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The More Perfect Union
or Reconstruction Blues?
Responses by
E. Ethelbert Miller and
Wilson J. Moses
March 2, 2009
Books by E. Ethelbert
Miller
How We Sleep
on the Nights We Don’t Make Love
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Fathering Words /
In
Search of Color Everywhere
First Light: New and Selected Poems /
Where are
the Love Poems for Dictators? /
Whispers, Secrets and Promises
Beyond
The Frontier: African-American Poetry for the 21st
Century /
Season of Hunger/Cry of Rain
Synergy:
An Anthology of Washington D.C. Black Poetry
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The Obama
Revolution? One just has to love what's going to happen
next. How do we introduce the word revolution to a new
generation? It wasn't that long ago that the word was
used to sell everything from soft drinks to sneakers.
Now the word might just have to be breastfed again.
Watch the media
have problems with this one. Fox news will find a
conspiracy somewhere. Muslim terrorists might fade away
and folks will be seeing Red again. Remember when the
worst thing for a person to be was black and red? Poor
Obama. Everyone is going to try and define the Obama
Revolution. Because of our sorry economic condition
we've been having this romance with the 1930s and the
Great Depression. I was walking on U Street the other
day and saw a "hobo" bag on sale. How long will it be
before you start seeing men in dirty suits trying to
sneak a ride on Amtrak?
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Since we keep
comparing Obama to Lincoln and FDR, we keep overlooking
the historical period we should be paying more attention
to. Let's discover our
Du Bois
again. Pull the big book
off the shelf and read
Black Reconstruction. Yep.
America is completing the work of Lincoln. We need to
examine that era after the Civil War. What would happen
to our nation if two years from now some folks believed
Obama was taking the nation too far Left?
W. E. Burghardt Du
Bois.
Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880. |
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What if some
popular Republican candidate emerged in two years
wanting to begin impeachment hearings because the public
trust was manipulated? What if class warfare does begin
in the US? How do we survive this "new" reconstruction
of our nation? Just something to think about.
Now here is
something to watch—monitor student protests around the
country. Many colleges are going to have to raise
tuition. There are many young Americans who won't be
able to attend college in the fall of 2009. A bitter
pill to accept. Sad times around the dinner tables where
a mother and father have been looking for work the last
few months. People having to decide about keeping their
house or sending a child to college.
We might reach a
point where all the charisma of Obama won't feed anyone.
Yes, Racism will look for a partner on the dance floor.
Too many images of the First Lady looking elegant and
black folks dancing to Earth, Wind and Fire in the White
House—and some poor white folks might just get angry and
look for hoods. You've heard these stories before.
This is how they
begin because they never end. So I wouldn't be surprise
to see more protests and young people in the streets
come warm weather. Any confrontation that results in
injury or property damage is going to alter the image of
our nation. It could leave us with a bad case of the
Reconstruction Blues. Right now we are taking pills for
high blood pressure. I'm afraid of what might happen
when we start taking the medication for depression..—E.
Ethelbert Miller
E-Notes
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The 5th Inning by E. Ethelbert Miller
The 5th Inning is poet and literary
activist E. Ethelbert Miller's second memoir. Coming after
Fathering Words: The Making of An
African American Writer
(published in 2000), this book finds Miller returning to
baseball, the game of his youth, in order to find the
metaphor that will provide the measurement of his life.
Almost 60, he ponders whether his life can now be entered
into the official record books as a success or failure.
The 5th Inning is one man's examination
of personal relationships, depression, love and loss. This
is a story of the individual alone on the pitching mound or
in the batters box. It's a box score filled with
remembrance. It's a combination of baseball and the blues.
To see a clip of Ethelbert reading
The 5th Inning click here:
http://www.eethelbertmiller.com/etube |
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Books by Wilson
Jeremiah Moses
Golden Age of Black Nationalism,
1850-1925 (1988) /
The Wings of Ethiopia
(1990)
Alexander
Crummell: A Study of Civilization and Discontent
(1992) /
Destiny & Race: Selected Writings, 1840-1898
(1992)
Black
Messiahs and Uncle Toms: Social and Literary
Manipulations of a Religious Myth (1993)
Liberian Dreams: Back-to-Africa
Narratives from the 1850s
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Afrotopia: The Roots of African American
Popular History
(2002)
Creative Conflict in African American Thought (2004)
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Ethelbert Miller,
the Washington poet, is right in expressing fears of a
revolution-from-the-right. According to Southern Poverty
Law Center, hate groups are on the rise. Meanwhile
"respectable" conservatives are already blaming Obama
for aggravating the economic crisis.
