we didn't consciously choose. Instead we followed other’s choices, and did as we were told to do, like children. Then we blame ourselves for something we weren’t responsible for, or we blame others and overlook our contribution to the problem. Having equal opportunity to develop our potential, we need never point our finger at others as the source of our ills or discomfort. As a result we develop the tools to right any wrongs and correct any errors, whether made by us or another. We must always remember that until we take personal responsibility for our lives, and realize that what is happening in our lives is a result of us, (not anything outside of us) then we are helpless to do anything about the situations we are in. Once we accept our responsibility for our life we gain control over our lives and can thus make things happen the way we want them to.

These daily principles to live by are presented, so that you will be able to develop a moral code to live by that works.

Each day/week/month you are encouraged to meditate on a principle, define it, write about it (poetry, prose, songs, rap), draw about it and discuss it with others. Most important create ways to incorporate it into your life. As a result you will begin to experience your Divinity and gain self-worth, self-confidence and self-transformation. Pick a principle a day or a week and include it in your diary.

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PRINCIPLES Principles applied to your life allow you to let your intellect drive your emotions rather than your emotions recklessly driving your life. Ephesians 6.

“We fight not against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities of power, spiritual wickedness in high places.

Stand therefore having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness. And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. Above all, taking the shield if faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.”

In order to protect yourself from these unseen forces you must fortify yourself with principles ABUNDANCE

DECISIVENESS

GROWTH

NATURALNESS

SHARING

ACCEPTANCE

DESIRE

HAPPINESS

NOBILITY

SELECTIVITY

ACHIEVEMENT

DETERMINATION

HARMONY

OBJECTIVITY

SELF

ACTUALIZATION

DEVELOPMENT

HEALING

OBSERVATION

SILENCE SINCERITY

ADVENTURE

DIGNITY

HEALTH

ONENESS

AMBITION

DILIGENCE

HELPFULNESS

OPTIMISM

SOUND

APPRECIATION

DIVINITY

HONESTY

ORDER

SOULFULNESS

ATONEMENT

DUTIFULNESS

HONOR

PATIENCE

SPACE

ATTAINMENT

DYNAMISM

HUMILITY

PEACE

SPIRIT

ATTENTION

EFFECT

IDENTIFICATION

PERCEPTION

SPLENDOR

ATTRACTION

ENDURANCE

IMMANENCE

PERFECTION

STABILITY

AUTHENTICITY

EQUILIBRIUM

IMMENSITY

PERSEVERANCE

STRENGTH

AWARENESS

EQUALITY

IMPROVEMENT

PRIMACY

SUCCESS

BALANCE

ENERGY

INCREASE

POWER

SUPREMACY

BEAUTY

ENLIGHTENMENT

INDEPENDENCE

PRESENCE

TEMPERANCE

BEING

ETERNALITY

INNOCENCE

PRODUCTIVITY

THOUGHTFULNESS

BLISS

EXCELLENCE

INFINITY

PROGRESS

TOLERANCE

BRAVERY

EXQUISITENESS

INSPIRATION

PROSPERITY

TRANSCENDENCE

BREATH

FAITH

INTEGRITY

PRUDENCE

TRUTH

INTELLIGENCE

PURITY

UNDERSTANDING UNIFORMITY

BRILLIANCE

FAMILY

BOUNDLESSNESS

FERTILITY

JOY

PURPOSE

BUOYANCY

FIDELITY

JUSTICE

RADIANCE

UNITY

CALMNESS

FINITENESS

KINDNESS

REALIZATION

VALOR

CHANGE

FIRST CAUSE

KNOWLEDGE

REABSORBING

VALUE

CHARITY

FLOW

LAUGHTER

REASON

VASTNESS

CHASTITY

FORCE

LEADERSHIP

RECEPTIVITY

VIBRATION

CIVILITY

FOCUS

LIBERATION

RECTITUDE

VIRTUE

CLARITY

FORGIVENESS

LIFE

RECOGNITION

VISION VITALITY

COMFORT

FORM

LIGHT

REDEMPTION

COMMUNICATION

FREEDOM

LOVE

REFLECTION

WARMTH

COMPASSION

FREQUENCY

LOYALTY

RELATIONSHIP

WHOLENESS

COMPLETION

FRIENDSHIP

MAGNIFICENCE

RELATIVITY

WILL

CONFIDENCE

BREVITY

MAGNETISM

RELAXATION

WISDOM

CONSCIOUSNESS

FRUITFULNESS

MAINTENANCE

RESOURCEFUL

WONDER

CONSTANCY

GAIETY

MAJESTY

RESPECT

WORK

CONTEMPLATION

GENEROSITY

MANIFESTATION

RESPONSIBILITY

ZEAL

CONTENTMENT

GENTLENESS

MASTERY

REVERENCE

CONTROL

GIVING

MATURITY

RHYTHM

COOPERATION

GLADNESS

MEEKNESS

RIGHTEOUSNESS

CORRESPONDENCE

GLORY

MERCY

SACREDNESS

EMERGENCE

GOODNESS

MODESTY

SACRIFICE

COURAGE

GRACE

MORALITY

SAFETY

CREATIVITY

GRATITUDE

MOTION

SALVATION

DARKNESS

GREATNESS

MOTIVATION

SERENITY

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THE FEMININE POWER VIOLENCE OR NONVIOLENCE

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THE ENERME Deep within me there is a wench, a lunatic.

She is a vial creature of destruction. She does not know love.

She only knows lust, lies, pain, suffering, hate and jealousy.

Where did she take root? What is her origin?

I must discover her beginning in the dark recesses of my being.

She is a heinous formation. She is death. She is destruction.

She is the murderer of Christ, for she makes right wrong and wrong right.

She knows no justice. She knows no truth.

And out of her belly she brings forth sons and daughters like unto herself.

She is the epitome of Eve-ill.

Oh this journey to discover her. This journey into the depths of my mind To find and uproot this very essence of Eve-ill, the devil herself.

I saw her in every women I ever met.

And so I sought to discover her in myself. For so without, so within.

I had been witness to a cruelty, injustice, non-love and witchyness in others that had no comparison.

I experienced the hatred, lies and cowardice directed towards to me often without conscious provocation.

When questioned or addressed they would quickly turn the tables, lie, change the subject, get an attitude and sometimes stop talking to me forever.

I experienced the plots, schemes, slander, gossip and mean spiritedness directed towards anyone, for no reason.

I observed the devastation to children, stripped from their fathers and grandparents because of vicious hateful, revengeful actions.

How could I be witness to this Eve-ill and not have a correspondent to identify within myself?

My mind is a vast territory, not just the physical brain.

My mind is the sum total of me, and somewhere within she lives.

Where are you old wretched one? Show yourself, I demanded.

I have come to know you, to understand you and finally to send you to the Light, so that you can be transformed into a Star of Love.

Come out, come out, wherever you are. And she hid.

I realized that my journey might be a long and arduous one, but the goal is oh so noble.

Am I afraid? Most definitely. I don’t know what to expect.

I don’t know the depths that I will have to tred. I don’t know what I will do upon discovery.

Like a pioneer I have to transverse unknown topography.

I have to discover her at any cost, even if I lose my life in my attempt to find, eliminate and transform her.

The journey continues as everyday I find aspects of her and apply love and self-therapy to heal her.

Maybe one day I will be free of her completely and the Divine Feminine will show herself fully in me. Until that day my work continues.

An ever vigilant lunatic detective, Myeka 396

EDUCATION FOR CHANGE When the present educational system was set into motion, females were not a part of the framing or decision making process. As a result our health, interest, rights and needs were not considered in creating policies or curriculum. In fact this system was set up in order to give males an advantage over female and to perpetuate their enslavement and exploitation. For twelve thousand years, females have been kept ignorant of them self and subservient to the sons that they birth and served as first teachers too. As a result knowledge pertinent to female health, growth, development, and freedom has been unavailable, and a way of life that is contrary to nature has evolved. Therefore, females seeking true liberation must begin to construct a system of education that fosters their health, includes their interest, protects their rights and fulfills their needs. We cannot continue to mimic and imitate males who are the products of their mother’s ignorance and achieve true liberation. The first and primary choice of any female is to be able to choose whether to achieve or avoid conception, before having sex. This is a choice born of selfknowledge and is both responsible and liberating. This is the choice of primary thinkers. Squabbling about choice after conception is a waste of time, energy and resources, when it is possible to make a primary choice. Education is the key. Join the movement for Fertility Literacy.�

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Injustice anywhere, is a threat to justice everywhere.

—Martin Luther King, Jr.

THE MIS-EDUCATION OF FEMALES IS THE MIS-EDUCATION OF A NATION Injustice begins when a person believes and operates from a position that there is something inherently better about them than another person, or group. As a result they deserve more props, resources or privileges. Our present day educational system was founded on such a belief. White Anglo-Saxon Protestant males believed that because of the color of there skin, ethnic origin and maleness, they should have an advantage over females and people of color, whom they believed to be inherently inferior to them. As a result they set-up a public education system, that only they could attend, and learned mathematics and science, so that they could become producers and masters over females and slave races who would be consumers and life long dependents. Based on the tenets of this system, there would always have to be the have’s and the have not's, the producers and the consumers, the upper class and the lower class. It is a system based on sexism, racism, classism, ageism, and the exploitation of nature. It was set-up to perpetuate inequality, injustice, murder, war, rape, greed, sexual abuse and other untold abuses to people, animals, the land, the air, the water and all of life.

This same system of education, still exists today. Today however, people of all races, classes, ages and both sexes, are allowed to participate in this education system. As a result they inherently develop an unjust character structure and belief system, that defines them as better than someone else, and sanctions their exploitation and abuse of those they deem lesser than equals. This is perpetuated by the institutional racism that is embedded in the system. It is not visible, thus difficult to ascertain from a purely physical perspective, but it is there. The evidence is: Females today can be heard saying, “I would rather have a male boss than another female.” African American people can be heard saying, “I would rather have a White boss than another Black.” It is simply that the educational system fosters the abusive, better than thou, snub your nose at, sedity, egotistical attitudes which separate people from there true authentic self, their family and others. Other nations send their youth to be educated in this system and they go home greedy, exploitative, judgmental, and destructive to their society.

The White Anglo-Saxon Protestant male youth, whom this system was designed to give an advantage to, now feel trapped within it, in that he has to compete equally with females and other races in this unjust system. This has driven them to rebel against the system and destroy those who pose a threat to their imagined superiority. There aim is to strike fear into their victims and hopefully drive them out of “their” schools, so that they can once again have an advantage and be the only masters. An example of this would be the Columbine High School tragedy.

You cannot solve a problem with the mind that created it!

Albert Einstein This system of education is a testament to man’s inhumanity to man. It is the educational system that sets the tone for the nation. It instills in citizens what is and is not acceptable and either prepares a person to be the best that they can be, or programs them to be what the society wants them to be. An unjust system creates egotistical, selfish, greedy, unhealthy, negative, violent, hateful, people. Whereas, a system of education founded on the principles of nonviolence and justice will produce creative, healthy, loving, serving, constructive, empathetic, just people.

You will know a tree, by the fruit it bears.

We uphold a system of education whose very foundation is unjust and violent, and we are taught to choose between the lesser of two evils. Either you will be a master (producer) or you will be a slave (consumer). Either you will violate or you will be violated.

Violence and civilization are antithetical concepts.

Martin Luther King, Jr. The Civil Rights Act, brought the cry of liberation from the lips of females, but their actions are far from liberated. Being slaves, they sought to compete with males in an unjust system, hoping that one day they would be the masters and males would be the slaves (the Amazon concept). That day will never arrive, because in a system of violence and injustice, males will always be the masters, just as Whites will always be the masters over other races in a system of violence and injustice. Females operating as pseudo- liberated slaves, have given birth to a generation of pseudo-liberated youth, who attend a school system of injustice. These youth have perpetuated a new level of violence that has led to the growth of the 398

present day prison industry.

Having shed the puritanical sexual viewpoint (of the Victorian Age), females now seek to discover their sexuality. Love not being the generative principle behind the sex act however, they created millions of youth, born of drugs, alcohol, and guilt. Here is a generation of youth whose parents were just fu_king with no intention of having a child, and one day the female says to some body “uh-oh, I’m pregnant.”

Today, 85% or more of all pregnancies are unplanned. This is a tragedy and an atrocity. What makes this fact even more appalling is that a female can only get pregnant for seven days out of her monthly cycle and this time can be accurately and naturally predicted. And yet females claim they are liberated while remaining ignorant.

Are the children of unplanned pregnancies likely to grow up to be great liberators, scientist, doctors, lawyers, etc., in a just social order? It’s not likely. Trained to be second class, third class and fourth class citizens, these people fall into the category of being compost for an unjust system. Void of a system of justice, which would include authentic healing, instead of punishment, these people will just die, never achieving the true purpose and status for which they were created

by God. In the Bible, Genesis 3:16, the curse on the woman is “In pain shall you bring forth children, and your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you.” This could also read, “And in ignorance (which causes pain and suffering) shall you bring forth children, and rather than take personal responsibility for yourself, you will seek outside of yourself for someone (a male) to control you.” Until females awaken from this nightmare, they will continue to live under this curse, believing that it is the correct way to live. What is the nightmare? In Genesis 2:21-25, it is written that Adam was put to sleep. The rest of the Bible and life to this day, is the nightmare that Adam had. There is no where written that Adam was awakened from his sleep. The pain that females experience is a direct result of the ignorance and cowardice they possess and perpetuate. Not knowing themselves they have to look outside of themselves for someone to rule or control them. This someone, their husband, mate or just any male is the child of an ignorant, ill, abused female, and they are just carrying on the foolishness and ignorance she taught them.

Ignorance of course breeds fear, the fear of the unknown. This fear projected into the society causes untold pain and suffering. We presently live in a fear based society. This causes us to create huge military budgets and expenditures to protect ourselves from ourselves, because we don’t know ourselves.

Mary the Mother of Jesus, broke this cycle of ignorance by dedicating and preparing herself to give birth to a highly evolved soul, an Avatar. She gave an example to the world of an Immaculate Conception. Yeshua (Jesus) the Christ came to demonstrate life outside of the curse and the nightmare, and the power and rich rewards that await those who awaken to the Kingdom of God (The Garden of Eden). We however continue to perpetuate the Land of Nod and sleep, and not the Kingdom of God on earth.

How can a person awaken from the Land of Nod? Each individual must begin a process of self-healing and selfpurification. This is a process of removing all judgment from the self and others. It is a process of becoming aware of your ego and its abuses (selfishness, greed, lust, jealousy, violence, and the creation of misery in one’s own and others life.) A process that includes many modalities of healing including but no limited to: Meditation, Hypnotherapy, EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), Primal Therapy, Sound Therapy, (NLP) Neuro-linguistic Programming, SHEN and Polarity Therapy is needed.

Misery comes when a person refuses to accept the reality of NOW, by living in the past, and projecting into the future.

This is a non-acceptance of what IS. One must learn to deal with what IS from a spirit of love, forgiveness and learning the lesson being taught.

There is another choice which has been available since the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It is to create a system of education that protects the rights, fosters the interest, maintains the health and provides for the needs of all people, regardless of sex, race, age, or class. A system that inherently teaches true stewardship of the earth, protecting the sacredness of the air, the water, the land, the trees and vegetation, and all creatures (four legged, winged and crawling).

Our constitution gives us the right to abolish the government, if it does not prosper its citizens. So how much more an educational system that allows people to fail and become fodder for a growing industrial prison system. What greater testament to failure can there be than this? Still people are rushing and preparing to send themselves and there children to a system that does not work, because this is all they know. There is a better way, but it takes true pioneers to bring it into being. It also means no more patch work on the present system, but the initiation, development, administration and maintenance of a new system of education. It is similar to building a new house, you wouldn’t use an old foundation.

You have to build a foundation that will support the demands of the new house. Education that puts the societies interest first, denies the sovereign right of the individual to know and execute their purpose in harmony with the laws of nature.

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Education that serves the individual, serves the society.

“Institutions were made for mankind, mankind was not made for institutions, thus institutions must change to meet the growing needs of mankind.”

—Myeka In 1964 with the signing of The Civil Rights Act, this system of education righteously should have been done away with, but males and females of that day were and still do operate under a slave mentality, and slaves can’t perpetuate anything but slavery. Oh yes, a few brave souls inspired by God, fought to end injustice, but they were never healed of their slave tendencies, and thus reverted back to slave status, seeking to assimilate into the very system that enslaved them. Seeking privileges, fame, fortune and prestige in the eyes of other slaves, rather than continuing to apply nonviolence to their personal lives, once social victory was obtained. . These people need healing, just as all of us do. They in their secret, private lives possess the slave tendencies of lust, lying, pedophilia, stealing, and murder. Many however, are just not caught, and are able to maintain a public persona of righteousness. So slaves just agreed to be equal within a slave state and receive an equal slave education. So females and Blacks, gained the privilege to be educated to have an advantage over others who might be less fortunate than themselves.

As we progress into the new millennium, when we look at our society, we see that the biggest growth industry is prisons, and we must stop and ask the question, why is this so? This is so, because in an unjust society, somebody has to be a slave, an unfortunate, and a failure, to be taken advantage of and abused. So when the educational system fails us which it will inevitably do, (if it hasn’t already) we become victims of the system, how convenient. We spend more money on housing a prisoner, than on educating a child, so that the child can fail and become a slave unable to do for self.

There is a mistaken notion that the master is not a slave, but the truth is, the master exists within the slave state of mind.

In order to hold another down, you must also be down, without free mobility. The master is no more free than the slave.

The masters children can just as well end up in prison or live in fear of being killed, stolen from, raped, etc. So prisons are the new way for masters (this includes everyone now) to feel superior.

In an unjust society prisons are a necessary evil, because people are not properly educated to be the best that God created them to be and to bring forth the gifts they were sent here to deliver to the world.

It has been said, that a nation can rise no higher than its women, because women are the first educators of the youth. If a female operates from a fear based, slave mentality, she cannot avoid passing fear and slave mentality to both her male and female children? She creates the first instance of accepting injustice as she cringes under the dominant, abusive male, and creates a pecking order with her children receiving her dominant, passive, violent, abuse and toxic emotions.

Not one of us has escaped the scourge of slavery, and in our public or private lives, we have and are violating ourselves, others or both, or we have healed ourselves and stopped the violations. We have not been taught to love ourselves, love others and all of creation. We live in fear of a multitude of things that really can’t harm us, but because we have been educated in an unjust system, and are ignorant to the ways of living life, (having been taught only how to survive), we can’t help ourselves. A new mind-set is needed to recognize and undo the wrong. We must redesign our personal thought system, which has led to our pain, loss and confusion. Healing only starts with the renewal of the mind. Healing therapies are used so that we can bring into being a collective system of justice and then educate ourselves to our true state of natural goodness and divinity.

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THE TWELVE LAWS OF NATURAL EDUCATION True education is designed to facilitate a structure for the orderly fulfillment of these basic laws.

INDEPENDENCE 1. To Be. To Know The Self. To Stand Alone.

Self-Knowledge 2. To Know Your Environment and its Resources

Self-Awareness 3. To Know The Laws, Limitations & Boundaries Of Your Environment

Self-Control 4. To Know Your Place In The Environment

Self-Acceptance 5. To Creatively Express Yourself In Your Environment

Self-Expression 6. To Be Of Service To Your Environment

Self-Responsibility

INTERDEPENDENCE 7. To Know Another/Others

Self-Love 8. To Join Resources, Gifts, Skills And Talents With Others

Self-Unification 9. To Create Laws of Exchange And Reciprocity With Others

Self-Liberation 10. To Create Institutions With Others (Worship Center, Government, Industry/Business, Clinic, Home, School)

Self-Empowerment 11.To Creatively Express With Other Through Institutions

Self-Confidence 12. To Reap The Harvest, Truths, Fruits Of The Previous Cycle And Prepare To Begin Again With Greater Wisdom And Understanding

Self-Regeneration COPYRIGHT 2007 Myeka

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PRE-CONCEPTION CHOICE EDUCATION "Full freedom from all limitations means full responsibility for one's reality. —Anonymous

Pre-Conception Choice requires a female to heal her past, so that she can be educated in the ways of self- knowledge.

Thus all subsequent learning has a root system and foundation upon which to be anchored in her reality, so as to empower her and allow her best to come forth.

Pre-Conception Choice is the only intelligent choice for females to make.

Pre-Conception Choice allows a female to become a primary, first class person, as she exercises her first choice of whether to achieve or avoid conception.

Pre-Conception Choice is revolutionary and nonviolent because it offers females the opportunity to know themselves as essential, valuable, worthwhile contributors to humanity.

Pre-Conception Choice rekindles from within a spark of the power and majesty of a distant past when civilizations flourished and benefited all of humanity, as a result of females taking responsibility for self and others.

Pre-Conception Choice allows females to create a world where children are planned, wanted and conceived in a spirit of love. A world where institutions are created to prosper the health, foster the interest, protect the rights and fulfill the needs of generations to come, ad infinitum.

Pre-Conception Choice is the only right and true path offered to females who want to come of age and operate as responsible self-liberated females who do not need to seek or receive the approval of others.

Pre-Conception Choice involves having a knowledge base upon which to make a decision. By knowing and understanding the science of fertility awareness and human reproduction, females and males gain a means by which to make a conscious choice based on reason and anchored in responsibility.

Consider the archaic means of the past. A female and a male have a sexual urge and have intercourse, knowing that sex can lead to procreation, but not knowing whether she is fertile and capable of getting pregnant. Conception occurs. A decision has to be made as to whether to have an unwanted child, put the child up for adoption or have an abortion.

Consider the present. A female and her male counterpart know ahead of time when she is ovulating and conception is possible and make a decision as to whether they are ready to conceive a soul. If conception is desired a plan that enhances the soul is developed. Not choosing to conceive, and knowing fertility awareness signs, the female and male are able to completely relax and fully enjoy sex.

This is a new day and as with anything new, it means change. Change of attitude, change of posture, change of position, change of lifestyle, change of direction, and change of outlook. If we continued to bring unwanted, unloved children into the world, then the world will continue to deteriorate under the weight of this mass of ignorance. Unwanted, unloved children grow up to be terrorist, revengeful, empty, violent, self seeking destructive adults who are void of mental, emotional, or physical health and spiritual awareness. People who value substance above character, physicality above spirit and hate above love.

Pre-Conception Choice is for the truly liberated female and is the authentic movement for female self- liberation. If your choice is not Pre-Conception Choice, then you are really not choosing, only reacting to circumstances and this is the position of weak, silly females ever learning but never coming to the knowledge of truth.

Join the movement and be truly free with

Pre-Conception Choice

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Rebellion against your handicaps gets you nowhere. Self-pity gets you nowhere. One must have the adventurous daring to accept oneself as a bundle of possibilities and undertake the most interesting game in the world-making the most of one's best.

—Harry Emerson Fosdick

FROM LUNATIC TO LUNAQUEEN For 12,000 years females have engaged in the creation of a Lunatic World. Our present day world order is the culmination of this creation on the brink of nuclear destruction. Feted as a male dominant world, the lunatic world is in disguise. Females and their sons would rather pretend that males can dominate females (sons can dominate their mothers), thus never getting at the real source of the problem.

For the last 12,000 years females have operated void of lunar consciousness. The absence of lunar consciousness has caused females to become lunatics, i.e. to be motivated and controlled by unstable, toxic emotions and external forces.

The moon governs emotions, and a lack of lunar consciousness leaves one unconscious of the effect of emotions on their life. Just as the moon governs large bodies of water, so it is with the human body, which is comprised of 80% water. The lunacy that occurs in females makes them irrational, unstable, fearful, indecisive, wishy-washy, judgmental, insecure and passively violent. All of these tendencies are then passed on to their children, and has created the society that we now live in.

Males are not exempt from these tendencies. In fact males are greatly affected by them. Whereas, the mother is the first teacher and role model, she unconsciously passes her lunatic personality to her sons in utero, after birth and throughout early childhood. Once a male child internalizes his mother’s lunacy, he takes it to an aggressive level. Whereas most females are passively aggressive and violent (using words to put-down, slander and criticize and emotional manipulation, to control), they give birth to males who are overtly violent and engage in murder as a way of life with their war games.

Males are a direct reflection of their mothers. If the mother is fearful, then her son becomes her protector. If she is needy then he becomes her provider. With lunacy this is taken to extremes. So he is not just her protector, he sets up elaborate military schemes to protect her. He is not just her provider; he sets up elaborate exploitative schemes to provide for her.

Growing up with mother’s who are ignorant of the feminine principle, has forced males to look to nature for their identity. Out of sync with the masculine principle, males looked to animals for a definition and function of manhood.

They began to imitate male animals (primarily wolves) “pecking order.” From a human perspective taking on an animalistic nature created a violent social structure, which is the means by which males have been able to express violence against each other, females and nature. Males have reveled in their “pecking order” and continue to operate from the lower reptilian brain (fight or flight) as a means of addressing problems and supposedly establishing order. It must be understood that Man (male/female) is not an animal, and must rise above the animal nature if true peace and justice are to be established. Man is a Spirit Being having a human experience in a physical (vehicle) body, and only as spirit can true equality between the sexes be achieved, and an end to all war.

In that males fear the toxic emotions of females and dismiss emotions as unimportant, they are ignorant of the power inherent in emotions, thus susceptible to emotional manipulation, blackmail and programming. They are also incapable of controlling the rage, anger, hate and violence that unaddressed emotions cause.

The heart rules emotions and when ignored the emotion of fear takes dominance, throwing people into the lower brain “flight or fight” syndrome. This overtaxing of the heart causes heart disease to be the #1 killer. The heart naturally operates from the emotion of Love and is capable of integrating any eventuality. Emotions cannot be ignored; they must be understood, purified and mastered, if one is to attain a state of peace of mind.

When toxic emotions are allowed to drive the body, a state of lunacy exists. Thus if a person finds themselves feeling jealous towards another, if they don’t have a strategy for eliminating jealousy they will eventually do something to injure the other person whether by word or deed. We can see the same dynamic when a person is stuck in anger without any control mechanism for eliminating it. Grief is similar as a person can grieve for years. The same is true of all emotions except love, for love and its derivatives (joy, peace, etc.) finds a way to be constructive.

