INCLUDE_DATA

NAACP’s Origin: 1908 Race Riot in Lincoln’s Home Town

May 19th, 2023

Illinois Mobs Kill and Burn

Foiled in Attempt to Lynch Two Negroes, Angry Whites Start Destructive Raid

Troops Bring Gatling Gun

Mob Sets Fire to Negro District and Refuses to Allow Fire Department to Work

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. Aug. 15 — Race riots are raging here as the result of an attempt to lynch two negro prisoners in the county jail. [ New York Times ]

Those are the headlines and opening sentence of a New York Times account published on August 15, 1908, of a race riot in the home town of Abraham Lincoln, the sainted president who practiced law in an office that overlooked the Old Statehouse. It was at that same building, 100 years later, where Lincoln’s would-be successor, a young Barack Obama, announced his campaign for the presidency. But, in 1908 that very area had been full of a seething white mob.

Who could have imagined it? A ‘race riot’ in Lincoln’s home town?

This was no Watts or Detroit. No, this was a white man’s riot. At one point, according to the New York Times’ account, “the sky over the east end of Springfield was aglow.”

I know that ‘east end’ of Springfield — the ‘end’ Springfield residents now call the East Side — because I was born and raised in Springfield. For as long as I can remember, the East Side was ‘the black side’ of Springfield, the ‘other side of the tracks’ just beyond Ninth Street. And it was in that part of town, the Times reporter wrote 101 years ago, where a mob roamed, killing blacks and destroying their homes and businesses.

How did this all begin?

On the hot summer evening of August 13, 1908, a white woman, Mabel Hallam, who lived on Springfield’s north side, claimed she’d been raped by a black man. Subsequently an African-American construction worker, George Richardson, was identified by Hallam, whom she told “I believe that you are the man and that you will have to prove that you are not.” [ Something So Horrible, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation, 2008 ]

Richardson said, “Before God, I am innocent of this crime. I can explain her identification of me only by the theory that all coons look alike to her.”

According to the Lincoln Presidential Library account, “Richardson was a handsome, dark-skinned man, the well-spoken grandson one of Springfield’s most prominent Blacks, William Florville, who had been Abraham Lincoln’s barber.”

Richardson was taken to the county jail, where another black prisoner, arrested a month earlier in a different case, resided.

The next morning the city opened its newspaper, The Illinois State Journal, to find this screaming headline: “DRAGGED FROM HER BED AND OUTRAGED BY NEGRO.”

Aflame with the alleged ‘violation of a white woman by a black man’ — the ruse concocted to lynch untold numbers of black men over the history of this nation — an angry mob formed at the jail, demanding the sheriff to release his two black prisoners, so the mob could lynch them both.

Instead the sheriff spirited the two out of town for their protection, and the riot began in full force.

One of those killed in the furious mayhem was a black barber named Scott Burton, who faced the mob in his shop doorway. Someone shot and killed Burton “and his body was paraded from his porch to a place several blocks away where it was hanged from a tree outside a saloon. Burton’s corpse became the symbol of the mob’s hatred of blacks and was riddled by bullets.”

At the end of the second day of rioting, the mob, frustrated in its attempt to roust other black Springfieldians from under militia protection at the state arsenal, marched across the Capitol grounds, where the militia was encamped, to the home of 80 year-old William Donnegan, a successful businessman. Donnegan came out of his house - two blocks from the Capitol - to confront the crowd of a dozen men, who attacked him, cut his throat and used clothesline rope to lynch Donnegan to a small tree standing in a school yard across the street from his home. He was cut down, still alive, by members of the militia, whose act proved too late to save Donnegan’s life.

And how did State Journal, Springfield’s leading newspaper, headline its day-after, post-riot account? Well, it tells you a lot about what Springfield was in 1908, and what, eerily, still lurks there today: “Frenzied Mob Sweeps City, Wreaking Bloody Vengeance For Negro’s Heinous Crime.”

A ‘crime’ that had never occurred.

“Two weeks after the riot, Mabel Hallam would confess to the grand jury that her story of rape by a Black man was a lie. … But that Friday morning, August 14, her cry set the mob in motion and evoked death, destruction and untold hardship for which Hallam was never held accountable.”

