As someone who attended the Woodstock Festival in 1969, I write this on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of its first day, August 15, 2019. Curiously, I have been reading about Woodstock50 which failed to happen and the many commentaries about what a miserable failure the original three-day festival had been. Dirty, drugged-out hippies – what’s the point?
Not to mention I noticed online how most media outlets did not get the memo that though the Woodstock50 never happened, the events at the original Bethel, NY site, now Woodstock museum and auditorium, are in full swing. I know this because my best friend, Donna, with whom I attended the festival in ’69, lives near Bethel, New York. As an NPR affiliate broadcaster in New York interviewing different, interesting local people for her program, this week she’s interviewing people associated with the original and current series of events at the Bethel site.
But I digress. This evening I’ve been listening to a replay of the original festival including the messages in-between acts shared from the main stage about ‘lost persons’, emergency calls for specific people, lost property and letting people know about the medical tent. Forty-five unpaid MD’s were on site for emergencies including with insulin for those in need. It was an ad hoc community attempting to address individual and community concerns as they arose.
At one point, early on, some guys began to climb the sound towers alongside the stage in order to get the best ‘seat’. I remember (and heard on the replay) how a fellow on the main stage mic literally talked them down in the least aggressive yet crystal clear manner. The climbers voluntarily came down without incident. Soon after Tim Hardin came on and asked that we each light a match, which sounds innocuous enough, but was actually a stunning moment of the solidarity of over 400,000 people.
As far as I could tell no state or local police attended; the security was internal. The medical tent served those who overdosed, were ready to give birth, or had any type of health emergency. Babies were born. A couple of people died there but no one at Woodstock was murdered like at the Altamont Festival in Northern California a few months later, which I regretfully also attended.
In 1969 at Woodstock some may remember that we ceremoniously named ourselves: the Woodstock Nation. More than a manufactured commercial gimmick, we spontaneously aligned with the spirit of love, inspired by a shared awareness of the senseless war in Vietnam, killing over 50,000 of our own and so many innocent Vietnamese.
Our mission: peaceful co-existence. What happened there was beyond what any individual or group could have orchestrated: synchronicity at its finest. Don’t get me wrong, I would never, ever, say Woodstock was a perfect world by any stretch of the imagination; it was, however, what Jimi Hendrix called, an “experience”. I doubt anyone who was there would deny it.
Yes, cannabis and drugs were involved and yes, I believe that we were mostly highly naive and inexperienced in the ways of the world. Yet the experience, though anecdotal, was that 400,000+ jammed together people demonstrated their intent to ‘do no harm’ in community while celebrating the individual and collective possibility of living in harmony.
This is an absolutely noteworthy historical fact.
Make no mistake, the Woodstock Nation was a gift to humanity: a gift that lives on in the hearts of those who attended, and those who did not, committed to inner peace and to the vision of a transcendent ethic beyond differences. The so-called ‘failure’ talking point so quickly trotted out about the Woodstock story by the media, in my view, is simply revisionist history.
Given that ‘there’s ‘no going home again’ is often true, the time and place of the Woodstock Festival must be taken into full consideration. Yet the intangible, but equally real, Woodstock Nation exists forever outside of the boundaries of time and space. Since the Woodstock Nation did, at one point in time, show up in physical reality, might such synchronicity beyond our control show up somehow again?
“Peace at any price”, one of our generation’s mandates, is evergreen; it is a truth out of time. I believe we the people are more powerful individually and collectively than a government that appears to depend on war for the health of the economy.
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* "The Almost Forgotten Selma March; Fifty years ago this week, thousands in the Civil Rights movement set out from Selma, Alabama, to march to Montgomery, and this time, triumphantly, they made it" (2015-03-20, thedailybeast.com/the-almost-forgotten-selma-march) [archive.is/UBsgB]
* "Remembering St. Louis Jews who marched with Martin Luther King" (2015-02-12, stljewishlight.com/blogs/cohn/remembering-st-louis-jews-who-marched-with-martin-luther-king/article_9c764c56-b220-11e4-b529-1b4aaa380cdd.html) [archive.is/O5p8M]
- image caption: Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (second from right), marches at Selma with Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Bunche, Rep. John Lewis, Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth and Rev. C.T. Vivian.