The moon represents the unconscious, the dark side of ones personality. It is hidden and has to be consciously explored with the light of the sun, the personality. Unexplored this shadow self wrecks havoc in the lives of people. Within every female is a shadow male, and within every male is a shadow female. The shadow male in females is that part of her that gives power to a submerged ego and passive violence. This ego is acted out in the world via her sons and the men in her life in overt violence. The males shadow is the female and she is usually disempowered. She is the unconscious aspect of 404

him that becomes emotional and uncontrollable. He gives no power to the female aspect of self, so she constantly seeks recognition through manipulation, control, trickery and emotional displays. These two aspects are formed in childhood.

When mothers are not conscious of themselves they feed their children both her male and female, their fears, lies, hates and negativity. She gives privileges and rewards to her son, in order to gain favor with the father and the male societal structure and ignores her daughters. In some societies even today, female babies are not valued and thus killed, as only males are acceptable. The female automatically demonizes males as evil, due to her inability to see her shadow self and recognize her contribution to its creation. Males do likewise and go around with a dreaded fear of females. Carl Jung writes, “Projecting the shadow onto some other ‘strengthens the opponent’s position in the most effective way, because the projection carries the fear which we involuntarily and secretly feel for our own evil over to the other side and considerably increases the formidableness of his threat.” Paul Levy elaborates on this by saying, “The nature of this world is such that if we project out our own darkness, the world will shape-shift and provide convincing evidence that the evil really does exist out there, which simply confirms to us our delusion in a never-ending, self-generating feedback loop.”

William Sloane Coffin in Letters to a Young Doubter (Westminster John Knox, 2005), states, “Self-righteousness blocks our capacity for self-criticism, destroys humility and undermines the sense of oneness that should bind us all, thus coming to understand that our smug certainty that our way is the right and only way and others are just evil, feeds our disconnectedness. As Jung has said, “Whatever is wrong with the world is in us.”

Of recent with the rise of single family homes ruled by mothers, a new aberration has taken form. For the first time females have gained dominance over male children in the home, void of any male interaction. This extends from the home, to the day care to the first five years of early education. Female dominance has thus created a feminine type male who is overly emotional and imbalanced. He suffers from an identity crisis, and is filled with rage, anger and hostility as a result of his upbringing. These males become fodder for the penal institute, because they unconsciously seek male bonding, and the prisons provide this. In fact the first male with power, force and the ability to punish these young males is usually the police. Up until there first encounter with the police they are strictly under the dominance of females. When they have this encounter with the police, it resonates with them and there is a symbiotic bond created that unconsciously provides them with the first discipline from a male, causing them to continue to break the law to reenact this needed male interaction.

Then with repeated offences, jail and prison are the consequences and in this male bonding becomes a welcome experience, causing repeat offences and a life of recidivism. This bonding can further be seen in the mannerisms of males who are not confined in the penal system as the prison sub-culture dominates their dress (low hanging pants), language, music and interactions with others.

Females by and large have been a slave class and have never asserted individual and collective free will and first class decision making ability. There have been some females who have done this like Victoria Woodhull, who was the first female to run for president of the United States. She said, “While other of my sex devoted themselves to a crusade against the laws that shackle the woman of our country, I asserted my individual independence”. Others have asserted their right as females to person hood, however the masses have chosen to continue to play the game of male dominance. Game because no son can ever enslave or exploit his mother, except she gives him permission and a means by which to do so.

Today’s rap musicians, like to refer to females in their music as bit_hes and whores. In this they are including their mothers and all females. What they call bit_hes and whores as a societal colloquialism, we scientifically refer to as lunatics. They are attempting to portray the madness and insanity in females and the only words within the common language system are derogatory. Lunacy however is an illness that can be cured. To address any problem, the cause ascertained can aide in creating a cure. As developing humans our aim should be to find our way back to original wholeness thus/oneness. The influence of mass media with its images designed to exploit, manipulate and control has pretty much created ideals to which we seek to emulate. These must be discarded if we are to obtain our goal.

For a long time males have fed and developed their physical prowess, strength and intellectual ability, at the same time they have ignored, suppressed and discouraged the development of the emotional and intuitive nature, which is usually referred to as a feminine nature.

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Females have not developed there emotional stability or intuitive abilities, because these have not been acceptable in the “male dominant society.” Nor have they developed their intellectual capacity, prowess or strength, although an attempt has been made to develop the latter in order to compete with males in the market place, thus for the wrong reason.

Females have basically been developing emotional instability, and their ability to manipulate, whine, complain, act offended, point fingers at others and shirk responsibility. The effect of this is a deterioration of humanity as a whole.

Individuals thus exist in a state of illness and imbalance. In addition disharmony is engendered between the sexes creating a burden of guilt and inadequacy. This plays out in the society in the technical advancement and overemphasis on science and intellect in the world, with a corresponding neglect of emotional stability and soul quality. War, revolution, exploitation, destruction of the environment and dysfunctional families are the obvious results. Both sides of the human personality have to be equally developed and understood, in order to establish peace and justice on this earth plane.

Lunatics have taken over the world as they have fully imbued this illness in males and females alike. It has become the gauge of normalcy. Now males act like lunatic bit_hes, complaining, manipulating, whining, shirking responsibility and basically being imbalanced.

Likewise, the first and primary choice of every female is whether to achieve or avoid conception when having sex. This is a choice born of self-knowledge and is both responsible and liberating. This is the choice of primary thinkers. Females being mis-educated and relegated to a position of second class status, habitually react at a secondary level to life happening, as part of their unhealed programming, conditioning and toxic emotions. So it is with the choice of procreation. Females would rather squabble about choice after conception and waste time, energy and resources, rather than take the time to learn how their bodies work in order to make a primary choice. Females need to heal themselves and become equipped to make their first choice and then secondary choices become obsolete. Pre-Conception Choice Education and Fertility Literacy guarantee this.

The LunaQueen System is designed to teach both males and females how the reproductive system and the emotions work and can be used as an empowerment tool. Through this system societies will be able to end the wars of the sexes, religion and nations. Through this process the heart can be opened and take its rightful place as ruler and generator of pure emotions. This system is designed to impact females in such away that they are able to transmit the highest attributes to their children by planning them with a conscious mate, maintaining the highest thoughts during conception and pregnancy and raising them in a stable, healthy environment with all the love, nurturing and protection that they need. We propose that the end result will be a civilized society and a world that is based on the principles of civility.

Thus lunatics will become LunaQueen’s and create peace on earth, goodwill towards all mankind.

—Myeka

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Lunatic

LunaQueen

Attempts to fit into an alien solar frequency. (Gregorian calendar).

Unconscious of lunar frequency.

Expresses toxic emotions (fear, spite, guilt, hate, lust, envy, greed, jealousy, covetousness, irrationality, etc) Believes that males are superior to females and subjugates them self to them. The Curse: “And your desire shall be for

Understands and operates from the lunar/solar frequency (Lunar calendar) Conscious of lunar frequency Express healthy emotions (love, truth, peace, justice, compassion, understanding, joy, helpfulness) Recognizes that males are birthed from females who are their first teachers, and thus can never be superior to a your husband and he shall rule over you.” Genesis 3:16 female only equal to.

Supports and promotes the pecking order of bullying (the Recognizes that MAN (female/male) are not animals, but alpha male/female, based on imitating animal relationships), humans with the capacity to govern the self as sovereign causing them to operate for the lower reptilian brain. being, respecting the Divinity of all and living in peaceful co-existence with others and in harmony with nature.

Sees people as sex objects to be manipulated, exploited, Sees people as brothers and sisters, prayer mates, potential tricked and violated. mates, co-workers, friends.

Uses sex for recreational and violent purposes.

Uses sex for procreation, healing, creation and spiritual upliftment (Tantra and Taoist Sexual practices) .

Sees people as enemies and invests in war games & prisons. Sees enemies as ignorance and illness and invests in healing (clinics) and real education (schools).

Invests in toys and physical objects to show-off.

Invests in tools that heal, educate and meet primary needs.

Lacks self-knowledge.

Seeks and attains self-knowledge.

Haphazardly gets pregnant.

Engages in conscious conception.

Prostitutes self and body for food, clothing, shelter, etc.

Knows purpose for being and develops ministry, career and institutions to fulfill it.

Communicates to achieve clarity, understanding and Lacks communication skills. Speaks in terms of ought, agreements. Speaks in terms of what is and what can be should, could, didn’t (dead language of past). done about it. (present tense language).

Puts others down to feel adequate Encourages other to excel.

Fault finder Seeks the good in every situation and experiences.

Low self-esteem High self-esteem.

Judges people by physical markers (skin color, age, material Judges people by the content of their character. “I want to possessions, educational achievements, gender, fame, etc.) live in a world where people are not judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” M. L. King, Jr. Finds solace in physical things.

Realizes Spiritual Being ness and use of material things.

Gives birth to and raise pimps, murderers, rapist, liars, Gives birth to and raises people who are peace makers, slaves, thieves, sexual perverts, haters, terrorists, prison just, creative, loving, truthful, service oriented, healthy inmates… and harmonious with nature.

Hates, competes and seeks to conquer males/females.

Cooperates with others.

Seeks to control others, while having no self-control.

Focuses energy on knowing and controlling self.

Ignores, excuses and blames others for mistakes.

Acknowledges and corrects errors.

Lacks self-control and discipline and thus must be controlled Has self-discipline and self-control. by others.

Devalues the institution of home. Lacks home making skills. Values and invests in home development.

Seeks to survive.

Seeks to live life abundantly.

Invests in derogatory music, art and one-side media.

Invests in healthy music, art and unbiased media.

Beats, curses and hollers at children in a re-enactment of Learns nonviolent child development and heals toxic slavery. emotions, in order to rationally relate to children.

Realizes that a person has to create one successful Gives credence to males with low self-esteem having relationship before they can even contemplate or consider multiple wives for self-gratification and ego.

COPYRIGHT 2006 Myeka myekamyeka@hotmail.com

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Excerpted from, LunaQueen, The Journey From Lunatic To LunaQueen, by Myeka

FERTILITY LITERACY QUIZ 1. A female is capable of getting pregnant for ____ days out of a monthly moon cycle?

6 1 63 6 28 6 14 6 7-8 6Other _____ 6 I don’t know, I just guessed 2. A males sperm can live inside a female for only _____ day/s.

6 2 6 4 6 28 6 14 6 6 6 8 6 Other _____ 6 I don’t know, I just guessed 3. Females ovulate for ___day/s?

6 1 6 4 6 28 6 14 6 7-8 6 Other _____ 6 I don’t know, I just guessed 4. The normal length of a females monthly moon cycle is ____?

6 2 6 4 6 28 6 14 6 6 6 8 6 Other _____ 6 I don’t know, I just guessed 5. Fertility awareness has a ___ user effectiveness rating. 650% 698% 675% 6. Testosterone is a female hormone that determines fertility? 6True 6False 7. A female can get pregnant anytime she has sex. 6True 6False 8. Cervical mucus can be an indicator of high fertility days. 6True 6False 9. It is wiser to choose when to get pregnant, than what to do after conception has occurred. 6True 6False 10. Fertility literacy will allow females/males to know via natural body awarenss when a female is fertile and thus capable of conception. 6True 6False 11. I need to invest in fertility literacy education for myself and others? 6True 6False If you answered true to number 11, please choose your involvement method/s.

12. I would like to attend a free workshop on fertility literacy.

13. Set-up a workshop or seminar to expose females to this process for knowing themselves.

14. I found value in taking this quiz. 6True 6False Research Sponsored By

SHE Liberation Ministry About you: Date ______________ Name (optional) ____________________________________________ Address (optional) __________________________________________ City/State/Zip ______________________________________________ Female Male

Age ______ DOB (optional) ________________

Race/Religion/ Ethnicity/Nationality _____________________________

SCORE

Occupation _______________ Last Grade Completed _________ Email (optional) _______________________________________

# Correct _______ # Incorrect _____ 1.

Would you like to know your score? Yes No (Complete an online quiz at: When you complete the “About you” section and mail it to us with a self-addressed postcard and $2, you will be entered in a contest to attend a one week Fertility Awareness Education Camp, conducted by Myeka, in the summer of 2012. All expenses paid. There will be thirteen winners. Send to: 652 E. 89th Place, Chicago, IL 60619

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2.

3.

MOTHERHOOD THE KEY TO CIVILIZATION Motherhood is the fertile ground in which souls are planted into the world. As seedlings planted at the moment of conception, the soul begins its life on earth. The soul of the incoming spirit is believed to hover around the mother’s body until the moment of first breath when it enters its newly formed body. Prior to birth, the new soul learns to live in the environment of its parents, as the body it will inherit at birth gestates within the mother. The soul learns the language, the religion, the limitations, beliefs, fears and expressions of its newfound family. The soul learns about the family and their characteristics and molds itself to be acceptable upon birth. The influence the mother plays in the molding of the new soul is inestimable. The new soul molds itself to her emotionally, accepting her loves, fears, lusts, beliefs and her basic way of living life.

Mothers are the purveyors of culture, and when they lack self-knowledge they engender a culture of fear and lack. You can not love what you don't know. So the unknown creates fear of self, and not knowing the self, causes a person to be incapable of knowing anything else whether another person, experience, environment, cycle, purpose, function or Source. As an unknown factor (the self), the external world becomes a threat and the heart closes, causing the brain to kick in as the secondary ruler that is only capable of reacting from a fear based fight and flight ancient programming.

This leads to aggression, war, murder, conflict, chaos, exploitation, slavery, scarcity, physical, mental, emotional and spiritual abuse, decadence, disease and death. In addition only approximations, superstitions, false religions and prejudices are possible. Without self-knowledge a female does not know how to open her heart.

Both males and females are influenced by their mothers. The mother model determines the failure or success of a person, family or a nation. Our present mother model reflects a weak, silly, ignorant, fearful and passively violent female.

From this model evolves all the problems inherent in our present society. Whereas females often blame males for war and violence, the truth is that females foster this in their sons. Her fear makes him seek to protect her. Her silliness makes him not take her or other females serious. Her weakness makes him abusive to her and other women. Her ignorance makes him egotistical, because of the lack of wisdom. Her passive aggressiveness makes him overtly violent.

These traits are passed on unconsciously in the womb and early childhood. Neither the mother nor the son are aware of this because it has become the norm for her to act fearful, silly, weak, ignorant and passively aggressive.

Mothers cannot escape the responsibility they have. As mothers we are supremely responsible for the character development of their offspring. We shape and mold them beginning at conception and in the womb. Our loves become their love, our fear, our truths, our lies become theirs. Our children are like clay that we mold.

We must heal ourselves and forgive ourselves. Healing is primary because we have endured 12,000 years of violence and playing small. We have been traumatized into thinking that we are powerless, have no intrinsic value except as sex objects and that we must hate each other, be jealous and competitive with each other and somehow conquer males, and ruin our children by making them like ourselves. In this we have lost out basic humanity, become incapable of authentic sisterhood, engaged in a war with males and perverted the Divine Purpose of our children.

We must start by purging our emotional toxicity that take the form of fear, hate, greed, lust, jealousy, envy, covetousness, guilt, shame, lies, etc. Once we heal we will learn to know ourselves, begin to open our hearts, let love flow and then align ourselves with self-kind (other females) to initiate, develop, maintain and administrate institutions that provide healing, support, education and the preparation of future mothers. Finally, we will be able to end the war of the sexes and establish a peaceful co-existence here on earth.

Motherhood, is such a vital and viable state. Its relevance is beyond measure, it is truly incalculable. The most important investment any nation can make is in the development of future mother. The most important work any female can ever do is to prepare for and engage in the art and science of mothering. The most important work any male can do is to honor and uplift motherhood. Mothering is the oldest profession and the most revered among civilized societies. All civilized people realize the value of the mothering aspect of life and invest heavily in the conscious development of females, for in this the nation becomes strong.

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WHY 21ST CENTURY EARLY AMERICA IS NOT A CIVILIZATION? ● The people are not civil or self-governing evidenced by prisons, jails and other forms of punishment. ● People do not consciously plan conception. ● People interact with nature in a disruptive, violent manner. ● Racism exists in individuals and institutions, thus people are intolerant of differences. ● A majority of people suffer from an identity crisis. ● People are not committed to their health and thus experience a nationwide health crisis. ● People are not interacting with nature in a meaningful productive manner as individuals, families and groups. ● Systems are not in place at the community and local levels to solve problems. ● Illiteracy, poverty, hunger, and pre-mature death are major problems. ● Youth are careless with their lives and uninstructed by caring adults. ● Egotism looms large because individuals do not know themselves. ● Children do not honor and respect adults. ● The society does not value motherhood. ● The society does not value the elderly. ● Large conglomerates and corporations operate with immunity in the destruction of people, plants, animals, water, air and other natural resources. ● Individuals and groups do not recycle waste in harmony with natural systems. ● People drink the water they defecate and urinate in. ● Adults exploit children sexually, thus children are not protected. ● Major institutions are financed through gambling and schemes of various kinds. ● Women sell themselves to gain the basics of life, food, clothing and shelter. ● Individuals and groups are enslaved within, and thus seek to control others. ● Natural resources are not justly distributed amongst people. ● People are devalued and sent to jails and prisons to waste away because the society has not developed a means for rehabilitating and healing those who are not civil. ● The educational system is not constructed to assist people in giving their gifts to the world, but are designed to exploit people by directing them to jobs that are unfulfilling in order to make money. ● There are no methods employed to pinpoint the unique talents and gifts of people at birth. ● People are satiated with religions that enforce following others without thought. ● People are not taught how to think, examine and solve problems. ● Sons and daughters hate their mothers and fathers. ● Incestuous relations are commonplace but hidden. ● The masses are sexually immature, putting more emphasis on sex than is necessary. ● Marriages are built on false premises like sexual attraction, classism, racism, sexism, and economic status. ● Females are not self-defining, autonomous beings who can take care of and provide for themselves, thus they seek to exploit males in intimate relationships. ● Individuals are more concerned about animals than people. ● Marriage is not based on principle but economics, gender issues, ownership and insecurity.

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MOTHER MODELS Mothers are the architectects of a society, and a society that devalues motherhood or females is a decadent society by virtue of its genesis.

Mothers are the purveyors of culture, thus if the society is a slave culture (master/slave) then she will perpetrate the tenets of slavery via her offspring.

“No man or nation can rise higher than the consciousness Violent

Nonviolent

Enslaved Dysfunctional Co-dependent Powerless

Free Functional Co-creative Empowering

abrasive abusive addictive allows children to violate others arrogant bitches blamers caring towards immediate family and friends competes with males conniving controlling critical cruel deceivers decision maker devalued disconnected from the earth dishonest dishonored dis-respected emotionally toxic (fear, hate, anger, lust, etc.) forms sister hoods to foster greed greedy has no voice and had no vote hates self-kind haughty head of family heartless helpless home wreckers ignorant industrious

irresponsible judgmental lacks self-knowledge liars lives in a fantasy world low self-esteem lunatic makes minor decisions man-hater Mis-understood non-communicative non-nurturing not bonded to children out of control phony scornful seeks identity from males selfish sexually frustrated sexually perverted silly sluts spiteful strong superstitious uncaring unconscious of body unprotected weak willed whores wishy washy

Transforming our world is based on becoming conscious of our mother model. We must recognize the mother model that shaped our emotions, beliefs and thoughts. Becoming conscious of our mother model allows us to see our limitations.

“The woman is the foundation on which nations are built. She is the heart of her nation. If that heart is weak, the people are weak. If her heart is strong and her mind is clear, then the nation is strong and knows its purpose. The woman is the center of everything.”

Art Solomon (Ojibwe), For the People: Teachings 411

Bonded through breastfeeding Caring towards all people Connected Creative Connected to the earth Emotionallly balanced Formed sisterhoods to air differences and create institutions Gave birth to long lasting stable civilizations Helpful Her own person High self-esteem Honored Industrious Loving Nurturing Protected Respected Strong Valued

If a mother has unresolved conflicts, her children will inherit aspects of this. If a mother is the victim of slavery, her children will inevitably inherit her slave essence and mannerisms. If she is the victim of rape or incest, she will past this unresolved issue to her offspring and her sexual mannerisms which are fear and anxiety based to her children. If a mother has been beaten or experiences domestic violence, her children will receive aspects of her unresolved abuse to have to work out in their lifetime.

The prenatal stage requires at least as much attention as postnatal development. Humanity's future depends upon the education of children. And this education must begin from the moment of conception in the baby's first classroom. The expectant mother is her child's principal instructor even before the baby leaves the womb.

A child learns and recalls even what is heard while in the womb. The most important education for the child are the impressions created in the womb (womb impressions). According to ancient scriptures and modern day scientific research, the fetus registers everything that the mother goes through -- mental, emotional, physical, etc. It registers everything in the form of impressions that form the basis of life. The fetus registers what makes the mother happy and what brings her unhappiness.

True education is character building that begins with conception and continues throughout pregnancy. Once out of the womb, the child learns about concrete concepts and experiences. However, the foundation of human character is laid in the womb, through the pregnancy tenure. —Elizabeth Carman,Ph.D. and Neil J. Carman, Ph.D.

What mother model created these males and who do they represent?

Fearless, warriors, kind, loving, caring, respectfull of females, nurturing, gentle spirit, intelligent, rational, just, visionary, warm hearted, cooperative, shares decision making with females, nurturing to children.. _________________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________________ Fearsome, warlike, cruel, barbaric, uncivilized, conquerors, unjust, unkind, exploiters of people, animals and nature, destructive, unreasonable, blood spillers, ruthless, greedy, selfish, competitive, liars, schemers, plotters, guilt ridden, unmerciful, rapist, sexual perverts, controlling, homosexuals, heartless, enslaved to things, can only create an economy based on slave labor and exploitation, originators of the pecking order, hates women, hates self. _________________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________________ Fearful, enslaved, kind hearted, angry, burdened, injured, gentle spirits, charming, unconscious, liars, imitative, competitive, selfish, word has no value, greedy, exploiters of women, non-communicative, drug users, drunks, noncreative, studs, enslaved to things, disconnected from Source, lives in the past, uncooperative, no economy, no definition of functional manhood. _________________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________________

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SELF-AWARENESS STUDY The following chart lists common characteristics. You can use this chart to identify traits you received from your parents. Just put a M for mother or F for father on the line next to the trait. Get a friend to rate you and compare the traits you noted for your parents. It is important to be conscious of what you receive for others. This way you can make a choice a to whether you are being empowered or otherwise.

