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Moderates and the South
James Cone recounted the support Blacks had from Reinhold Niebuhr, possibly the greatest theologian of the 20th Century. Niebuhr wrote of the plight of the Black American with fair consistency. But Cone is critical of Niebuhr for holding back when it counted.
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Lynching, suffering, and the cross
Because of their experience of arbitrary violence, the cross was and is a redeeming and comforting image for many black Christians. If the God of Jesus’ cross is found among the least, the crucified people of the world, then God is also found among those lynched in American history.
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Refusing to go down in despair
Unlike Kierkegaard and Job, however, blacks often refused to down into that “loathsome void,” that “torment of despair,” where one “struggles with death but cannot die.” No matter what trouble they encountered, they kept on believing and hoping that “a change gonna come.” (The Cross and the Lynching Tree, by James Cone)
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Black History IS American History
I am reflecting on mentors from Black Cultures (mentors who are no longer with us yet I am still learning from) the first part of 2024. While we’ve relegated “Black History” to one month, and yes, I’m posting these in February, I am concentrating in a space and place to stay focused. And to remind us, especially in a time…
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A progressive racist
The “Presidential” podcast goes through each of our presidents to the present. Each one is interesting and the take in each particular episode is interesting. The podcast will take on the complicated narrative of each president, and Woodrow Wilson is a great example. He was a progressive politically. Teddy Roosevelt was another progressive president preceding Wilson. In his time the…
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The education we need
We need to move past defending needless monuments erected in eras that sent specific messages to formerly enslaved people. We need to understand our history more, not less. That means we deal with the power of Thomas Jefferson’s words as well as his slaveholding mentality and brutality. We need a more full education as we keep cutting history programs from…
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The Great Dissenter
A few years ago when I was teaching American History and in a section on the Supreme Court and “famous cases” I actually read the dissent of John Marshall Harlan in the case of “Plessy vs. Ferguson.” One man dissented in a time when the Supreme Court routinely upheld Jim Crow laws on a unanimous basis. I knew of Harlan’s…
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Learning from histories
I’ve been on a wonderful trip with our in-laws through Pennsylvania. Gettysburg. Lancaster. Philadelphia. As I’ve taken this trip, especially in Lancaster, PA, where James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens both resided, I’ve learned all over again it’s not about history. It is histories. We don’t get the the whole story a lot of the time when we concentrate on one…
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Thoughts on Independence Day, Part 2
Few men have virtue enough to withstand the highest bidder. — GEORGE WASHINGTON However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of…
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How did we get “wedge issues?”
In American politics, we call them “wedge issues.” These days, it can be just about anything. But, generally, it’s throwing something out there for “discussion” that won’t get discussion because the person throwing it out knows everyone has a pre-fabricated response. Gay Marriage Racism Poverty Immigration Abortion Wedge issues. When did we get “wedge issues?” 1970s, when Roe v. Wade…
Tag: American History