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* "Noteworthy People of Waterbury" (retrieved 2019-08-20, waterburylife.com/people.html) [archive.is/TIdNE] [begin excerpt]:
Jose Rene Gonzales brought the Black Panther political party to Waterbury. The Black Panthers were comprised largely, but not exclusively, of African-Americans. During this time, most cities feared this group, which used the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America as a rightful enabler for people to carry arms, as a threat to the safety and policing forces of their municipalities. In Waterbury, progressive Mayor Harlamon enabled a youth group, Young Black Militants, to self-patrol their neighborhoods. Despite strong opposition from the police department, the program was a success; the first night was "the quietest time the streets have ever seen". [end excerpt]
* "Photos and Videos about #todayinwhiteterrorism" (retrieved 2019-08-20, instastuck.com/tag/todayinwhiteterrorism) [archive.is/SWaQm] [begin excerpt]:
June 5, 1969 -Hartford, Connecticut
The cities of Connecticut were the scene of racial violence every summer during the last three years of the decade. There were riots in New London, Norwalk, Stamford, Bridgeport, Waterbury, Middletown, New Britain, New Haven and Hartford. In New Haven, in August, 1967, a white store owner shot a Puerto Rican threatening him with a knife, and this action unleashed a series of incidents that fed on each other and eventually led to chaos in the streets. Mayor Richard C. Lee called a state of emergency and asked that the National Guard be brought to the edge of the city. The next month in Hartford leaders of the newly formed Black Caucus of the North End responded to the shooting of a Black youth by a policeman by calling for a march on the predominantly white South End to protest housing conditions and neighborhood segregation. Their march ended when they were blocked from their destination by 250 policemen wearing helmets and carrying riot sticks. That night Black youths ran wild in the North End, breaking store windows, setting fires, looting, and throwing bricks and bottles at passing cars, including patrol cars. The violence reached its peak in the late summer of 1969 when mobs of Black youths in Hartford were fighting in the streets with state and city police, and damaged almost one hundred buildings, including a public library that was set on fire and a super market that was never to return to the North End. “The power structure reacts to riots and violence. This is the black man’s only power,” cried John Barber, spokesman for the Black Caucus.
[end excerpt]
Panama City News Newspaper Archives, Jul 4, 1969, p. 12
https://newspaperarchive.com/panama-city-news-jul-04-1969-p-12/
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The SPHINX | Summer 1971 | Volume 57 | Number 2
https://issuu.com/apa1906network/docs/197105702
text [archive.is/7HGgN]
- cover [archive.is/OkFts], Publisher's info [archive.is/09kF8], TOC [archive.is/dXZSO]:
General President Speaks 2 Resolution — Brother Whitney Moore Young. Jr. 3 My Son Whitney M. Young. Jr. 4 Excerpts — Speeches By Brother Young 7 Career Highlights 8 Home From Vietnam — Whitney M. Young. Jr. 9 The Black Power Of Whitney Young 13 A Black Point of View — Brother Floyd B. McKissick 17 Separatism — Whitney M. Young, Jr. 20 White House Conference 23 Ghetto Investment — Whitney M. Young, Jr. 27 Whitney Young Dies In Nigeria 29 Messages of Sorrow 30 A Giant Walked Among Us 31 Funeral Services 33 Eulogy — Hon. Richard M. Nixon 38 Legacy and Time of Whitney Moore Young, Jr. — Brother Harold Slim 39 The Whitney I Knew — Brother Dunbar Maaurin 42 Leadership For Black America — Roy Wilkins 45 The Loss of a Leader — Bayard Rustin 46 Brothers of Alpha — National Urban League 49 65th Anniversary Convention 52 Omega Chapter 62 Alpha Work-shop 64
TO LOVE AND DUTY TRUTH Official Memorial Service in the Motherland... A f r i c a . . . Ambassador Samuel Z. Westerfield, Jr.
Tribute to Whitney Moore Young, Jr.