__ Abandoned you __ Abrupt __ Abusive __ Accused __ Addicted to gurus __ Addicted to psychics __ Addicted to therapies __ Adventurous __ Afraid to speak in groups __ Aggressive __ Always in hurry __ Always questioned __ Amateur __ Ambitious __ Ambivalent __ Analytical __ Angry __ Animal lover __ Annoying habits __ Anti-social __ Anxious __ Argumentative __ Artistic __ Assumed others guilt __ Assumed values shared by others __ Attention addict __ Automatic __ Avoided confrontation __ Avoided risk __ Bad memory __ Batterer __ Beautiful __ Bit nails __ Bitter __ Blamed others __ Bored __ Boring __ Bossy __ Braggart __ Brave/fearless __ Bullied __ Careless __ Castrated __ Catty __ Challenging __ Charming __ Championed silly or hopeless causes __ Chattered __ Cheated __ Child like __ Claustrophobic __ Clean __ Clinging __ Clumsy 413

__ Coke addict __ Cold __ Communicative __ Complained __ Compulsive achiever __ Compulsive clean __ Compulsive emotional exhibitionist __ Compulsive monogamy __ Computer addict __ Conceited __ Concerned __ Confident __ Confused __ Conventional __ Cop-out __ Couldn't concentrate __ Courteous __ Coward __ Cowardliness hidden by a mask of wisdom __ Crazy __ Creative __ Critical __ Cruel __ Cunning __ Cursed frequently __ Cynical __ Daring __ Defiant __ Demanded attention __ Demanded love all the time __ Demonic possession __ Dependent __ Depressed __ Despaired __ Destructive __ Detached emotionally __ Determined __ Did sex as duty __ Didn’t apologize __ Didn't enjoy sex __ Diligent __ Diplomatic __ Dirty __ Discreet __ Disappointed in kids __ Disappointed in mate __ Disciplined __ Discouraged __ Disdainful __ Diseased __ Disorganized __ Disrespectful __ Distant

__ Distrusted __ Divisive __ Dogmatic __ Dominated __ Dominating __ Dominates conversation __ Dramatic __ Drug abuse (prescription) __ Drug abuser ________ __ Drunk __ Eccentric __ Economical __ Egotistical __ Elegant __ Energy drain __ Escaped in sleep __ Exhibitionist __ Explained and excused self or others __ Explosive temper __ Extreme __ Extrovert __ Faithful __ False charm __ Fanatic __ Farted __ Fat __ Fault finder __ Feared bugs __ Feared height __ Feared others judgments __ Feared others religions __ Feared rejection __ Feared solitude __ Fearful __ Felt inferior __ Freedom loving __ Free spoken __ Fickle minded __ Flirtatious __ Foolish __ Food faddist __ Forceful __ Forgetful __ Friendly __ Frigid __ Frustrated sexually __ Funny __ Fussy __ Gave double messages __ Gave then withdrew love __ Generalized __ Generous __ Glutton __ Good cook

__ Gossipy __ Great with children __ Greedy __ Grudging __ Gruff __ Grumpy __ Guilty __ Guilty about __________ __ Gullible __ Had to earn everything __ Hardworking __ Harsh __ Hated being hugged __ Hated body __ Hated self __ Helpful __ Hermit __ Heroin addict __ Hero-worshiper __ Hid behind humor __ Hid sexuality __ High self-esteem __ Honest __ Humorous __ Hurt animals __ Hypersensitive to criticism __ Hypocrite __ Impartial __ Impatient __ Impotent __ Inarticulate __ Inattentive __ Incompetent __ Indecisive __ independent __ Indifferent __ Indignant __ Indiscriminate __ Industrious __ Inflexible __ Insecure __ Insensitive __ Insomniac __ Intelligent __ Interfering __ Intense __ Introvert __ Intuitive __ Invalidated others __ Irrational __ Irritable __ Jealous __ Jovial __ Joyless __ Judged me for _______ __ Judgmental

__ Judicious __ Killed spontaneity __ Lacked humor __ Lazy __ Lied __ Lived fantasy __ Lived for afterlife __ Lived through others __ Loner __ Logical __ Love of freedom __ Loving __ Low self-esteem __ Loyal __ Lust-dominated __ Machine-like __ Made points citing allies __ Magnetic __ Manipulator __ Marijuana Smoker __ Martyr __ Masochistic __ Matchmaker __ Materialist __ Meek __ Messy __ Meticulous __ Mild mannered __ Miserly __ Mocked __ Mood swinger __ Moralistic __ Musical __ Nagged __ Narcissistic __ Nasty to others __ Need to be right __ Negative __ Neglectful __ Nervous __ Never satisfied __ Non apologetic __ Non-supportive __ Nosey __ Not affectionate __ Not assertive __ Not good at many things __ Not smart __ Nutrition wise __ Obsequious __ Obsessed with duty __ Obsessed with fashion __ Obsessive animal lover __ Odd __ Offensive __ One-of-a-kind __ Only child __ Outgoing __ Over dramatic __ Over emotional __ Overprotected __ Over reactive 414

__ Pacified __ Paranoid __ Patient __ Peaceful __ Perfectionist __ Petty __ Philosophical __ Phony __ Pig-headed __ Planned obsessively __ Plastic __ Played favorites __ Polygamous __ Pompous __ Poor cook __ Possessive __ Practical __ Preached __ Prejudiced __ Pretends everything okay __ Prissy __ Procrastinated __ Project feelings on others __ Promiscuous, swinger __ Proselytized __ Possessive __ Protective __ Provoked violence __ Power hungry __ Prude __ Pseudo-intellectual __ Punitive __ Puritanical __ Pushed __ Put children down __ Put self down __ Put up a front __ Quarrelsome __ Racist __ Rage __ Rational __ Rationalizes __ Rebel __ Receptive __ Reformist __ Refused help __ Rehearsed __ Rejected __ Rejects people and ideas for being different __ Reliable __ Religious __ Repressed sex __ Resents motherhood __ Resentful __ Retreated __ Revolutionary __ Reward/punish with sex __ Rigid __ Romantic __ Sadistic __ Said yes when meant no

__ Sanctimonious __ Sarcastic __ Saw sex as exploitation __ Scared of bugs __ Scared of dogs __ Scared of people __ Scared of snakes __ Scared you __ Secretive __ Security loving __ Self-centered __ Selfish __ Sensuous __ Sex offender __ Sexist __ Sexy __ Sexual or body shame __ Sexually conceited __ Sexually healthy __ Shamed others __ Short-tempered __ Shrewd __ Shrieked, yelled __ Silent __ Sloppy __ Smelly __ Smiled to hide hurt __ Smothered anger under smile __ Snob __ Sought approval __ Spoiled __ Spooky __ Sputtered __ Stiff __ Stingy __ Stopped joy __ Straightforward __ Strict __ Strong sense of family __ Stubborn __ Stuttered __ Subservient __ Suggestible __ Superficial __ Superstitious __ Suppressed anger __ Suspicious __ Sympathetic __ Tactless __ Tactful __ Tattled __ Teased __ Thought for others __ Thought sex vulgar __ Threatened __ Threatening __ Timid __ Too ambitious __ Too competitive __ Too helpful __ Too intellectual

__ Too loud __ Too permissive __ Too proud __ Too quiet __ Too sexually aggressive __ Too skinny __ Treacherous __ Tried to make things alright __ Trustworthy __ TV addict __ Two-faced __ Ugly_____________ __ Unable to discuss sex __ Unable to empathize __ Unable to take action __ Uncaring __ Unclear __ Uncomfortable being a man __ Uncomfortable being a woman __ Undermined __ Undermining __ Understanding __ Unemotional __ Unique __ Unloving __ Unrealistic __ Unreliable __ Untouchable __ Untrustworthy __ Vacillated __ Vague __ Vain __ Vengeful __ Vulgar __ Warmhearted __ Weird __ Whined __ Witchy __ Wise __ Wishy washy __ Withdrawn __ Withheld encouragement __ Witty __ Womanizer __ Workaholic __ Work ethic __ Worried __ Wouldn't ask help __ Youthful _________________________ _________________________ _________________________ _________________________ _________________________ _________________________ _________________________

"Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you."

—Pericles, 430 B.C.

HOME DEVELOPMENT FOR NONVIOLENT CONSCIOUS LIVING Be your own palace, or the world is your jail.

John Donne , 1572-1632, British Metaphysical Poet

A home upgrade is essential for every citizen of the United States of America. Just as computers and computer operating systems are upgraded, so it is that mankind needs a home upgrade. It is like using the Windows 3x Operating System in 2009, when we need Windows 7. We are using a antiquated, dysfunctional home model at present, and we need to incorporate and upgrade to a home model that meets our present needs. A dysfunctional home model has been the legacy of our slave past. Slavery did not allow people to develop homes as institutions for the healthy evolution of the human soul. We gained our freedom, but maintained the old models and mindsets of our slave past. No free person would ever seek to enslave another, and yet we continue to this day to control everybody but ourselves. The slave home or household model usurps the consciousness (awareness) of the individual and inserts a group model that has to be mimicked by each individual, creating a controlled system that takes away personal responsibility thus canceling out the natural creative functions of the individual. In this model individuals become moons (with no light-life of their own) reflecting the light-life from the sun (dysfunctional society), when in essence each individual is a star unto themselves, with their own unique gifts, skills, talents, laws and boundaries which govern them in harmony with the laws of nature.

Each individual must thus be able to define themselves, delineate their boundaries and express their creativity in a manner that is enriching to their spirit.

As homo-sapiens, home is a necessity in the process of being rooted in nature. It provides a foundation upon which each individual can establish their Beingness in the 3 dimensional world. Thus a dysfunctional or slave model denies the reality of the individual as a force in nature, as individuals are corralled into group dynamics that eclipse their individual essence and essential nature.

Individual consciousness is a dynamic expressive need. Before a group orientation can be correctly engaged in, each individual must first know, express and be them self. Reality has corresponded to what we have believed to be true, and what has been given to us by our parents. Reality, however as we have known it is based on a dysfunctional model derived from people who sought to be masters of others while totally void of self-control. The outdated home model has within its very structure the seeds of personal and environmental irresponsibility. These include but are not limited to pollution of the air, water, greed as expressed in ponzi schemes and gambling, lust and its tirade expressions of sexual perversions, homosexuality, sexual abuse, ill-health—AIDS, Swine Flu, diabetes, heart disease, autism, criminal activity—murder, theft, assault, domestic violence, fear of change, social interactions, people, nature, dying and premature death.

“A house is not a home.”

Slavery gave us a slave quarter, shanty shack, house, domicile, shelter, cubby-hole model instead of a true home model.

What is a home?

Home is the most basic institutional need of individuals in a society of free people. Home is an institution that 415

facilitates the basic needs of individuals by providing shelter, food, clothing, tools, transportation, energy, communication and self-healthcare. All of these are the major industries within the construct of human existence as derived from nature. In a free society these are guaranteed rights, fostering the stewardship responsibility of each individual to maintain and protect the sanctity of nature.

Like the motherboard of a computer, our mother is the foundation of our life. All of our life is inter-connected to the reality of what she taught us consciously or unconsciously. Human life begins at conception and the womb is our incubator for nine months leading to our birth into physical reality and the in-breath of the Spirit making us living souls.

Mothering is best anchored in the home. Home is like a nest, a battery charger, a Haven Of Me Evolving. Home is the institution that grounds us at the physical level. It is a most necessary institution for the refinement, evolution and development of mankind. All homo-sapiens seek to establish a home in one form or another. Home, however is not just a physical construct, for a house is not a home. Home is where the heart is. Home is an invisible construct first of the mind. Home is the place where we anchor ourselves in nature so that we can experience heaven.

The home provides us with a rich environment for development and education. There are many skills that are developed when we take home development seriously. Following is a list of those skills.

Home Development Includes This is a partial list.

Self-knowledge Personal Responsibility Home Management Personal Care (such as dressing, bathing, toiletry) Hygiene/Cleanliness/Grooming Architecture & Interior Design Communication (speech, listening) Homemaking Skills (organizing, planning, time management, etc.)

Self-Health Care & First Aid/CPR Water Consumption Nutrition Food Growing Food Preparation Clothing Care, Selection, Sewing Recycling Conflict Resolution Emergency Preparedness Emotional Mastery & Well-being

Hobbies Sleeping/Rest/Relaxation Protection/Security Family Development Interpersonal Development Democratic Organization Relationship Development Fertility Literacy Marriage Conscious Conception

It is incumbent on us to claim the value of home and home making and teach it to our sons and daughters, as every homo sapien needs to create a home. Our personal lives will flourish and grow exponentially when we express gratitude, value and commitment to home. In fact home making is best seen as a adjunct to any career development as it is the foundation of our existence. Our home is the container for our life drive, our very essence. It is the anchor of our being and the cornerstone of our existence. It is our connection to the universe, our very foundation. —Myeka Excerpted From: LunaQueen, The Divinely Feminine Art of Nonviolent Home Development

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FERTILITY LITERACY Fertility Literacy is a process of internalizing and respecting the natural cycles, phases and patterns that occur within the female body.

Fertility Literacy provides females with the knowledge and skills they need to use fertility awareness methods for conscious conception and natural birth control.

Fertility Literacy means having the self-knowledge gained by learning to observe and scientifically chart proven signs of fertility and infertility, together with other health and wellness observations.

Fertility Literacy incorporates fertility awareness and more, including a broad base of knowledge from which females can make fully informed reproductive choices.

Fertility Literacy respects a females decision making, by empowering her with the knowledge needed to make an informed and primary choice about her sexual and reproductive health.

Fertility Literacy is the foundation of education for females. This foundation provides fertile ground for all subsequent learning to take root.

Fertility Literacy is learning to take the time to understand the language of fertility and its importance in our lives. It is the experience of a life long relationship with our bodies.

Fertility Literacy, ends the Environmental Estrogen Overload (EEO), that is creating havoc on the environment. As women consume estrogen from birth control pills, within 24 hours, the effluent from those doses ends up in our sewage systems.

Fertility Literacy and education for females go hand in hand. In fact reading, writing and math are best taught in relationship to a female learning about her fertility and reproductive systems and health. By developing curriculum for young females and adults that are based on basic human biology, females will have a practical education that is valid, meaningful, scientific and lasting.

Fertility Literacy education helps a female understand how she works, so that the skills and tools make sense and can be easily remembered, adapted, applied in different situations, and easily passed on to others.

Fertility Literacy is a prerequisite for self-knowledge and personal growth, for the use of all health care services, for the prevention of illness and unplanned conception.

Fertility Literacy provides females with a safe, effective, method for achieving or avoiding conception. It provides a choice that is both liberating and responsible.

Fertility Literacy is the choice of wise females, who know, love and control them self.

When a Nation loses its sense of the holiness of life in any aspect, and particularly in that of the maternal function, then that nation is in a moral decline. —The Spiritual Significance of Motherhood by Geoffrey Hodson http://www.tphta.ws/GH_SPSMO.HTM

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“Courage is the willingness to be afraid and act anyway.� —Anonymous

THE DEVELOPMENT OF A SHE CULTURE PHILOSOPHY: Females are designed by nature to operate on a lunar/solar frequency. For the last 6,000+ years, females have adapted solely to the solar (sun) frequency, represented by the Gregorian calendar, to the detriment of themselves and their children (both male and female). This has caused a lunatic or lunacy pathology that can only be eradicated when females gain sovereignty of their bodies and control over their fertility which is a basic right. When this is done females will make the primary choice of whether to achieve or avoid pregnancy and all secondary choices (abortion and unwanted children) will be relics of the Dark Ages.

THEOLOGY: In the King James version of the Bible, Eve (womankind) was cursed to have pain in childbirth and to desire her husband who would rule over her. Genesis 3. Curses are not forever. They only last until the cause is understood and the proper actions are taken to eliminate it. Pain comes from ignorance, so we must gain selfknowledge to eliminate it, and to desire someone, rather than to seek the Kingdom of God, which is self-knowledge, leads to enslavement and subjugation, and the creation of an Eve-ill world. We must remember that all men were raised by mothers who were born under the curse of ignorance and irresponsibility. The so-called superiority and dominance by males is nothing more than a myth created by females who abdicate self-responsibility and wallow in ignorance. The enemy is thus ignorance.

PATHOLOGY: We are drowning in a sea of lunacy passed on by generations of mothers who have remained ignorant of themselves, and thus developed a multitude of illnesses, both physical, emotional and mental. Lunacy is the lack of lunar consciousness (ignorance of the effects that the moon has on our bodies which are 80% water. As the moon affects the tides of the ocean it affects our body). This lunacy takes the form of the emotional plague or toxic emotions (fear, hate, lust, greed, avarice, selfishness, lying, etc.) and communications filled with negative attitudes and dispositions, charges and counter charges, blaming and judgment. Because an outside force controls us (sin), we are in sin, because in order to be free we must govern ourselves and make all outside forces serve our health, interest, rights and needs.

SOCIOLOGY: As females come to know themselves they will evolve a SHE Culture. No longer ruled by toxic emotions, the fear that has kept us separated from each other will allow us to come together as institutional developers. As such institutions that further the development of females and their children (both male and female) will evolve from the released spirit of creativity and union of self.

ECOLOGY: The ecology will prosper as females reconnect with Source and each other on an agenda of work and embrace and protect Mother Earth. Females will once again become responsible for food production. In this capacity food will be grown for health and nutrition and the profit motive that allowed for the destruction of the ecosystem will no longer be applicable. We will recognize the danger of genetically modified food and the use of chemicals in an attempt to control natures creatures and learn to control them through thought and consciousness.

PSYCHOLOGY: A culture of healing will evolve as females recognize that ignorance and illness are the only enemies to humankind and work to eliminate both by setting up clinics. Healing of the emotions and mind will allow us to avoid diseases of all types, in that they are the result of a weakened immune system. Once the stress of life are properly managed, this will be possible. In addition we will be able to eliminate all crime and all prisons as each person becomes a law unto themselves and engage in self-policing and self-government.

BIOLOGY: The value of home as an institution that houses the human being will allow each individual to create homes that provide for all of their essential biological needs. As a result of individuals evolving their homes, couples and families will be able to combine the specific aspects that fulfill each individual to create a meaningful existence.

The healthy exchanges of energy within the home will overflow into all institutions as the feminine and masculine principals are balanced and engaged in institutional development for the good of all.

ANTHROPOLOGY: As the pathology of mankind is eradicated, education will provide people with a context for extracting the unique gifts, skills and talents they were born with so that each individual can apply these to the evolution of mankind. No longer will students be imposed on by society, instead the society will thrive as students are equipped with healthy models, basic knowledge and nature which is the highest achievement of mankind), contin418

ues on her path of brain and conscious development. Remember the ability to speak is gained without formal education and is the highest achievement of mankind, and this takes place as a result of natures plan.

METHODOLOGY: LunaQueen, The Divinely Feminine Art of Using A Lunar Charting Calendar For SelfCare, The Key To Self-Knowledge, Self-Love, Self-Control and Personal Liberation, is designed to teach the basics of how to record the various changes that take place in the female body as she goes through a lunar cycle (28 days).

One must learn this unique charting system that operates like a score card for females, allowing them to master recording the four basic aspects of their Being, their spirit, mind, emotion and body in order to understand themselves, come to love the self and control the self. Control cannot be exercised over an unknown aspect. This charting system will allow a female to begin to recognize the individual patterns, phases and cycles generated by her body and thus allow her to begin to make future predictions, thus gaining control of herself and eventually her environment.

LunaQueen, The Journey From Lunatic To LunaQueen, is designed to prove the fact of lunacy in females and provide a systematic means for identifying ones particular lunacy characteristics. It also provides self-therapies that can be used to eliminate toxic emotions and other aspects of lunacy.

OUTCOME: Using a true lunar/solar calendar and other tools will allow females and their sons to regain the missing lunar consciousness (males are solar/lunar beings) and allow them to learn how to know themselves and gain the ability to govern themselves so that they don’t violate, self, others or the environment. Females will thus be free and give birth to free children who are capable of building a true civilization that is based on the pre-requisite of nonviolence, civility and principled living.

America need not fight anymore wars within her borders, what we need is to heal ourselves from the ravishes of slavery and develop a new contract that upholds, the dignity, worth, value, esteem and needs of all.

Healthy people engage in healthy activities and solve problems. With health will come the instituting of new institutions that protect the health, interest, rights and needs of all the people and create a surplus that can be shared with the world.

How do we heal? Where do we begin?

We begin by first recognizing that the problem exists and has never been addressed. The trauma of slavery is real and know therapeutic process has yet to be employed to uproot the hate, anger, fear, guilt, sadness, grief and shame of slavery and remove the mental shackles and the religious lies.

To eliminate the toxic emotions, we must diligently and courageously move from being simply physical beings as slavery delegated us to be making skin color the determination of worth and value. We must engage our emotions by tuning into them and seeking and utilizing healing modalities that address emotional healing, like EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), Clinical Hypnotherapy, TAT (Tapas Acupuncture Technique), RET (Rapid Eye Therapy and many others.

Once we eliminate the toxic emotions that we carry from slavery, we can then reclaim our minds and begin to think holistic thoughts that include everyone. We can do this by seeking and utilizing the above therapies and other energy modalities that sharpen our brain and eliminate the toxins that cloud our thoughts and cause us to violate our own definition and purpose and that of others. Once we have cleaned-up our emotions and our brain we can then address our bodies and begin to study ourselves and learn to control ourselves, because you can't control what you don't know. Once this is completed we will then have access to our Mind which is the governing force of the body, brain and emotions. Once this takes place we will then be able to address our spiritual self. In fact when we acknowledge that we are operating as 1/4th of a person and ask the important questions like: What am I? Who am I? What is my purpose for being on this earth at this time and in this place? How do I fulfill my needs without violating self or others? What are my unique gifts, skills and talents and how do I use them to secure food, clothing, shelter, communication, energy, tools and transportation? and Are their any non-physical, non-visual, non-touchable entities that can assist me to wake up and become all that I can possibly be, and if so HELP! This will ignite the spiritual aspect and free us from false religions crafted in slavery and designed in to keep us oppressed with a goal of going to heaven when you die, rather than establishing heaven right here on earth.. With your spirit, mind, emotion and body activated you will then be able to interact with space, energy, elements and motion to extract from nature what you need and interact with other whole beings to create new nonviolent institutions to advance your health, interest, rights and needs in keeping with the laws that govern intelligent life on the planet. A person must learn to trust themselves and the innate abilities that give them true power here on earth as they interact with nature.

As we come to know ourselves, we will begin to love ourselves, value ourselves and seek the very best for ourselves. We will gain high self-esteem and we will recognize the power we have as sovereign being to create and define our reality. It is at this point that we are ready to join with others in initiating, developing, maintaining and administrating our nonviolent institutions, for we have no need to express violence as we discover that we are Light and Love.

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"A nation is not lost as long as the women's hearts are still high. Only when the women's hearts are on the ground then all is finished, and the nation dies."

--- An old Native American proverb.

"Not till woman bursts the bonds of her sexual slavery, to which she has ever been subjected, will the world obtain an inkling of what she really is and of her proper place in the economy of Nature." —A Great Mahatma (The Paradoxes of the Highest Science, by Eliphas Levi, page 171)

Since ancient times, it has been known that the child in the womb adopts impressions from its surroundings and the behavior of its mother, and also starts learning things. This fact has now been confirmed by modem science. The health of the parents is directly responsible for the health of a child. Not only their physical health, but also their psychological and spiritual health affects the child in the womb. The surrounding environment, the food, the activities, in fact everything the mother is exposed to during pregnancy directly affects the child.

Dr. Bhate

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OUR BIRTH CHOICES How To Create A Peacemaker 1. Educate a female so that she has self-knowledge, thus self-control, self-love, self worth, self confidence and high self-esteem.

2. She will magnetize to her a male who will love, value, encourage and inspire her. He will be her perfect compliment.

3. These two will engage in Holy Matrimony.

4. The couple will pray and plan the conception of a "highly evolved soul" utilizing the LunaQueen Method.

5. Conception will occur at an auspicious time, under ideal conditions, as these two people make love.

6. The mother-to-be is loved, nurtured and treated like a queen throughout pregnancy.

7. The mother intakes highly nutritious food prior to conception, during pregnancy and throughout lactation (breast feeding) and an environment fit for a queen is created.

8. An ideal birth situation is constructed.

9. Upon birth the child is immediately given to its mother and nursed at her breast.

10. The child is loved and educated to bring forth its gifts, skills and talents to the world, supported, protected and taught to love self, others and nature.

YOU NOW HAVE A PEACEMAKER. How To Create A Liar, Terrorist, Murderer, Gang Banger, Exploiter, Rapist, and Sexual Deviant 1. Start with an ignorant (lacking self-knowledge) female.

2. Have sex with her preferably while intoxicated, drugged or ill, or rape her until she is pregnant.

3. Expose her to physical and verbal abuse and neglect her while she is pregnant.

4. Make sure she has inadequate nutrition.

5. Make her ashamed of the fact that she is pregnant and fill her mind with suggestions of getting rid of the growing fetus.

6. Create an unwelcome environment for her child to be born in.

7. Deprive the infant of its mother for one hour to one day directly after birth.

8. Let the mother raise the child and impose her fear, ignorance, grief, hate, sorrow and suffering on the child. If the child is a male, he will be a liar, terrorist, gang banger, prison inmate, murderer, rapist, or destroyer of the eco-system. He will inherit his mothers ignorance and take revenge on a world that would allow such conditions leading up to his conception, and birth to exist.

9. If the child is a female, you now have another violence breeder. Just repeat steps one through seven until you get a male.

YOU NOW HAVE A WARMONGER.

“No nation can rise higher than the consciousness of its mothers.�

Excerpt from: LunaQueen, The Journey From Lunatic To LunaQueen. Available at lulu.com

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SEVEN SYSTEMS OF PRAYERFUL LIVING PRAYER MY

DRIVE LOVE

SCIENCE RELATIONSHIP INSTITUTIONS SELF PHILOSOPHY/ INDIVIDUAL IDEOLOGY Know Thyself Making A Nation Spirit, Mind, Emotion, Body

Female/Male

Creator

will be done.”

‘It is my will that your

PRINCIPLE

THEOLOGY

CREATOR

Generator Organizer Director

ORDER

SOCIOLOGY

OTHER

PEOPLE

ENVIRONMENT

INDUSTRY/ BUSINESS

Thy kingdom come on earth Give me my daily bread

WORK

ECOLOGY

Earth, Air, Water, Trees, Sky, Animals, Minerals, Protoplasm

Agriculture (Food Farming), Construction,Tool Making, Textile (Clothes making), Energy Conservation, Communication, Transportation

CLINIC

Forgive me, as I forgive others their trespasses

HEALTH

PSYCHOLOGY

Psychological EMOTIONAL/ Counseling, Energy MENTAL Healing, Massage, MAINTENANCE Acupuncture, Iridology, Herbalism, Hypnosis, etc

HOME Health Care, Management, Diet, Matrimony, Intimacy. Nutrition, Tantra, Conception, Child Intercourse, Food, Touch, Hygiene, rearing, Relaxation, Clothing, Shelter Exercise,Entertain men, Hobbies, Enjoyment, Prosperity, etc

PHYSICAL NEEDS

Lead me not into temptation

LIFE

BIOLOGY

TEACHING/ SCHOOL Early Childhood Deliver me from LEARNING ANTHROPOLOGY evil KNOWLEDGE Career, Vocation, Education, PreSchool, Elementary, (Ignorance) Trade, Job High School, College, Trade School

© 2011 Helen L. Bevel Revised from James L. Bevel’s Six Institutional Prayer Process 422

FROM CO-DEPENDENCY TO CO-CREATIVITY As females continue to foster the unconscious and dark side of the moon, they reinforce in the external, physical world chaos, confusion, pain, suffering, lies, fear, hatred and a host of toxic emotions (lust, greed, fear, anger, hatred, etc.). In doing this we allow principalities to govern us, which leads to premature and agonizing death.

We are not these fleshly bodies. These bodies are simply a vehicle for our sojourn here on earth, the realm for conscious creation. We are spirit being who are here on a mission. It is thus our responsibility to know what our mission is and carry it out. In doing this we have to know ourselves and teach our children to know themselves. We can no longer afford to languish in ignorance. A new cosmic day is upon us and we must prepare to live fully in the moment to absorb the rich rays of the sun as it gives light to our true essence.

We are not reflections of any external influence, unless we lazily follow the path that has been laid before us by others.

Those who have failed to live up to the calling of freedom, justice, equality, prosperity, joy and the enlightened way, has experienced a past that has been strewn with a legacy of slavery, manipulation, abuse, ignorance, superstitions and fear.

We have failed as caretakers of the earth as disease, pollution of the air we breathe and the water we drink is rampant.

We have allowed the lungs of the earth our rainforests and tress worldwide to be decimated by greed and foolish planning by inept persons. A large part of our population languishes in prisons, a testament to the failure of our school systems and social system to prepare them to live rich, meaningful and fulfilling lives. We continue to prop up this very same system claiming that it is necessary for our education. Those who failed in this system did not fail in natures system in the first years of their life when they developed a language to express themselves. They did not have to go to school to learn to speak. Nature is thus a successful educator and has provided us with everything that we need at the appropriate time.

It is only when we turn ourselves over to others, whose interest is to exploit, manipulate and rob us of our birth right that we find failure in this world, as we become co-dependent in a illusionary world. Failure is inherent in a system of isms.

Capitalism, racism, sexism, classism, agism and egoism are diseases of an inferior class of people who do not know themselves and thus attempt to fill the void in their lives by enslaving others. We must declare a time out from these archaic replicas of the past.

The ability of mankind to live in the present, embracing the moment, in the now is upon us. The past is dead, and along with it the nightmare of the dark ages, if we choose to let it go. In the now, we must build a foundation on principles that assure us an eternal foundation of peace on earth and goodwill towards all. The key is self-knowledge, that knowledge that springs forth from within. It is the knowledge that aligns us with our true worth, value and esteem. It is the knowledge that is cultivated from within each individual self that when combined creates the external world that we all share and which allows us to develop co-creative relationships that allow us to prosper..

