Podcasts about topeka board

This 2013 episode covers the Mendez v. Westminster case that fought the segregation of Mexican-American students in the state of California in the 1940s. It went on pave the way for the much more famous Brown v. Topeka Board of Education.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A decision by the State could potentially add hundreds more housing units in San Diego and change the look of the city's coastal communities. Then, the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education ended “separate but equal” school discrimination and began the integration of American schools. But a new book tells the story of a little-known consequence and legacy of the ruling: Black teachers and principals who taught in segregated schools, lost their jobs and were replaced by white teachers. And, with abortion rights in jeopardy, many women are sharing their personal stories. For those who terminated pregnancies before it was legal in 1973, the memories can be especially painful. Finally, a preview of the film, “Neptune Frost.” The Afrofuterist sci-fi musical has been making the festival rounds but is playing exclusively at Digital Gym Cinema in East Village through Thursday.

Congrats to Hearts & Wheels, who won week 2 of #moxiemillion, by sharing the show to help it reach 1 million downloads this month! Necessity is the mother of invention and who was in a more necessitous position than victims of the Atlantic slave trade?  You may revolutionize industries, but good luck getting a patent. 00:47 Patents and law  06:40 Benjamin Bradley 09:10 Benjamin Montgomery 16:30 Thomas Jennings 23:15 Henry Boyd Links to all the research resources are on the website. Hang out with your fellow Brainiacs.  Reach out and touch Moxie on Facebook, Twitter,  or Instagram.  Become a patron of the podcast arts! Patreon or Ko-Fi.  Or buy the book and a shirt. Music: Kevin MacLeod, David Fesilyan, Dan Henig. Sponsors: History's Trainwrecks, What Was That Like, Sambucol Want to start a podcast or need a better podcast host?  Get up to TWO months hosting for free from Libsyn with coupon code "moxie."   The U.S. legal system has both helped and hindered racial justice through our history.  – high points like Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, which said that separate but equal inherently isn't equal, and one of my favorites, Loving v. Virginia. This aptly titled ruling finally overturned laws against interracial marriage, and low points like the notorious Dredd Scott decision, which said that no Black person could be a citizen or sue someone in court.  It's not just the Supreme Court.  As above, so below and that trickles all the way down to the USPTO.  My name's Moxie…   Real quick before we get stuck in: what is a patent?  A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a set period of time.  Not to be confused with trademark or copyright, which you can hear more about in the episode Copy-wrong, link in the show notes.  Do you *need a patent to sell an invention?  No, but you need one if you want to be the only one to sell your invention.  A patent can't actually stop other people before they steal your idea, as anyone whose had to deal with cheap foreign knockoffs knows.  (That happened to a fellow who designed these amazing motion-sensing LED eyelashes I bought back in my burlesque days; the Chinese knockoffs hit Amazon before his Kickstarter had even finished.)  What the patent does is gives you ammo to go to court for legal remedy… if going to court is fiscally feasible and for most people it's not.   Patents are a form of property, a thing you can own.  When you live in a place were certain people, specifically those from Africa and their descendants kept in bondage in the US, are barred from *having property, that means no patents for enslaved people.  A 19th century law specified that patent applicants had to sign a Patent Oath that, among other things, attested to their country of citizenship.  When the Dredd Scott decision effectively denied Black Americans any citizenship at all, that meant an automatic dismissal of patent applications by slaves.   Nonetheless, Black inventors persisted and were often successful at the patent office despite staggering legal impediments.  As a well known example, George Washington Carver was born a slave but was still issued three patents in his lifetime, a number that is but a shadow of his inventive genius.  The first known patent to a Black inventor was issued to Thomas Jennings in 1821 for a dry cleaning method.  And the first known patent to a Black woman inventor was issued to Martha Jones in 1868 for an improved corn husker and sheller. Well, she might be the first, she might not be; more on that later and by later I mean next week, because my research exceeded my grasp again.   Despite being removed from their homes, intentionally mixed with people from other regions with whom they had no common language, denied an education or even the right to educate themselves, and of course all the outright abuse and atrocities, the enslaved people of America were no less clever than their white counterparts and no less driven to improve their lives.  More so, likely.  When a white man invented a new farming tool, it was saving his tired back.  When a black slave invented a new and improved tool, he was saving his family.  The new idea could save him from lashings, spare his wife working herself to death, save the limbs of his children from the machines of the time.  And of course making yourself more valuable to the person who dictates your fate doesn't hurt.      You'll notice a certain pattern to the stories today, not that that means the stories need telling any less.  And there are always individual details, though most of them will make you face-palm so hard you'll get a cyst.  That's a real thing that happened to my sister back in like 1990 when you made fun of someone else's intelligence with a dramatic slap to your own forehead.  And my husband thinks I'm the critical one.  There are face-palmy stories like a man named Ned, who invented the cotton scraper.  The man who kept Ned in bondage, Oscar Stuart, tried to patent Ned's invention, but was denied because he couldn't prove he was the inventor, because he wasn't.  Stuart went as far as to write to the Secretary of Interior in 1858, asserting that “the master is the owner of the fruits of the labor of the slave, both manual and intellectual.”  Enslaved people weren't actually barred from getting a patent…until later that year, when it was codified that enslaved Blacks were barred from applying for patents, as were the plantation owners.  Undeterred by his lack of patent, Stuart began manufacturing the cotton scraper and reportedly used this testimonial from a fellow plantation owner, and this is the bit where you might do yourself a minor battery: “I am glad to know that your implement is the invention of a Negro slave — thus giving the lie to the abolition cry that slavery dwarfs the mind of the Negro. When did a free Negro ever invent anything?”  Oy vey.     Free Blacks invented *tons of things.  For further reading, look up Granville T Woods, often called “the black Edison,” Woods was a self-taught engineer who received over 50 patents, which is over 50 more than most of us have, but he was clearly able to get patents, so he's outside our focus today.  We're looking at people like Benjamin Bradley, born a slave around 1830 as a slave in Maryland.  Unusually, and illegally, he was able to read and write.  While being made to work in a print shop as a teenager, Bradley began working with some scrap materials, modeling a small ship.  He quickly built his skills until he'd graduated from model ships to building a working steam engine from a piece of a gun-barrel and some random handy junk.  You can't not be impressed by that and the people around Bradley suitably were.  He was placed in a new job, this time at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland as a classroom assistant in the science department.  He helped to set up and conduct experiments, working with chemical gases.  The faculty were also impressed with Bradley in his understanding of the subject matter and also with his preparedness in readying the experiments.     Praise is nice, but a paycheck is even nicer.  Bradley was given a salary but he still “belonged” to a white man, who took most of his money; Bradley was allowed to keep about $5.00 a month, or about $180 today.  Despite having a pretty good set-up at Annapolis, Bradley had not forgotten his steam engine.  He'd sold an early prototype to a student and used that and the money he'd been able to squirrel away from his pay to build a larger model.  He worked his way up to an engine large enough that his engine became the first to propel a steam-powered warship, he was with Navy types after all, at 16 knots, which is about 18 mi/29km.  Because Benjamin Bradley was a slave, he was unable to secure a patent for his engine. His master did, however, allow him to sell the engine and he used that money to purchase his freedom.  So if you have an idea you really believe in, stick with it.   Another Benjamin with a penchant for tinkering was Benjamin Montgomery, born in 1819 in Loudon County, Virginia.  A *lot of these stories start in my home state.  He was sold to Joseph E. Davis of Mississippi planter, the older brother of Jefferson Davis, future President of the Confederate States of America.  Joseph must have been more liberal than Jefferson, because he recognized Montgomery's intelligence and tasked him to run the general store on the Davis Bend plantation.  Montgomery, who'd been taught to read and write by Davis' children, excelled at retail management and Davis promoted Montgomery to overseeing the entirety of his purchasing and shipping operations.     Montgomery also learned a number of other difficult tasks, including land surveying, flood control, drafting, and mechanics.  The golden spike wouldn't be driven in the transcontinental railroad until four years after the end of the civil war, so that meant that natural waterways were still the best and most important way to get widgets, kajiggers, and doodads from A to B.  This wasn't as as simple as those of us of the interstate highway system epoch might imagine.  Nature, in her beauty, is inconsistent and varying and variable depths of rivers made them difficult to navigate.  Heavy spring rains could cause sand bars to shift and, boom, now the boat is stuck and your cargo is delayed.  They lacked the benefit of the comparatively tiny backhoe that tried to dig the Ever Given out of the Suez canal.   Montgomery set out to address that problem – he was in shipping & receiving after all – and created a propellor that could cut into the water at different angles.  With it, boats could easily and reliably navigate through shallow water.  