March 14, 1971 — Ambassador Samuel Z. Westerfield, Jr. Whitney Moore Young, Jr., Executive Director of the National Urban League, was born in Lincoln Ridge, Kentucky July 1, 1921. His death came in Lagos last week on March 11 while swimming with former Attorney General Ramsey Clark. President Nixon said "With the death of Whitney Young, the United States has lost one of the most compassionate and principled leaders it has had in all the long centuries since whites from Europe and blacks from Africa began building together the American dream. "Whitney Young died in the full bloom of life and at the very height of his contribution to American society. His life is over but his life's work continues. Of the many hours I have spent with him, the most recent and the most memorable were just last December 22 when he and several of his Urban League colleagues met with me and most of my cabinet here in the White House. This was not a meeting of pleasantries or a proforma occasion. Whitney Young came here to tell me and the cabinet of his deep concern for the condition of black people in America, especially of young black people. He was eloquent, tough and convincing: a great leader among his peers. "From that meeting, I sent out instructions to all my cabinet to find ways to enlist the unique capabilities of the Urban League and other private social service agencies in advancing and evaluating the nation's human resources programs. The last time I talked with Whitney Young was when he called me to report on the rapid progress the Urban League is making in mounting such a joint effort with the several departments. This effort launched so ably by Whitney Young will go forward as will all of the enterprises which have benefitted from his vision and energies — and which are now his legacy. That the great work of equal justice and human dignity must continue without him is a tragedy that weighs heavily upon the nation; but continue we must, more than ever because of the example he set." President Nixon ordered an Air Force plane to fly to Lagos to carry Mr. Young's body to the United States. Before joining the National Urban League as executive director in 1961, Whitney Young had served as Dean of the Atlanta University School of Social Work from 1954-1960. In earlier years he had been executive secretary of the Urban League in Omaha, Nebraska, and industrial relations director of the Urban League in St. Paul, Minnesota. Mr. Young served on numerous Presidential Commissions and had received many awards and citations. He was the recipient of some 30 honorary degrees from leading American Universities, including Harvard and Howard. He graduated from Kentucky State College, where he was an outstanding athlete and scholar. Young earned a master's degree in social work at the University of Minnesota. In addition he was a visiting scholar at Harvard University and also studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Whitney was a tireless and articulate proponent of the cause of freedom, dignity and eqaulity for all men. He was committed to the achievement of these goals within the framework of the American system. He never eased his constant pressure upon the political and industrial leaders of America to lend their cooperation in the achievement of these objectives. This great man appealed to the hearts and minds of people to bring about change. He was a most persuasive individual. His support came from almost every spectrum of the American society. Although he was considered moderate, in recent years he had established a successful dialogue with young black militants and won their respect and support. He was an organizer of the March on Washington movement which took place in America's capital city in August 1963. In this effort he worked closely with Phillip Randolph, Martin Luther King, Bayard Rustin, James Farmer, Walter Reuther and many others. Because of his unusual organization and leadership abilities he was called upon for service and advice by four Presidents — President Eisenhower, President Kennedy, President Johnson and President Nixon. However, whatever is written about Whitney Young's life and work, it remains difficult to capture him completely. He was a free spirit. He loved all people, without regard to race, creed, or color, and was completely at home with them, whether he was at the White House, with industrial leaders, with black leaders, with the man on the street, with university professors and students, or in Africa, Europe or Asia. Whitney seemed to relate to everyone. It was almost impossible not to like him, even if you disagreed with him. He had a tremendous sense of humor, he was always the life of the party — or any other group of which he was a part. He was devoted to his family and enjoyed the love and comfort of a wonderful wife and two daughters during 27 years of marriage. He was a loyal and concerned friend. America and the world have lost one of their noblest sons. I doubt that we will see his like again. Whitney Young died while trying to strengthen the friendship between America and Africa, especially the ties between black Americans and the continent of their origin.
* "Separatism? 'WE ARE Separated — and That's the Cause of ALL Our Woes" (by Whitney M. Young, Jr. ) [archive.is/PoKpo] [archive.is/DCKdp] [archive.is/Qrpp5]: Ghetto has failed the black man, says author — 'and I'm not ready to let the whites off so easily1 There is in us all a stronger tendency toward isolation than we may be aware of," wrote James Weldon Johnson. "There come times when the most persistent integrationist becomes an isolationist, when he curses the white world and consigns it to hell. This tendency toward isolation is strong because it springs from a deep-seated, natural desire— a desire for respite from the unremitting, grueling struggle; for a place in which refuge may be taken." The "tendency toward isolation" of which Johnson wrote, we now see in calls for separatism; and for all its posturings about racial pride and power, its roots are sunk deep in negativism, in the desire for relief from the "grueling struggle" with American racism. It is a tendency that his always surfaced when the going got tough; when the oppression of white racism was at its strongest, or when, as happens now, black hopes for justice are encouraged, then defeated. The era of Black Reconstruction was followed by a Back-to-Africa movement. Garveyism rose from the ashes of the post-World War I anti-Negro riots. Calls for all-black states grew out of Depression poverty.