Something positive did come of this horrific event: the NAACP was founded less than six months later in New York on the 100th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth, February 12, 1909. Last year at the Old State Capitol in Springfield, the Association commemorated its link to that terrible summer of 1908, and included a copy of William English Walling’s chilling, on-the-scene account. [ The Independent - 1908 ]

And what of Springfield today, 100 years after the founding of the NAACP, 101 years after the riot itself?

The State Journal-Register (successor to the State Journal) produced a special edition to commemorate the riot’s 100th anniversary on August 14, 2008. But below the online story in the ‘comments’ section, the ugliness of 1908 raised its head in the form of two anonymous comments:

‘tweetybird’ wrote:

“this is a total waste 0f time why keep bringing up the bad stuff? Nobody living now was involved in that. Its past. Leave it there. The article states its not forgotten. Well its not forgotten because this paper keeps shoving it down our throats. I’m tired of hearing about it. drop the subject and leave it in the past where it belongs.”

Following tweety’s comment, ‘Iremember’ wrote:

I am in my 70’s. I was born and raised in a small town outside of Springfield. When the riot was still fresh on the minds of many, I recall folks stating that one of main reasons for the riot was the black’s ‘push day.’ On one day of the week (I think it was Thursday, but am not sure), groups of blacks would literally walk down the sidewalk in mass pushing everybody — in this instance, whites — out of their way. That tactic and the supposed rape I guess set the white folks off. Whether ‘push day’ is true or not, and I am of the belief it occurred, it is part of local lore, and I am disappointed the JR didn’t do a better job of researching and reporting the complete story of the riot.”

Has the election of Barack Obama changed the thinking of these two? You have to wonder. Springfield remains a racially tense town.

Just a little more than two months ago in Springfield, a noose was hung in the work area used by a black employee of the city’s power and light utility.

The apparent target of the noose hanging, Mike Williams, an African-American, pleaded to the Springfield City Council,

“So, I beg of you, as this ground starts to shake and the rumble is coming, to please don’t just ignore this, don’t sweep this under the rug,” Williams said. “Adopt a no-tolerance policy immediately that says if you are caught or if you admit jokingly, unintentionally or whatever it may be that you committed such acts, that you will be terminated immediately.”

After Williams spoke, Archie Lawrence, president of the Springfield Branch of the NAACP, said that hanging a noose is “the ultimate insult.”

“The only thing that’s worse than hanging a noose is hanging itself,” he said, adding that he finds it impossible “to believe that anyone would hang a noose did not have the intent to send a message that black people are not welcome in this town, that black people did not deserve to perform their job without any type of threat or intimidation.”

Following a ‘review’ of the incident by the Mayor of Springfield and the Sangamon County State’s Attorney, the names of those who placed the noose were made public: one was the brother of the mayor’s former wife, and the other a nephew of the city human resource director, himself a well-known former high school coach.

The punishment – meted two months later – for the heinous act committed by these well-connected city employees in Abraham Lincoln’s home town: 60-day unpaid suspensions in scheduled five-day increments. This unusual method of discipline was taken, according to the city utility’s spokesperson, “in order to not adversely affect the operations of those departments and avoid overtime.”

At an October 7 secret meeting, the city’s civil service commission declined to intervene, yet one member questioned the suspensions as a “a new level of discipline … that basically keeps people from being terminated.”

And so it goes in the Land of Lincoln.

[ Also at Springfield 1908 ]

American Taliban?

April 28th, 2023

You’ve seen the pictures - the Taliban, the extremist group that has taken over Afghanistan, maintains its grip on that country by posting young men on almost every street corner, riding in trucks, holding/brandishing assault rifles, wearing atypical clothes that stand out, letting the public know who’s in power, and will stay in power, by the power of openly brandished guns and fear.

How can we think our future under a government backed by the hate-filled, gun-carrying white supremacists could be any different?

What would an America with a Second Amendment “rights”, extremist-controlled government look like? Remember how the militia types - Proud Boys, the ones an ex-president told to “Stand Back and Stand By,” and others of like mind - appeared at the Capitol January 6th in Washington? Similar shows of gun-force were on display at state capitols:

Richmond,
Lansing,
Helena,
Indianapolis,
Harrisburg,
Austin,
Olympia (Washington),
Salem (Oregon),
Salt Lake City

And recall how Al Quaeda stormed our skies, tore into the Pentagon and slaughtered our citizens with anti U.S. furor on 9/11.

Now, think of the rage of the mob who attempted to conquer our Capitol and stop our republic from functioning. Their actions were as vile and filled with every bit of rage against our country, their own country, as the foreign suicide terrorists had for us on 9/11.