Joseph Davis attempted to patent the device in 1858, but the patent was denied, not because Davis wasn't the inventor, but because Montgomery, as a slave, was not a citizen of the United States, and thus could not apply for a patent.  If this were a YT video, I'd use that clip from Naked Gun of a whole stadium of people slapping their foreheads.  You can actually listen to the podcast on YT, btw.  Later, both Joseph *and Jefferson Davis attempted to patent the device in their names but were denied again.  Ironically and surprisingly, when Jefferson Davis later assumed the Presidency of the Confederacy, he signed into law the legislation that would allow a slaves to receive patent protection for their inventions.  It's like the opposite of a silver lining and honestly a bad place for an ad-break, but here we are.   MIDROLL   After the civil war and the emancipation proclamation, when Montgomery, no longer a slave, he filed his own patent application… but was once again rejected.  Joseph Davis sold his plantation as well as other properties to Montgomery and his son Isaiah on a long-term loan in the amount of $300,000.00.  That's a big chunk of change if that's in today dollars, but back then?  Benjamin and Isaiah wanted to use the property to establish a community of freed slaves, but natural disasters decimated their crops, leaving them unable to pay off the loan.  The Davis Bend property reverted back to the Davis family and Benjamin died the following year.  Undeterred, Isaiah took up his father's dream and later purchased 840 acres of land where he and other former slaves founded the town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi in 1887, with Isaiah as its first mayor.   My research didn't indicate why the free Montgomery's application was refused, but oe assumes racism.  The new language of patent law was written to be color-blind, but it's humans reading the applications, so some black inventors hid their race by doing things like using initals instead of their name if their name “sounded black.”  Others “used their white partners as proxies,” writes Brian L. Frye, a professor at the University of Kentucky's College of Law, in his article Invention of a Slave. This makes it difficult to know how many African-Americans were actually involved in early patents.  Though free black Americans like Jennings were able to patent their inventions, in practice obtaining a patent was difficult and expensive, and defending your patent?  Fuggedaboutit.    “If the legal system was biased against black inventors, they wouldn't have been able to defend their patents,” says Petra Moser, a professor of economics at New York University's Stern School of Business.  “Also, you need capital to defend your patent, and black inventors generally had less access to capital.”  If an issue were raised, credibility would automatically go to the white man.     It's impossible to know how many inventions between the 1790 establishment of the patent office and the 1865 end of the Civil war were stolen from slaves.  For one thing, in 1836, all the patents were being kept in Washington's Blodget's Hotel temporarily while a new facility was being built, when a fire broke out, which is bad.  There was a fire station next door, which is good,  but it was winter and the firefighters' leather hoses had cracked in the cold, which is bad.  They tried to do a bucket brigade, but it wasn't enough, and all 10k patents and 7,000 related patent models were lost.  These are called X-patents not only because they'd been lost but because, before the fire, patents weren't numbered, just their name and issue date, like a library without the Dewey decimal system.  They were able to replace some patents by asking inventors for their copy, after which they were numbered for sure.  As of 2004, about 2,800 of the X-patents have been recovered. The first patent issued to a black inventor was not one of them.   That patent belonged to one Thomas Jennings, and you owe him a big ol' thank you card if you've ever spilled food on your favorite fancy formalwear and had it *not been irrevocably ruined.  Jennings invented a process called ‘dry scouring,' a forerunner of modern dry cleaning.  He patented the process in 1821, to wit he is widely believed to be the first black person in America to receive a patent, but it can't really be proved or disproved on account of the fire.  Whether he was first or not, Jennings was only able to do this because he was born free in New York City.     According to The Inventive Spirit of African-Americans by Patricia Carter Sluby, Jennings started out as an apprentice to a prominent New York tailor before opening his own clothing shop in Lower Manhattan, a large and successful concern.  He secured a patent for his “dry scouring” method of removing dirt and grease from clothing in 1821, or as the New York Gazette reported it, a method of “Dry Scouring Clothes, and Woolen Fabrics in general, so that they keep their original shape, and have the polish and appearance of new.”  I'll take eight!     What was this revolutionary new method?  No freaking clue.  Because fire.  But we do know Jennings kept his patent letter, signed by then Secretary of State and future president John Quincy Adams, in a gold frame over his bed.  And that Jennings put much of his earnings from the invention towards the fight for abolition, funding a number of charities and legal aid societies, the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, and Freedom's Journal, the first black-owned newspaper in America.  Dry-scouring put all of his children through school and they became successful in their careers and prominent in the abolition movement.  His daughter Elizabeth, a schoolteacher, rose to national attention in 1854 when she boarded a whites-only horse-drawn streetcar in New York and refused to get off, like Rosa Parks 101 years before Rosa Parks, except she fought bodily the effort of the conductor to throw her off, hanging on to the window frame.  A letter she wrote about the incident was published in several abolitionist papers, and her father hired a lawyer to fight the streetcar company.  Amazingly, they won – again this was before the civil war, let alone civil rights.  The judge ruled that it was unlawful to eject black people from public transportation so long as they were “sober, well behaved, and free from disease.”  Their lawyer was a young Chester A. Arthur, who would later be the 21st president.   [segue] review   Henry Boyd's story began like the others we've heard, but in Kentucky in 1802.  He was apprenticed out to a cabinet maker, where he displayed a tremendous talent for carpentry.  So proficient and hard-working was Boyd that he was allowed to take on other work of his own, a side hustle as we say these days, and earn his own money and Boyd eventually made enough to buy his freedom at age 18.     At 24-years-old, a nearly-penniless Boyd moved to Cincinnati.  Ohio *was a free state, but Cincinnati sat too close to slave state of Kentucky to be a welcoming city for blacks, and I'm sure a few Cincinnatians would say it's too close to KY for their liking nowadays too.  Our skilled carpenter Boyd couldn't find anyone willing to hire him.  One shop had considered hiring him, but all the white employees threatened to quit, so no joy there.  Boyd finally found work on the riverfront, with the African Americans and Irish immigrants working as stevedores and laborers; Boyd himself was a janitor in a store.   One day, when a white carpenter showed up too drunk to work, Boyd built a counter for the storekeeper. This impressed his boss so much that he contracted him for other construction projects. Through word of mouth, Boyd's talent began to bring him some of the respect he deserved and a good amount of work.  He diligently saved up to buy his brother and a sister out of bondage too and purchase his own woodshop.  Not just a corner garage space; his workshop grew to spread across four buildings.  This was where came up with his next big idea - a bedframe.  Wait, it's interesting, I promise.  Everybody needs a bed and a bed needs a frame.  The Boyd Bedstead was a sturdier, better designed bedframe that was an immediate success…that he couldn't a patent for.  But a white cabinetmaker named George Porter did.  It is not known if Boyd was working with Porter and Porter was his white face for the patent office or if Porter ripped Boyd off.  Either way, the Boyd bedstead became extremely popular, with prominent citizens and hotels clamoring to get them.  The H. Boyd Company name was stamped on each one to set them apart from the knockoffs that such success inevitably breeds.   Not only was his bedstead breaking new ground, but his shop of up to 50 employees was racially integrated.  This social advance was, politely put, not popular.  The factory was the target of arsonists and was burnt to the ground.  Twice.  Twice Boyd rebuilt, but after a third fire, no insurance company would cover him and in 1862 the doors closed for good.  But don't worry about Boyd.  He'd saved enough to live out his retirement comfortably, but he wasn't lounging around.  Boyd had been active in the Underground Railroad and housed runaway slaves in a secret room.  His home was welcoming to the needy as well.  Henry Boyd passed away at the age of 83 and was laid to rest in an unmarked grave in Spring Grove Cemetery.  While you may not be able to find Boyd's grave, you can easily find original Boy bedsteads fetching high prices in antique stores and auctions.   And that's…You might have noticed today's episode was a bit of a sausage party so it's a good thing we'll pick up again next week with the stories, triumphs and tribulations of female inventors of color.  The world has so many fascinating facts in it and I am just a humble weekly half-hour podcaster, so see you next week for part two.  Remember…Thanks     Sources: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/with-patents-or-without-black-inventors-reshaped-american-industry-180962201 https://atlantablackstar.com/2014/02/11/5-inventions-by-enslaved-black-men-blocked-by-us-patent-office/4/ https://www.blackenterprise.com/black-history-month-inventions-black-slaves-denied-patents/ https://amsterdamnews.com/news/2021/08/05/sarah-boone-inventor-ironing-board-and-first-black/ https://theconversation.com/americas-always-had-black-inventors-even-when-the-patent-system-explicitly-excluded-them-72619 https://www.blackenterprise.com/black-history-month-inventions-black-slaves-denied-patents/ http://www.blackpast.org/aah/reed-judy-w-c-1826 https://web.archive.org/web/20180802193123/https://www.uspto.gov/about-us/news-updates/uspto-recognizes-inventive-women-during-womens-history-month https://www.yesmagazine.org/health-happiness/2016/03/21/10-black-women-innovators-and-the-awesome-things-they-brought-us https://www.nkytribune.com/2019/02/our-rich-history-henry-boyd-once-a-slave-became-a-prominent-african-american-furniture-maker/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/first-african-american-hold-patent-invented-dry-scouring-180971394/ https://blackinventor.com/benjamin-bradley/ https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/goode-sarah-e-c-1855-1905/