When we recognize that we are each complete universes and not moons that reflect someone else’s light (influence), we can then take the time to program and order our universe and thus our world, as collective expressions of principled living. This means that each of us must lay a foundation of principles within, so that we can reap the harvest of peace, joy, love, truth, friendship, prosperity and freedom in our external world.

Spirit man is Mind, the creative intelligence that is eternal. Trapped in physical bodies by forced and wage labor, we have simply forgotten who we are and thus our power to create a world that sustains us in the highest possible manner 423

has been lost. We must regain that which has been lost and live up to the true calling of man to establish peace, order, prosperity and joy on the earth. We the living, are here now on the earth with this mandate. Let us awaken from the Land of Nod (sleep), shake off the lethargy and recognize that our survival is based in our breath and creativity and labor not to support ourselves by menial jobs, but work to create a world that is fit for future generations of our seed to flourish and live abundant, fulfilling lives, by pooling our collective intelligence, gifts, skills, talents, time, resources and energy.

Let us be pioneers of a new way of living here on earth. A way that is just, loving, kind and principled. We have nothing to lose and so much to gain. To continue in the ways of our recent ancestors is to court disaster, failure, gloom, doom and destruction. Let us be brave advocates of self-exploration. For all we need is within us, waiting to be mined as valuable gold hidden from us only when we neglect to know the truth of our being.

LunaQueen, The Divinely Feminine Art of Using A Female Charting Calendar provides a means for self-exploration. It is a labor of love. Its value is inestimable during this time of stress, distress and lost in the lives of countless multitudes of people worldwide.

LunaQueen, The Divinely Feminine Art of Using A Female Charting Calendar, is a call to all females, mothers, future mothers and their sons to awaken to the truth of their being by examining themselves in the most scientific way and charting their findings so that patterns can be recognized that unknowningly control us, but known gives us great power to choose consciously how we will live our lives. Conscious choice is the way of the responsible female, she who would be master of herself.

LunaQueen, The Divinely Feminine Art of Using A Female Charting Calendar lays the foundation for a new way of living that is beneficial by facilitating the health, protecting the rights, fulfilling the needs and fostering the interest of individuals and the collective.

The Journey From Lunatic to LunaQueen provides a mirror for examining oneself and the ill formed attitudes, toxic emotions and false assumptions that females have pasted on from generation to generation through their enslavement. It provides self0theraupeutic methods for eradicating and freeing oneself from enslavement to things and illusions.

The LunaQueen System is a complete system that prepares females to use their powers intelligently and thus give up the haphazard manner of birthing, playing small and powerless. Both books, provides a peek into the dynamics of this system of conscious living. This book is avaialble for purchase online at http://lulu.com/myeka.

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VOICES OF THE SISTERHOOD The consciousness of African American females has shined through many who have achieved success in their chosen fields. This growth and development of consciousness was gained through great suffering and sacrifice and is reflected in the following quotes. We have arranged the quotes from youngest to oldest.

“Racism is a disease. It affects whites as well as blacks. It may even be a kind of mental illness. But the effect on black people is greater because we are the victims of it. The effect on whites is severe because it deforms their thinking and gives them a distorted picture of the world. But because the economics of racism isinarguably in their favor, most whites learn to live with it, even to deny it.”

—Sistah Souljah For me, it might sound cliché, but beauty really does start on the inside. It’s like a state of mind, a state of love if you will. Then wahatever you can do on the outside is all a bonus.”

—Queen Latifah “When a human being has purpose you can instill self-esteem and the self-esteem will ground you.”

“People are always telling you what you can and can’t do. Touch the power within you, and do you.

You are the power to change your life.”

—Jada Pickett Smith ”A Black child born today has less of a chance of being raised by both parents than a Black child born during slavery...This is due, in large part, to the mass incarceration of Black men.”

“More African American adults are under correctional control today in prison or jail, on probation or parole - than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began. In 2004, more Black men were disenfranchised than in 1870 - the year the 15th amendment was ratified, prohibiting laws that deny the right to vote explicitly on the bases of race.”

“We’ve got to… really build a movement, a grassroots movement, for the kind of reform that will dismantle the system of mass incarceration as a whole. I think the reality is that this entire system rests on a single belief which is that some folks, poor folks and poor folks of color especially, are disposable. They’re just not worthy of our care, compassion and concern. When we challenge that core belief, this whole system will fall like dominoes.”

—Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness “Beauty? Let me tell you something - being thought of as 'a beautiful woman' has spared me nothing in life. No heartache, no trouble. Love has been difficult. Beauty is essentially meaningless and it is always transitory. Beauty is not just physical.”

—Halle Berry “One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals.”

“We can make a commitment to promote vegetables and fruits and whole grains on every part of every menu...And we can help create a culture where our kids ask for healthy options instead of resisting them.”

“As a mom, I know it is my responsibility, and no one else's, to raise my kids. But we have to ask ourselves, what does it mean when so many parents are finding their best efforts undermined by an avalanche of advertisements aimed at our kids.”

—First Lady Michelle Obama “I’m convinced that we Black women possess a special indestructible strength that allows us to not only get down, but get up, to get through and to get over.”

—Janet Jackson "Parents need to be role models for children and instill in them the fact that exercise and healthy eating should be lifelong habits.”

—Florence Joyner “. . . what I am is a humanist before anything -- before I'm a Jew, before I'm black, before I'm a woman.

And my beliefs are for the human race -- they don't exclude anyone.”

—Whoppie Goldberg 425

“Don't let anyone rob you of your imagination, your creativity, or your curiosity. It's your place in the world; it's your life. Go on and do all you can with it, and make it the life you want to live.”

“Greatness can be captured in one word: lifestyle. Life is God's gift to you, style is what you make of it.”

—Dr. Mae Jemison “What God intended for you goes far beyond anything you can imagine.”

“Understand that the right to choose your own path is a sacred privilege.”

“In every aspect of our lives, we are always asking ourselves, “How am I of value?” What is my worth?

Yet I believe that worthiness is our birthright.”

Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever have enough.

—Oprah Winfrey “Challenges come so we can grow and be prepared for things we are not equipped to handle now. When we face our challenges with faith, prepared to learn, willing to make changes, and if necessary, to let go, we are demanding our power be turned on.”

“Everything that happens to you is a reflection of what you believe about yourself. We cannot outperform our level of self-esteem. We cannot draw to ourselves more than we think we are worth.”

"The only way to get what you really want is to let go of what you don't want."

—Iyanla Vanzant “You don’t have to see it to believe it..you have to believe it to see it.”

—Deborah Clark “Your attitude will determine your lifestyle. Protect your mind with all your heart through your prayers, your meditations and your affirmations, and through your choice of healthy foods and healthy relationships.”

“I am my sisters keeper. I take responsibility. I could never think that “Oh I have healed myself, now I am good.” I tell the sisters that you are not fully healed unless you can help someone else.

“What I want for myself, I want for my sister.”

—Queen Afua “If you want to be something, you have to perceive that something is possible.”

“Surgery is a service business. You provide a service as unobtrusively as possible. But you must be human. In order to provide good quality care, it is so important that patients are able to talk to you and not regard you as some deity above them.”

—Dr. Alexa Canady “In this phase of the struggle for mankind to come to consciousness, Holy Matrimony is the key to functionally bring the Kingdon of God to earth.”

—Impress Karen “Imani” Hardy We should never feel entitled. We have to remember what (King) stood for, what his goals were and revisit them, and build upon the foundation that he started. We have to find out how to be better parents, to continue furthering our education and keeping kids in school.

The mother should take a back seat to no one. We have to model that for our kids.

—Sheila Johnson” “You know, you do need mentors, but in the end, you really just need to believe in yourself.”

“You can’t just sit there and wait for people to give you that golden dream. You’ve got to get out there and make it happen for yourself.”

—Diana Ross “Our society allows people to be absolutely neurotic and totally out of touch with their feelings and everyone else's feelings, and yet be very respectable.”

“When I die, I will not be guilty of having left a generation of girls behind thinking that anyone can tend to their emotional health other than themselves.”

—Ntozake Shange 426

“It's not impossible for a woman - a Black woman - to become President.”

“We're failing our children with education, we're failing our environment.”

“Magic lies in challenging what seems impossible.”

“The really important victory of the civil rights movement was that it made racism unpopular, whereas a generation ago at the turn of the last century, you had to embrace racism to get elected to anything.”

—Senator Carol Mosely-Braun “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.”

“Anybody can observe the Sabbath, but making it holy surely takes the rest of the week.”

“Don't wait around for other people to be happy for you. Any happiness you get you've got to make yourself.”

“Men make war to get attention. All killing is an expression of self-hate.”

—Alice Walker “Activist work allows you to give back and to consider yourself not as a single individual who may have achieved whatever, but to be a part of an ongoing historical movement.”

“Racism is a much more clandestine, much more hidden kind of phenomenon, but at the same time it's perhaps far more terrible than it's ever been.”

“Jails and prisons are designed to break human beings, to convert the population into specimens in a zoo obedient to our keepers, but dangerous to each other.”

—Angela Davis “In that President Barack Obama’s mother used the lives of outstanding African American’s to teach him values and character, should we not do the same for all children? What are you doing to teach children at home and school about their heritage?”

“There is no question, every person has been given gifts and talent by the Creator. The real question is, in what way are you and your child gifted and talented?”

--Paulette Jones-Imaan, Founder, Ideal Charter School and The Academy for Ideal Education “We love because it's the only true adventure” “There is always something to do. There are hungry people to feed, naked people to clothe, sick people to comfort and make well.

And while I don't expect you to save the world I do think it's not asking too much for you to love those with whom you sleep, share the happiness of those whom you call friend, engage those among you who are visionary and remove from your live those who offer you depression, despair and disrespect.”

—Nikki Giovanni “I learned that if you bring black people together, you bring them together with a song. To this day, I don't understand how people think they can bring anybody together without a song.”

“Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are.”

—Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon "Do not allow your mind to be imprisoned by majority thinking. Remember that the limits of science are not the limits of your imagination."

—Dr. Patricia E. Bath “Winning is great, sure, but if you are really going to do something in life, the secret is learning how to lose. Nobody goes undefeated all the time. If you can pick up after a crushing defeat, and go on to win again, you are going to be a champion someday.”

—Wilma Rudolph “Education is for improving the lives of others and for leaving your community and world better than you found it.”

—Marian Wright Edelman

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“The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don't agree with.”

—Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton “I have discovered few learning disabled students in my three decades of teaching. I have, however, discovered many, many victims of teaching inabilities.”

“There is a brilliant child locked inside every student.”

—Dr. Marva Collins “A lot of people don't understand that the world is larger than themselves, and that this world was here long before they and their ancestors were born, and that darker people made contributions more than any other combination of ethnic groups.”

“We can say 'Peace on Earth,' we can sing about it, preach about it or pray about it, but if we have not internalized the mythology to make it happen inside us, then it will not be.”

—Dr. Betty Shabazz “.. in order to be a true revolutionary, you must understand love. Love, sacrifice, and death.”

—Sonia Sanchez “Challenges make you discover things about yourself that you never really knew. They're what make the instrument stretch-what make you go beyond the norm.”

—Cicely Tyson "You can't help it. An artist's duty, as far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times."

—Nina Simone “Schools must stop being holding pens to keep energetic young people off the job market and off the streets. We stretch puberty out a long, long time.”

“Freeing yourself is one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self is another.”

—Toni Morrison “If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.”

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”

“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”

—Poet Laurete Maya Angelou “The grim possibility is that she who "hides her brains" will, more than likely, end up with a mate who is only equal to a woman with "hidden brains" or none at all.”

“A status not freely chosen... is necessarily one of oppression and the oppressed are by their nature forever in ferment and agitation against their condition and what they understand to be their oppressors. If not by overt rebellion or revolution, then in the thousand and one ways they will devise with and without consciousness to alter their condition” —Lorraine Hansberry “No matter what accomplishments you make, somebody helped you.”

—Althea Gibson “If you're not feeling good about you, what you're wearing outside doesn't mean a thing.”

—Leontyn Price “Struggle is a never ending process. Freedom is never really won you earn it and win it in every generation.”

“Women, if the soul of the nation is to be saved, I believe that you must become its soul.”

“If American women would increase their voting turnout by ten percent, I think we would see an end to all of the budget cuts in programs benefiting women and children.”

“I'm fulfilled in what I do... I never thought that a lot of money or fine clothes -- the finer things of life -- would make you happy.

My concept of happiness is to be filled in a spiritual sense.”

—Coretta Scott-King 428

“Tremendous amounts of talent are being lost to our society just because that talent wears a skirt.”

“I stand before you today as a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency of the United States. I am not the candidate of black America, although I am black and proud. I am not the candidate of the women's movement of this country, although I am a woman, and I am equally proud of that. I am not the candidate of any political bosses or special interests. I am the candidate of the people.”

—Representative Shirley Chislom “The kind of beauty I want most is the hard-to-get kind that comes from within - strength, courage, dignity.”

“The greatest gift is not being afraid to question.”

—Ruby Dee “It [prejudice] is such a waste. It makes you logy and half-alive. It gives you nothing. It takes away.”

—Dorothy Dandridge “Just don't give up on doing what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don't think you can go wrong.”

—Ella Fitzgerald “No one can figure out your worth but you.”

—Pearl Bailey “Sometimes it seems to tell the truth today is to run the risk of being killed. But if I fall, I’ll fall five-feet four-inches forward in the fight for freedom.”

—Fannie Lou Hamer “Truth-tellers are not always palatable. There is a preference for candy bars.”

“It is brave to be involved. To be not fearful to be unresolved.”

—Gwendolyn Elizabeth brooks “You have to be taught to be second class; you're not born that way.”

—Lena Horne “Dope never helped anybody sing better or play music better or do anything better. All dope can do for you is kill you - and kill you the long, slow, hard way.”

"You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation."

—Billie Holiday “Art is only important to the extent that it aids in the liberation of our people.”

—Elizabeth Catlett “Racism is still with us. But it is up to us to prepare our children for what they have to meet, and, hopefully, we shall overcome.”

—Rosa Parks “Greatness is not measured by what a man or woman accomplishes, but by the opposition he or she has overcome to reach his goals.”

— Dorothy Irene height “It's easy to be independent when you've got money. But to be independent when you haven't got a thing -- that's the Lord's test.”

“One of the hardest things to teach a child is that the truth is more important than the consequences.”

—Mahalia Jackson “Go within every day and find the inner strength so that the world will not blow your candle out.”

—Katherine Dunham “Surely the day will come when color means nothing more than the skin tone, when religion is seen uniquely as a way to speak one's soul; when birth places have the weight of a throw of the dice and all men are born free, when understanding breeds love and brotherhood.”

—Josephine Baker 429

"The most disastrous aspect of colonization which you are the most reluctant to release from your mind is their colonization of the image of God." “If you hear me call someone a duped, pea-brain, bamboozled, fun-lovin' negro, I am simply comparing that person's behavior to that of NAT TURNER, DENMARK VESEY, IDA B. WELLS, ETC. SO WATCH YOURSELF, YOU ARE BEING COMPARED AGAINST THE MODELS OF BLACK LIBERATION- TOTAL LIBERATION FROM UNDER white world terror domination.”

—Dr. Frances Cress-Welsing “In order for poor and oppressed people to become part of a society that is meaningful, the system under which we now exist has to be radically changed.”

“Give light and people will find the way.” ♥ “We who believe in freedom can’t rest.”

“The struggle is eternal. The tribe increases. Somebody else carries on.”

—Ella Baker “Don't let anything stop you. There will be times when you'll be disappointed, but you can't stop. Make yourself the very best that you can make of what you are. The very best.”

—Sadie Tanner Alexander “Our purpose in life is to leave a legacy for our children and our children's children. For this reason, we must correct history that at present denies our humanity and self-respect.”

—Audley “Queen Mother” Moore “I have a great belief in the fact that whenever there is chaos, it creates wonderful thinking. I consider chaos a gift. Chaos is a good thing. God created the whole world out of it. Change is what comes of it.”

“I am one dedicated person working for freedom.”

“What we are working for is an educational program that has become a resource and rallying point for scores of brave southerners who are leading the fight for justice and better race relations in these crucial days.”

—Septima Clark “Fear is a disease that eats away at logic and makes man inhuman.”

“No matter how big a nation is, it is no stronger that its weakest people, and as long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you might otherwise.”

—Marian Anderson “The entire race is usually judged by the actions of one man or woman. I sincerely hope that I shall always be a credit to my race, and to the motion picture industry.”

“You can best fight any existing evil from the inside.”

—Hattie McDaniel “There's a time when you have to explain to your children why they're born, and it's a marvelous thing if you know the reason by then” “I've always known I was gifted, which is not the easiest thing in the world for a person to know, because you're not responsible for your gift, only for what you do with it” “Who ever walked behind anyone to freedom?”

—Hazel Scott “No man may make another free.”

“Once you wake up thought in a man, you can never put it to sleep again.”

“I have been in Sorrow's kitchen and licked out all the pots. Then I have stood on the peaky mountain wrapped in rainbows, with a harp and a sword in my hands.”

—Zora Neale Hurston

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“The air is the only place free from prejudices.”

“I decided blacks should not have to experience the difficulties I had faced, so I decided to open a flying school and teach other black women to fly.”

—Elizabeth Bessie Coleman “The true worth of a race must be measured by the character of its womanhood.”

“Invest in the human soul. Who knows, it might be a diamond in the rough.”

—Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune “If a solution isn't enduring, it's not really a solution. In process automation, we need enduring systems and solutions that become standards in their own right.”

—Maggie Walker “Perseverance is my motto.” ● “I got myself a start, by giving myself a start.”

“Don't sit down and wait for the opportunities to come; you have to get up and make them.”

—Madam C. J. Walker “I cannot help wondering sometimes what I might have become and might have done if I had lived in a country which had not circumscribed and handicapped me on account of my race, that had allowed me to reach any height I was able to attain.”

—Mary Church Terrell “One had better die fighting against injustice than die like a dog or a rat in a trap.”

“The white man’s victory soon became complete by fraud, violence, intimidation and murder.”

—Ida B. Wells “The work of the mothers of our race is grandly constructive. ... Some races have been overthrown, dashed in pieces, and destroyed; but to-day the world is needing, fainting, for something better than the results of arrogance, aggressiveness, and indomitable power. We need mothers who are capable of being character builders, patient, loving, strong, and true, whose homes will be uplifting power in the race. This is one of the greatest needs of the hour.”

—Frances Ellen Harper “NEVER GIVE UP THE BALLOT.” “Rome got her civilization from Greece; Greece borrowed hers from Egypt, thence she derived her science and beautiful mythology . . . . As we ascend the Nile we come to Meroe the queen city of Ethiopia and the cradle of learning into which all Africa poured its caravan. So we trace the light of civilization from Ethiopia, to Greece, to Rome, and thence diffusing its radiance over the entire world.”

—Elizabeth Hopkins “O, ye daughters of Africa, awake! arise! no longer sleep nor slumber, but distinguish yourselves.

Show forth to the world that ye are endowed with noble and exalted faculties.”

—Maria Stewart “The hours are growing shorter for the millions who are toiling; And the homes are growing better for the millions yet to be; And we all shall learn the lesson, how that waste and sin are spoiling, The fairest and the finest of a grand humanity.

It is coming! it is coming! and men's thoughts are growing deeper; They are giving of their millions as they never gave before; They are learning the new Gospel; man must be his brother's keeper, And right, not might, shall triumph, and the selfish rule no more.”

—Lucy Delaney A R I S E, my soul, on wings enraptur'd, rise. To praise the monarch of the earth and skies, Whose goodness and benificence appear as round its centre moves the rolling year, or when the morning glows with rosy charms, or the sun slumbers in the ocean's arms: Of light divine be a rich portion lent To guide my soul, and favour my intend. Celestial muse, my arduous flight sustain and raise my mind to a seraphic strain! Almighty, in these wond'rous works of thine. What Pow'r, what Wisdom, and what Goodness shine! And are thy wonders, Lord, by men explor'd, and yet creating glory unador'd!

—Phillis Wheatley 431

“Evil finds entrance into the world through unplanned human conception.”

When mothers and fathers prepare and plan their conception, they can pray into the world a highly evolved, loving, serving, creative, talented soul.

When preparation and planning are not engaged in conception is left to chance and soul quality becomes a roll of the dice.

CHOOSE CONSCIOUS CONCEPTION Learn How!!!

LunaQueen The Divinely Feminine Art of Using A Lunar Charting Calendar & The Journey From Lunatic To LunaQueen

http://lulu.com/Myeka ● (202) 528-6768 sheawakening@yahoo.com Support SHE Ministry Lunaqueen.angelfire.com http://helenedmond.cieaura.com 432

QUESTIONAIRE Are you?

Black American 6yes 6no African American 6yes 6no Moorish American Negro American

6yes 6no 6yes 6no

Colored American

6yes 6no

ANEW American

6yes 6no

(ANEW = African, Native, European & World American)

A infant race born of the blood, sweat, tears and triumphs of the American people.

The true melting pot of America.

Other ___________________

Please email your answer to: sheawakening@yahoo.com

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Declaration of African American Males As An Endangered Species In the Americas The father is the life giver and blesses the children.

The African American male is the Light (Sun) of African American people, which are a new race of people forged from the genetic pool of every major race. Without his Light, we as a people are doomed to extinction as a species on earth. We will go the way of the dinosaur and other extinct species of life. A crisis now ensues as African American males are under the threat of extinction and actions must be taken forthwith to repel these forces and rekindle the spirit, mind, emotion and body of African Amrican males in a spirit of love and thanksgiving for their endurance on Planet Earth.

This crisis is caused by the following: 1. Unplanned conception.

The lack of planning at conception causes needy souls, rather than productive and highly evolved souls to be born into the world. This is a result of ignorance as it relates to the basic science of human reproduction and conscious conception.

The LunaQueen System, developed by Helen L. Bevel addresses the need for a method for females to gain total consciousness of their body, emotions, mind and spirit. Her two books Unique, The Divinely Feminine Art of Using A Female Charting Calendar and The Journey From Lunatic To LunaQueen provides calendars and charts for obtaining consciousness.

2. Ignorance of gestational care during pregnancy.

During the fetus’s gestational period in the womb, the utmost care must be taken to assure the mother the best nutrition, health care, comfort, peace of mind and nurturing for the sake of the soul to be born and the mother whose quality of care directly affects the infant.

Since ancient times, it has been known that the child in the womb adopts impressions from its surroundings and the behavior of its mother, and also starts learning things. This fact has now been confirmed by modem science. The health of the parents is directly responsible for the health of a child. Not only their physical health, but also their psychological and spiritual health affects the child in the womb. The surrounding environment, the food, the activities, in fact everything the mother is exposed to during pregnancy directly affects the child.

Dr. Bhate The mental/physical state of the mother is very important in the formation of the body of the incarnating spirit. It is highly recommended that the mother be supported and nurtured from conception during this time of inner growth. Her thoughts, feelings, emotions, and nutritional state create the body of the individualizing ego, as well as being a determining factor in the psychological make-up of the indwelling spirit. She is creating through the genetic inheritance of the father, along with her psychological attitude, the body of the newborn.

Da Vid, MD Medical Director, The San Francisco Medical Research Foundation

3. Unhealthy birthing procedures.

It’s all about machines, blood tests, ultra-sound, bright lights and the high-tech environment of the delivery room where mothers are surrounded by people they don’t know The birth trauma can be particularly devastating to the child energetically. During delivery, the child is being removed from the physical and energetic embrace of its mother for the first time. Those births in which the child is physically taken away from the mother right after birth are most disruptive, because the child is alone outside the aura of the mother. When removed more than 20 centimeters from the mother, the child is outside the protective umbrella of the mother's etheric aura. When the child is within the mother's etheric aura, there is unconscious rhythmic flow of love and emotional energy from mother to child. If the child is taken outside the mother's etheric aura, it loses contact with the mother emotionally. When the child is removed more than two and a half meters from the mother, the child loses contact on the mental level as well because the child is outside the mother's mental aura or mental field."

Painful things happen to nearly all of us early in life that get imprinted in all our systems which carry the memory forward 434

making our lives miserable. It is the cause of depression, phobias, panic and anxiety attacks and a whole host of symptoms that add to the misery. We have found a way into those early emotional archives and have learned to have access to those memories, to dredge them up from the unconscious, allowing us to re-experience them in the present, integrate them and no longer be driven by the unconscious. For the first time in the history of psychology there is a way to access feelings, hidden away, in a safe way and thus to reduce human suffering. It is, in essence, the first science of psychotherapy.

Dr. Arthur Janov, Primal Therapy Excerpted from an article by Djehuty Ma'at-Ra, Home Birth vs. Hospital Birth, http://www.dherbs.com/articles/home-birth-vs-hospital-birth-410.html

4. The lack of breastfeeding and bonding.

Breastfeeding is the means by which children receive supreme nourishment and bond to the mother. The nutritional value of breast milk has been well documented. Breastfeeding allows the infant to bond with the mother and thus feel secure, loved and valued.

Lack of Bonding = Attachment Attachment occurs when bonding fails to take place at birth. It can also occur at any point where there is a breakdown in the ongoing sequence of bonding's that make up our development. He cannot perceive subtle or intuitive signals that are the precursors of physical experience and is always aware only after the fact. He is, you might say, locked into hindsight. He reacts to stimuli, since by the time he has registered and processed an event, the time for response to that moment is gone. He compensates by trying to anticipate, predict, and control events in the outer world.

Learning is a process of movement from that which is known into that which is unknown. The bonded person can make such a movement because his orientation is based on the non-physical realm of relationship that underlies and comes before all physical events.. So any event fits the bonded state and can call forth a response as opposed to a reaction. Bonding provides a capacity to flow with events on a pre cursive level. The attached person attempts to analyze the upcoming event ahead of time, predict the probable outcome, and try to enter into the flow to alter it on behalf of a supposedly preferable outcome. Since attachment behavior is always aware after the fact, this intellectual meddling is disruptive, always too late to alter what has taken place, and gets in the way of what should take place next.