Do we really believe the behavior of our rifle-bearers - should they achieve power - would be any different than that of the Afghan Taliban? Who would be on our street corners? Who would be standing outside our state capitol buildings? Our local government buildings? Outside our U.S. Capitol in Washington? And would we still live free, enjoying our lives? Or would we live in fear?

#

— For a look at the militia movement and the entities most prone to violence, see this report by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), “a disaggregated data collection, analysis, and crisis mapping project, [which] collects information on the dates, actors, locations, fatalities, and types of all reported political violence and protest events around the world.”)

Now see how a previous militia behaved: The District of Columbia militia Protecting the Capitol on May 13, 1861.

The U.S. and The Holocaust

October 3rd, 2022

We need to take stock of who we are as a country - the good as well and the bad - and resolve to learn, so that bad choices are never made again.

Ken Burns, maker of outstanding documentaries, ranging from the National Parks to Country Music, has produced The U.S. and the Holocaust, calling it “one of the most important we’ve ever worked on.” Based on the political furor over our nation’s elections, over immigrants, over the huge lies of a former president, Burns reveals his deep concern over where we’re heading as a nation.

Please watch his film and ponder who we’ve been and who we seem to have become today … and whether we can change course before it’s too late.

Lies, Politics and Democracy

September 26th, 2022

For the sake of the future of our country, if you’ve not seen it, please please watch this vital program - Lies, Politics and Democracy - which addresses the most serious issue of our time: the survival of our democracy.

Produced by PBS, Frontline, Lies, Politics and Democracy carefully explores how decisions by our political leaders - those calling into question the legitimacy of our elections - have placed our own democracy in peril.

This program has been produced by one of the most acclaimed teams of investigative journalists in our country. And, according to Wikipedia, “As of July 2016, Frontline has won a total of 75 Emmy Awards and 18 Peabody Awards.”

Please, regardless of your political/non-political views, take the time to see it. What you and I do between now and our next elections - how we discuss, how we read, how and to whom we write - will play a role in what the United States of America is or will become.

Driving While Black … “Three times”

August 7th, 2022

This column has been written in loving memory of Calvin Milton Jones, who died May 25, 2011.

“Has that ever happened to you?”

His face looked at me with the most serious expression I’d seen from this gentle man.

“Three times,” he said.

My friend, the late Calvin Milton Jones, had just sent me a copy of Dick Gregory’s talk to a Tavis Smiley “State of Black Union” convention center audience. Gregory, the comedian and activist, wondered aloud, that if Bill Clinton was truly “our first Black president,” would he know (at 1 min,50 sec.) how it felt to be a Black man, driving down the road, and hear a police siren:

“Mr. President, do you know what it feels like to be a Black person, to be a congresslady, to be a lieutenant governor with 12 doctor’s degrees, and driving down the street, and hear the police siren, and you start squeezing that steering wheel tight, and they pass by you, and you Thank God! Damn! You didn’t do nothin’ in the first place. Do you know what it is to be Black?”

The primarily Black audience was in howls, cheering with a standing ovation at Gregory’s presentation. And I realized then that the expression, “driving while Black,” was so real and so common that an entire audience of hundreds had reacted, knowingly and in unison, with raucous laughter at Gregory’s searing remarks.

After I watched it, I walked over to Calvin’s office and asked him, “Has that ever happened to you?”

He looked me straight in the eye, “Three times” … on the way to and from Washington and his hometown in North Carolina.

So this gentle and generous man … who arrived at the office at close to five o’clock every morning — even the day before he died, sick with pneumonia — to turn on the lights, make the coffee, check the phone and computer systems, arrange the conference rooms to be sure everything was in place for the days’ meetings … told me, with those words, that he had been stopped by police officers on three separate occasions, just because they knew they could taunt another Black man.

This man, Calvin Milton Jones … who wouldn’t harm a soul, who cut all the lawns in his neighborhood, because he didn’t want it to look unkempt; who, unasked, often waxed neighbors’ cars; and who would give you the shirt off his back, if you were in need … this man had been pulled over three times for no other reason than the color of his skin.

Imagine how it must feel to look up into the eyes of a uniformed man, who, you and he know, could change your life in an instant.