Martin Luther King Jr. - Letter From Birmingham Jail - Episode 1 - Dr. King Reaches Out Of His Jail Cell To Touch The Heart Of A Nation!   I'm Christy Shriver and we're here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us.    I'm Garry Shriver and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast.  Today we are going to start a three part series on a man who changed the landscape of political protesting- demonstrating that positive change can occur without massive loss of life.  He won the Nobel Peace Prize when he was 35 years old, at the time he was the youngest to ever receive the award.  His life became synonymous with civil disobedience- taking it farther than Thoreau ever dreamed possible. He radically and controversially claimed the role of a Christian political resister was not only the role to resist injustice.  This was not enough, to be successful one must accompany resistance with love- loving the persecutor- a claim that would be put to the test over and over and for which he would be martyred.  On Jan 20, 1986, the US Federal Government proclaimed a national holiday commemorating his life and message. Today over 955 (that number is likely small), but there are at least 955 major street, boulevards and thoroughfares that carry his name not only across the United States but across the world.  If you haven't figured it out yet, we are talking about the life, literature and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Specifically, the iconic letter that moved a nation from apathy to change, the “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” It was written on April 16, 1963 and famously addressed to “My Dear Fellow Clergyman.”      Indeed, and yet, so many students or really people, who hear that name know so little about the movement itself.  Growing up first in our nation's capital, Washington DC and then Brazil, I'd heard of Dr. King.  I knew he stood for non-violence, but I ignorantly thought he literally just walked around preaching and protesting, carrying signs, singing and marching.  I had NO idea how calculated the entire Civil Rights moment was.  I had no idea the amount of strategy and genius that went into the planning and execution of one of the most effective non-violent movements in the world- or even how many years it was in the making.  I just thought, Dr. King got up one day and just started protesting.      Well, I think most people don't, even people of good faith who try to mimic some of his basic strategies.  It's really difficult to wrap our minds around the complexity involved, not to mention the sheer power of King's personal rhetorical charisma that carried the movement from a few thousand African-American Christian protesters in Montgomery, Alabama to 250,000 people of all ethnicities and faith and the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.  The changes in legislation and the implementation of laws that had been allowed to be ignored for a century were a direct result of this movement we are discussing over the next few episodes.     So, let's get started beginning with some terminology that we hear  when it comes to Civil Rights, words that many of us who aren't originally from the South may not be familiar with- for example what are Jim Crow laws.  Who was Jim Crow and what are his laws?    Sure.  Jim Crow was not a real person.   He was a character created by a famous white comedian in the 1850s.    This white comedian painted his face black with charcoal and called himself Jim Crow and did comedy- it's what today we call black face and, of course, is derogatory and highly offensive.  That term later was adopted to refer to the laws that went into effect starting in the 1880s-these laws, of course, are also derogatory and highly offensive- so the term remains appropriate.  They refer to legislation that specifically targeted African-Americans to keep them from upward social mobility and fully participating in American life with the rest of the mostly white population.  Let me remind you that all of this occurred AFTER the end of the Civil War and after the Union troops left the South where they had been forcing Southern cities to integrate against their will under the direction of President Ulysses Grant- this period has been called Reconstruction.  After 1877 Reconstruction ended partly because the North was exhausted from trying to enforce the rights guaranteed by the 14th and 15th amendments. The north abandoned the South and the south will remain a third world part of the country for decades to come.  Jim Crow laws stayed in effect literally all the way until success of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.     Let me give you an example, in 1891, 25 years after the Civil War,Georgia became the first Southern state to pass a Jim Crow law.  The Georgia legislature passed a law that railroads had to provide equal but separate accommodations for black and white passengers.  In other words, the African Americans would not be allowed to sit with the white Americans.  After this first attempt at dividing the races was allowed- there soon were others- there began to be black and white bathrooms, black and white water fountains, hospitals, schools, swimming pools, prisons, barber shops, parks, movie theaters, sports arenas, telephone booths, lunch counters, libraries even graveyards.  In his letter Dr. King refers to these signs as “nagging”- that of course is an understatement.  They were degrading and psychologically damaging.  Racism in the United States during the Jim Crow period was worse than in any other period of history, including today.  There was a famous case, Plessy versus Ferguson in 1896- five years after that first sign in Georgia- that created a legal precedent saying that these laws were okay- The courts said that if the facilities were equal then it was not illegal for people to be separated by race.  This was a blow to African-Americans as well as the railroad industry actually, which didn't want to segregate their railcars.  It was an enormous financial burden- beyond being offensive and unnecessary- they now had to provide two of everything.  But Jim Crow laws went on for years, and of course the facilities were never equal, but even if they had been, the message was still derogatory, and the entire system obviously unjust which caused many advocates of social equality both African-American as well as white to continue to mobilize and advocate for change.  During WW2, President Harry Truman desegregated the US military in 1947,  which was a huge advance in Civil Rights.  Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in professional sports in 1947, but it wasn't until 1954 that there would be another landmark ruling of the Supreme Court that would address this issue.  In 1954, in a case known as Brown versus Topeka Board of Education,  lawyers Richard Ellis and Michael Birzer successfully argued that things were separate but not equal, and in fact, the facilities for black children in schools were always inferior.  In a unanimous decision, the court agreed saying that separate learning facilities were by their very definition unequal and this had a detrimental effect on minority children because it is interpreted as a sign of inferiority.  This was a big deal.  The legal precedent had been set.  This was the finally justice in the courts, but now, how does that play out in classrooms across the country.  Who is going to force almost half the schools in the United States to integrate students of both races?  And when would they be required to make this happen?  In every state in the South, Segregation was actually the law- a school couldn't have been integrated even if they had wanted to.  Central High School in Little Rock Arkansas was the first southern school to even attempt integration in 1957. So, The short answer is -not immediately.    Well, and as Dr. King pointed out in his letter, entire African nations were being decolonized faster than American students were being allowed to integrate in local schools.      And it is here that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. rise to national recognition emerges.  At the young age of 26, he is newly married and has recently moved  to accept a job as the pastor of the Dexter Street Baptist Church in the southern town of Montgomery, Alabama.  It would be here that he would meet another seemingly inconspicuous woman but powerful woman by the name of Rosa Parks.  Together, they were about to change their world.     So as we set this up, let's introduce Dr. King's life before entering the political scene in 1956- and let's try to keep the dates straight- that's kind of hard for those of us for whom numbers don't come naturally.  So, Dr. King was born in 1929 in an upper-middle class African-American family in Atlanta, Georgia.  One interesting detail was that his birth name was Michael.     That's right, his father later changed his name to Martin Luther, perhaps because of a trip he made to Germany to study the great theologian who also changed the political landscape of his day during the ProtestantReformation, but that is still slightly speculative.       His father was a very popular Baptist pastor, the pastor of the successful and well-established Ebenezer Baptist Church.  King was privileged to have received a high level of education- likely one of the most educated Southern African-Americans at this time period.  He attended the very elite Morehouse College there in Atl,  and then Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania and finally Boston University.  So, you can see, he had the opportunity to ignore the plight of the majority of African-Americans.  He had job offers at various universities in prestigious locations.  Another important point to notice is that while in Boston he met a rising star vocalist by the name of Coretta Scott, and he fell in love with her.  They got married in 1955.  It wasn't long after that, he took the pastorate in the much smaller town of Montgomery, Alabama and moved their with Coretta and their baby, _______.  Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, btw, is located just a stone's throw from the state capitol building in Montgomery- the heart of state government.  Then, on December 1, 1955, something happened that changed Dr. King's life forever as well as the entire world.  A woman by the name of Rosa Parks was arrested for not giving up her seat to a white gentleman on a bus.  She had entered the bus through the front door instead of the back door, as required by those Jim Crow laws.      