—From Magical Child To Magical Teen, A Guide to Adolescent Development, Joseph Chilton Pearce, Online chapter, http://innerself.com/content/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5905

5. Ignorance of early childhood development.

The parent’s lack of knowledge about infant brain development and growth contributes to creating an environment that perpetuates the criminal and insane mindset. The Better Baby Institute and The Institute for the Achievement of Human Potential, founded by Dr. Glenn Doman, has pioneered research and education in the area of early childhood development and education.

6. Lack of a brotherhood founded on truth.

Men need each other on their journey of manhood. Yet the mask that is so often presnt to hid the self-doubt and feelings of rejection creates a lie that falsifies who he really is. This false self causes males to blame others for their shortcomings rather than bring them self to a place where they can share the dark secrets of their physical insecurities, or

inhibitions about money and work, or worry and anxiety over the future. These things lock males into a selfmade prison and keep the world out for fear of rejection. And misunderstanding.

Males need to be nakedly honest with them self and each other. Males need authentic relationships and this can only come about when they dare to unlock the door to the mancave, exit and risk being vulnerable with other males, especially about their identity as a male. The problem is it’s not as easy to find a trusting brother, or a loving father figure, who is willing to hear your stuff and respond in love and with compassion. Also there is the fear of being labeled gay if a male gets to close to another male.

“Consequently, men lack true depth in brothehooed with their own gender group. John J. Higgins wrote, “Men today are incapable of true openness that would express itself in a genuine communion. Rather, they have substituted or adopted unauthentic and illusory relationships in place of such communion” (Thomas Merton on Prayer).

A movement toward the deep restoration of the American masculine heart and soul will be led by those who are willing to trust other men to walk their journey with them, intimately and “nakedly”. Solomon says in one of his writings, “Two are better than one.... If one falls down, his friend can help him up” (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 NIV).

I have found that the type of walking and helping between men that Solomon describes requires gut-wrenching honesty and strength to admit fears, unveil hidden shame, and come clean with secret mistakes. It is through this genuine level of friendship that God teaches us the tangible meaning of loyalty and loving devotion to Him.” 435

The German theologian and teacher, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in The Cost of Discipleship, said it best, “There is no truth towards Jesus without truth towards man. Untruthfulness destroys friendship, but truth cuts false fellowship to pieces and establishes genuine brotherhood.”

—Jared Faria, The Guy’s Guide To Manhood

7. The stud mentality and breeding farms.

This is inheritance form slavery, that has locked males into the physical plane and the sexual act as the only release of life force energy. The stud breeding system was an extensive system that rivaled the breeding of horses, cows, chickens, dogs and pigs. In slavery people are looked at as things to be owned and sold.

Among the Negro slaves the most enviable position was that of the stud. Now here was someone that all the males wanted to be, and all the women wanted to give birth to. The stud had the fortune of being given the best food, the best sleeping quarters, and most of all, he got to have sex with all the females (his mother, his sister, his daughter, aunts, cousins and those from other plantations). Slavery destroyed the natural affection and love that can exist between a male and a female and replaced it with lust. The stud was the envy of all slaves, for not only did he go around creating babies, but he didn’t have to take any responsibility for the care of them. To this day the irresponsibility promoted by the stud exists among African American men as they create babies without any sense of fatherhood responsibility.

(Excerpt from, The Nonviolent Right To Vote Movement People’s Almanac

8. Alien educational structures and patterns.

African American people are a different breed than European Americans. Yes we are both human beings, but just as ducks and chickens are both birds, they would not go to each other for the education of their young for obvious reasons.

Thus the present educational institutions are drowning our children because it is alien to them and the form it takes is the new enslavement the overcrowded penal institutions.

From birth the African American youth is not directed towards institutional consciousness. That is our youth have no knowledge, respect, or appreciation for the administration and development of institutions (the church, government, business, clinic, home and school), as a means for looking after their health, interest, rights and needs and how to transfer threat knowledge into practical solutions to problems.

The present educational policies were developed during the period of segregation, when African Americans were not expected to be socially responsible. Because of the lack of opportunity and interest in running these institutions, youth lose their motivation and emerge from school unable to read a court order, do an adequate job as an employee and are unable to venture into business opportunities.

—Reverend James L. Bevel, Architect of the Nonviolent Right To Vote Movement

9. Archaic institutional constructs.

Institutions that derive from European American imperialism, capitalism, white supremacy and racism are crippling our children, because they are alien to us, and do not address our basic and specific needs. In addition they are all built on violence and the animalistic system called “the pecking order.”

10. Lack of positive masculine interaction in childhood.

The African American male child is inundated with female energy from conception to puberty. Many families are headed by females with no male intervention, the first teachers are females, the first school administrators are female, and the first strong male most young males meet is the policeman who will surely kick his butt and put him in check.

This is both wanted and hated by the young male. And then the prison provide a male bonding experience that locks him into recidivism.

11. Lack of coming of age ritual.

Not having a definite time when adulthood is entered into as structured by lessons that would allow the child to become a principled adult, cause the person to remain dependent and immature. It sounds like this; what I want, what I like and dislike.

In her book, Cutting the Ties That Bind, Dr. Phyllis Krystal states, “When the young person is about to enter the world as an adult, the early ties to the parents need to be severed so that the youth is free to develop as an independent individual.. When these ties remain uncut beyond the age of puberty, an unhealthy situation develops where the child, whatever his age, is either too dependent on one or both parents and therefore is incapable of expressing his own true personality….” She provides a simple ritual that any person regardless of age can use to cut the ties to parents.

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12. Low self-esteem Having been under sever stress from the cradle to the grave, the African American male has inherited his mother’s low self-esteem and his esteem is constantly bombarded in institutions and the environment.

“No one can be integrated, no one can function harmoniously, no one can think clearly and effectively about the deep issues of life who is oblivious to the internal signals, manifested as feelings and emotions, rising from within the self-organism.

Most of us have been encouraged to deny and repress who we are, to disown our feelings, to disown important aspects of the self, almost from the day we were born. The road back to selfhood usually entails a good deal of struggle and courage.”

Nathaniel Braden, Ph.D., The Psychology of Self-Esteem

13. High stress with no outlet.

The average African American male, young or old do not know how to effectively relieve stress which leads to a mirade of problems.

14. Lack of emotional balance.

Constant bombardment of female energy which is primarily toxic emotions (negative attitudes, fear, anger, hate, revenge, criticism, putdowns, should have, could have, didn’t, out bursts, rage, contempt) leaves the male imbalanced and shunning his emotions which he never learns to know and thus gain control of. As a result he acts out what he knows from his exposure to excessive female toxic emotional energy, which is alien to him.

It was discovered over 5000 years ago in ancient China that our bodies have meridians or pathways through which energy flows. It was also observed that during an imbalance or blockage in the flow of energy within the meridians, it causes different types of emotional disturbances coupled with their corresponding mental issues or problems.

Through the work of several researchers over the past ten to twenty years, including Dr. Roger J. Callahan (Thought Field Therapy, TFT) and Gary Craig Creator of The Emotional Freedom Technique, EFT), the reverse has been found to be equally true, meaning that when the energy in the meridians is brought back into balance, then emotions are then integrated and restored to their previous state of balance.

As difficult to believe as this is, every dis-empowering negative belief or context that we hold has a connection to a corresponding imbalance in our energy system together with a negative emotion. By correcting the imbalance in the energy system, the emotion and the negative belief are released at the same time.

15. Stagnate unhealthy DNA and RNA patterning from ancestral and present day slavery experiences.

Slavery left an indelible mark on the DNA and RNA of African American males.. This can be healed through a process of erasure, using various energetic healing modalities.

16. Inadequate dietary practices.

The slave diet was composed of left over’s and the most unhealthy food preparation and cooking practices. We continue to carry on these unhealthy traditions without revision and have not made health a primary objective.

17. Trauma from various experiences (birth, childhood, puberty, young adulthood and adulthood).

Being hollered at as a child, told no constantly, whipped, bullied, gang raped, put in prison, sent to the army, etc. are traumatic experiences that are left to fester. These problems unhealed perpetuate the sickness and is passed on like a contagious virus.

18. Lack of spiritual principles.

Life is governed by spiritual principals which are the weapon of choice to fight principalities and spiritual wickedness.

Not having these principals has left the African American males defenseless. “We fight not against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities of powers, spiritual wickedness in high places. Therefore put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand the fiery darts of evil. Out on the breastplate of righteousness, the gospel of peace...”

Some of these principles are: Love, truth, justice, joy, peace, power, light, vitality, health, excellence, mercy, generosity, progress, empathy, faith, harmony, unity, equality courage, honor, integrity, compassion, freedom, success, meekness, reason, purpose, divinity, humility, wealth, responsibility, respect, majesty, innocence, compassion, balance, patience, understanding, beauty, endurance, awareness, order, strength, action, wisdom, forgiveness, honesty, meekness, growth, confidence, splendor, magnetism, humility grace, spirit, will, optimism, wonder, perfection, fruitfulness, rest, 437

reverence, serenity, silence, force, bliss, prudence, temperance, leadership, form, mastery, attention..

19. Perverted and mis-directed sexual energy.

All manner of sexual perversions have flown out of the African American males enslavement in the Americas. Some of these include, incest, rape, the stud mentality, homosexuality, bestiality and promiscuity. The lost of sperm through constant ejaculation strips the male body of important nutrients and has led to a health crisis with a rise in prostate cancer. The ancient art of sexual kung fu or tantra teaches a better way of achieving fulfillment, health, and creative wholeness through sex.

20. Fear of women.

Not knowing the female species, males have been operating from ignorance which causes them to be fearful. As a result a gender war ensues which is not necessary, when truth and knowledge are put in the equation. Few males will admit that they fear women, however this fear can be traced to the Biblical myth of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

Males can overcome the fear of women by engaging in a principled relationship with a principled female who knows herself and does not compromise herself to get along with anyone. This of course is initially frightening to a male because he is so use to living from the animalistic relationship structure of “the pecking order,” whereby females are considered beneath him.

It is the struggle to overcome his tendency to get angry, express violence and demean and denigrate the female that will allow him to come to self-respect and self-love, for in truth he possesses a feminine interior that longs to be acknowledge, recognized and respected. Once this takes place he can operate as a whole being that possesses character and integrity. In addition he will not be able to be manipulated or swayed by any female to do anything less than love in the process of living.

In nature the yin and yang, masculine and feminine forces find harmony, balance, peace and equilibrium and sets the standard for creating I-Thou relationships of equality and is the only true role model to follow.

21. Ignorance of healthy mating practices.

Slavery left a void as it relates to healthy mating practices. Thus we attempt to imitate other races whose practices sometimes work for them and sometimes not. We have yet to research what works best for us.

22. Lack of spiritual grounded ness.

Without being grounded in nature energetically, one is like a leaf blowing in the wind. Chi Gong teaches one how to be grounded and thus effective.

23. Lack of economic grounding in nature.

Void of an economic base that is rooted in nature, the African American male remains a second class citizen. All of basic and essential needs come directly from nature (food, clothing, shelter, energy, transportation, communication and tools). For these we are dependent others. This is akin to being locked up in a cage at the zoo, waiting to be fed. Free people feed themselves directly from nature. As a result there is never a need for compromise.

24. Lack of adequate natural health care and maintenance.

Natural health care consists of foods that heal, nourish and cleanse all systems of the body. The Health pak from Rainforest herbs provides this perfectly as males eat from the living garden.

25. Non-scientific child rearing practices.

So often African American people imitate and engage in child rearing traditions passed down from slavery. Thus beating children, hollering, cursing at them, denigrating them and punishing them is simply a re-enactment of slavery.

These actions are demeaning and leave boys and girls with fractured self-esteem, self-doubt and feelings of rejection.

How often do mother’s and father’s whip children and then demand that they don’t cry? This is heartless as they are being taught to bottle up their emotions, which they grow into adulthood doing, and thus not having outlets for the release of stress.

Based on interviews with the mothers of about 3,000 children, researcher Murray Straus of the University of New Hampshire found that corporal punishment is counterproductive, resulting in more antisocial behavior by children in later years. The more spankings a child received at the beginning of the study, the higher level of antisocial behavior at the end, according to the researchers.

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Antisocial behavior was defined as cheating, lying, disobedience at school, breaking things deliberately, not feeling sorry after misbehaving or not getting along with teachers.

The study found that the higher levels of antisocial behavior were independent of other traits that could affect that behavior, such as a family's socioeconomic status and the amount of support parents give their children.

—Researcher Murray Straus of the University of New Hampshire In a new study published in Pediatrics, researchers at Tulane University provide the strongest evidence yet that children's short-term response to spanking may make them act out more in the long run. Of the nearly 2,500 youngsters in the study, those who were spanked more frequently at age 3 were much more likely to be aggressive by age 5.

"Frequent spankings, may have a negative impact on sex development. Because of the proximity of the sex organs, a child may get sexually aroused when spanked. Or he may so enjoy the making up that follows the punishment that he will seek suffering as a necessary prelude to love. There are many adult couples who seem to need a good fight before a good night."

—Dr. Haim G. Ginott, child psychologist. Between Parent and Child (1966)

26. Lack of manhood principles.

The attempt to assimilate within an alien culture that has consistently threatened to destroy manhood. How many roads must a man walk down before they call him a man, the answer my friend is blowing in the wind.” Manhood is built on principles that are rooted in nature, not something that is blowing in the wind.

The missing factor is a shared common definition and purpose of man and a shared knowledge of how man lives according to definition and attain their individual and collective purpose through institutional development and administration.

—Reverend James L. Bevel, Architect of The Nonviolent Right To Vote Movement 1965

27. Ancestral health problems.

We have inherited the illness and weaknesses of our ancestor who were enslaved. They had the worse diet and thus their bodies were weakened. We have inherited these and built upon them by continuing to practice their eating and living habits which were perverted by slavery. Likewise we have inherited their mental and emotional illnesses.

28. Fear of annihilation for expressing strong values.

With the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and El Hajj Malik El Shabazz (Malcolm X), fear was implanted in the hearts of African American males. The fear that standing up and speaking the truth and doing what is right for the community would lead to death was implanted. As a result they have shirked their responsibility and compromised to be safe and seek to only protect individual family members at the expense of the community.

29. The African American female’s contribution to the destruction of the African American male.

Negative mental attitudes and toxic emotions are out contribution. When we are expressing fear, anger, revenge, hate, jealousy, envy, covetousness, guilt, shame, resentment, distress, agony, misery, remorse, sorrow, frustration, hurt, doubt, dread conceit, arrogance, unhappiness, ungratefulness, cowardice, selfishness, worry and the scorned woman syndrome we strike a blow at the self-esteem of African American males. The lack of a sisterhood rooted in principle creates an inability to create interdependently institutions that would protect ourselves and our offspring and allow us to develop prospering communities. We carry on cold-wars with each other and devalue each other, leaving all of us vulnerable to disease, crime, and exploitation.

30. The European contribution to the destruction of the AA male.

European Americans have consistently and repeatedly worked to destroy the manhood of people of African descent.

First by the act of kidnapping, enslaving, torturing, murdering, raping, forced labor, denial of an education, denial of the right to vote and the intent and deliberate purpose of creating a subhuman being. These actions applied to other races have destroyed and created their extinction. These actions have crippled, perverted and hindered African American people from developing and need to cease forthwith.

The following is a example. To the Negro of the state was issued a warning that the Democrats were preparing, through means of the constitutional convention, to shape the election law to their own needs and then “the policy of crushing out the manhood of the Negro citizens is to be carried on to success.”

J. S. McNeilly, “History of the Measures Submitted to the Committee on Elective Franchise, Apportionment, and Elections in the Constitutional Convention of 1890,” in Mississippi Historical Society, Publications, VI (1902), 132.

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31. Exposure to European male symbols of divinity, power and success.

The constant exposure to European images of the Christ is crippling to the African American males psyche. It also perpetuates the myth of white supremacy. No self-respecting Jewish person would have a picture of Hitler in their synagogue or home. Beyond religious symbols are those of media tycoons and heroes( Rambo, Donald Trump, James Bond, etc.) African American males are not exposed to strong, intelligent, thoughtful, creative and emotionally mature males like Dr. George W. Carver, W. E. B. Dubois, Booker T. Washington or the Black Christ and Madonna. This trend is very detrimental.

Although the present cultural environment that works against the natural function of human life has contributed much to our peculiar behavior as a people, and as individuals, I believe our behavior owes more to that peculiar past experience behind us.

It owes more to the ugly pages of history and the enslavement of the African-American man.

This odd way of behaving is seen in our choices. Where in history have you ever read of people treated the way we were by their superiors, then when they gained their freedom, walk arm in arm with the people who mistreated them. We even joined their religion, the same religion that was used to justify our enslavement. We accepted their concept of God, even though that concept does not admit our race. We walk into their religious houses, accept their concept of God, bow, pray and kneel before the images that they have which don't admit our image, our ethnicity nor our race. ...why doesn't he (the whiteman) show that common image of man rather than the image of a whiteman. You may ask, "What is the common image?" The common image first of all is that we have a good nature, a nature to rise up to the higher life and higher principles toward excellence.

—Imam Warith Deen Muhamad, Founder of the Committee To Remove All Images That Depict the Christ

32. Mothers punishing fathers by denial of interaction and authority in their sons life.

Females who feel or experience rejection by males who are the father of their sons, often seek to punish them by denying them access to their children and get the courts to support them in this. This hurts the child and the father and leaves a void that nothing can fill. Children give males a sense of purpose when they have authority in their lives and are seen as more than money givers. African American boys need their fathers or strong mentors in their life if they are going to succeed in life. Fathers teach them things that mothers know nothing about, because she is not a male.

33. Lack of work initiatives that develop a work ethic.

With in many households the only work that a young male has to do is take out the garbage or mow the lawn and sometimes wash the dishes. These tasks never allow a male to really learn to work and develop a work ethic. A work ethic provides a sense of purpose. Just like long distance runners and athletes reach a point of what is called “the second breath”, a work ethic is learned from engaging in intense work in conjunction with other males. It is in this process that a male comes to know himself and is able to develop the inner resources to better himself and become responsible.

34. Constant exposure to weak, silly, emotionally toxic females.

A male can rise no higher than the females he surrounds himself with. Too often males who base their manhood on sexual conquest seek out females who are easy to bed, and who have no self-esteem, making them easy to exploit. This backfires on them because they never develop mental toughness and emotional mastery leaving them easy prey for those who would exploit them.

It has been said that 95% of the causes for males being incarcerated has to do with a woman. It is a truth that if a mother is enslaved that she cannot but pass on a portion of her enslavement to her children both male and female. We can see this trend in how so many boys raised in single family homes with mother’s and no fathers have adopted the prison trend of “saggin pants” which was born out of the prison experience. In prison males are not allowed belts because they can use them as weapons or to hang themselves. Now this prison trend has become a dominant trend among none incarcerated males. Thus the dominant culture is now influenced by the prison culture.

Females seek things from males for proof of love and commitment and when African American males are economically unprepared to purchase things they may resort to theft leading to prison time. Jealousy plays a huge role in the dynamics that lead to incarceration as males compete for females and females create situations to stir up jealousy.

For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. —2 Timothy 3 In this scripture we are told of women who are weak and silly and thus capable of being captured (enslaved) because of their 440

lusts. They learn but they never come to a knowledge of truth. It is these women who are the mother’s of an enslaved race of people.

“Men's minds are raised to the level of the women with whom they associate” —Alexander Dumas 35. The culture of violence and enslavement.

Many of us forget that we were taught the belief that blacks were created inherently inferior, and that this was passed on from generation to generation. Slave masters fostered this teaching and said that we were Ham's children, and that Ham was cursed for laughing at his father's nakedness. We have been taught that a curse was put on Ham's children, and they were cursed to be black and servants. It was this teaching that was used to justify the enslavement of our ancestors.

After having experienced cultural setbacks that this and other teachings has created to the extent of the social devastation in the life of the African-American, we must work on concerns that point to the establishment of a individual and collective philosophy of life, that fosters a sacred and divine unity that is liberating to all people.

Nonviolence sees problems and solutions. Nonviolence sees ignorance and the illness it creates as the only enemies, thus healing and education are active components of a nonviolent culture.

The present violent based, co-dependent society, locks African American males in the penal system at a high rate, which can be contributed to the aftermath of slavery, its traumas and its aftermath. Punishment creates liars, irresponsibility and guilt. Prisons are no more than trauma producing factories. In addition prisons foster sexual violence and homosexuality amongst African American males because the natural sex drive is perverted, given there are no male female interactions allowed. As a result of incarceration African American males bring back to the family and community, trauma and perverse sexual practices that are passed on to youth who are easily exploited. This creates a culture of violence.

African American males need mental and emotional therapy to heal from the harshness and cruelty of a society that devalues and attempts to destroy them. They need clinical initiatives that seek to repair the damage done and restore them to their Divine state of Being, which is Love.

36. Lack of character development education.

The development of character is essential to attaining and maintaining high self-esteem and self-worth. It allows a person to value them self and thus others beyond mere physical attributes. The following quotes attest to what great minds have always known about character, and for some reason it has been left out of education.

I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically...

Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.

—Dr. Martin L. King, Jr. Character is power.

— Booker T. Washington, American educator (1856-1915) Americanism is a question of principles, of idealism, of character: it is not a matter of birthplace or creed or line of descent.

— Theodore Roosevelt, adventurer, politician and Nobel Prize-winning 26th U.S. president (1858-1919) To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man’s character one must judge it by the standards of his time, not ours.

— Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), American humorist, author and journalist (1835-1910) Since the things we do determine the character of life, no blessed person can become unhappy.

For he will never do those things which are hateful and petty.

— Aristotle, Greek philosopher (384-322 B.C.) Of all the properties which belong to honorable men, not one is so highly prized as that of character.

— Henry Clay, statesman, orator, politician (1777-1852)

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Most people say that it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.

— Albert Einstein, Swiss-American mathematician, physicist and public philosopher (1879-1955) Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.

— Theodore Roosevelt, American adventurer and 26th president (1858-1919) To exercise good character daily is to be morally fit for life.

— Karen Hartz, CC! coordinator, CHARACTER COUNTS! in Caroline County Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

— Abraham Lincoln, 16th U.S. president (1809-1865) What a man’s mind can create, man’s character can control.

— Attributed to Thomas Edison, American inventor (1847-1931) The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops – no, but the kind of man the country turns out.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist, philosopher and poet (1803-1882) Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you represents determinism; the way you play it is free will.

— Jawaharlal Nehru, Indian prime minister (1889-1964) Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

— Helen Keller, American social activist, public speaker and author (1880-1968) In a president, character is everything. A president doesn't have to be brilliant... He doesn't have to be clever; you can hire clever... You can hire pragmatic, and you can buy and bring in policy wonks. But you can’t buy courage and decency, you cant rent a strong moral sense. A president must bring those things with him. He needs to have, in that much maligned word, but a good one nonetheless, a vision of the future he wishes to create.. But a vision is worth little if a president doesn't have the character – the courage and heart – to see it through.

— Peggy Noonan, 20th century American author, speech writer for U.S. President Ronald Reagan With all the power that a president has, the most important thing to bear in mind is this: You must not give power to a man unless, above everything else, he has character. Character is the most important qualification the president of the United States can have.

—Richard Nixon, 37th U.S. president (1913-1994), Every person in America has done or said something that would keep him or her from being president. Maybe a nation that consumes as much booze and dope as we do and has our kind of divorce statistics should pipe down about character issues.

— P.J. O’Rouke, 20th-century American humorist and essayist Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people.

A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.

— Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd American President (1882-1945) [Because power corrupts] Society’s demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.

— John Adams, American Founding Father and second U.S. president (1735-1826) Character is the only secure foundation of the state.

— Calvin Coolidge, 30th American president (1872-1933) The best index to a person’s character is (a) how he treats people who can’t do him any good, and (b) how he treats people who can’t fight back.

— Abigail van Buren (Pauline Esther Friedman), American newspaper advice columnist (1918-2002) The measure of a man's character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out.

— Baron Thomas Babington Macauley, English historian and statesman (1800-1859) Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, riches take wing, and only character endures.

— Horace Greeley, American journalist and educator (1811-1872) The proper time to influence the character of a child is about a hundred years before he’s born.

— William R. Inge, American playwright (1913-1973)

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If we want our children to possess the traits of character we most admire, we need to teach them what those traits are and why they deserve both admiration and allegiance. Children must learn to identify the forms and content of those traits.

— William J. Bennett, author and former U.S. Secretary of Education (b. 1943) The last, if not the greatest, of the human freedoms: to choose their own attitude in any given circumstance.

— Bruno Bettelheim, Austrian-born American psychologist and writer (1903-1990) When wealth is lost, nothing is lost. When health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost.

— German proverb A man's character is his fate.

— Heraclitus, Greek philosopher (c. 540-c. 475 B.C.) Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.

— Albert Einstein, Swiss mathematician, physicist and public philosopher (1879-1955) Watch your thoughts, for they become words. Watch your words, for they become actions. Watch your actions, for they become habits. Watch your habits, for they become character. Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.

— Unknown A slave shows his true character, not while he is enslaved, but when he becomes a master.

— Jewish proverb Examine what is said, not the person who speaks.

— Native American proverb Laws control the lesser person. Right conduct controls the greater one.

If there is beauty in character, there will be harmony in the home. If there is harmony in the home, there will be order in the nation. If there is order in the nation, there will be peace in the world.

— Chinese proverb You must teach your children that the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of your grandfathers. So that they will respect the land, tell your children that the earth is rich with the lives of our kin. Teach your children what we have taught our children, that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves.

— Chief Seattle (1784-1866) of the Duwamish, Suquamish, and allied Native American tribes If you damage the character of another person, you damage your own.

— Yoruba proverb

Other causes must be researched and documented.

Every effort must be made to resurrect the African American male and protect him from all hurt, harm and endangerment, while providing him with unlimited natural health care and assistance to heal from the trauma, stress and threats of the violent society at all cost.

To support research of those actions that foster the destruction of the African American male, please send a $1 or more donation to the following.