And now we have young Trayvon Martin, killed by a single shot from the gun of a self-appointed ‘neighborhood watchman,’ who said Trayvon was, “suspicious … looks Black” and, chasing Trayvon against orders, told 911, “They always get away.” But “they” (Trayvon) did not get away; and the man who hunted him down wasn’t even arrested.

Walking while black?

Author Donna Britt, commenting on the shooting death of Trayvon, said, “I don’t know what this child could have done to be safe, except not be Black.”

Being, while Black.

These two men, going about their business, are stopped for being “suspicious,” for being Black men living in the world’s lone superpower; which the rest of us tell ourselves is “the land of the free” … the “sweet land of liberty” … that exists, “under God … with liberty and justice for all.”

Perhaps it is … for some.

The Danger of Presidential Racism - Tulsa 1921, George Floyd 2020

May 16th, 2022

What a president says, matters.

When he was running for president in 1912, Woodrow Wilson signaled to the African American community, whose votes he was courting, that he was on their side: “Should I become President of the United States, [Negroes] [sic] may count upon me for absolute fair dealing and for everything by which I could assist in advancing the interests of their race in the United States.” Wilson, a Democrat, won, in part, by capturing the votes of many African Americans, formerly embraced the Republican Party. Long-sought equality seemed within reach.

But only weeks after his March 7, 1913, inauguration, Wilson - in an April 11 meeting - assented to requests by determined Southern cabinet members to segregate their departments, which had been officially integrated for 50 years, since the time of Reconstruction at the end of the Civil War. The U.S. Postal Service and the Department of the Treasury soon went into action, rushing to move African American workers into desks and tables that were separated from white workers, and moving Black workers out of formerly shared locker rooms and restrooms. Screens were posted around African American workers, so no white person could see them.

Wilson told a group of African American leaders at the White House that segregation was necessary to “prevent racial friction.” Instead, by reversing his pre-election pledge, he provoked it.

W.E.B. DuBois, the editor of NAACP’s The Crisis, responded, “The federal government has set the colored apart as if mere contact with them were contamination,” adding, “Behind screens and closed doors they now sit as though leprous. How long will it be before the hateful epithets of ‘Nigger’ and ‘Jim Crow’ are openly applied?”

In the years following official segregation of the federal government, the security of African Americans became ever more tenuous. Recruitment for the armed forces for World War I featured a draft registration card that crudely instructs the enlistee: “If person is of African descent, cut off this corner.”

Racial separation signaled to racists that Uncle Sam doesn’t see Black people as equal, and in the 1919 summer months following the return of service personnel from Europe, white rioters attacked and killed hundreds of African Americans, including fellow servicemen, in 33 cities spread across the entire country. Black life was in low regard.

The seeds of division Wilson had planted produced such venom and disregard for the lives of Black people that the most successful and prominent community of African Americans in the country, Greenwood - a 40-square block district of Tulsa, Oklahoma, known as The Black Wall Street - was invaded by white mobs on June 21, 1921, firebombed by planes and totally destroyed. Upwards of 300 African American men, women and children were killed, and the Black Wall Street lay in embers.

When Donald Trump called the white supremacists in Charlottesville, “very fine people:” when he said African immigrants come from “shithole countries,” and when he fed crowd rage toward protesting African American football players, urging, “Get that son-of-a-bitch off the field!” we had another president taking aim at our own citizens, only this time it was being done with blunt furor and open hate, with no attempt to hide his disdain for Americans he just doesn’t like to see.

The signals he gave to those seething with hate, the ones who had been in the background, those who had gathered secretly in the woods as militia and KKK, came out in full force on January 6, 2021. The wink he gave to police about their treatment of suspects likely ended the vibrant life of George Floyd in 2020 Minneapolis.

Are you willing to allow this venom to pour into our communities and neighborhoods? To see open attacks on people of color? Will you do anything to stand up for justice and the rule of law?

Sadly, we have seen more videos of three or four or five police officers arresting African American men for simply being in a public space. in 2018, a woman was choked and her clothes torn off, as she asked why a disagreement over plastic-ware caused her to be cornered by police in a fast-food restaurant. When an officer used that coded-phrase, “You’re resisting me,” he seemed to feel that gave him full authority to do whatever he willed to her partially-clothed body.

Then, in a moment separated by just miles and hours, a lone African American man had the courage to lunge at a gunman in a similar fast-food outlet, and stopped potential carnage. What a comparison: two policemen tackle an unarmed girl, while a Black man heroically tackled an armed gunman.