This hadn't been an accident, the practice of forcing women to give up their seats had been going on for years, and several women protested to no avail, but for the highly and morally reputable Rosa Parks, it would be different.  The national spot light was heading her way- but it wasn't accidental.  This was a highly intentional and strategic play.      Let me go back and say, Dr. King had personal experience with being forced to stand against his will on a bus. When he was in high school, he won a speaking contest in a town 90 miles outside of Atlanta.  He and the teacher who went with him to the contest were riding on a bus back to Atlanta, super excited when white passenger got on.  The white bus driver ordered King and his teacher to give up their seats, and cursed them. King wanted to stay seated, but his teacher urged him to obey the law. They had to stand in the aisle for the 90 miles back home.  King stated later that that was the angriest he had ever felt in his life. If you can imagine.  So, of course he could understand emotionally as well as cognitively what was happening every day in buses in Montgomery, Alabama as well as across the South.   But what do you do?  That's the question.  Later on in Dr. King's life, someone asked him that very question- how do you manage your anger.   I want to quote King here, "A destructive passion is harnessed by directing that same passion into constructive channels."  And that's what he did in this case.   Yes- next very next day, after Park's arrest, on December 2 ministers, including a man by the name of Rev. Ralph Abernathy who would be the one to go to jail with Dr. King, met at King's church to organize and publicize a bus boycott.  Relying in part on Dr. King's eloquence, they mobilized the African-American community almost in full.  On December 5, 90 percent of Montgomery's African-American citizens stayed off the buses.  Dr. King was also elected as the president of the Montgomery Improvement Association or the MIA- the organization spearheading the boycott.  According to Rosa Parks, the reason they chose King to be the president of the MIA was because he was so new to Montgomery, no one knew him.  He had no friends but also no enemies.      The evening that Dr. King spoke at Holt Street Baptist Church,  this is what he said. “I want it to be known that we're going to work with grim and bold determination to gain justice on the buses in this city. And we are not wrong.… If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. If we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong”.    And what is striking is that when you see what they were demanding, these demands are not crazy, they are not even unrealistic or difficult to implement.  They wanted courteous treatment by bus operators, first come first serve seating on public buses, and they wanted African-American bus drivers to be hired to work the routes that were in areas where mostly African-Americans were living.  The demands were not met, and the boycott went on for 13 months- now think about that, even in the South, that is a lot of walking in a lot of bad weather for a long time.  And this came at a huge personal cost to the thousands of African-Americans who were working or studying all over Birmingham but living across town in the segregated section for African Americans.  Large complex carpool systems were created of over 300 cars to support the boycotters.  People with cars offered rides to the walkers.  The city government resisting, going so far as to punish African-American taxi drivers for offering rides at reduced rates.  80 leaders of the boycott were jailed under an old law from the twenties for  “conspiracy that interfered with lawful business.”  King himself was tried, convicted and ordered to pay $500 or serve 386 days in jail.  King's house was bombed while he was at church.  On the day of the bombing, King rushed home to see that Coretta and his baby were okay.  This would not be the last big test on his ability to remain non-violent, but it was an important moment in his public career.  Many people were outraged that someone had cowardly tried to murder the family of their leader, and they showed up on his porch with weapons ready to defend King and go after the assailant.  King, although still personally affected, famously and calmly stood on his front porch and told everyone to go home.  The mandate of Jesus was to love their enemies.    So, when he talks about loving your enemies in his letter, he's. not just saying these things.  He lived this idea and practiced it risking his own life, the life of his wife and the lives of his children.  He  believed  so deeply in the life of Jesus Christ in the power of redemptive love through Jesus Christ that he put his life on the line.  A point I want to make because it is something that I have thought about and he speaks to is what to do with the anger.  How do you avoid the inevitable hate that has to emerge in your heart?  I don't care who you are or what your religious faith is- the hate and rage and anger are justifiable and unavoidable.  Of course, I'm not the first person to have this question and Dr. King spoke about that many many times later on during his life.  I'm not sure he had a working theory at the age of 26.  But by the time he was writing books, he did have an articulate vision on how this could work.  For Dr. King, anger was a part of a process.   It IS part of the process.  He said you  have anger then forgiveness then redemption then love.  That was the order.  It is what he believed and that is what he practiced to the best of his ability- although, and he speaks to this honestly in his biographical work, he struggled with anger his whole life.    Well, the Montgomery Boycott as well as King's trial got national new coverage.  A man by the name of Glenn Smiley visited Montgomery and offered King advice and training on Gandhian techniques of nonviolence.  These two men discussed how to apply Ghandian techniques to American race relations.      King later said, ““Christ showed us the way, and Gandhi in India showed it could work”.  King and his team would combine Ghandhi's methods with Christian ethics to create a model for challenging segregation all over the South.    So, follow the chronology- On June 5th, 1956, remember, Parks was arrested on Dec 1st, but by the beginning of June, the federal district court ruled that bus segregation was unconstitutional.  That's HUGE but not the last word- in the United States, people have a right to go up the chain to the next court to see if a different court will overrule the first one.  Since this was a possibility, The boycott could not nor did not end until December 20, 1956 when the case made its all through the appeal process all the way to the final court- the Supreme Court- when the decision was NOT overturn- then the boycott ended.   The boycott lasted for a total of 381 days, if you can imagine.     And here's a fun side- note- The day after it ended- Ralph Abernathy, Ed Nixon and Glenn Smiley- now let me add that Glenn Smiley is white- but these three men  got on an integrated bus together- for the very first time- how satisfying would that have been.      King famously had this to say about the boycott: “We came to see that, in the long run, it is more honorable to walk in dignity than ride in humiliation. So … we decided to substitute tired feet for tired souls, and walk the streets of Montgomery”.      You can already see that metaphorical language that he's so famous for in both his speaking and writing.      True and speaking of writing, he wrote up his experiences from Montgomery in a book called Stride to Freedom and in 1958, set out on a book tour across the United States.  He wasn't as famous obviously as he would eventually become, but he was a well-known figure.  On September 20, 1958, a 42 year old apparently deranged African-American woman plunged a letter-opener into his chest.      So, Dr. King's methods were not always well-received by either side.     No- Non-violence is controversial because it's obviously unfair.  Why do I have to practice non-violence when the opposing side is not?  It's a fair question and one which King spent his lifetime discussing.  Non-violence is paradoxical – it doesn't seem like it would work.  Its power lies in its ability to contrast so sharply with violence that you strip away any pretense that the violence is justified. It's also very slow.  You have to have a tremendous amount of patience, trust, and stubbornness.       And King was moving forward- but he was absolutely fed up with the pace of the federal court system.   Remember, the courts mandated that schools be integrated in 1954, but still, here they were in 1963, nine years after Brown vs. Board of Education, and only 9% of African-American students were attending integrated schools.      1963 was going to be the year.  1963 was the 100 year anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation- the day Lincoln pronounced that slaves were no longer slaves- for Dr. King, Rosa Parks, Fred Abernathy and the thousands of others willing to put their lives on the line- 100 years was enough time- and the chosen place for this confrontation of forces and will would be Birmingham, Alabama.  Garry, why Birmingham?  This was not a coincidence.  This movement was not spontaneous; it did not just blow up.  It was planned and as Julius Caesar would tell you - selecting the location for the confrontation is key to success. is     Well, Dr. King tells us in his writings.  The whole thing was highly orchestrated.  Birmingham was the largest industrial city of the South.  It had been a symbol of bloodshed in the past when African-American trade unions tried to form there.  Because it was an industrial city, the financial interests and the political interests were intertwined.  Birmingham was one of the most segregated cities in the United States- the entire city was an expression of Jim Crow- from hospitals to schools to parks to jobs to everything.  Brutality towards African-Americans was an undisputed reality headed up by a man who prided on keeping African Americans, to use his words, “in their place.”  His name was Eugene, but this man, the Commissioner of Public Safety went by the nick Name, Bull- Mr. Bull Connor.  Under his reign or leadership depending on how you view his leadership, between 1957-1963 there had been 17 unsolved bombings of African-American churches and homes of Civil Rights leaders.  Bull Connor was so radical that one time a white United States Senator visited Birmingham to give a give a speech and was arrested because he walked through the door marked, “Colored.”  This guy was ruthless, and he ruled both African-Americans and whites alike with fear.  He was accompanied and supported by a segregationist governor- Governor George Wallace who is famous for saying at his inauguration, “Segregation now; segregation tomorrow; segregation forever!”     