This Is A Call To Action By

SHE She Heals & Educates 652 E. 89th Place ♦ Chicago, IL 60619 ♦ sheawakening@yahoo.com Sponsored In Part By

The Institute for the Study & Advancement of Nonviolence http://almanac ● nonviolentstudy@gmail.com 443

VOICES OF THE BROTHERHOOD A PASSION FOR EXCELLENCE & FREEDOM The following pages of quotes are from African American males who against all odds have etched out a semblance of excellence in their chosen field. We have endeavored to present uplifting and inspirational quotes that can provide the foundation for a life of achievement for any male or female who would endeavor to obtain character, greatness, distinction, honor and dignity. Though the road may be long and the obstacles many, the following males who are descendants of Africans enslaved in the Americas, have trod the road less travelled and overcome insurmountable odds to provide a beacon of light for those who would follow. Though they may have stumbled and fallen, yet their excellence shines bright and cannot be denied. May their struggles and achievements not be in vain. May their mother and father be blessed. May their tribe increase.

“The choice is not between non-violence and violence, but between non-violence and non-existence.”

“Now, I say to you today my friends, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

“A nation that spends more on military than on social programs and education is morally bankrupt.”

—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don’t wait for good things to happen to you. It you go our and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope.”

“Change will not come if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”

—President Barack H. Obama

Nguzo Saba Seven Principles of Kwanzaa 1. UMOJA (Unity) 2. KUJICHAGULIA (self-determination) 3. UJIMA (Collective Work & Responsibility) 4. UJAMAA (Cooperative Economics) 5. NIA (Purpose) 6. KUUMBA (Creativity) 7. IMANI (Faith) “It is Martin King who taught that a real moral struggle seeks to win partners, not to leave victims.”

—Dr. Maulana “Ron” Karenga “In life we don’t get what we want, we get in life what we are. If we want more we have to be able to be more, in order to be more you have to face rejection.”

—Farah Gray, Self-made millionaire at age 14, 1984-Present “Success is measured by the impact I make everyday.”

“Entrepreneurship can begin at any age. I committed to my dream at the age of nine, and was a millionaire by age 16.”

—Ephren W. Taylor II, 1982-Present “All that glamour builds up a false sense of ego. It's not needed. I'm already happy with who I am. My job is just to get on the podium.”

—Shani Davis, Olympic Speed Skating Gold Medalist, 1982-Present “Everything negative—pressure, challenges—is all an opportunity for me to rise.”

—Kobe Bryant, 1978-Present “Don’t force your kids into sports. I never was. It’s the child’s desire to play that matters, not the parent’s desire to have the child play. Fun. Keep it fun.”

—Tiger Woods, 1975-Present “Excellence is not a singular act but a habit. You are what you do repeatedly.”

—Shaquille O’Neal, 1972-Present 444

Believe in something

Believe in yourself

Turn adversity into ambition Now blossom into wealth.

—Tupac Shakur, 1971-Present

“Successful people do more than talk, we act on our ideas and find out how to execute them.”

—Omar Tyree, 1969-Present “Throughout life people will make you mad, disrespect you and treat you bad. Let God deal with the things they do, cause hate in your heart will consume you.”

“Greatness lives on the edge of destruction.”

—Will Smith, 1968-Present “Pursue your passion all the way. The thing you are most passionate about will bring the greatest rewards in life.”

—Maurice Ashley, Int’l Grandmaster of Chess, 1966-Present “Nonviolence is a way of life that will guarantee peaceful coexistence in the future and the eventual goal of a demilitarized region.”

Congressmam Jessie Jackson, Jr., 1965– Present “I have always been motivated by a strong keen desire for true independence and a sense of achievement.”

“If you have a core set of values like family, hard work, trust, these will stay with you even when you have difficulties.

—Reginald Lewis, TLC Beatrice Int’l Food, 1965-1993 “My attitude is that if you push me towards something that you think is a weakness, then I will turn that perceived weakness into a strength.”

—Michael Jordan, 1963-Present “If you enter the world knowing you are loved and you leave the world knowing the same, then everything that happens in between can be dealt with.”

“Children show me in their playful smiles the divine in everyone. This simple goodness shines straight from their hearts and only asks to be lived.”

“There's a Mother's Day and there's a Father's Day, but there's no Children's Day. It would mean a lot. World peace.”

“Let us dream of tomorrow where we can truly love from the soul, and know love as the ultimate truth at the heart of all creation.”

—Michael Jackson, 1958-2009 “Black people were stripped of an identity when brought here, and it's been a quest since then to define who we are.”

“Our greatness, our talent has never been the question. It's been a matter of grappling for control over what we do.”

“It is really important that young people find something that they want to do and pursue it with passion.

I'm very passionate about filmmaking. It's what I love to do.”

—Spike Lee, 1957-Present “Judgment of the people in the situation is not helpful. How can you help them is the question.”

“The key ingredient to any kind of happiness or success is to never give less than your best.”

—Russell Simmons, 1957—Present “Elie Wiesel says that the greatest evil in the world is not anger or hatred, but indifference. If that is true, then the opposite is also true: that the greatest love we can show our children is the attention we pay them, the time we take for them.

Maybe we serve children the best simply by noticing them.”

“Do you see law and order? There is nothing but disorder, and instead of law there is the illusion of security. It is an illusion because it is built on a long history of injustices: racism, criminality, and the genocide of millions. Many people say it is insane to resist the system, but actually, it is insane not to.”

“I spend my days preparing for life, not preparing for death… I believe in life, I believe in freedom, so my mind is not consumed with death. It’s with love, life and those things. In many ways, on many days, only my body is here, because I am thinking about what’s happening around the world.”

—Mumia Abu-Jamal, 1954—Present 445

“Most important, if you love someone, tell him or her, for you never know what tomorrow may have in store.”

—Walter Payton, 1954-1999 “I made a commitment to completely cut out drinking and anything that might hamper me from getting my mind and body together. And the floodgates of goodness have opened upon me - spiritually and financially.”

—Denzell Washington, 1954-Present “You can’t lead the people if you don’t love the people. You can’t save the people if you don’t serve the people.”

—Dr. Cornell West, 1953-Present “What is important what I consider success is that we make a contribution to our world.”

“To THINK BIG and to use our talents doesn't mean we won't have difficulties along the way. We will--we all do. If we choose to see the obstacles in our path as barriers, we stop trying. "We can't win," we moan. "They won't let us win.”

—Dr. Ben Carson, 1951-Present “A leaders private and public life should be similar.”

—Swami Krishnapada, 1951-2005 “Humanity is but a brief flicker in the history of the earth. The scale of the universe is unimaginably vast in as compared to what we are on the earth.”

“Are we capable of being technological and not destroy ourselves?”

—Gibor Basri, 1951– Present “Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there.”

—Stevie Wonder, 1950-Present “No one can do everything, but everyone can do something.”

—Gil Scott-Heron, 1949-Present I think segregation is bad, I think it's wrong, it's immoral. I'd fight against it with every breath in my body, but you don't need to sit next to a white person to learn how to read and write.”

“Good manners will open doors that the best education cannot.”

“I don't believe in quotas. America was founded on a philosophy of individual rights, not group rights.”

—Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, 1948 “You can’t have civilization between a group of people who are not civil.”

“Our greatest natural resource is not oil, wind power or trees, but rather the single greatest natural resource in the world is our youth.”

—Bhagwan Ra Africa, 1948-Present “I can do something besides stuff a ball through a hoop. My greatest resource is my mind.”

—Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, 1947-Present “One should begin by examining within self in order to find true corrective action to a problem that is threatening the mental, physical and spiritual existence of Man, He and She.” —High Priest Kwatamani, 1946-Present “Growing up Black and poor in America is clearly a challenge. But it's a challenge, which can be overcome as many have already done.”

—Robert L. Johnson, 1946-Present “I feel that the most important requirement in success is learning to overcome failure.

You must learn to tolerate it, but never accept it.”

—Reggie Jackson, 1946-Present “As long as the colored man looks to white folks to put the crown on what he says, as long as he looks to white folks for approval, then he won’t find out who he is and what he’s about.”

—August Wilson, Jr., 1945-2005 446

“Don’t gain the world and lose your soul, wisdom is better than silver or gold.”

“The greatness of a man is not in how much wealth is acquired, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively.”

—Bob Marley, 1945-1981 “Now consciousness, what is consciousness? Consciousness is being aware of one's surroundings, recognizing the existence, truth or fact of something; being aware of the very moment, the very instant that you are in; being aware of how you affect the human social, political, and natural ecology you are a part of and how it affects you. Consciousness is being informed and instructed through your groups peculiar culture on the effects of the varied ecologies on your immediate and distant ancestors, and to be aware of their interpretation of that experience.”

—Professor James Small, 1945—Present “Other people’s opinion of you does not have to become your reality.”

“Accept responsibility for your life. Know that it is you who will get you where you want to go, no one else.”

—Les Brown, 1945-Present "When our young people know that there are no limits to their potential in the world of manufacturing, communication, physics, chemistry or the science of the human mind, then those same young Black minds ... will recreate these fields of human endeavor with the same incomparability as on the basketball courts we create the athletic genius of Michael Jordan or Magic Johnson... " "Human beings are unable to be about the serious business of living and building societies if they feel compelled to always clown or entertain others. People do not take you seriously if you don't take yourself seriously. A sense of humor brings necessary balance to an organized life, but a life of humor blinds one to life."

—Dr. Na’im Akbar, 1944-Present “One important key to success is self confidence. An important key to self confidence is preparation.

Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”

“My potential is more than can be expressed within the bounds of my race or ethnic identity.”

—Arthur Ashe, 1943-1993 “Culture is to people as water is to fish, invisible, pervasive and essential.”

—Professor Wade Nobles, 1943-Present “Many people have serious academic degrees but cannot find a job, and sadly their degrees are so limited that they cannot even think about how to create a job for themselves.”

—Haki R. Madhubuti, 1942—Present “He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.”

“If you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything.”

“Champions aren´t made in the gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them - a desire, a dream, a vision.”

—Muhammad Ali, 1942-Present “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.”

—Jimi Hendrix, 1942-1970 “My fear was not of death itself, but a death without meaning.”

—Huey P. Newton, 1942-1989 “Small wonder our national spirit is husk empty. We have more information but less knowledge. More communication but less community. More goods but less goodwill. More of virtually everything save that which the human spirit requires. So distracted have we become sating this new need or that material appetite, we hardly noticed the departure of happiness.”

“If the most important office in a democracy is the office of citizen, then it is a responsibility we all have, but we can’t practice this office until we become informed.”

—Randall Robinson, 1941—Present

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“I am not a perfect servant. I am a public servant doing my best against the odds.

As I develop and serve, be patient. God is not finished with me yet.”

“If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it.”

“In many ways, history is marked as 'before' and 'after' Rosa Parks. She sat down in order that we all might stand up, and the walls of segregation came down.”

—Reverend Jessie Louis Jackson, 1941-Present “This racism is scattered, diffused throughout the whole of America, grim, underhanded, hypocritical, arrogant. There is one place where we might hop it would cease, but on the contrary, it is in this place that it reaches its curelest pitch, intensifying every secone, preying on body and soul, it is in this place that racism becomes a kind of concentrate of reacism: in the American prisons.”

“Men who have never received and have had little occasion to express the love theme or original goodness respond in a very significant manner to that real, spontaneous, gratuitous kindness. Those feelings that find no expression in desparate times store themselves up in great abundance, ripen, strengthen and strain the walls of their repository to the utmost; where the kindred spirit touches this wall it crumbles—no one responds to kindness, no one is more sensitive to it than the desparate man.”

—George Jackson, 1941-1971 “The first need of a free people is to define their own terms.”

“I knew that I could vote and that that wasn't a privilege; it was my right. Every time I tried I was shot, killed or jailed, beaten or economically deprived.”

—Kwame Toure (Stokely Carmichael), 1941-1998 “A man must be willing to die for justice. Death is an inescapable reality and men die daily, but good deeds live forever.”

“Why does the Black man say, 'freedom is doing what I want to do!' and why is it that every thing he 'wants to do' enriches the European?”

“When we get into social amnesia - into forgetting our history - we also forget or misinterpret the history and motives of others as well as our motives. The way to learn of our own creation, how we came to be what we are, is getting to know ourselves. It is through getting to know the self intimately that we get to know the forces that shaped us as a self. Therefore knowing the self becomes a knowledge of the world. A deep study of Black History is the most profound way to learn about the psychology of Europeans and to understand the psychology that flows from their history.”

Ultimately, intelligence must be defined in terms of the degree in which it solves YOUR PROBLEMS. The nature of education today prepares you to solve THEIR PROBLEMS and not your own. That's why you study THEIR books, you go to THEIR schools, you learn THEIR information, THEIR language, THEIR styles, THEIR perceptions, so when you come out of school you can do a humdinger of a job solving European problems, but you can't solve your own. And then you DARE call yourself "intelligent?" C'mon. That's the height of stupidity."

The Afrikan American community, especially, should vastly overhaul and reconstruct its educational orientation toward knowledge of the Motherland. It must realize that its own economic salvation is coterminous with or tied to that of Afrika's. It must invest money and human resources in Afrika's development and perceive its economic prosperity as its special responsibility and mission…

—Dr. Amos Wilson, 1941-1995 The last thing Dr. King said to me was, “The next movement we will have is to institutionalize and internationalize nonviolence.”

“Sometimes the psychological wounds you get from conditions (segregation, discrimination) takes longer to heal than the physical wounds. Some are permanently scarred by that. We are still getting the residual affects from their older sister and brothers and parents.”

“We are moving towards a nonviolent society, and now we must develop the tools to make this possible.”

—Dr. Bernard LaFayette, 1940-Present “The only thing you’re taking out of here is your spirit and your soul, so we need to be conscious to develop that part of ourselves, because we’re all spiritual creatures.”

—Smokey Robinson, 1940-Present 448

“If you cannot find peace within yourself, you’ll never find it anywhere else.”

—Marvin Gaye, 1939-1984 “Science is not something you have to go to a laboratory to do. Life is a lab.”

—Walter E. Massey, 1938 -Present “I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”

“The events which transpired five thousand years ago; Five years ago or five minutes ago, have determined what will happen five minutes from now; five years From now or five thousand years from now. All history is a current event.”

“Whoever controls the images, controls your self-esteem, self-respect and self-development.

Whoever controls the history, controls the vision.”

—Dr. Leonard Jeffries, 1937-Present “The essence of childhood is play.”

—William “Bill Cosby , 1937-Present “Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty, and persistence.”

—General Colin Powell, 1937-Present “The new science of humaculture is a tool for reversing the effects of slavery by dismantling “the culture that produces poverty, crime, racism, hatred and ineffective education.”

—Dr. Nkosi Ajanaku, 1936– Present “ You cannot use the definition of the slave master to obtain your freedom. Inherent in his definition is your enslavement.”

“Racism is the belief that God made a race other than the human race.”

“Gangs are guys and gals who don’t know government.”

“You don't fight racism with racism, the best way to fight racism is with solidarity.”

“You can jail a revolutionary, but you cannot jail the revolution.”

"We don't hate nobody because of their color. We hate oppression!"

—Bobby Seale, 1936-Present “Respect commands itself and can neither be given nor withheld when it is due.”

“The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less.”

—Eldridge Cleaver, 1935-1998 "You can not make yourself whole again by brooding one hundred percent of the time on the darkness of the world. We are the light of the world."

—Ivan Gladstone Van Sertima, 1935-2009 “In a nuclear age we can’t afford to be violent, we must be nonviolent.”

—Dr. Otis Moss, Sr., 1935-Present “I never doubted my ability, but when you hear all your life you're inferior, it makes you wonder if the other guys have something you've never seen before. If they do, I'm still looking for it.”

“I'm hoping someday that some kid, black or white, will hit more home runs than myself. Whoever it is, I'd be pulling for him.”

—Hank Aaron, 1934—Present “You must recognize that the way to get the good out of your brother and your sister is not to return evil for evil.”

“If education doesn’t bring out what God has put in you for his glory then you’re not being properly educated. Education frees you to master yourself.”

“Black leadership has to recognize that principles more than speech, character more than a claim, is greater in advancing the cause of our liberation than what has transpired thus far. “ —Minister Louis Farrakhan, 1933-Present 449

“Violence is a tool of the ignorant.”

—Flip Wilson, 1933-1998 “Greatness occurs when your children love you, when your critics respect you and when you have peace of mind.”

—Quincy Jones, 1933-Present “Achieving excellence will clearly be a matter of will, not a matter of discovery.”

“We must not bring shame on ourselves and upon our descendants. We must bring light to the world again.”

—Asa G. Hillard, III—Nana Baffour Amankwatia II, 1933-2007 “Freedom is to move in our intellect to a greater vision, a greater purpose, to a greater responsibility until we are comfortable with ourselves in our life and in our purpose on this earth.”

"If we (Black America) become Independent Thinkers, we can make a contribution."

"Man means mind and woman means the womb of mind" “Freedom is to move" in our intellect to a greater vision, a greater purpose, to a greater responsibility until we are comfortable with ourselves in our life and in our purpose on this earth. It's a natural requirement, the life of every human being that their intellect be liberated.”

—Imam W. Deen Mohammed, 1933-2008 “In a world where change is inevitable and continuous, the need to achieve that change without violence is essential for survival.”

—Ambassador Andrew Young, 1932-Present “If it wasn't for Abe Lincoln, I'd still be on the open market.”

“Just being a Negro doesn’t qualify you to understand the race situation any more than being sick makes you an expert on medicine.”

“Civil Rights: What black folks are given in the U.S. on the installment plan, as in civil-rights bills. Not to be confused with human rights, which are the dignity, stature, humanity, respect,and freedom belonging to all people by right of their birth.”

—Richard “Dick” Gregory, 1932-Present “There is not enough magic in a bloodline to forge an instant, irrevocable bond.”

—James Earl Jones, 1931-Present “Don't judge yourself by others' standards, have your own. And don't get caught up in the trap of changing yourself to fit the world. The world has to change to fit you. And if you stick to your principles, values and morals long enough, it will.”

—Berry Gordy, Jr. 1929-Present “We must keep in mind that we are not yet 200 years out of slavery and that every effort has been made to destroy Black leadership.”

—James R. Forman, 1928—2005 “The Negro will make the gift (a transformed society) when he accepts himself completely—his hair, his skin color, his nose formation, his emotions, his everything.” ...a zest for life, a creative capacity for taking hard knocks and transcending them, is a way of life which can save a people who have lost the capacity to enjoy themselves and others because of a Faustian obsession with money and power.”

—Lerone, Bennett, 1928—Present “The role of art isn’t just to show life as it is, but to show life as it should be.”

—Harry Belafonte, 1927-Present “My music is the spiritual expression of what I am — my faith, my knowledge, my being … When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for people, to help humanity free itself from its hang-ups … I want to speak to their souls.”

“All a musician can do is to get closer to the source of nature, and so feel that he is in communion with the natural laws.”

“There is never any end. There are always new sounds to imagine. New feelings to get at. And always there is a need to keep purifying these needs and sounds so that we can really see what we've discovered in its pure state, so we can see more clearly what we are. In that way, we can give those who listen to the essence, the best of what we are .”

—John Coltrane, 1926-1967 450

“Everyday I find something creative to do with my life.”

▪ “Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.”

—Miles Davis, 1926-1991

“We declare our right on this earth...to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day. Our objective is complete freedom, justice and equality which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.”

“Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.”

“When a person places the proper value on freedom, there is nothing under the sun that he will not do to acquire that freedom.

Whenever you hear a man saying he wants freedom, but in the next breath he is going to tell you what he won't do to get it, or what he doesn't believe in doing in order to get it, he doesn't believe in freedom. A man who believes in freedom will do anything under the sun to acquire...or preserve his freedom.”

“You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his Freedom.”

—El Hajj Malik El Shabazz (Malcolm X), 1925-1965 “I decided in my life that I would do nothing that did not reflect positively on my father's life.”

—Sidney Poitier, 1924-Present “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

—James A. Baldwin, 1924-1987 “There is nothing noble in being superior to somebody else. The only real nobility is in being superior to your former self.”

“Support the strong, give courage to the timid, remind the indifferent, and warn the opposed.”

—Whitney M. Young, 1921-1971 “If you pray for one thing, let it be for an idea.”

—Percy Sutton, 1920—2009 “I realized by using the high notes of the chords as a melodic line, and by the right harmonic progression, I could play what I heard inside me. That's when I was born.”

“Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line.”

—Charlie Parker, 1920—1955 “It is important for young people to be exposed to as many areas of learning as possible so that they can decide what they want to do.”

—Dr. David Blackwell, 1919-2010 “To succeed, one must be creative and persistent.” ▪ “Failure is a word I don’t accept.”

“Dream small dreams. If you make them too big, you get overwhelmed and you don't do anything. If you make small goals and accomplish them, it gives you the confidence to go on to higher goals.”

“You spend so much time in your profession it ought to be something you love.”

—John H. Johnson, 1919-1972 “I may be helping to bring harmony between people through my music.”

“Get me well so I can get on television and tell people to stop smoking.”

—Nat King Cole, 1919-1965 “Life is not a spectator sport. If you're going to spend your whole life in the grandstand just watching what goes on, in my opinion you're wasting your life.”

“You can kill a man but you can't kill an idea.”

“A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.”

—Jackie Robinson, 1919-1972 451

“Dipped in chocolate, Bronzed with elegance, Enameled with grace, Toasted with beauty.

My Lord, she is a Black Woman!”

—Dr. Yosef Ben Jochannan, 1918-Present “I find in being black, a thing of beauty; a joy; a strength; a secret cup of gladness.”

“Any form of art is a form of power; it has impact, it can affect change - it can not only move us, it makes us move.”

—Ossie Davis, 1917-2005 "...education has but one honorable purpose, everything else is a waste of time, that is to train the student to be a proper handler of power."

"You have to make a distinction between an organized religion and a spiritual way of life."

“You start building a nation by creating the things that are essential to your existence.”

—Dr. John Henrik Clarke, 1915-1998 “When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.”

“Power doesn’t have to show off. Power is confident, self-assuring, self-starting, self-stopping, self-warming and self-justifying. When you have it, you know it.”

—Ralph Ellison, 1914-1994 “The battles that count are not the ones for the gold metals. The struggles within yourself - the invisible, inevitable battles within all of us, that’s where its at.”

“Find the good. It’s all around you. Find it, showcase it and you’ll start believing in it.”

“We all have dreams, but in order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline, and effort.”

—Jessie Owens, 1913-1980 “When I say I love Eastland, it sounds preposterous--a man who brutalizes people. But “you” love him or you wouldn't be here.

You're going to Mississippi to create social change--and you love Eastland in your desire to create conditions which will redeem his children. Loving your enemy is manifest in putting your arms not around the man but around the social situation, to take power from those who misuse it--at which point they can become human too” —Bayard Rustin, 1912-1987 “The guy who takes a chance, who walks the line between the known and unknown, who is unafraid of failure, will succeed.”

—Gordon Parks, 1912-Present “Violence is a personal necessity for the oppressed. It is not a strategy consciously devised. It is the deep, instinctive expression of a human being denied individuality.”

—Richard N. Wright, 1908-1960 “Freedom is an internal achievement rather than an external adjustment.”

“A man's respect for law and order exists in precise relationship to the size of his paycheck.”

“In my preaching the shafts are ever aimed at the brainwashed horde.”

—Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, 1908-1972 “In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute.”

“A good teacher must be able to put himself in the place of those who find learning hard.”

“Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the poser to control men’s minds.”

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“Today's Constitution is a realistic document of freedom only because of several corrective amendments. Those amendments speak to a sense of decency and fairness that I and other Blacks cherish.”

—Jurist Thurgood Marshall, 1908-1993 “No matter how hopeless the situation is, you’ve got to continue to struggle.

You might lose, but if you don’t struggle you certainly won’t win.”

—John G. Jackson, 1907-1993 “Excellence of performance will transcend artificial barriers created by man.”

—Dr. Charles Drew, 1904-1950 “We must fight as a race for everything that makes for a better country and a better world.

We are dreaming idiots and trusting fools to do anything less.”

—Ralph Bunche, 1904-1971 "Negro school" is obsolete. The need today, is far greater. It is worldwide understanding based on the concept of brotherhood.

Nowhere is there a university designed and equipped [so well] to make this ambitious aim a reality.”

—Horace Mann Bond, 1904– 1972 I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen when company comes, but I laugh, and eat well, and grow strong. Tomorrow, I'll be at the table when company comes.

Nobody'll dare say to me, "Eat in the kitchen, then. besides, They'll see how beautiful I am and be ashamed I, too, am America.

—Langston Hughes, 1902-1967 “The talk of winning our share is not the easy one of disengagement and flight, but the hard one of work, of short as well as long jumps, of disappointments, and of sweet success.”

—Roy Wilkins, 1901-1981 “What we play is life.”

●

“We all do 'do, re, mi,' but you have got to find the other notes yourself.”

“There is no such thing as 'on the way out' as long as you are still doing something interesting and good; you're in the business because you're breathing” —Lousi Armstrong, 1901—1971 “Idealism is like a castle in the air if it is not based on a solid foundation of social and political realism.”

“If a man is not faithful to his own individuality, he cannot be loyal to anything.”

“I feel that my own good country robbed me of the chance for some of the great experiences that I would have liked to live through.”

“I would forever fight to keep hope alive.”

—Percy Levon Julian, 1899 -1975 “We must join with the tens of millions all over the world who see in peace our most sacred responsibility.”

“Through my singing, acting and speaking, I want to make freedom ring. Maybe I can touch people’s hearts better than I can their minds, with the common struggle of the common man.”

“To be free.. To walk the good American earth as equal citizens, to live without fear, to enjoy the fruits of our toil, to give our children every opportunity in life—that dream which we have held so long in our hearts is today the destiny that we hold in our hands.”

“I stand here struggling for the rights of my people to be full citizens in this country and they are not. They are not in Mississippi and they are not . . . in Washington. . . . You want to shut up every Negro who has the courage to stand up and fight for the rights of his people. . . . That is why I am here today. . . .”

—Paul Robeson, 1898-1976

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“The lack of knowledge of self is a prevailing condition among my people here in America. Gaining the knowledge of self makes us unite into a great unity. Knowledge of self makes you take on the great virtue of learning."