And how many unarmed Black men and women have been killed by police, in the encounters we know about, since 1999?

How can we - you and me - ensure that this outrage stops, that this legacy of violent racist hatred ceases?

America, What Horror Is Looming Toward Us? What Fate Is Staring in Our Faces?

March 27th, 2022

We see news of violence at meetings of school boards - our closest local governmental body, overseen by elected, unpaid, community volunteers - meetings formerly peaceful and respectful, that have become shouting rows tinged with threats of violence over issues that barely exist - face masks, “critical race theory” - which is a college-level concept not taught in public schools - and attempts to purge books from school libraries over alleged sexual content, which one Iowa resident alleged included “child-adult sex and books that promote pedophilia,” a preposterous statement.

The furor against schools, against libraries, against face masks, against the vaccines that have saved our lives in a worldwide pandemic, is creating a cauldron of hatred that will - if we cannot control ourselves - steer our beloved country further away from civility on “this land … your land” - the hills and cities and farms and hamlets and apartments and factories - into fearful disorder.

Meanwhile, civic order is also seeing challenges to local and state elections, as the “stolen election” lie has caused local administrators - some experiencing threats to their lives - to resign, and new state laws are passed to restrict who can, and how easily, vote, both of which foretell an assault on our precious right to choose whom to elect as our leaders.

This apparent chaos exists because one man, who had been our president, repeated and repeats, over and over - with no evidence - the “Big Lie” that his attempt to win reelection was stolen from him. And because elected leaders in his party, extol and repeat his lies, a huge portion of our country believes our president is illegitimate.

Reflect that each of these questioning officeholders appears to see no problem with the vote count in their own reelection - won by having their name checked on the very same ballot on which voters also checked a box for the office of president. If the ballots were fraudulent, wouldn’t their own election be fraudulent, too?

Imagine how empowered Russia’s and China’s leaders must feel, watching us tear each other apart, weakening our national government. Perhaps that’s why Putin is killing his opponents and destroying Ukraine? Maybe he thinks the U.S. isn’t such a tough opponent anymore.

Stoked by enormous lies, repeated over and over, by extremist politicians and the far-right cable “news” channels in a symbiotic echo chamber, many of us believe the government is against us; that it is threatening our freedom.

But look at what objectors to our government can do here - demonstrate, peaceably, with marches and signs and even slow-driving “convoys” around our nation’s capital - and compare that to the genuine threat to freedom ripping apart Ukraine, where middle class cities, families, children, schools and hospitals are being destroyed by Russian tanks and bombs and missiles, just because the people and the government won’t surrender their genuine freedom to a murderous dictator.

Being asked to wear a mask, to get vaccinated, during a worldwide outbreak of a new and deadly infection that has claimed millions of lives, is called an assault on our freedom? Look to Ukraine, if you want to see what a real assault on freedom looks like.

Here we can express our disagreement, but not express it with violence. Why would we? We can go anywhere we want, walk wherever we want every day, if you are white, that is. We can travel between cities and go to work, our children can go to school, we can read whatever we want, say whatever we like, love whomever we love, watch whatever we want, listen to whatever we want to hear - all without anyone in authority telling us we can’t; all without anyone grabbing us off the street.

Are the anti-mask/anti-vaccine and anti-school cries for “freedom” a foretelling of widespread violence? Is it actually true, frighteningly true, that greater numbers of us think political violence is acceptable? That another January 6 would be likely … in the freest nation on Earth?

We know this is happening. And it frightens me to death.

My friend in The Netherlands wrote to me that “Biden’s (1/6/22) speech, the whole horrible event of January 6th, has been given much attention on tv over here. And that makes it clear how important it also is to us and our values … democratic values.” He added, “One can hardly believe what is happening right now in Republican states like Arizona and Georgia, where Trump’s lies in advance are given a ‘legal’ basis for overturning the correct results of elections in the future.”

Where are we? Is this the United States of America? The place where Jefferson declared, “all men are created equal”? Where Roosevelt strove to calm Depression fear and to topple fascists abroad? Where JFK sought a New Frontier and Johnson said, “We shall overcome”? Which Reagan called “a shining city on a hill”? Where Lincoln pledged that our unique commitment to self-governed liberty “shall not perish from the Earth”?

America, who are we? And what will we become?

Will we become?