Goodness, history likely does not shine favorably on these remarks.      No, nor on any of these defenders of segregation, of which Bull Connor was one of the most publicly vicious, but I will say, Bull Connor played a very important role in disrupting segregation because he played the part of the villain so well and so predictably.  He was the perfect foil.  After it was all over, JFK famously told MLK at the White House following the signing of the Birmingham agreement, “Our judgement of Bull Connor should not be too harsh, after all, in his way, he has done a good deal for civil-rights legislation this year.” Connor was the absolute perfect foil for nonviolent protest.     Meaning, he was so terrible, it became morally obvious to any fool who was right and who was wrong.      Exactly, and after it was all said and done, President Kennedy could say that, but in April of 1963, that was not so obvious.  Bull was on a rampage; he was in control; and he was winning. On the third of April in 1963, segregationist Albert Boutwell became the new mayor of Birmingham.  Mr. Boutwell was a likeable person; he was not like Bull Connor so some people thought he was the better choice.  They were even glad he had won, but in the words of Fred Shuttlesworth, he was nothing but a “dignified Bull Connor.”      Now, you're starting to throw out some names that will show up in the letter.      Yes, Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth was one of the local leaders of the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama.  Remember, he had been involved in Montgomery.  He had organized an organization called the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, otherwise known as the ACHR.  Now, this becomes important because as we're going to read in a minute, Dr. King is accused of being an outsider and meddling into somebody else's business and starting trouble.  To which he is going to respond that he was invited to come, and Reverend Shuttlesworth is one of the local leaders who had invited him.  All of this becomes very important in understanding the context of the letter.  So, at this time, the ACHR was holding weekly meeting in churches all over Birmingham.  At these meetings they were mobilizing African-Americans to boycott business that displayed jim crow signs, or refused to hire African American workers except as janitorial staff.  As a result, many stores and businessess around town were losing as much as 40% of their business.  Shuttlesworth, became a problem for the status quo, and as a result, he had been jailed, his home AND his church both had been bombed.    In the now famous room 30 of the Gaston hotel, Abernathy and King among others launched what they called “Project C”. The goal was to pressure Birmingham businesses to integrate and remove those horrible Jim Crow signs that said “White Only” or “Colored”.  The intense boycotts and demonstrations were to start on the first week of March and would continue all until April 14, which was Easter and the Easter season is a big season for shopping, especially for clothes.       What is interesting to me, and something I think is lost on a lot of students, is that they didn't just go around and drum up angry people to hold up signs and such, they required them to participate in workshops and daily evening meetings.    Everything that happened in these weekly and later nightly meetings was intentional.   Everything had a purpose.  They would start the mass meetings by singing old negro spirituals they called freedom songs.  These songs were adaptations from the same negro spirituals slaves had sung 100 years previously.  These songs were old and inspirational, they had been transformed from songs of sorrow song by one's great-grandparents to becoming battle hymns.      Singing together is psychologically bonding under any circumstances, but the power of the history of the music as well as the spirituality of the songs is difficult to explain in words.      Every single volunteer was required to sign a commitment card where they would pledge their body and soul to nonviolence in the face of violence.  This was explained in full.  They developed ten commandments.  The first commandment was to daily meditate on the teachings of Jesus Christ.  The 8th was to refrain from violence of fist, tongue or heart.       Yes, the idea was the prepare every person psychologically to expect and withstand abuse.  When they started to march, when they entered a restaurant labled whites only in a to sit-in, when they were arrested, they needed to be prepared to do what they had been trained to do- resist peacefully.  It is counter-intuitive to human nature.  On April 6th, they marched orderly two by two without banners or singing.  Bull Connor, right on cue, emerged and arrested 42 marchers for “parading without a permit”.    And this became the pattern.  After ten days, between 400-500 people were sitting in jail.  Dr. King and Ralph Abernathy decided that on Good Friday, they would lead the demonstration and submit to being arrested, as they most assuredly would be.  They left their church and walked with around 50 others – they had been denied a permit to march, so they were guilty of parading without a permit.  Of course, that day when Dr. King and Rev. Abernathy began walking down the street in Birmingham, Alabama, many bystanders lined the streets.  The marchers began to sing. The bystanders joined in the singing and sometimes burst into applause.  As if on cue, Bull Connor emerged, his officers grabbed Dr. King and Rev. Abernathy by the back of their shirts and hauled them off to jail.  Dr. King was held in solitary confinement for over 24 hours.  Not even a lawyer was allowed to visit with him.  He was not allowed to telephone his wife.  Several violations of civil liberties all at once.    Coretta, by Monday, stressed out of her mind, placed a call to President Kennendy.  It wasn't but a few minutes from her trying to contact the president that his brother Robert Kennedy, who was at that time the Attorney General of the United States,  called her back promising to intervene.  The president called himself a few hours later.  He called the officials in Birmingham, and amazingly the conditions of Dr. King's imprisonment changed significantly.      He was in jail for eight days, and it was during that time, that a public letter was written to him and signed by 8 leading clergyman in Alabama.     Again, these men have their names signed on the wrong side of history and this has to be embarrassing at this point.  But, oh well, they wrote a public letter- and on the surface this letter sounds so reasonable.  It is another example of someone saying something cruel in the nicest way possible.  It is accusatory- in a polite way- and it enrages Dr. King.   We started the podcast today talking about what do you do when you are enraged- really righteously enraged- this is what Dr. King did- he channeled this energy to become this laser-sharp rhetorical monster and it became uncontainable.  Let's read the public letter written by these fellow clergymen, and then let's begin Dr. King's response that changed the world.        What are some of the things we need to highlight- first of all- what are their main points  King is an outsider= he's come from the outside to agitate    They acknowledge that they understand why he might feel impatience, but they are encouraging him to let the system work and not incite unrest.  They should trust the courts.      They go so far as to commend the police- remember that is Bull Connor.    Yes- and this is to a man who's family has been targeted to be murdered and arrested unfairly.      Exactly, before we read his response- let's look at who signed it.      Read the names and where they are from    When Dr. King responds to these ministers- he makes it a point to cite a theologian from each of these specific religious traditions, and may I point out that he does it from memory since he is in a jail cell.    Next week, we will analyze and discuss how he systematically demolishes the specious arguments and challenges on principles of Judeo-Christian faith the inconsistencies in the words and lives of “My Dear fellow clergyman”.    Okay, we have a lot to look forward to.  I hope you have enjoyed this discussion on the background of this important piece of American literature and history.  As always, thank you flr listening, if you feel so inspired, please give us a five star rating on your podcast app.  Connect with us on social media be it fb, insta, twitter or linked in.  Also, if you are an educator, check out our instructional materails on our website. Howtolovelitpodcast.com    Peace Out         

Where we discuss The Little Apple (Manhattan, KS), the Civil Rights Trail and Brown v The (Topeka) Board of Education, the splendor of the Konza Prairie Nature Trail, cocktails at The Plaza in Kansas City, the expansive Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, and the amazing National Museum of Toys and Miniatures. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/reinitin/message

Hello and welcome to the show today! In our study of Acts chapter 10, we have been taking a look at a Roman centurion by the name of Cornelius, who we see is striving in every way that he can to follow God. But he does not yet know about Jesus. But he is drawing near to God in the best way that he knows how. And that is something that God will always honor. God promises in… James 4:8a (NKJV)— 8 Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Well that is what Cornelius has been doing. And so therefore Jesus is preparing to draw near to him in a powerful way. Now it says in… Acts 10:3-8 (NKJV)— 3 About the ninth hour of the day {([3:00 p.m.])} he saw clearly in a vision an angel of God coming in and saying to him, “Cornelius!” 4 And when he observed him, he was afraid, and said, “What is it, lord?” So he said to him, “Your prayers and your alms have come up for a memorial before God. {(So we see that God is acknowledging that what Cornelius intended has in fact been the reality. [Cornelius' prayers, devotion, faith, and goodness were like a fragrant offering rising up to God.] And God is about to reward him. Now the Angel continues, saying:) 5 Now send men to Joppa, and send for Simon whose surname is Peter. 6 He is lodging with Simon, a tanner, whose house is by the sea. He will tell you what you must do.” 7 And when the angel who spoke to him had departed, Cornelius called two of his household servants and a devout soldier from among those who waited on him continually. 