“Mere belief counts for nothing unless carried into practice.”

“A nation can rise no higher than its woman.”

—The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, 1897-1975 “I encourage young Black undergraduates to pursue mathematic studies at the graduate level.”

—Dr. Elbert F. Cox, 1895—1969 “At best, race is a superstition.”

“What seems to have escaped the generality of writers and commentators is that all three forms of government are identical in having regimented life from top to bottom, in having ruthlessly suppressed freedom of speech, assembly, press and thought, and in being controlled by politicians...The politician being the only class in society that is charlatan enough to offer a cure for everything if elected to office.”

“On the horizon loom a growing number of iconoclasts and Atheists, young black men and women who can read, think, and ask questions, and who impertinently demand to know why Negroes should revere a God who permits them to be lynched, jim-crowed and disfranchised.”

—George S. Schuyler, 1895—1977 “Every man and woman is born into the world to do something unique and something distinctive and if he or she does not do it, it will never be done.”

“The tragedy of life doesn't lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach. It isn't a calamity to die with dreams unfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream. It is not disgrace to reach the stars, but it is a disgrace to have no stars to reach for. Not failure, but low aim, is a sin.”

“He who starts behind in the great rice of life must forever remain behind or run faster that the man in front.”

—Benjamin E. Mays, 1894-1984

Rules For Living 1. Save a part of all you earn and pay yourself first.

2. Establish a reputation at a bank. Save at an established institution and borrow there. Stay away from loan sharks.

3. Take no chances with your money. A man who can't afford to lose has no business gambling.

4. Never borrow anything that, if forced to it, you can’t pay back.

5. Don't get bigheaded with the little fellows.

6. Don't have so much pride.

7. Find a need and fill it. Successful businesses are founded on the needs of the people.

8. Stay in your own class. Never run around with people you can't compete with.

9. Once you get money people will give you money.

10. Once you reach a certain bracket, it is very difficult not to make more money.

“Money is no good unless it contributes something to the community, unless it builds a bridge to a better life. Any man can make money, but it takes a special kind of man to use it responsibly.”

“When you get you a good wife, you love her.”

—A.G. Gaston, 1892-1996 “The Negro people of America... have cut our forests, tilled our fields, built our railroads, fought our battles, and in all of their trials they have manifested a simple faith, a grateful heart, a cheerful spirit, and an undivided loyalty. Now they have come to the place where their faith can no longer feed on the bread of repression and violence. They ask for the bread of liberty, of public equality, and public responsibility. It must not be denied them.”

“I know the dark delight of being strange. The penalty of difference in the crowd. The loneliness of wisdom among fools . . .”

—Claude McKay, 1890-1948 “Western civilization, Christianity, decency are struggling for their very lives. In this worldwide civil war, race prejudice is our most dangerous enemy, for it is a disease at the very root of our democratic life.”

—Dr. Mordecai Johnson, 1890– 1976 454

“A community is democratic only when the humblest and weakest person can enjoy the highest civil, economic, and social rights that the biggest and most powerful possess.”

“Justice is never given; it is exacted and the struggle must be continuous for freedom is never a final fact, but a continuing evolving process to higher and higher levels of human, social, economic, political and religious relationship.”

—A. Philip Randolph, 1889-1979 “God and Nature first made us what we are, and then out of our own created genius we make ourselves what we want to be.

Follow always that great law. Let the sky and God be our limit and eternity our measurement.”

“When God breathed into the nostrils of man the breath of life, He made him a living soul, and bestowed upon him the authority of "Lord of Creation." He never intended that an individual should descend to the level of a peon, a serf, or a slave, but that he should be always man in the fullest possession of his senses and with the truest knowledge of himself.”

“The ends you serve that are selfish will take you no further than yourself but the ends you serve that are for all, in common, will take you into eternity.”

“A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.”

—Marcus Garvey, 1887-1940 “Money does not make the man and clothes do not make the man. It is character and free national standards that make the man.”

—Noble Drew Ali, Moorish Science Temple of America, 1886-1929 “For generations the Negro has been the peasant matrix of that section of America which has most undervalued him, and here he has contributed not only materially in labor and in social patience, but spiritually as well. The South has unconsciously absorbed the gift of his folk-temperament. In less thanhalf a generation it will be easier to recognize this, but the fact remains that a leaven of humor, sentiment, imagination and tropic nonchalance has gone into the making of the South from a humble, unacknowledged source.”

—Alain Locke, 1886 - 1954 “Negro authors, once they free their art of the necessity of furnishing the means of life, will drop the stereotypes into limbo with the assurance that real art will finally create in their readers a demand for honest treatment of every gradation of Negro life.”

“Show me a population that is deeply religious, and I will show you a servile population, content with whips and chains, contumely and the gibbet, content to eat the bread of sorrow and drink the waters of affliction.”

—Hubert H. Harrison, 1883-1927 “Ethiopians, that is, Negroes, gave the world the first idea of right and wrong and thus laid the basis of religion and all true culture and civilization.”

“The doctrine of inequality is emphatically a science of white people. It is they who invented it.”

—J. A. Rogers, 1880—1966 “Love is the answer At least for most of the questions in my heart Why are we here and where do we go And how come it's so hard It's not always easy and sometimes life can be deceiving I'll tell you one thing It's always better when we're together.”

—Jack Johnson, 1878-1946 “The educational system of a country is worthless unless it revolutionizes the social order.”

“Philosophers have long conceded, however, that every man has two educators: 'that which is given to him, and the other that which he gives himself. Indeed all that is most worthy in man he must work out and conquer for himself. It is that which constitutes our real and best nourishment. What we are merely taught seldom nourishes the mind like that which we teach ourselves.”

“It may be well to repeat here the saying that old men talk of what they have done, young men of what they are doing, and fools of what they expect to do. The Negro race has a rather large share of the last mentioned class.”

“The confidence of the people is worth more than money.”

—Carter G. Woodson, 1875-1950 455

“I know why the caged bird sings, ah me, when his wing is bruised and his bosom sore; when he beats his bars and he would be free, it is not a carol of joy or glee, but a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core.”

“The Lord had a job for me, but I had so much to do, I said, "You get somebody else--or wait till I get through." I don't know how the Lord came out, but He seemed to get along: But I felt kinda sneakin' like, 'cause I know'd I done Him wrong. One day I needed the Lord--Needed Him myself--needed Him right away, And He never answered me at all, but I could hear Him say Down in my accusin' heart, "Nigger, I'se got too much to do, You get somebody else or wait till I get through.”

—Paul Lawrence Dunbar, 1872-1906 “My friends made fun of me...they thought it was foolish of me to anticipate success in a field in which so many men before me had failed, but I went on fighting the opposition of my adversaries and the indifference of my friends, and I emerged victorious but battle-scarred.”

“No greater glory, no greater honor, is the lot of man departing than a feeling possessed deep in his heart that the world is a better place for his having lived.”

—Robert Sengstacke Abbott, 1870-1940 “Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season. It is today that our best work can be done and not some future day or future year. It is today that we fit ourselves for the greater usefulness of tomorrow. Today is the seed time, now are the hours of work, and tomorrow comes the harvest and the playtime.”

“The power of the ballot we need in sheer defense, else what shall save us from a second slavery?”

“Playing the man" included a resolve "to stand straight, look the world squarely in the eye, and walk to my work with no shuffle or slouch... to refuse to cringe in body or in soul, to resent deliberate insult, and assert my just rights in the face of wanton aggression.”

—W. E. DuBois, 1868-1963 “As I stood there on the top of the world and I thought of the hundreds of men who had lost their lives in the effort to reach it [North Pole], I felt profoundly grateful that I had the honor of representing my race.”

“I think I'm the first man to sit on top of the world.”

—Matthew Henson, 1866 – 1955 “Fear of something is at the root of hate for others, and hate within will eventually destroy the hater.”

“Since new developments are the products of a creative mind, we must therefore stimulate and encourage that type of mind in ever way possible.”

“When you can do the common things of life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world.”

“When I was young, I said to God, god, tell me the mystery of the universe. But God answered, that knowledge is for me alone. So I said, god, tell me the mystery of the peanut. Then God said, well, George, that's more nearly your size.”

—Dr. George Washington Carver, 1864-1943 “Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome.”

“Associate yourself with people of good quality, for it is better to be alone than in bad company.”

“One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.”

—Booker T. Washington, 1856-1915 “Anything is possible, when it is done in love, and everything you can do should be in love or it will fail.”

—Daniel Hale Williams, 1856-1931 "I do not care how dark the night; I believe in the coming of the morning."

—Dr. Joseph Charles Price 1854-1893) He said little if anything to us. Off the record, he said everything that ever was of value or worth.

“Courage, dignity, endurance, integrity, intelligence.”

It is difficult to imagine a priority of human values which he did not demonstrate, and all under the circumstances configured to suppress and devalue.

—Edward Bouchet, First African American Doctorate , 1852-1918 456

“It is rather hard to be accused of shiftlessness and idleness when the accuser closes the avenue of labor and industrial pursuits to us.”

“It is an undisputed fact that the negro vote in the State of Alabama, as well as most of the other Southern States, have been effectively suppressed, either one way or the other--in some instances by constitutional amendment and State legislation, in others by cold-blooded fraud and intimidation, but whatever the method pursued, it is not denied, but frankly admitted in the speeches in this House, that the black vote has been eliminated to a large extent.”

—George Henry White, 1852– 1918

Ebon Venus Let others boast of maidens fair of eyes of blue and golden hair!

My heart like need is ever true turns to the maid of ebon hue.

I love her form of matchless grace. the dark brown beauty of her face.

Her lips that speak of love’d delight Her eyes that gleam as stars at night.

O’er Venus let them rage, Who sets the fashion of the age; Each to his taste, but as for me, My Venus shall be ebony.

—Lewis Latimer, 1848-1928 “It is our hope and expectation that there will rise up men, aided by institution and culture, …imbued with public spirit, who will know how to live and work and prosper…how to use all favoring outward conditions, how to triumph by intelligence, by tact, by industry, by perseverance, over the indifference of their own people, and how to overcome the scorn and opposition of the enemies of the race…”

“It is sad to think that there are some Africans, especially among those who have enjoyed the advantages of foreign training, who are blind enough to the radical facts of humanity as to say, ‘Let us do away with our African personality and be lost, if possible, in another race’. Preach this doctrine as much as you like, no one will do it, for no one can do it, for when you have done away with your personality, you have done away with yourselves. Your place has been assigned you in the universe as Africans, and there is no room for you as anything else.”

—Edward Wilmot Blyden, 1832-1912 “If you want the civilization of a people to reach the very best elements of their being, and then, having reached them, there to abide, as an indigenous principle, you must imbue the womanhood of that people with all its elements and qualities. Any movement which passes by the female sex is an ephemeral thing. Without them, no true nationality, patriotism, religion, cultivation, family life, or true social status is a possibility. In this matter it takes two to make one-mankind is a duality. The male may bring, as an exotic, a foreign graft, say of a civilization, to a new people. But what then? Can a graft live or thrive of itself?

By no manner of means. It must get vitality from the stock into which it is put; and it is the women who gives the sap to every human organization which thrives and flourishes on earth.”

“Let our posterity know that we their ancestors, uncultured and unlearned, amid all trials and temptations, were men of integrity.”

“Those too impressed with material things cannot hold their place n the world of culture; they are relegated to inferiority and ultimate death.”

“Strive to make something of yourself; then strive to make the most of yourself.”

—Rev. Alexander Crummell, 1819-1898 “I thank my God, that through a long life of hardship and adversity, I have ever been free in both mind and body: and have always raised my voice on behalf of my enslaved countrymen.”

—Reverend Robert Wedderburn, 1762-1835 “I was born a slave, but nature gave me the soul of a free man….”

—Toussaint L'Ouverture, 1743-1803 “Presumption should never make us neglect that which appears easy to us, nor despair make us lose courage at the sight of difficulties.”

“I am of the African race, and in the color which is natural to them of the deepest dye; and it is under a sense of the most profound gratitude to the Supreme Ruler of the Universe.”

—Benjamin Banneker, 1731- 1806

We have designed a beautiful scroll that bears all of these quotes. You can pre-order the scroll now. The scroll is size 13” x 22” and comes in color. The scroll makes a great gift for a young man who has no knowledge or relationship with his father, as these great men can fill in the gap. To order send your postal money order for $26 + $2 s/h made payable to H. Edmond, 652 E. 89th Pl., Chicago, IL 60619. Delivery of the scroll will begin December 12, 2011.

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“Black male and female slaves were brainwashed to see themselves as studs and sexual objects. Many blacks have unconsciously perpetuated the one-dimensional studs and sluts personas.”

“Media manipulation, propaganda and destructive societal norms have persuaded many that black men are unreliable and thus inferior. Black women and children have been taught that they are safer in white controlled environments.”

“Stripped of all self-esteem, slaves clung to the one possession that always mystified, tantalized and angered whites—their sexuality. Black females became sexual objects and black men Mandingo studs. Blackness and hyper-sexuality became inseparable concepts.”

“Entertainers often promote depictions of blacks that are based on hyper-sexual violent, self-destructive and demeaning stereotypes that date back to slavery. These powerful media images are just as influential today as they were more than 350 years ago.”

White-on black injustice angers blacks more than blackon-black violence. We should be just as concerned about the injustices we heap on each other as we are with the negative way whites treat us.”

“Before and after slavery, blacks were conditioned to believe that whites were mentally, morally and culturally superior. Due to media messaging, African slaves and their descendants have accepted this myth as truth.”

“Woven into the black American experience is an abnormal embrace of inaccurate stereotypes created to justify slavery. Damage to our psyches, inherited from societal brainwashing, compels us to accept buffoonery and cling to anything that appeals to our emotions, lightens our mental pain and teaches us to laugh at our own denigration.”

“Most blacks are unaware of the psychological trauma resulting from more than 350 years of racial oppression.

Even in the so-called ’post-racial era’ African Americans still wrestle with the black inferiority complex in the face of white privilege.”

—Tom Burrell, 1939– Present

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YOUTH BILL OF RIGHTS For parents, teachers and other adults.

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Stand by me, not over me. Give me the feeling that I am not alone in the world, and that I can always count on you when I am in trouble.

Make me feel that I am loved and wanted. I want to love you, not as a duty, but because you love me, and I thus learn what love is. Make me a priority in your life and schedule outings and activities that I can share and that I can enrich my life by.

Educate me by being affectionately firm. You really will achieve more with me through patient teaching than by punishment or preaching. Say "no" when you feel you must, but explain your rules, don’t merely impose them. Most of all be consistent and not wishy washy. If you are confused about what you want from me, why shouldn’t I be confused about what I give you.

Bring me up so that I will not always need you. Teach me how to take on responsibility and become independent of you. I will learn faster and better if you will let me question you, your ideas and your standards. I want a chance to prove what I can do as soon as I am ready to give proof. Don't hold me back by a false love that over-protects and paralyzes.

Don't act shocked when I do things I should not. It is going to take me time to learn how to grow into life properly. All of God’s children have problems. That doesn’t mean we’re all problem children.

Don't treat me like I am inferior. I doubt ourselves enough without your confirmation. Predicting failure won’t help us to succeed. We need support, nurturing and encouragement from you.

Say "Nice Work" when I do something really well. Don't hold back the praise when I deserve it. That’s the way to spur us on.

Show respect for my wishes even if you disagree with them. You teach respect, when you give respect. Respect for you will flow naturally from your respect for me. "What you are, speaks louder than your words."

Get the slave out of you. Slavery has lasted long enough. It has destroyed families, communities and nations. This culture of master and slave is antiquated and a dead-end system of dysfunctional relationships. It is predicated on fear of scarcity and the illusion that we can control others when we can’t control one cell of our own body. Transform your fears into love, and take the time to eradicate the slave. I represent freedom. Don't impose your slave mentality and systems on me. It’s time for a change. See Ajanaku Basic Research.

Give direct answers to direct questions. Don't give me more than I ask for or can understand. When you don't know, say so, but find someone who does know, so that my question can be answered.

Sometimes I run into serious emotional difficulties. Should that happen, obtain professional counseling for me. It isn’t always easy for me to understand myself or know just what I need. That’s why there are specialist in personal adjustment and vocational selection.

Treat me as a person in my own right. Children are people, not carbon copies of grown-up’s. Treat all young people in your care fairly; that is, as of equal value to yourself. That is how I will learn to respect the rights of other people and to treat them fairly.

If I reject your religion, be sure to teach me principles. You can teach me to be a good person by instilling principles in me. “Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you," is a principle that permeates all religions, as do love, truth, justice, peace, and principles can be taught in public schools.

Make me feel that our home belongs to me. I am at least as important as the furniture. Don't protect "things" at my expense by making me feel like an intruding bull in a china shop.

Don't laugh at me when I use the word "love." The need to love and be loved starts early (and never ends.) Help me to develop a healthy self-esteem, so that I love myself, and thus magnetize genuine love to me for a healthy partnership.

Treat me as junior partners in the firm. Democracy starts at home. If you want me to be a worthy successor to you, take me into your confidence, and let me help manage our family, school and community. Decisions that will affect our whole future should be made with me, not for me. I should at least be heard as to the kind of future I want.

Make yourself an adult fit for a child to live with. Prove to me "it isn’t so" that parents are the worst persons in the world to have offspring, or that teachers are precisely the people least-suited to teach. Show me that home and school are not simply places where young people learn how to get along with disagreeable adults.

I am a gift to the world. Prepare me to lead my life, not yours. Find out what I aspire and am capable of doing and being.

Don’t force me beyond my capacity or make me become what you want me to become. Help me set realistic goals and successfully achieve them.

School should be a place that instills a love of learning and a healthy lifestyle. Loading me with homework so that I don't have a life outside of school makes me hate learning and school. Making me sit for hours in school, acclimates me to a sedentary lifestyle that is against my health, because it leads to heart disease. Movement is natural and not hyperactivity. I don’t need drugs to sedate me, I need people who know my authentic needs, protect my health, facilitate my interest and protect my rights. Are you listening?

Help me develop financial independence and stability. Teach me a work ethic and how to earn and use money wisely and set financial goals. I need a career, a profession and institutional development skills.

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21. Show interest in what I am doing. Even though by your standards my activities may not be important or interesting, don't reduce them in my eye by your indifference.

22. Let me make my own mistakes. To make wise decisions takes experience. That means I have to try something’s for myself. I can only learn from my own action not yours.

23. Learn to understand me from my point of view. Your perspective is just that, yours. Remember the saying, walk a mile in another shoes. Apply that to me. I am not you so learn to empathize with me.

24. Teach me to know myself first. Know Thyself! Help me to gain self-knowledge so that I can know others.

25. Don't treat me like adults only when I break the law. As a child I learn from adults. I have no determination of whom or where, I grow up or what values I am taught. If I am taught to be a criminal, give me the necessary healing therapies to help me overcome my ills. I am a child and I don't have the right-to-vote and elect judges, and other public officials, so why treat me like an adult only when I break the law?

26. Learn how to communicate and listen. Listening is a art that facilitates communication rather than arguments. Communication is a science and has rules. Teach me to do more than just talk. My words should reflect intelligence, meaning and purposeful living.

27. I need both of my parents. Don't let your disagreements interfere with my relationships with each of you. Your problems are just that, your problems, don't use me to punish each another.

28. Change those institutions that no longer work in my interest. Don't be so stuck on the way things were, that you can’t change institutions that fail me. My generation is different from yours so create institutions that fulfill my needs, protect my rights, facilitate and maintain my health and foster my interest.

29. When you are emotionally or mentally ill, get help. Don't allow your inferior feelings to make you operate from a supremist point of view (I’m right because I pay the bills, am older, male, my mother, etc.) Be willing to at least examine the possibility of you’re being incorrect, and gain the courage to correct yourself. Learn EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) www.emofree.com 30. Don't assume that you know what I am doing or being. Ask questions, get answers and then come to your conclusion, based on facts.

31. Love means discipline. Don't let your guilt for not having planned my birth, be the reason you let me run wild. I need you to discipline me as a child, so that others who have no love or commitment to me will not harm me later in life. Let your discipline be just, loving and reasonable.

32. Don't be afraid to admit when you are wrong. Perfection comes with correcting error, so don't act like you are always right and look down on me. So be perfect in correcting your errors.

33. I need fun and companionship. Help me share my interests and happy feelings with groups of friends. Give me time to be with them and make them welcome when they come to visit.

34. Learn how to be a good parent. Parenting does not come naturally, so take the time to learn to be a successful parent by taking classes.

35. Don't be toxic to me, by perpetuating your fears and lies. If you are afraid of bugs, snakes, dogs, people, etc., have the courage to admit that you are fearful and that their is not something wrong with the thing you fear but with you, and seek the knowledge you need to overcome your fear. "Fear is the abandonment of the supports offered by reason.” Book of Wisdom This way I can grow up with my natural curiosity and desire to learn intact.

36. TV is not an adequate substitute for good parenting. Too much TV, like too much of anything (except love) is a detriment. The library is a much better resource. Also activities that allow me to exercise my body and release energy.

37. End the "pecking order." The pecking order is an animalistic means for defining value, based on adopting an animal social structure. As a child, I am always at the bottom of your pecking order and that sets me up to be a bully or bullied.

Learn nonviolence and commit to developing I-Thou relationships based on equality, where everyone is valued and deserving of respect, and justice.

38. Don't make me ashamed of my natural sexual feelings. Sex is natural. Teach me by precept and example how to maintain sexual integrity in harmony with the true purpose of sex. Help me to understand and develop a healthy sexual attitude grounded in love, self-respect and healthy self-esteem. Protect me from sexually perverted people who would destroy my innocence and development.

39. I need a functional home. A house is not a home. A home is an incubator for the development of healthy individuals.

Home is a principled institution founded on the science of biology, love and goodwill. Take the time to invest in its development for it is the foundation of all sane societies.

40. Your and previous generations social, relationship and environmental grade is an F. You have failed at developing a healthy functional society. You have failed at developing loving relationships. You have failed at maintaining a healthy and balanced ecology. What are you going to do about this? Business as usual is not acceptable. You have to change your foolish ways, now!

41. Fertility Literacy Education is of paramount importance. Provide me with an education that begins with the science of how I got here and how to get others here. Primary choices can only be made when I have knowledge. I don't have to be in a position where I have to react to a failure to plan conception when I am fertility literate. © 2006 SHE www.lunaqueen.angelfire.com

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AN APPEAL FOR HUMAN RIGHTS ONE We, the students of the six affiliated institutions forming the Atlanta University Center — Clark, Morehouse, Morris Brown, and Spelman Colleges, Atlanta University, and the Interdenominational Theological Center — have joined our hearts, minds, and bodies in the cause of gaining those rights which are inherently ours as of the human race and as citizens these United States.

We pledge our unqualified support to those students in this nation who have recently been engaged in the significant movement to secure certain long-awaited rights and privileges. This protest, like the bus boycott in Montgomery, has shocked many people throughout the world. Why. Because they had not quite realized the unanimity of spirit and purpose which motivates the thinking and action of the great majority of the Negro people. The students who instigate and participate in these sit-down protests are dissatisfied, not only with the existing conditions, but with the snail-like speed at which they are being ameliorated. Every normal being wants to walk the earth with dignity and abhors any and all proscriptions placed upon him because of race or color. In essence, this is the meaning of the sit-down protests that are sweeping this nation today.

We do not intend to wait placidly for those which are already legally and morally ours to be meted out to us at a time.

Today's youth will not sit by submissively, while being denied all of the rights, privileges, and joys of life. We want to state clearly and unequivocally that we cannot tolerate in a nation professing democracy and among people professing democracy, and among people professing Christianity, the discriminatory conditions under which the Negro is living today in Atlanta Georgia — supposedly one the most progressive cities in the South.

Among the inequalities and injustices in Atlanta and in Georgia against which we protest, the following are outstanding examples: (1) EDUCATION: In the Public School System, facilities for Negroes and whites are separate and unequal, Double sessions continue in about half of the Negro Public Schools, and many Negro children travel ten miles a day in order to reach a school that will admit them.

On the University level, the state will pay a Negro to attend a school out of state rather than admit him to the University of Georgia, Georgia Tech, the Georgia Medical School, and other tax-supported public institutions.

According to a recent publication, in the fiscal year 1958 a total of $31,632,057.18 was spent in the State institutions of higher education for white only. In the Negro State Colleges only $2,001,177.06 was spent.

The publicly supported institutions of higher education are inter-racial now, except that they deny admission to Negro Americans.

(2) JOBS: Negroes are denied employment in the majority of city, state, and federal governmental jobs, except in the most menial capacities.

(3) HOUSING: While Negroes constitute 32% of the population of Atlanta, they are forced to live within 16% of the area the city.

Statistics also show that the bulk of the Negro population is still: a. locked into the more undesirable and overcrowded areas of the city; b. paying a proportionally higher percentage of income for rental and purchase of generally lower quality property; c. blocked by political and direct or indirect restrictions in its efforts to secure better housing.

(4) VOTING: Contrary to statements made in Congress by several Southern Senators, we know that in many counties in Georgia and other southern states, Negro college graduates are declared unqualified to vote and are not to register, (5) HOSPITALS: Compared with facilities for other people in Atlanta and Georgia, those for Negroes are unequal and totally inadequate.

Reports show that Atlanta's 14 general hospitals and 9 related institutions provide some 4,000 beds. Except for some 430 beds at Grady Hospital, Negroes are limited to the 250 beds in three private Negro hospitals. Some of the hospitals barring Negroes were built with federal funds.

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(6) MOVIES, CONCERTS, RESTAURANTS: Negroes are barred from most movies and segregated in the rest.

Negroes must even sit in a segregated section of the Municipal Auditorium.

If a Negro is hungry, his hunger must wait until he comes to a "colored" restaurant, and even his thirst must await its quenching at a "colored" water fountain.

(7) LAW ENFORCEMENT: There are grave inequalities in the area of law enforcement. Too often, Negroes are maltreated by officers of the law. An insufficient number of Negroes is employed in the law-enforcing agencies. They are seldom, if ever promoted. Of 830 policemen in Atlanta only 35 are Negroes.

We have briefly mentioned only a few situations in which we are discriminated against. We have understated rather than overstated the problems. These social evils are seriously plaguing Georgia, the South, the nation, and the world.