And now, with the civil rights movement in temporary eclipse because of white resistance to our demands for complete equality and because Washington is more deeply committed to spending American blood and wealth on a futile war in Asia than it is committed to practicing democracy at home, black frustration with a morally bankrupt society has led to a resurgence of separatist ideas. Like past movements committed to group isolationism, this one operates outside of the mainstream of Black thinking, and, however attractive its rhetoric and anger may be, it bears about as little real relevance to the solution of the black man's problems as it did when Booker T. Washington advised black people not to contend with whites in the arena of political power. 20
The fact is that there are no virtues to be found in segregation, whether imposed by white racists or sought out by ourselves. We already have a separatist society. Black people, given the choice, may decide to stay in allblack neighborhoods. But we haven't ever had the choice. The ghetto has been imposed upon us, the slum has been forced down our throats and other men's heels press us to the bottom of the economic ladder. The black man was segregated on Southern plantations; he's segregated now in urban ghettos. Separatism is not some goal we ought to aspire to. It's here. Now. We are as separate in every real sense as the most convinced isolationist could hope for — and the result has been powerlessness,, not power; poverty, not riches; discrimination, not equality. The very fact of our segregation has been the tool with which the white society has kept us in an inferior position. The geographically cohesive black community has only made it easier for white institutions to control black people and deny us our equal rights. The black ghetto is proof of this. The schools, the hospitals, the police protection, even the quality of food and goods available, are not as good as those found in white neighborhoods. And we need not go any further to see the reason for this than W. E. B. Du Bois's comment about white society: "Just as soon as they get a group of black folk segregated, they use it as a point of attack and discrimination." The abuses so widespread in the ghetto are allowed to exist because only black people live there. If whites sent their children to schools in the black ghetto, those schools would improve, if only because white society would not tolerate decaying school buildings and shortages of textbooks for their kids the way they accept it for blacks. Police in Scarsdale, N. Y., or in other white suburbs, arrest dope pushers; they don't just share their loot the way some policemen do in the ghetto. Hospitals in white neighborhoods don't stick beds in corridors the way ghetto hospitals do — they know white administrators won't allow it. Supermarkets don't overcharge for spoiled food in white neighborhoods, either. Their managers know that white people, not blacks, would be victims. It's all well and good to say that black power and control in the black community would end these abuses. To a degree thay would. But no neighborhood is an island unto itself. The black ghetto, like any white neighborhood, would be dependent upon funds and services provided by the city, by the state, and by the federal government. And unless 88 per cent of the population of this country packs up and moves elsewhere, those governments will be dominated by white people. And there has never been any sign, in our whole history, that white institutions are disposed to treat blacks on the same basis that they treat whites.