Read, learn, seek truth, and vote, knowing that in the United States of America, your voice matters, and your vote is, without question, fairly counted.

What is a “Big Lie”?

July 9th, 2021

I felt so ashamed afterwards. After I told a lie.

My Mom had spent all morning taping up pretty pictures she’d cut out from Life magazine. After she finished, my brother and I continued to play, and our scooting little feet got onto the surface that Mom had decorated. The pictures began to tear. In a short time, all the pictures Mom had posted had been ripped and ruined. She came up, angry when she saw what we’d done.

I blurted out, “Frankie did it! It was Frank!”

It was a lie. A small one, but the memory of it haunts me still.

But what if Mom, herself, stood up at the PTA and declared that the principal had poisoned the town’s water tank. Mom? Really? But, why would she say that? Does she really know it? I lied about the pictures, but that’s pretty serious. She’s my Mom. It must be true.

Most of us never lie. But, if you do, no one feels good about it, because a lie is a betrayal of trust. And since we are each inclined to be truthful, most of us were stunned, when Donald Trump publicly stated that Barack Obama, the man who sought to become our president. wasn’t a citizen and, in addition, was a follower of Islam.

“Obama is a Muslim!” Wow, really? Trump’s a well known man. I see him on TV all the time. People that famous don’t lie. He’d never lie about something that important, would he? I’d be humiliated, if my Mom or my wife or my pastor discovered I’d lied to them.

Now, each day seems to begin with a statement, words and exclamation points, from a smartphone inside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington. And it usually comes with a claim that will be said by some to be true, while others will likely say it is not.

This is a list of some President Trump’s pre-election claims, and the links to sources that show each claim is not true:

  • “Hey, I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down. And I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering.” - a long investigated lie.
  • Obama founded ISIS - untrue.
  • The Election Is Rigged - untrue.

Back in the earlier 20th century another politician with a huge ego was elected to lead a European country. His rise to power was accompanied by many questionable statements, huge statements that sounded like facts, as he presented them. Millions believed these untruths told as if true, thinking that no one that important could possibly lie about something so serious.

This European had developed a theory about truth and power. He called it The Big Lie. And here’s how he described it in his autobiography,

“[I]n the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.

“It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down.”

The European politician’s use of the big lie, after his election, was transferred to a man who became his chief information officer, who would use the lie as a central to his work,

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

When he was seeking the office, Trump said - and often says now - that the newspapers and television news reporters all lie … all the time. But how do we find out what he says every day? From newspapers and television/radio news programs. His relentless challenges and charges against genuine news are what is most troubling today, because truth, the facts we all acknowledge, is at the core of our democracy. Without truth, what are we?

Newspapers hire reporters (which I once was) to record the details of events or reveal unknown facts. News is how we find out what is happening each day, to discover what is true, what you alone could not discover, without the newspaper (or radio/TV news).

Opinions are only allowed on the editorial and OpEd pages in newspapers and commentary in broadcast news. Everything else is strictly limited to facts, or, as we call it, news. And editors — who re-read and fact check articles, before they can be printed or spoken — enforce that policy with strict attention to the details of what a reporter has written.

Presidents rarely like reporters and news, because reporters find facts that presidents don’t want to be revealed. But past presidents respected newspapers and news broadcasters, because they know they are vital to stability of our system of government. Thomas Jefferson, as he was preparing the Constitution of our nation, wrote,

“[W]ere it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them.”

Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, January 16, 1787

Now, in 2018, think about the statements that “all news is fake,” the press are “the biggest group of liars,” “the lying New York Times,” and on it goes. Every reporter is a liar and everything that I say is the truth. Why would anyone keep insisting that every one of our sources of news and information is lying to us? Do we honestly believe that we have liars everywhere, except in the White House?

When you talk to people from other countries - frequently, cab drivers - you begin to understand that the freedom to speak your mind is the most valuable right we have, because some other countries don’t allow it. Spies can be everywhere, even in families. What they value most here: the freedom to speak. But with that freedom comes responsibility to say truth to others.

Oh. That European’s name: Adolph Hitler. And his information officer was named Joseph Goebbels, more frequently known as the Minister of Propaganda.