For a discussion of
typical conservative doublethink as to what caused
the housing and banking crisis:
Southern Poverty Law Center
Unfortunately I
frequently have students informing me, that the banking
crisis was caused by the
Community Reinvestment Act! That's as big a joke as
blaming minimum wage laws for unemployment, or blaming
the Great Depression on the New Deal. But don't laugh!
The above dogmas are currently being taught and accepted
in most economics departments and MBA programs. The sad
thing is that good kids regardless of gender, race, or
class, are susceptible to such notions and absorb them
indiscriminately. It is ironic to contemplate working
class students rising up in anger and protesting that
they can no longer afford to attend business schools
that indoctrinate them with propaganda that is tailored
to undermine their own class interests.
How can we win against this sort of thing?
We must continue to inform them that Roosevelt increased
taxes and created government jobs, and that his only
fault was not being aggressive enough until the war
provided him an opportunity. One stage of his recovery
plan was the Lend Lease Act, which kept the
factories humming by building tanks and giving them to
Stalin. Another part was the banking reforms, which kept
us out of a depression for almost seventy years.
For thirty years under Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush,
Democrats and Republicans conspired to dismantle the New
Deal. Under
Alan Greenspan, appointed Fed Chairman by Reagan,
and renewed by Clinton, and both Bushes, the government
followed a course of constant inflation, in the prices
of health, education, and housing. The
Congressional Budget Office,
Bureau of Labor and
Statistics,
Council of Economic advisers, etc., conspired to
fudge the statistics and lie to us about inflation,
telling us it didn't exist.
In reality, real wages dropped constantly, tempting
middle-class households to take out adjustable rate
mortgages, foolishly hoping to benefit from constant
inflation of housing prices to compensate for inadequate
purchasing power—in other words speculating against the
dollar.
Meanwhile, their children were graduating from college
owing tens of thousands of dollars, and unable to find
jobs. It became increasingly difficult to afford the
costs of health care for our grandparents, our parents,
our children, or ourselves.
The housing bubble has popped, and I predict this is
nothing compared to what may be coming if the credit
card bubble busts.
When people start pushing wheelbarrows full of worthless
money to the supermarket, they will blame Obama, and
that should be enough to bring out the Nazi armbands. As
it did in Germany.—Wilson J. Moses
http://wilsonmoses.wordpress.com
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Malcolm X
A Life of Reinvention
By
Manning Marable
Years
in the making-the definitive biography of
the legendary black activist.
Of the great figure in twentieth-century
American history perhaps none is more
complex and controversial than Malcolm X.
Constantly rewriting his own story, he
became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and
an icon, all before being felled by
assassins' bullets at age thirty-nine.
Through his tireless work and countless
speeches he empowered hundreds of thousands
of black Americans to create better lives
and stronger communities while establishing
the template for the self-actualized,
independent African American man. In death
he became a broad symbol of both resistance
and reconciliation for millions around the
world. |
Manning Marable's
new biography of Malcolm is a stunning achievement.
Filled with new information and shocking revelations
that go beyond the Autobiography, Malcolm X unfolds a
sweeping story of race and class in America, from the
rise of Marcus Garvey and the Ku Klux Klan to the
struggles of the civil rights movement in the fifties
and sixties.
Reaching into
Malcolm's troubled youth, it traces a path from his
parents' activism through his own engagement with the
Nation of Islam, charting his astronomical rise in the
world of Black Nationalism and culminating in the
never-before-told true story of his assassination.
Malcolm X will stand as the definitive work on one of
the most singular forces for social change, capturing
with revelatory clarity a man who constantly strove, in
the great American tradition, to remake himself anew.
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Ratification
The People Debate the Constitution,
1787-1788
By Pauline Maier
A notable historian
of the early republic, Maier devoted a
decade to studying the immense
documentation of the ratification of the
Constitution. Scholars might approach
her book’s footnotes first, but history
fans who delve into her narrative will
meet delegates to the state conventions
whom most history books, absorbed with
the Founders, have relegated to
obscurity. Yet, prominent in their local
counties and towns, they influenced a
convention’s decision to accept or
reject the Constitution. Their
biographies and democratic credentials
emerge in Maier’s accounts of their
elections to a convention, the political
attitudes they carried to the conclave,
and their declamations from the floor.
The latter expressed opponents’
objections to provisions of the
Constitution, some of which seem
anachronistic (election regulation
raised hackles) and some of which are
thoroughly contemporary (the power to
tax individuals directly). Ripostes from
proponents, the Federalists, animate the
great detail Maier provides, as does her
recounting how one state convention’s
verdict affected another’s. Displaying
the grudging grassroots blessing the
Constitution originally received, Maier
eruditely yet accessibly revives a
neglected but critical passage in
American history.—Booklist |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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Browse all issues
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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posted 2 March 2009
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