Separatism as a strategy for equality has never worked and it never will. The South is dotted with all-black towns. They've got all the symbols and trapping of power-black mayors, black police, black schools. But they don't have sidewalks, money or jobs. And they don't number among their citizens any of those very vocal advocates of separatism. These seem to be concentrated in integrated neighborhoods or in predominantly white colleges. Political separatism—as in all-black towns—has failed. Economic separatism doesn't have a much better chance of succeeding. We don't hear so much about "black capitalism" any more. That's because its white supporters knew it was a fraud from the start. They knew it was a way to keep blacks from demanding the jobs and the managerial positions in the mainstream. So they tossed us a bone called black capitalism" which, while it has resulted in a modest growth of black businesses, and in some added economic activity in the ghetto, has not resulted in the massive job hiring, training, and economic opportunities to which we are entitled. And in the coming months, as the Administration-engineered economic slowdown develops into a deep recession, it will become obvious that a separate economy is a marginal, insecure substitute for the wealth and power that come with full participation in the now-predominantly white mainstream. I'm all for building the economic and political strength of the black community through group solidarity and cohesiveness. But the strengths we develop, if they are to mean anything for the black masses, must be used to force our way into full participation in the larger society. There is always a handful of people who will benefit from a segregated situation, but the rest of us wind up fighting for the scraps the white society throws us. I believe in the need for an integrated society, not because associating with whites is, of itself, a good thing, but because it is only through participation in the mainstream that full equality can be won. Integration does not imply a rejection of black values or a desire to imitate white society. If anything, belief in an open society affirms a belief that black people can compete on an equal basis with whites. Whenever blacks have had the opportunity, we have demonstrated the ability to compete successfully, whether it's been on the Supreme Court or on the basketball court. Those who wish to retreat from this competition, to create out of the least attractive parts of the city and the country a permanent enclave of blacks separate from the rest of society, are only exhibiting a lack of faith in the ability of black people and a refusal to fight for the power and opportunities that are right fully ours. And the whites would like nothing better than to have blacks let them off the hook by retreating from the goal of equality. Patronizing white would-be-revolutionaries are anxious to have blacks retreat to "do their own thing." Why not? It's much easier to pursue romatic visions of revolution than to dig in and work with blacks as equals in the real fight to change our society. Even self-styled liberals rush to cop-out by taking the wildest black demands as if they were serious. What blacks are often saying when they insist on certain "non-negotiable" demands is: "Look, you whites have been making decisions for us for 400 years. When do we get to make decisions for ourselves?" Rather than negotiate seriously and bring blacks into a real dialogue as equals, such whites figuratively pat black militants on the head and say: "There, there, if that's what you want, we'll give it to you." And what they give is, of course, inconsequential — the illusion, rather than the reality, of decision-making. So whites are trying to cop-out from the struggle just as much as some blacks are. I could take the easy way out, too. I could raise the flag of retreat and abandon the fight for a share of the wealth and power of this society in return for the myths of self-segregation. But that's a cop-out, and I'm not anxious to let whites off the hook so easily. We've got a claim on this society. For 400 years we tilled the soil, hewed the wood, and drew the water. America grew fat and rich on our blood, sweat and tears. Now we've got some back pay coming to us, and I'm not about to tell the man to put the check back into his pocket and just toss me some change. No minority can afford to encourage that slave mentality that is willing to accept less than complete equality. And no minority can afford to isolate itself away from the sources of power and into a vulnerable position. Black strategy must be based upon the firm determination to create group pride and group solidarity with the goal of developing the inner strengths to compete. And it must be flexible enough to use all the resources it can command, including the time, money and skills of white people. The integrated organization is a a vital part of the black man's struggle for equal rights. There is no reason why we should deny ourselves access to whites committed to our cause. Of course, there is no place in the movement for whites who cling to missionary attitudes, whites who want to uplift the downtrodden, inferior race. But there is an important place for whites who are willing to accept peer relationships with blacks; for whites capable of providing the resources black people can use constructively; for whites who can communicate with other white people, and who have the influence and power to help white enlightened whites; to educate them, and to open cracks in the walls surrounding the ghetto, cracks through which we can open doors. The problem has been created by whites and is perpetuated by them — and it will be solved not only by black unity, but also by the inroads our white allies make among their own people and institutions. I know of no civil rights organization that has been able to survive without using committed whites to further its aims. Sure, some fly-by-night outfits have come to prominence, picked up some cash from whites who were either frightened, or who couldn't care less, and then disappeared when that feeble, uncommitted white support melted away. Our fight is one for the long, haul, and we need organizations run by blacks, but with the lasting support of whites capable of working as equals to change the system that oppresses whites and blacks alike.