8 So when he had explained all these things to them, he sent them to Joppa. The Right Servant— Now you can definitely sense how military-minded Cornelius is. After the angel gives him these instructions, he immediately obeys. Now God could have had him send for Philip, who was already in Caesarea (Acts 8:40), but he doesn't; because remember [it was Peter, not Philip, who had been given the “keys.” {And what this shows us is that} God not only works at the right time, but He also works through the right servant, and both are essential.] There are people God isn't sending to others because His intention is to send them to you. You are the one He wants to open the door for them. The question is, are you and I going to respond to that call? Peter's Preparation— Now it was not only necessary for Cornelius to be prepared for this event; Peter had to be as well. After all, [he had lived as an orthodox Jew all of his life (Acts 10:14).] And because of that (being a product of his culture) he did not see the Gentiles as a part of God's salvation plan. For the Jews of the time there was a strong barrier between them and the Gentiles; and they considered them aliens and strangers [as far as the Jewish covenants and promises were concerned (vv. 11-13).] However, we know that that barrier was [broken down at the cross (Eph. 2:14–18).] And now [“There is no difference” either in condemnation (Rom. 3:22–23) or in salvation (10:12–13).] A Seed In The Declaration— And you know, a very similar circumstance took place when the United States was founded. God no doubt inspired Thomas Jefferson to write these incredible words into our Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Now you'd think that this would mean that America (from the moment it was conceived when that Declaration was signed on July 4, 1776) would be a nation free of racism and slavery (which is often a product of that racism). But no, it took a long time for that to trickle down. It wasn't until almost a hundred years later that the Thirteenth Amendment finally abolished slavery in 1865. And it wasn't until 1870 (5 years later) that the Fifteenth Amendment gave African Americans the right to vote, which was a landmark decision. And then in 1954 there was another landmark decision made by the Supreme Court. And that was the Brown vs. the Topeka Board of Education, which ended segregation in public education. And then in 1964 of course you had the Civil Rights Act, which gave equal opportunity to all. Now did any of these decisions fix all our problems or completely eradicate racism? No. But each of them was another step in the right direction. And when you take a step back you can see how God placed a seed in the minds of our founding founders (some of whom owned slaves) and caused that seed to grow and eventually bring freedom and desegregation to our land and a recognized equality that has become so complete that on January 20, 2009 we inaugurated our first African-American president. And whether you liked his politics or not, that (for many people) was a milestone because it revealed just how unified the United States had become under the idea that all of us are equal. Now we have a long way to go still, but that equality (for much of our history) has been recognized as having its roots in the very the nature of God Himself, in whose image we are created. Losing The Seed— Now unfortunately that concept has been vehemently attacked in recent years. And that is sad, because it was that concept that got the ball rolling in the right direction to begin with. And without that foundational belief in our being created in the image of a loving God, we will always be open for that racism to creep back in. Because without God, there is nobody to hold us accountable for how we treat one another. And if naturalism is true (the belief that we were only created through natural processes) and we are all just highly evolved primates, who is to say that one race is not better than another? Actually that's exactly what Evolution teaches in its doctrine of the Survival of the Fittest. There are some people who are lower on the evolutionary food chain and may even need to die so that the fittest can survive. That was one of the key fundamental ideas that drove the Nazis. And they ended up committing the most heinous acts imaginable on other human beings not because they were insane (though many of them were) but because they took these evolutionary ideas to their logical conclusion. Now not everyone who rejects God will embrace that kind of hatred, because all of have demonstrated at least some of the effect of our having been created in the image of God; but anywhere from which the fear of God has been removed, history will always repeat itself. Because you will have lost the very foundation that supports every individual's inherent worth. And furthermore, it is only through Jesus that we can be renewed in the image of our Creator and receive the spiritual equipment we need to overcome our evil tendencies and defeat racism. And that is what was starting to happen in our passage today; and things will eventually progress to the point where Paul can write in… Colossians 3:11 (ESV)— 11 Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all. But this was a big transition; one that God had to prepare Peter for. And so it says in… Acts 10:9-16 (NKJV)— 9 The next day, as they went on their journey and drew near the city, Peter went up on the housetop to pray, about the sixth hour {(12:00 noon)}. 10 Then he became very hungry and wanted to eat; but while they made ready, he fell into a trance 11 and saw heaven opened and an object like a great sheet bound at the four corners, descending to him and let down to the earth. 12 In it were all kinds of four-footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, creeping things, and birds of the air. 13 And a voice came to him, “Rise, Peter; kill and eat.” 14 But Peter said, “Not so, Lord! For I have never eaten anything common or unclean.” 15 And a voice spoke to him again the second time, “What God has cleansed you must not call common.” 16 This was done three times. And the object was taken up into heaven again. Unclean— Now what was going on with this vision, and why did God choose to use this imagery to teach Peter to start to see the Gentiles as He did? Well, keep in mind that the text says Peter was hungry. And so what better way to “speak to his condition” (as the Quakers used to say) than to give him a vision involving food. He's longing for food and so God gives him food; just not the food he was expecting. He is given food that (according to Jewish dietary regulations) was ceremonially unclean. And [the distinction between “clean and unclean foods” was a major problem between the Jews and the Gentiles in that day. In fact, {we will see in the very next chapter that} Peter's Christian friends {actually} criticized him for eating with the Gentiles (Acts 11:1–3)! {And so} God used this centuries-old regulation (Lev. 11) to teach Peter an important spiritual lesson.] Peter Refuses— Now (though it shouldn't have) this command to eat ceremonially unclean food came as quite a shock to Peter. And he politely but vehemently refuses God! And though he meant well, it was still wrong for him to respond the way he did. As Dr. W. Graham Scroggie wrote, “You can say ‘No,' and you can say ‘Lord'; but you cannot say ‘No, Lord!'” If He is truly our Lord, then we can only say “Yes!” to Him and obey His commands.] But God is very merciful and patient with Peter, which should be an encouragement to us because He is just as patient with us. But the angel responds to Peter. Verse 15… Acts 10:15 (NKJV)—15 And a voice spoke to him again the second time, “What God has cleansed you must not call common.” Both Unclean— Now I want you to hear this, because this is very important. The lesson here is not that the Jews were clean and the Gentiles were just as clean. No, it was that both Jew and Gentile alike are unclean in the sight of God. Both needed cleansing. The Jew is just as unclean and in need of the cleansing of God as the Gentile is. And the reason that is important for us to understand is because what this [meant {was} that a Gentile did not have to become a Jew in order to become a Christian.] The Jew was not at some kind of higher spiritual level just by being a Jew. No, ALL of us need the cleansing work of Jesus Christ. Now Peter doesn't understand the meaning of the vision right away, but (as we saw with Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch, God's timing is perfect. It says in… Acts 10:17-20 (NKJV)— 17 Now while Peter wondered within himself what this vision which he had seen meant, behold, the men who had been sent from Cornelius had made inquiry for Simon's house, and stood before the gate. 18 And they called and asked whether Simon, whose surname was Peter, was lodging there. 19 While Peter thought about the vision, the Spirit said to him, “Behold, three men are seeking you. 20 Arise therefore, go down and go with them, doubting nothing; for I have sent them.” Doubting Nothing— And that [phrase “doubting nothing” (Acts 10:20) means “making no distinctions.” You find it again in Acts 11:12, and a similar word is used in Acts 11:2 (“contended with him” = “made a difference”). Peter was no longer to make any distinctions between the Jews and the Gentiles.] And it says in… Acts 10:21-23a (NKJV)— 21 Then Peter went down to the men who had been sent to him from Cornelius, and said, “Yes, I am he whom you seek. For what reason have you come?” 22 And they said, “Cornelius the centurion, a just man, one who fears God and has a good reputation among all the nation of the Jews, was divinely instructed by a holy angel to summon you to his house, and to hear words from you.” 23 Then he invited them in and lodged them. Who's Your Cornelius?— You know, this story has so much to say to us about allowing God to challenge and re-shape our world-views. Even we as Gentiles who (by God's grace) have been grafted into His family can still look down on others. We can become exclusive in our thinking. And I don't think there are many of us here today (if any) who are openly racist or prejudice; who would say there is a person or a people group that we hate or openly reject. But I don't think this passage is just about not openly rejecting people. Sometimes we reject by neglect. And the way we reject by neglect is by simply choosing to overlook people. And I think that for each of us, there probably is a Cornelius in our life that needs what we have in Christ Jesus, the Good News of the Gospel. The question is, are we willing to go to them? Are we willing to cross whatever barriers we have to in order to introduce them to Jesus? As we close today, I want to challenge you to ask God to show you the Cornelius in your life; and after revealing that person to you, ask Him to give you the courage and strength to reach out to them with the love and message of Jesus Christ. Because if you do, they will be blessed, you will be blessed, and the Church will be blessed. Let's do so. Amen.