Sources:

Mein Kampf
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/excerpts-from-mein-kampf

Joseph Goebbels
http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/holoprelude/goebbels.html

Mein Kampf discussion
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/does-mein-kampf-remain-a-dangerous-book

A Note to U.S. Catholic Bishops

June 20th, 2021

Gentlemen,

At a time when our very democracy is in peril, you have questioned Catholic officials for their stance on whether women ought to be able to choose an abortion, equating those officials with someone who supports or promotes that terrible procedure. Yet another, essential matter cries out for your leadership.

What have you done to chasten and deny the Eucharist to public officials who question the legitimacy of our elections? Who belittle the storming of our U.S. Capitol, the center of our democracy, our first branch of government, our Congress, in a violent insurrection? What have you done to call out those who have incited violence to solve our political differences?

Sirs, this is the most frightening time in my 75 years as a Catholic U.S. citizen. We look to you for leadership and moral courage to uplift the legitimacy of our form of government and the sanctity of our elections, and instead you focus on an issue that addresses none of that. My children, my grandchildren live in fear for their futures, as almost half the country believe the enormous lies of a former president and his acolytes.

Please, focus on our nation and the weakening of our democracy by an entire political party. That is the issue of our time. Are we to be bystanders, as a would-be dictator turns us into a fascist state? As Catholic legislators and political figures encourage this abhorrent, appalling public display of immorality?

For now, all I can say to you is, “Shame.”

Please, act on this matter, require and call on our public officials to act with the utmost urgency to preserve what makes us a beacon of liberty, a worldwide center of hope. Otherwise, that beacon will be snuffed out, with a puff of inaction from those who could act, but, instead, choose to stand by and merely observe.

Sincerely,
Nicholas Penning

Driving While Black … “Three Times”

May 20th, 2021

This column has been written in loving memory of Calvin Milton Jones, who died May 25, 2011.

“Has that ever happened to you?”

His face looked at me with the most serious expression I’d seen from this gentle man.

“Three times,” he said.

My friend, the late Calvin Milton Jones, had just sent me a copy of Dick Gregory’s talk to a Tavis Smiley “State of Black Union” convention center audience. Gregory, the comedian and activist, wondered aloud, that if Bill Clinton was truly “our first Black president,” would he know (at 1 min,50 sec.) how it felt to be a Black man, driving down the road, and hear a police siren:

“Mr. President, do you know what it feels like to be a Black person, to be a congresslady, to be a lieutenant governor with 12 doctor’s degrees, and driving down the street, and hear the police siren, and you start squeezing that steering wheel tight, and they pass by you, and you Thank God! Damn! You didn’t do nothin’ in the first place. Do you know what it is to be Black?”

The primarily Black audience was in howls, cheering with a standing ovation at Gregory’s presentation. And I realized then that the expression, “driving while Black,” was so real and so common that an entire audience of hundreds had reacted, knowingly and in unison, with raucous laughter at Gregory’s searing remarks.

After I watched it, I walked over to Calvin’s office and asked him, “Has that ever happened to you?”

He looked me straight in the eye, “Three times” … on the way to and from Washington and his hometown in North Carolina.

So this gentle and generous man … who arrived at the office at close to five o’clock every morning — even the day before he died, sick with pneumonia — to turn on the lights, make the coffee, check the phone and computer systems, arrange the conference rooms to be sure everything was in place for the days’ meetings … told me, with those words, that he had been stopped by police officers on three separate occasions, just because they knew they could taunt another Black man.

This man, Calvin Milton Jones … who wouldn’t harm a soul, who cut all the lawns in his neighborhood, because he didn’t want it to look unkempt; who, unasked, often waxed neighbors’ cars; and who would give you the shirt off his back, if you were in need … this man had been pulled over three times for no other reason than the color of his skin.

Imagine how it must feel to look up into the eyes of a uniformed man, who, you and he know, could change your life in an instant.

And now we have young Trayvon Martin, killed by a single shot from the gun of a self-appointed ‘neighborhood watchman,’ who said Trayvon was, “suspicious … looks Black” and, chasing Trayvon against orders, told 911, “They always get away.” But “they” (Trayvon) did not get away; and the man who hunted him down wasn’t even arrested.

Walking while black?

Author Donna Britt, commenting on the shooting death of Trayvon, said, “I don’t know what this child could have done to be safe, except not be Black.”

Being, while Black.

These two men, going about their business, are stopped for being “suspicious,” for being Black men living in the world’s lone superpower; which the rest of us tell ourselves is “the land of the free” … the “sweet land of liberty” … that exists, “under God … with liberty and justice for all.”

Perhaps it is … for some.