The notion that a civil rights organization must be allblack is a symptom of the insecurity some people show. They would prefer to wallow with others in their common bitterness and commiserate with one another. But they won't have a vehicle for change. They'll have a caucus, but not an organization capable of making breakthroughs for black people. Welcoming whites as partners in the common struggle to build an open society does not mean that whites will ever again control blacks or speak for blacks. Those days are dead and gone, and the determination never to return to them is a basic reason for the drive toward community control of ghetto institutions. There is nothing in the concept of community control that differs with the belief in an integrated, open society based on pluralism. The failure of white institutions to provide equal services for the ghetto means that the black community itself must control its institutions. Ghetto schools responsible to the black community will improve education for black kids, and community participation in local sanitation, police and other service institutions will insure that they function as well for blacks as they do for whites. Community control is a means to an end. It is a way to make life in the ghetto bearable while at the same time allowing black people the chance to make decisions and exercise control over their own destiny. But these are tactical questions within the overall strategy of winning an equal place in the larger society. Freedom comes from being able to exercise options; from having the ability to choose from among alternative. Real freedom for black people will come not from the limited choices available within the ghetto, but from the possession of the economic and political strength that determines the options to live and work where we wish. We need not accept the restrictions forced upon us by the evil intentions of racists or by the misguided romanticism of advocates of self-segregation. And we shouldn't be limited by restrictions forced on us by racial suspicion and mistrust. Malcolm X, in his last years, saw that blind hatred serves no purpose. "In the past, yes, I have made sweeping indictments of all white people," he wrote. "I never will be guilty of that again as I now know that some white people are truly sincere, that some white people truly are capable of being brotherly toward a black man . . . a blanket indictment of all white people is as wrong as when whites makes blanket indictments against blacks." Modern communications have made a neighborhood of the whole world. Blacks, no less than whites, who grow up in racial isolation will be ill-equipped to function in a world of diversity and change. The example of much of white America should warn us against the provincialism of seeking refuge in sameness. The bland, antiseptic all-white suburban gilded ghettos force many whites to grow up in an atmosphere of cultural incest and a sameness that compounds mediocrity. It is defeatist to hide behind ghetto walls and to reject the challenges and open competition with other groups that characterize people confident in their own abilities and their own culture. The black man's best hope lies not in a narrow separatism or in the cultural suicide of assimilationism, but in an Open Society; a society founded on mutual respect and cooperation, and pluralistic group self-consciousness and pride. The Open Society toward which we must strive is a society in which black people have their fair share of the power, the wealth, and the comforts of the total society. It is a society in which blacks have the options to live in a black neighborhood or to live in an integrated one; in which blacks have control over decisions affecting their lives to the same degree that other groups have. It is a society based on mutual respect and complete equality. There isn't a reason in the world why we should settle for anything less. The struggle may be long and difficult, but nothing worthwhile has ever been achieved without a struggle.
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* "Long overdue or divisive & futile? NYT’s 1619 Project on slavery in America splits readers" (2019-08-19, rt.com/usa/466842-nyt-1619-project-slavery/) [archive.is/iJa30] [begin excerpt]:
But some were less impressed by the Times’ anti-racism efforts.
Journalist Benjamin Weingarten tweeted (2019-08-18, twitter.com/bhweingarten/status/1163157584469250049) [archive.is/5wunG] that the true purpose of the project was to “delegitimize America” and “further divide and demoralize its citizenry.”
Conservative radio host Erick Erikson dismissed the project, arguing that if the Times is correct and the US is “tainted by racism since the 1600s” in every way, then it would stand to reason that the US itself is illegitimate. That would also mean “the constitution is illegitimate, and revolution is the answer,” he quipped.
Conservative editor Ian Miles Cheong said it amounted to a “rewriting of American history to suit a leftist victimhood narrative” (2019-08-29, twitter.com/stillgray/status/1163409734180802560) [archive.is/kGhB9]. [end excerpt]
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* "US school to hide, not destroy Washington mural depicting slaves and dead Native American" (2019-08-14, rt.com/usa/466488-washington-mural-school-controversial/) [archive.is/9OoLJ]
* "Peak PC logic: To shield students from ‘offensive’ image, activists opt to censor anti-racist mural" (2019-08-14, rt.com/usa/466509-george-washington-mural-censorship/) [archive.is/jBQKv]
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* "The Confederate flag symbolizes white supremacy — and it always has" (2015-06-22, vox.com/2015/6/20/8818093/confederate-flag-south-carolina-charleston-shooting) [archive.is/S7hfS]
* "Viral image about the Confederate flag confuses history" (2019-04-11, politifact.com/facebook-fact-checks/statements/2019/apr/11/viral-image/viral-image-about-confederate-flag/) [archive.is/3nD55] [begin excerpt]: Next, let’s look at what we today think of as the Confederate flag: the Confederate battle flag. It was designed by Confederate politician William Porcher Miles, not William T. Thompson, as the Facebook post claims. Miles chaired the Committee on the Flag and Seal, and though his design was never officially adopted by the Confederacy, it was "taken up by the Confederate army," the Washington Post notes, "not to mention ‘The Dukes of Hazzard’ and alleged Charleston shooter Dylann Storm Roof." (Roof has since been convicted and sentenced to death in the 2015 killing of nine African-American churchgoers in South Carolina.)
