Happy Hump Day … Yeahhhhh!
The week is already half over!!! It’s all because of the three day weekend of Memorial Day, y’all. I hope none of you took the celebration for granted. I mean, we are supposed to have fun … honor those who served our country. A friend of mine from Princeton included an historical review of the beginnings of Memorial Day, which actually started after the Civil War ended. It was quite an event, as decorations were first placed on graves and simple “burial locations” for those who died … and there were many … and hadn’t received a proper burial. Fields were scattered with bodies as the old style of “warfare” didn’t involve any government agencies to clean up afterwards … just sayin’!
The friend is Cora Monroe, the article is by David W. Blight in “The Onion”, May 29, 2011. Memorial Day was first called “Decoration Day”. Memorial Day became, as us humans often do with important things, a political football, thrown around by Notherners who claimed a victory over the Confederacy and slavery as well as Southerners who claimed it was their relatives blood spilt on the land as a sacrifice for what “they” believed in .. an agrarian and plantation-centered society (much like feudalism!) based on African slavery and servitude. You know, what “makes me wanna holler … throw up both my hands” … is the depth of ignorance that still permeates our America today, even with the abundance of historical works available in our society illustrating when and where things like this occurred!! I mean, I remember studying in college the concept of “the political man” (sorry ladies, that’s what it was called!) in Western civilization; but this kind of stuff is bordering on “stupidity in its crudest form”!
I mean, “we” as a people have endured some “crazy stuff” since arriving to America. African Americans were subjugated after attempts to enslave the Native Americans failed, since they, “Amerinds”, knew their own land better than the “colonists”. Our nation’s history has arrived today to where an officer in the City of Cleveland’s Police Department can stand on the hood of a car with two people immobile (probably dead already) inside who had led them on a high speed chase and fire multiple shots as if in a darn movie!!! So … “they” charged the officer at first and a judge decided that, ” … we couldn’t determine WHICH officer’s bullet(s) actually caused “the death” of the African American couple inside!” Now, I do understand that if there was a “shadow of doubt” that the bullet came from this officer’s gun … and that if found guilty, he would probably spend the rest of “his life” in prison … the judge had to find him “not guilty”. (Our justice system needs serious revamping when it comes to stuff like this!) Yet, look at the “big picture” and see how many times something like this has gone down in the African American communities and streets … ” … from sea to shining sea!” And we call this “civilization”?! Now, we … can just kill someone without arrests, charges, trials and jury/judge to decide … and THEN say that the culprit (at least one of them) is free to do the same darn thing at his earliest convenience!??!
Oftentimes, especially in the past like in Little Rock, AR, federal folks have had to come out and “restore the peace”! Has it changed much in nearly 200 years?!? Are we really all that intelligent but can’t figure out how to get along?!? “Makes me wanna holler … throw up both my hands!” Please, do your part … Be the peace and love!
Peace,
John I. Cook, Director
Educational Excellence 