Dr. Kenneth W. McFarland (1906-1985) was a teacher, public speaker, author, and conservative pundit. He was born in Caney, Kansas, received a bachelor’s degree from Pittsburg State College of Kansas in 1927, a master’s degree from Columbia University in 1931, and a doctorate from Stanford University in 1940. Eventually, he became the superintendent of the Topeka, Kansas school system, and was the superintendent when the Topeka Board of Education was sued in the landmark anti-discrimination case Brown v. Board of Education (1954). After Brown v. Board, General Motors and Readers Digest, among others, hired him as a speaker.Many of McFarland's speeches were recorded and published as LPs by the Edward M. Miller and Associates, Inc. label from Grand Rapids, Michigan, which published LPs by many different conservative speakers.This LP is a recording of a speech McFarland delivered to a Rotary International group in about 1966. Among other things, he criticizes the Supreme Court, singling out Justice Douglas, and questions the legitimacy of the civil rights movement. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

''Intensely personal ... funny and poignant'' (New York Times), Gregory Pardlo's poetry collection Digest won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize. An out-of-nowhere coup for the relatively unknown Columbia University MFA student and teacher, it was also nominated for an NAACP Image Award and was a finalist for the Hurston Wright Legacy Award, among other honors. In his new memoir, Pardlo tells the story of his strained New Jersey upbringing, fatherhood, addiction, and African American masculinity. The poetry editor for The New Yorker and the director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library, Kevin Young is the author of the poetry collections Blue Laws, Book of Hours, and Jelly Roll, a finalist for the National Book Award. His nonfiction books include Bunk and The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. From James Brown to John Brown's raid to Brown v. the Topeka Board of Education, Young's new poetry collection riffs on the themes of collective experience and color. Watch the video here. (recorded 4/24/2018)

Kevin Young, Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and New Yorker poetry editor, recently published a new collection of poems titled "Brown: Poems." From James Brown to John Brown v. the Topeka Board of Ed., Young meditates on all things "brown" and the ways culture shaped his personal experience growing up in Kansas. Joining him to discuss the book was Claudia Rankine, professor of poetry at Yale University and the author of "Citizen: An American Lyric." Rankine asks Young about his childhood memories, musical influences, and pop culture that makes us dance and think at the same time.

Ruthie Yow, a historian and ethnographer of student activism and public school integration in the South, takes Chief Justice John Roberts to task for his majority opinion in the landmark Supreme Court case of 2007, Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1. Her study of the legacy of the high court's Brown v. Topeka Board of Education decision, specifically in Marietta, Georgia, is the subject of her book, Students of the Dream: Resegregation in a Southern City (Harvard UP, 2017). Read more at the Georgia Tech Writing and Communication Program's online journal TechSTYLE: http://b.gatech.edu/2mVRUe6

Almost 30 years before Linda Brown and her parents took on the Topeka Board of Education in Brown v. Board of Education, Martha Lum's parents Jeu Gong and Katherine sued to try to stop Rosedale, Mississippi, from barring their Chinese-American children from the local "white" school. Their case, Gong Lum v. Rice, made it to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1927, but rather than granting them relief, the unanimous Supreme Court decision led to even stricter school segregation. For this episode of the Modern Law Library, in honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles discusses this little known chapter of history with Adrienne Berard. Berard is the author of “Water Tossing Boulders: How a Family of Chinese Immigrants Led the First Fight to Desegregate Schools in the Jim Crow South.” Berard discusses the bravery of the family's decision, and the complicated state of race relations in 1920s Mississippi in which the debate over whether the "colored" category applied to Asian Americans took place. We also discuss Earl Brewer, a former governor of Mississippi, who took the Lums' case in a bid to regain his reputation, and how the immigration debates of the early 20th century have ugly echoes in today's political environment.

Almost 30 years before Linda Brown and her parents took on the Topeka Board of Education in Brown v. Board of Education, Martha Lum's parents Jeu Gong and Katherine sued to try to stop Rosedale, Mississippi, from barring their Chinese-American children from the local "white" school. Their case, Gong Lum v. Rice, made it to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1927, but rather than granting them relief, the unanimous Supreme Court decision led to even stricter school segregation. For this episode of the Modern Law Library, in honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles discusses this little known chapter of history with Adrienne Berard. Berard is the author of “Water Tossing Boulders: How a Family of Chinese Immigrants Led the First Fight to Desegregate Schools in the Jim Crow South.” Berard discusses the bravery of the family's decision, and the complicated state of race relations in 1920s Mississippi in which the debate over whether the "colored" category applied to Asian Americans took place. We also discuss Earl Brewer, a former governor of Mississippi, who took the Lums' case in a bid to regain his reputation, and how the immigration debates of the early 20th century have ugly echoes in today's political environment.

Robert Carson, "Bob", is a well respected lawyer in our community. He's also a hunting and fishing enthusiast.  In our interview, he shares a few stories of being a kid in Havre de Grace including 17 cent movies and summers spent on and in the water in Charlestown, MD. He remembers some of the effects of WWII on a young student, the joy of fishing, and memories of downtown, including 17 cent movies! Bob well remembers segregation and the Brown vs Topeka Board of Education Supreme Court decision in 1954. He also shares his thoughts on the need for citizens to be involved in their communities. Since I've known Bob mostly as a professional, it was delightful to enjoy a laugh or two during the interview while enjoying his stories of years gone by and learning of some of his interests 'outside the law.'   (c) 2017 Thriving Owl Publ., Ellie Mencer, 343 Green St., Havre de Grace, MD ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Welcome back to robinlofton.com where we are remembering history and we’re making history. Today we’re also studying history.    We’re continuing our examination into the modern Civil Rights movement in the United States.  In Part I, we looked at the early movement beginning around the turn of the century and some of the iconic people who set the stage for the modern movement.  We looked at the transition of the movement into an organized and concerted effort toward ensuring equality and equal rights for African Americans. This was, by no means, a chance occurrence.  Leaders in the African American community, particularly the churches, had been patiently awaiting the right moment, person, and opportunity to make a strong statement and begin the modern movement. On December 1, 1955, when Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to get up her seat on a segregated bus, the movement was begun.  The modern movement was marked by organized marches, protests, sit-ins, freedom rides and other acts of civil disobedience. These acts had various degrees of success in dismantling segregation. But more needed to be done on another front. This second front was in the legal system.   The NAACP was the real leader on this front.  Talented and committed lawyers like Charles Houston and Thurgood Marshall (maybe those names are familiar) worked tireless and fearlessly to argue cases in court, including the Supreme Court, to attack discriminatory laws and practices.  In addition to invalidating these laws, civil rights leaders were also committed to the passage of new laws to guarantee equal rights and equal protection under the law.  By the way, I want to point out that the civil rights movement (whether in the form of marches and protests or by fighting in the courts was a unified movement with one goal: equality).   First, let’s look at the laws.   Civil Rights Act of 1964   This was a main goal of the March on Washington; this was what the people wanted!! For years, civil rights leaders had been working to dismantle segregation and promote equality for African Americans. They had marched, protested and rallied. Yes, progress was made. Supreme  Court judgments had been favorable. Some local practices were changed. But the country needed a law that would state clearly and unequivocally that discrimination would not be tolerated, that it was illegal.   Following the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, civil rights leaders met with President Kennedy who morally agreed with promoting civil rights legislation but seemed reluctant to pass any effective legislation at that time. However, President Johnson (a Southern democrat who succeeded President Kennedy after his assassination) made strong and bold moves to pass a civil rights bill.   After many political moves and maneuvers (some that can only be considered legendary), Congress passed the civil rights bill. President Johnson signed the bill into law on July 2, 1964. The country finally had the Civil Rights Act.  (I do want to add though that this was not the first civil rights law in the United States. The very first was in 1866, though President Andrew Johnson vetoed it at the last minute. The following year, Congress passed another civil rights bill and President Johnson again vetoed it but the Congress overrode that veto and the bill became a law. That’s a fascinating story and I wish that we had time to examine it but it will keep for another time.)          So, what did the Civil Right Act of 1964 do?   It was a sweeping and thorough attack on segregation. It outlawed discrimination in voting, education, public accommodations, employment and any federally-funded program.  It also created the Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission. In eleven different sections (called titles), the Civil Rights Act of 1964 attacked segregation and discrimination in nearly every segment of life.    It was, indeed, landmark legislation that set the scene for more specific and powerful legislation.  While there was a lot to celebrate with the passage of this law, it did have its weaknesses, particularly in its enforcement powers. However, more and stronger laws were made possible by the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, namely the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which guaranteed and enforced fair housing and even much later, the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990.   A great law that marked the beginning of a new era. Lots of people worked hard and sacrificed a lot for this law. But the work was not done yet. The next law was truly legendary.   Voting Rights Act of 1965   As we have discussed earlier, African Americans were continuing to be denied basic rights that were ensured by the U.S. Constitution.  One of those fundamental rights was the right to vote.  And this was one major focus of the Civil Rights Movement.            