WE HOLD THAT: (1) The practice of racial segregation is not in keeping with the ideals of Democracy and Christianity.

(2) Racial segregation is robbing not only the segregated but the segregator of his human dignity. Furthermore, the propagation racial prejudice is unfair to the generations yet unborn.

(3) In times of war, the Negro has fought and died for his country; yet he still has not been accorded first-class citizenship.

(4) In spite of the fact that the Negro pays his share of taxes, he does not enjoy participation in city, county and state government at the level where laws are enacted.

(5) The social, economic, and political progress of Georgia is retarded by segregation and prejudices.

(6) America is fast losing the respect of other nations by the poor example which she sets the area of race relations.

It is unfortunate that Negro is being forced to fight, in any way, for what is due him and is freely accorded other Americans, It is unfortunate that even today some people should hold to the erroneous idea of racial despite the fact that the world is fast moving toward an integrated humanity.

The time has come for the people of Atlanta and Georgia to take a good look at what is really happening in this country, and to stop believing those who tell us that everything is fine and equal, and that the Negro is happy satisfied.

It is to be regretted that there are those who still refuse to recognize the over-riding supremacy of the Federal Law. Our churches which are ordained by God and claim to be the houses of all people, foster segregation of the races to the point of making Sunday the most segregated day of the week.

We, the students of the Atlanta University Center, are driven by past and present events to assert our feelings to the citizens of Atlanta and to the world.

We, therefore, call upon all people in authority — State, County, and City officials; all leaders in civic life — ministers, teachers, and business men; and all people of good will to assort themselves and abolish these injustices. We must say in all candor that we plan to use every legal and non-violent means at our disposal to secure full citizenship rights as members of this great Democracy of ours.

LONNIE C. KING, JR. WILLIE MAYS President of Council For the Students of Atlanta University JAMES FELDER President of Student Government Association For the Students of Clark College MARION D. BENNETT President of Student Association For the Students of Interdenominational Theological Center DON CLARKE President of Student Body For the Students of Morehouse College MARY ANN SMITH Secretary of Student Government Association For the Students of Morris Brown College ROSLYN POPE President of Student Government Association For the Students of Spelman College

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AN APPEAL FOR HUMAN RIGHTS TWO 40th Anniversary - March 2000 Forty years ago, on March 9, 1960, the students of the six member institutions in the Atlanta University Center ( Atlanta University, Clark College, Morehouse College, Morris Brown College, Spelman College, and the Interdenominational Theological Center) published an advertisement in the Atlanta newspapers entitled “An Appeal for Human Rights”. The “Appeal” protested the devastating effect of racial segregation in the areas of education, employment, housing, voting rights, hospital access, public accommodations, and law enforcement. This document alerted the citizens of Atlanta of the students’ determination to seek immediate change. Joined by people of goodwill from throughout the city and the nation, the Atlanta Student Movement launched the sit-in protest campaign, which eventually led to the end of legalized segregation in places of public accommodation.

While acknowledging the significant social and political gains of the past four decades ... we find that there remains much work still to be done in order to remove the final vestiges of years of institutionalized racism and prejudice. For while segregation under-girded by law no longer exists, economic and social justice for all is not yet a reality and the access made possible by desegregation has not ended systemic racial inequities. In the year 2000, we are witnessing a resurgence of racial bigotry and the withdrawal of remedies designed to redress past wrongs.

Economic power for African Americans remains an elusive goal, especially for the entrenched underclass, still mired in grinding poverty.

We are on the threshold of a new millennium that will be characterized not only by global interdependence and structural economic change, but also by greater racial and cultural diversity. Metropolitan Atlanta is much more culturally diverse today than in 1960 as a result of the arrival of large numbers of Asian, Hispanic and other ethnic groups. It is also important to recognize that an estimated 86% of the new entrants into the U. S. labor force by 2010 will be non-white. The structural changes in the economy and the transition to a post-industrial, knowledge-based society in America makes the elevation of the African American underclass even more imperative. These current realities make racial discrimination a luxury our nation can no longer afford, as we face economic challenges from China, Japan, the European Union, and other nations.

At the dawn of the 21st century, we, the veterans of the 1960 Atlanta Student Movement, along with the current student leaders of Clark-Atlanta University, Morehouse College, Morris Brown College, and Spelman College join our hearts and minds in issuing a “Second Appeal for Human Rights”. We affirm our commitment to uphold the inherent dignity of all people. We protest injustice and call upon the citizens and leaders of all races in the Metropolitan Atlanta to create a shining example of progress and racial harmony in the United States.

The following are some of our concerns: EDUCATION In the 1960s, the struggle for equal education centered on the fight to integrate the public school system. Today, the fight must be refocused. In 1960, the population of Atlanta was 62 percent white. Since that time, as a result of “white flight”, the white population of Atlanta has declined by 64 %. Today, Atlanta’s population is 68% minority, and over 80% of the children who attend public schools in Atlanta are African American, Hispanic American or Asian American. The Atlanta public school system suffers from comparatively low-test scores, under-enrollment in college preparatory courses, inadequate career and vocational guidance, and high dropout rates at the high school level.

Georgia has demonstrated only marginal success in improving African American student enrollment in higher education during the past four decades. Although African Americans represented 32.3% of the college age population in Georgia in 1996, only 7.1% of these students were enrolled in the flagship institution, the University of Georgia in Athens. Moreover, only 3% of the students in three historically black state colleges and universities are white. In large measure, a de facto segregated public school system (PreK-12) and higher education continues to exist in Atlanta and the State of Georgia.

We welcome the commitment of the Governor of the State of Georgia, his Education Commission, and the Georgia General Assembly to improve education.

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Since 1970, structural changes in the economy of Metropolitan Atlanta have led to a major shift of manufacturing, warehousing and retailing jobs away from the city to the outlying suburbs. At the same time, there has been an increase in managerial, professional and higher skill service employment in the city. The negative effect of this transformation has been exacerbated by the limited public transportation between the city and its suburbs. Still, there is great disparity in the wealth of Atlanta’s African American and white populations. According to 1994 data, the median wealth of white families was more than 7 times that of African American families.

According to a recent report by Fannie Mae, a federally funded housing agency, white neighborhoods receive four times as many mortgage loans as do African American neighborhoods. The barriers to commercial credit play no small part in relegating African Americans to the status of consumers rather than producers of goods and services. Regardless of the capital window through which access is sought, African Americans continue to face higher standards, receive smaller loans, suffer substantially higher loan denials and then pay higher interest rates when loans are granted. Several studies undertaken by the Federal Reserve in the 1980’s proved that African Americans in the Atlanta metropolitan area experienced discriminatory lending practices and “red-lining” by local banks. These practices are as untenable today as they were forty years ago.

We must also acknowledge the distressing problem of homelessness and sub-standard housing existing in the midst of affluence and plenty. We submit that solutions can and must be found.

TRANSPORTATION Since 1960, the Atlanta Metropolitan Area has added 2 million new residents, making it the 11th most populated urban area in the United States. Seventy percent of the nearly 650,000 people that have moved into the 10-county Atlanta region since 1990 live north of 1-20, the area that has attracted the largest increase in jobs and highway expenditures. Extraordinary spending on road construction, with only a comparatively modest investment in public transportation outside of Fulton and DeKalb Counties, has created an absolute reliance on the automobile. As a result, Atlanta is congested and has intolerable levels of air pollution. According to a report on a study by the Brookings Institution in Washington, “There is a ‘stark divide’ between the northern ‘haves’ and their less fortunate brethren to the south, a growing schism that threatens the region’s economic, social, and racial foundation, and only a more equitable, geographically balanced level of growth will keep the Atlanta region from choking on its success.”

The MARTA system serves only Fulton and Dekalb counties and 75% of its riders are African American. While the highest concentration of African Americans live in Fulton and DeKalb counties, more than 50% of the metropolitan area’s jobs are outside of these two counties. The MARTA system does not service suburban areas and only a limited number of African American urban poor own cars. This mismatch between where most African Americans live and where most new jobs are being created is especially punishing on families trying to leave the welfare rolls.

It is projected that the Atlanta metropolitan region will spend $36 billion over the next 25 years on transportation improvements. It is imperative that the problems mentioned above become a high priority on the agenda of the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority and other transportation agencies.

POLITICAL EMPOWERMENT In 1960, throughout the South, voting rights discrimination against African Americans resulted in denial of that crucial right to many of our citizens. Many people suffered and some died in the struggle to gain the right to vote. Their sacrifices laid the groundwork for the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Yet, in Atlanta, low voter turnout for elections in the African American community continues to be a problem. For example, in November of 1997 only 37% of African Americans registered to vote in Atlanta cast their ballots in the municipal election. Another concern is the number of African Americans who are not registered, or if registered, simply stay at home on election day. We deplore this under-utilization of a privilege won through untold sacrifice. The cure to these ills, where they exist, is greater involvement in the political process by the African American electorate and greater accountability by public office holders.

In spite of the recent trends towards voter apathy, African Americans hold high level political positions in city, county, state, and national government. For example, in Atlanta, an African American has held the office of mayor since 1974.

Currently, African Americans represent almost 20% of the elected officials in the Georgia General Assembly, and hold a majority of the seats on the Atlanta City Council and the Fulton County Board of Commissioners. This trend is encouraging, but does not represent in any real sense the true capacity of the African American community in Atlanta, or in Georgia, to participate in determining its own destiny in a democratic society.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND PUBLIC SAFETY Between 1978 and 1996, the prison population in the United States more than tripled from 500,000 to 1.8 million. The 464

tripling of the incarceration of non-violent offenders during that period, resulted largely from the heavy enforcement of drug possession laws. African Americans and Hispanics are more often subjected to police brutality, suffer from racial disparity in sentencing, and tend to be more heavily impacted by the “get-tough-on-crime” laws requiring life terms without parole, mandatory minimum sentences and “two-strikes-you-are-out” laws. In addition, as a result of economic factors, large numbers of African Americans and Hispanic Americans are more dependent upon public defenders who have heavy case loads.

The State of Georgia has one of the largest prison populations in the world. Moreover, the criminal justice system of Georgia has failed to ensure that all prisoners serve appropriate and equitable periods of incarceration. Some other troubling facts are: Atlanta has the highest crime rate, as well as, the highest proportion of residents living below poverty of all cities of comparable size.

Although African Americans represent around 30% of the population of Georgia, they account for nearly 70% of the inmate population.

African Americans represent 68% of the prisoners in Georgia serving life sentences without parole, as compared to 32% for whites.

The majority of the prisoners on death row are African Americans and Hispanics.

Police brutality and racial profiling against African Americans in Atlanta and the nation are common and rarely punished. These incidents are seldom publicized except for high profile cases.

Widespread violence in Atlanta and the nation, in homes, religious institutions, schools, and work places, constitutes a serious public health problem. The African American Community tends to be disproportionately affected by this violence.

All citizens should be concerned about the conditions discussed above. It is well known that crimes against persons and property in our society are committed in large measure by persons without education, without economic security, and without hope. The resulting costs to society for systems of protection, policing, apprehension, adjudication, and incarceration, far exceed the reasonable cost of investment in the uplift of these citizens.

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION Even though Affirmative Action programs have proven to be the most effective remedy used to address racial inequities following the civil rights movement, support for Affirmative Action is eroding across the nation. Far more than thirty years of remediation are required in order to lessen the impact of 250 years of slavery and 100 years of racial segregation.

The recall of Affirmative Action will create a grave setback in efforts to achieve parity in this nation.

As a progressive community, we must not lose sight of the magnitude of the problems created by years of second-class citizenship. It is unreasonable to assume that the recovery will take only a fraction of the time that the sickness was allowed to fester. Atlanta, “the city too busy to hate”, must become pro-active in addressing these issues. Benign neglect is not acceptable.

The above are some of the most egregious concerns confronting the Atlanta community in general and the African American community in particular. There are others, including the state of health of African Americans, the underrepresentation and stereotypical treatment of African Americans in the media, and the limited representation of African Americans in the information technology industry.

THE CHALLENGE Over the past 40 years, some of the achievements of the city of Atlanta have been remarkable. People from all over the world look to Atlanta as an example of an exciting, progressive city enhanced by its cultural diversity. Nowhere are the human resources richer or more capable of addressing intransigent problems than in the city of Atlanta.

In past years, we, as African Americans, have resisted the assaults against our persons, our dignity, our rights, our liberties and our very survival through resolute solidarity among our community groups and institutions. We must do so now again. We must commit our intellect and energies across lines of geography, age, sex, economic and social station in order to secure for all citizens the guarantees of the United States Constitution.

We, the veterans of the civil rights movement of the 1960’s, and the student leaders of today, beseech the citizenship and leaders of Atlanta, and the academic community, to develop plans to address problems which impede the full realization of the promise of equality for all Atlanta citizens. These plans should focus on creating equitable opportunities for citi465

zens of the underclass. Specifically, we call upon the Mayor of Atlanta and the Governor of Georgia, in conjunction with the County Commissioners in Metropolitan Atlanta, to convene a Commission consisting of educators, students, corporate leaders, elected officials, representatives of faith-based communities, civic leaders, and youth. This Commission must examine the myriad of issues confronting the underclass and recommend policies that will enable these citizens to receive all benefits of full citizenship in the city of Atlanta, the State of Georgia and the United States of America.

Veterans: Carolyn Long Banks, Robert Felder, Marion Bennett, Frank Holloway, Charles A. Black, Lonnie C. King, Jr., Wilma Long Blanding, Gwendolyn Harris Middlebrooks, Anne R. Borders-Patterson, Daniel B. Mitchell, Herschelle Sullivan Challenor, Johnny E. Parham, Jr., Julius E. Coles, Roslyn Pope, Morris J. Dillard, Frank Smith, Lydia Tucker Douglas, Mary Ann Smith Sumrall, James Felder Current Students: Sean Gardner President, SGA, Clark Atlanta University J.C. Love President - SGA, Morehouse College Charles S. Barlow Executive Internal Vice President - SGA, Morris Brown College Geneice R. Davis President - SGA, Spelman College

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15 WAYS TO CREATE A SLAVE 1. Get a person or group to allow you to define them.

Examples: Thou are bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. You shall be called woman.

True Definition: Thou art the Divine Spirit of All That Is, clothed in human flesh.

You can not use your African name of Kunta Kente. You will be called Tony, Joseph, Dick, Sambo, Charles, PeeWee, Sarah, Jane, Shirley, Helen, Missy, Mudface.

You are gay or lesbian.

True Definition: You are suffering from an identity crisis and acting gay or lesbian. In truth you are MAN (male/female) created in the image of GOD. You are Negroes, colored, black, niggas, Afros.

True Definition: You are children of All That Is. You are MAN (male/female).

2. Allow someone to define your agricultural economy and deny you access to your right to exercise dominion over the earth, and free will as given by GOD, thus disconnecting you from Source.

You can no longer grow your food crops; you must grow cotton, tobacco, and rice.

You cannot grow hemp it is against the law.

3. Allow yourself to be controlled by fear.

Fear is the abandonment of the supports offered to you by Wisdom. Book of Wisdom 17:32 What you fear will come upon you.

4. Externalize everything with judgment, criticism, derision, mis-understanding.

You shouldn’t have done that.

You ought to have done this.

You are crazy, lazy, ugly, bad, stupid, and wrong.

Why do you always?

5. Allow your self-esteem to be eroded by being shame of yourr natural self (hair, skin color, height, weight, accent, lips, etc.).

6. Program people to invest their time and energy in doing what you want them to do for money and bottleneck their creativity.

7. Make people pay for what nature provides freely, air, water, energy, food, light.

8. Create a religion that promises salvation after death, so that suffering and want are acceptable. Create a savior who is not human (born of a virgin), so that people can’t aspire to Godhood on earth. Give god a face that is different from the people so that the people will worship the ethnic group that the face depicts. Create an emissary that contacts god for a person and give them no direct relationship.

9. Make people dependent from the cradle to the grave, never attaining independence and engaging in interdependent actions with others.

Dependent on mother and father, no rights of passage into adulthood.

Dependent on a degree.

Dependent on a job.

Dependent on a wife/husband.

Dependent on a doctor.

Dependent on a pension.

Dependent on the undertaker.

10. Deny a person or a people the right to read, write, do math and learn science. This can also be done by distracting people from learning and making fun and games more important and exciting.

11. Create a class structure and define and value people based on monetary value, skin color, gender, or age, thus locking their mentality into the physical world of things.

12. Create institutions that are founded on violence and maintain the threat and act of violence.

13. Create a system of punishment and rewards and make examples of some by setting them up to break unjust laws.

14. Make the natural expression of sexuality dirty, nasty and something to be shame of, thus causing people to hide, lie and deny their sexuality which will cause them to become perverse and engage in un-natural actions, break laws and seek forgiveness.

15. Denigrate the mother and she will denigrate the children and continue the cycle of slavery.

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35 WAYS TO ERADICATE SLAVERY 1. Develop a deep and abiding will and desire to be free.

2. Uplift motherhood by making it a science for conscious human and community development.

3. Develop high self-esteem by taking the time to know yourself so you can be, love and control yourself. Seek to know who you are as a distinct person (a universe unto yourself).

4. Become a law unto yourself by engaging in self-policing. Make doing the right thing, the right way for the right reason a habit, so that you get the right results.

5. Engage in a rights of passage that ushers you into adulthood (independence) so that you can engage with other independent people in inter-dependent activities. In other words cut the apron strings from your parents. Learn to think for yourself and observe and eliminate those things learned from your parents that are not for your highest and best good. This is best done at puberty (age 12-13) however if you are an adult who never engaged in a rights of passage create one for yourself. Your parents are your passage way onto earth and should be honored but not worshipped as infallible. Parents can make a mistake and most modern day parents still carry the legacy of slavery which manifests in the way they speak, act and do things.

6. Initiate, develop, maintain and administrate a stress free home for yourself. Homo sapiens have a need to be at home with themselves. Home is a necessary place to recharge and relax from a stressful environment.

8. Learn how to grow something that you eat and develop a working relationship of integrity with a farmer.

9. Create an urban/rural lifestyle so that you can protect the whole environment with your vote.

10. Take off all labels from the society. Define yourself in a manner that is empowering. Drop out of the class structure. Just BE. 11. Learn to meditate. Meditate upon a spiritual name that reflects your essence and purpose for Being.

12. Stop judging, criticizing, deriding, putting down, and mis-understanding self and others.

13. Eradicate your fears of dying, the dark, public speaking, mice, snakes and whatever.

14. Learn to express your creativity in a meaningful and empowering manner. Think outside the known by pioneering new frontiers of your mind.

15. Find the good in every experience, teaching, person and situation.

16. Observe yourself and seek to root out character defects like lying, not keeping your word, not being on time, loud talking, exaggeration of the truth, a lack of tidiness, a lack of personal hygiene, gossiping, blaming others, etc.

17. Turn off and tune out devises that program you to think or act against your interest. That includes violent music, television shows and persons.

18. Learn to meditate and connect with your internal reality. Get to know the GOD within, in that GOD is everywhere (omnipresent).

19. Fellowship with others who are developing their God-nature.

20. Work to eliminate toxic emotions that drive you to engage in self-destructive actions. Learn EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), RET (Rapid Eye Therapy) or another modality that can eliminate fear, hate, anger, lust, shame, guilt, and learn to generate and express Love to drive your intellect. Invest in Free Clinics to eradicate the ills that come as a result of ignorance, so that jails and prisons become obsolete.

21. Take your freedom seriously and learn to think for yourself. Be reasonable, thoughtful and honest.

22. Put raw and wild food in your diet and eliminate those foods that destroy your body. Join others in eradicating genetically modified crops that have the potential of creating a food monopoly and destroying natures order and your health.

23. Learn to heal yourself. Take responsibility for keeping you healthy. Here are some healing modalities that you can engage in for self-healing. (Nutrition, Herbology, Resonance Re-patterning, EFT, RET, Self-hypnosis, Meditation, Chi-gong, Massage and Reiki.

24. Learn about and invest in natural energy sources (solar, wind, geothermal, etc.)

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25. Learn how to run a meeting, resolve conflict, brainstorm, mind map, communicate (effective listening and IThou responses), solve problems and speak in public. These are basic leadership skills that all people need, in order to protect their health, foster their interest, uphold their rights and fulfill their needs.

26. Volunteer at a non-profit organization and learn new skills as you serve others.

27. Recycle and take care of the environment.

28. Set-up a sole proprietorship and engage in business.

29. Give-up violence of tongue, fist, weapon and thought. Learn nonviolence and work with others to initiate, develop, maintain and administrate nonviolent based institutions.

30. Vote. Take your right to make decisions about your world and environment seriously. When you pay taxes your vote gives you the right to determine how those taxes are used. You have a right to elect those people who will best represent you at the ward, county, city, state, national and international level of government.

31. Support bi-partisan government and develop representation in both the Republican (father) and Democratic (mother) Party. Begin to see government as an extension of family, a both/and relationship.

32. Engage in government (executive, judicial, legislative) by initiating precinct council government (the administrative fourth leg of government that is of, for and by the people) that anchors mankind in the reality of the four fold nature of self (spirit, mind, emotion and body), the environment (space, energy, elements and motion), nature (fire, earth, air and water) and the four directions (north, south, east and west).

33. Eliminate and eradicate laws that curtail your right to exercise dominion of the earth and exercise your free will.

Example: You have the right to carry a gun and some have the right to exploit nature for oil and waste it on seas and land, but you don’t have the right to grow hemp. The right to engage with nature and develop a free enterprise is basic to being a free and sovereign Being.

34. Express your sexuality in a manner that is natural, safe, loving, age appropriate, conscious and life affirming.

Learn how to consciously plan to achieve or avoid conception. The LunaQueen System provides this information.

35. Take self-education serious. Determine what your purpose is and learn what you need to know to carry it out.

Learn to think for yourself, engage your brain 100%.

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FREEDOM can only be achieved in the moment.

I Past

Was Could have Should have Ought have Regret

AM Definition VISION CHANGE

I AM THE ANSWER

NOW Who am I? What is my purpose?

What do I need to carry out my purpose When will I become active in fulfilling my purpose?

Where do I need to be to carry out my purpose?

How do I carry out my purpose?

Why - Apply to all the above.

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Future

Will Be Plans Hopes Dreams

THE WHO ZONE vs THE WHAT ZONE

WHO WHAT ZONE ZONE Living moment to moment A Subject Capable of Action The moment is an active reality and must be activated by a WHO (subject.)

Active Love in the Moment Principled Creative Self-defined Active Hopeful Truthful Just Kindness The moment is always action oriented.

Living in the past.

What happened? (interpretation) WHAT is past tense and incapable of living in the moment, even though the moment exists for all of life.

Slavery created people as a mis-definition to control, exploit and manipulate. Masters and slaves live in the what zone.

Slavery disconnects people from the moment and causes them to remember the pain, suffering, grief, shame and horror of the past.

Slavery is based on fear. This fear does not allow a person to generate love which is constructive in the moment.

When you bring negative attitudes and dispositions to the moment, you create an energy leakage.

Characteristics of Slavery

Each moment crescendos into the next moment.

The moment is full of possibilities and creativity. What determines ones outcome is what they bring to the moment. You can bring principles into the moment in order to build, for principles bring things into being. You can also bring negative attitudes and dispositions to the moment.

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Lying Fear Blaming Criticism Injustice Sexual Promiscuity Sexual Perversion Manipulation Judgment Acusations Over-sensitivity Unreasonableness Violence

Reactive Restricted Regrets Programmed Phoney Sadness Jealousy Hate Punishment/ Reward Duplicity Spite Revenge

Native American 10 Commandments The Earth is our Mother, care for her Honor all your relations Open your heart and soul to the Great Spirit All life is sacred; treat all beings with respect Take from the Earth what is needed and nothing more Do what needs to be done for the good of all Give thanks to the Great Spirit for each new day Speak the truth; but only of the good in others Follow the rhythms of nature; rise and retire with the sun Enjoy life’s journey, but leave no tracks

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STUDY SECTION 1. In your own words write two paragraphs on why the right to vote is important.

2. What would be the requirement and responsibility of someone who is Director of Direct Action? (Write as if you are seeking to fill this position.)

3. Why did the murder of the four little girls in the church bombing in Birmingham, AL, inspire Reverend Bevel to secure the right to vote?

4. Why do you think Dr. King and other leaders initially refuse to support Bevel’s proposal?

5. Which of the following principals would you attribute to Reverend Bevel?  fearful  indecisive  courageous  combative  loving  truthful  argumentative  just  determined  wishy washy 6. Choose one or two of the quotes from the top of most pages, that best describes Bevel’s response to the injunction.

7. Choose one or two of the quotes from the top of most pages, that best describes Bevel’s response to the appearance book.

8. Write a statement that would affirm the need for new elections after the right to vote was secured.

9. Can another person give you your rights?

10. What actions took place that detracted from the goal of attaining the right to vote? Name at least two.

11. Should you register to vote, and if so why” 12. What if anything would you have done different in securing the right to vote, under the circumstances that existed in 1965?

13. Why do you think white people were against African Americans voting?

14. Have you ever heard of James Bevel? If not, why do you think this is so.

15. Will you take the time to read the books that are used for reference, to learn your history?

16. Are you interested in visiting Selma, AL? (Every first weekend in March, the National Voting Rights Museum hosts a Annual Bridge Crossing Jubilee.)

17. What is nonviolence?

18. Give and example of how nonviolence was applied to secure the right to vote.

19. Name the principles that you would like to exemplify.

20. Name at least seven people who participated in the movement for the right to vote, and describe what they did.

21. What was the purpose for the March To Montgomery, AL? 22. Do you thing African Americans today, value the right to vote?

23. Why is precinct council necessary?

24. Write a screen play depicting an event that occurred in Selma, AL in 1965.

25. Write a poem or song, and draw a picture about the right to vote.

26. How has the Voting Rights Act benefited all Americans?

27. Write an essay on James Bevel’s contribution to the political franchise.

28. Set up a student precinct council (if under 18), a real one if you can vote.

29. Put music to the Ode To Martin Luther King, Jr., (back cover) and submit it to Edmond Publication.

30. What can you do, to maintain your voting rights?

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