Although the right to vote is guaranteed in the 15th Amendment, which was ratified in 1870, this did not prove sufficient to ensure that African Americans were allowed the right to vote.  Instead, many states, especially in the southern part of the country, were prohibiting Blacks from registering to vote. This was done in many ways: literacy tests, grandfather clauses, poll taxes and other means.  When these failed to deter Blacks from voting, some whites in the south used intimidation, threats, and often violence to keep Blacks from registering to vote.   Civil rights group put the right to vote on the top of their agenda.  (As you heard in the previous podcast, there were numerous marches, protests, and rallies that focused on the right to vote. These often turned violent because many southerners were determined to stop this from happening.) Fortunately, President Johnson was determined to pass a voting rights act to ensure that everyone was allowed to register.  It was a long and difficult road but the Voting Rights Act was passed and signed into law on August 6, 1965.   This was a major coup for civil rights. It largely restated the 15th Amendment but it went farther. Listen to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965: It says, “No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.”  Wow! That’s powerful and it was met with very mixed reviews. Before we look at that, let’s look at what else the Voting Rights Act did. It federalized the registration process in certain “resistant” states.       It guaranteed federal enforcement of the law, allowing troops, oversight, or any other means to prevent a denial of voting rights on the basis of race or to ensure the right to vote to all citizens. While it did not specifically prohibit the poll tax, it did allow a challenge to the tax in the federal courts, which quickly invalided it. One of the most powerful parts of the Voting Rights Act (even more powerful than section 2) was Section 5. I won’t read it because it’s too long but it prevented states or any subdivision from making any changes that affect voting rights until the Attorney General determined that the changes did not have any discriminatory effect or purpose. That’s huge! Section 5 would be enforced in states that had demonstrated records of denying voting rights on the basis of race. Those states were: Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia. No surprises there, I think. Section 5 also applied in parts of California, North Carolina, New York and Florida.   The VRA had an incredible impact on nearly every segment of American society. It was strongly enforced at the federal and state levels. Changes were quick. But more needed to be done. It was not the “miracle drug” that saved civil rights but it was a huge step in guaranteeing fundamental rights to every American.    In June of that year, President Johnson made a speech at Howard University and he addressed this issue. He said,   “The voting rights bill will be the latest, and among the most important, in a long series of victories. But this victory—as Winston Churchill said of another triumph for freedom—“is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps the end of the beginning. That beginning is freedom; and the barriers to that freedom are tumbling down. Freedom is the right to share, share fully and equally, in American Society—to vote, to hold a job, to enter a public place, to go to school. It is the right to be treated in every part of our national life as a person equal in dignity and promise to all others.”    There is a lot more but it shows that he understood that the road toward complete freedom and equality is long and that the right to vote (while critical in a free society) is only one step on this journey of a thousand miles.   Another step took place in the Supreme Court and that’s where we will turn right now.  That was an exciting venue and it showed some of America’s brightest talent and skill.   The Supreme Court had been both friend and foe to civil rights for African Americans.  Some of its decisions acknowledged and protected Constitutional rights.  Others completely denied rights to African Americans. The famous (or rather infamous) Dred Scott decision in 1857 was one of the worst decisions ever made in American jurisprudence. Justice Taney, writing for the Court, held:   1.    Missouri Compromise, which made certain states free, was unconstitutional; 2.    Congress could not prohibit slavery in any state; and 3.    A slave could not sue because he was not a citizen.  The South was ecstatic about this decision, which protected slavery. The North was furious. Justice Taney who wrote the opinion was a former slave owner as well as four other justices so the decision shouldn’t have been a surprise.  Many people believed that this decision made the Civil War inevitable. I know that it certainly denied the basic right of citizenship to a free man born to enslaved parents.   He stated, “A free negro of the African race, whose ancestors were brought to this country and sold as slaves, is not a “citizen” within the meaning of the Constitution of the United States.”     Another bad case by the Supreme Court was Plessy v. Ferguson, decided in  1897.   Plessy, who was part African American, attempted to sit in the white section of a railway car. He was arrested for violating Louisiana’s railroad law, which prohibited African Americans from sitting in the white section but also required a separate but equal section for African Americans. He challenged the law. The Supreme Court held that the Louisiana law was constitutional because the two separate sections were required to be equal. The effect of this case was to legalize racial segregation. Moreover, it created the concept of separate but equal as satisfying the equal protection requirement of the 14th Amendment. Those were definitely low points for the Court. Now, you’re gonna see the Supreme Court at its best. The Court wrote some of the BEST cases in American law during this period. Let’s take a look at a few of the cases. Brown v. Board of Education (1954) The Brown case is arguably the most famous case ever decided by the Supreme Court. Thirteen African American parents sued the Topeka Board of Education when they were not permitted to enroll their children in white schools. The Supreme Court held that racial segregation in public schools violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court held that separate but equal is an inherently unequal situation. This landmark case abolished segregation in public facilities. Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States (1964) This case changed the Court’s attention from segregation in the public sector to discrimination by private companies. The Court also changed “ammunition” by using interstate commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution. The Heart of Atlanta Motel refused to serve or house African Americans. The motel was located In Atlanta, Georgia near several interstate highways, advertised nationally, and served customers primarily from other states. The motel challenged the constitutionality of Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of this federal law on the basis of its protection of interstate commerce. The Court held that discrimination keeps African Americans from travelling throughout the country, which has a direct effect on interstate commerce. Congress is empowered to regulate any activity that affects interstate commerce. Therefore, Congress acted within its scope of power in passing the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination by private companies and individuals. This landmark case broadened Congressional power to regulate acts that directly or indirectly affect interstate commerce, which became a foundation for prohibiting and punishing discrimination.       Loving v. Virginia (1967) The state of Virginia passed a law making it a felony for a Black and white person to get married. The Virginia Supreme Court upheld the law stating that it served the legitimate state purpose of preserving the “racial integrity” of its citizens. The Virginia court also stated that the statute punishes both parties so it did not violate the Equal Protection clause. The U.S. Supreme Court disagreed. It overturned the law stating that classifications based on race were subject to the most rigorous level of scrutiny. Hence, the fact that the law bans only interracial marriages involving White and Black people is proof that the law promotes arbitrary and invidious discrimination and, therefore, violates the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment. To conclude this section on civil rights cases, I just want to note that the Supreme Court approached the issue of segregation in different and sometimes contradictory ways. It made wide-reaching decisions that have affected everyone. The days of “whites only” sections and schools have passed. The Supreme Court was an important though sometimes reluctant part of this process. Beginning with the Brown case, the Supreme Court moved strongly against discrimination in both the public and private sectors. It also expanded the scope of Congressional power to champion this cause. So, these were some of the more famous cases. I think that most people have heard of the Brown v. Board of Education case. I just wanted to mention a few other cases because they show that the Court was working to uphold the Constitution.  This was probably the golden age of the Supreme Court; it was an activist court that upheld the rights and guarantees of the Constitution and boldly faced new issues and controversies with courage. So, let’s bring this part of the History is Power! Lecture to a close. The Civil Rights Movement was an exciting time. The country changed forever. People changed forever.  But the story continues. In next month’s History is Power! Lecture, we will examine racial justice and other modern issues faced by African Americans. Jumping ahead, the problem of racial justice continues to elude African Americans. We will look at specific cases and events and how they have been handled. Some of these events occur in the criminal justice system, others are in the educational system. Still others are an economic issue. There is so much that needs to be done. There is still much to do.  But many groups and individuals are working hard to make America into an equal and fair country for all of its citizens, regardless of race, gender, religion or orientation.   I hope that you have enjoyed these two lectures on the Civil Rights Movement.  There are, of course lots of movies, books and documentaries made about civil rights and I hope that you also enjoy them. There is so much to learn and you will learn of the courage and strong moral force of the protesters. And I would love to hear your opinion about them on robinlofton.com. We should share this great information. BTW, I would love your opinion about the new film, Selma, which opened in January. It received two Oscar nominations (I was hoping for more!) but I would like to know what you thought of the movie. And please remember that, for everyone who listens to this podcast, I will make a donation to the Association for the Study of African American Life & History. It’s a great organization and it’s an honor to support them.   So, I look forward to seeing you again at robinlofton.com. Let’s remember history. And let’s make it.

Mendez v. Westminster fought the segregation of Mexican-American students in the state of California in the 1940s -- and it went on pave the way for the much more famous Brown v. Topeka Board of Education. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://news.iheart.com/podcast-advertisers