Miles’ design was also incorporated into the Stainless Banner, that second national flag that the Confederate Congress approved in 1863. William T. Thompson is often said to be the designer of the "Stainless Banner." The Los Angeles Times, for example, described him as that flag’s designer in its 2015 story about the Confederate flag’s evolution. Also that year, The Washington Post said putting the battle flag on a field of white was "his idea." Going even farther back, "Our Flag: Origin and Progress of the Flag of the United States of America," an 1872 book by American naval officer George Henry Preble notes that Thompson "suggested a white flag with the Southern cross or battle flag for its union, as a national ensign for the Confederacy" and then asked Capt. Wm. Ross Postell to make a colored drawing of his proposed flag.
But Coski questions whether Thompson was really that flag’s designer. He told PolitiFact in an email that he thought others had previously suggested putting the battle flag on a field of white. When we asked if he could confirm, he said "without substantial research, I don’t think it is possible to confirm that he was the designer."
"At this point," he added, "it is only a hypothesis."
We reached out to other historians about Thompson’s credit as the Stainless Banner’s designer but the two who responded pointed us back to Coski. One called him one of two experts on the flag (we couldn’t reach the other).
Coski could confirm the quotes.
Thompson, as it turns out, was the editor of the Savannah Morning News. According to the book "Our Flag," in an April 1863 editorial, he wrote:
Our idea is simply to combine the present battle flag with a pure white standard sheet; our Southern cross, blue on a red field, to take the place on the white flag that is occupied by the blue union in the old United States flag or the St. George’s cross in the British flag. As a people, we are fighting to maintain the heaven-ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race; a white flag would thus be emblematic of our cause."
He objected to efforts to add a blue stripe to the center of the white field, according to the book, and after the idea was dropped, he wrote on May 4, 1863:
The flag as adopted is precisely the same as that suggested by us a short time since, and it is, in our opinion, much more beautiful and appropriate than either the red and white bars or the white field and blue bar as first adopted by the senate. As a national emblem it is significant of our higher cause the cause of the superior race, and a higher civilization contending against ignorance, infidelity and barbarism.
Coski said Thompson’s editorials are well-known and regularly quoted. But, he said: "most historians consider his a somewhat lone voice and don’t regard his comments as in any way official or representative of the Confederate government."
Our ruling
William T. Thompson has been credited with designing the Stainless Banner, one of several flags used by the Confederacy. But not everyone agrees that Thompson was the Banner’s designer; Coski said it’s not possible to prove without substantial research. What’s more, Thompson didn’t design the flag that Americans today think of when they hear "Confederate flag." That flag is the Confederate battle flag, and while it was incorporated into the Stainless Banner, it was William Porcher Miles who designed it.
Thompson did say what the Facebook post claims. However, he was describing the "Stainless Banner," not the battle flag. [end excerpt]
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* "Devil’s Punchbowl — An American Concentration Camp So Horrific It was Erased from History" (2017-03-04, thefreethoughtproject.com/devils-punchbowl-slaves-mississippi/) [archive.is/pk2Q2]
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* "Director stresses claim about plot to spread AIDS in Africa; A Danish film director has reiterated accusations leveled in a documentary that a white supremacist group plotted to spread HIV among Black people in several African countries in 1980s and 1990s" (2019-08-15, presstv.com/Detail/2019/08/15/603582/Africa-HIV-vaccination-Danish-director-) [archive.is/tbhVN]
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* "Normalizing fascists" (2016-12-12, theconversation.com/normalizing-fascists-69613) [archive.is/Wb8ng]
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May 1945
Train of Jews intercepted by Allied Forces.
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* "Pentagon to name new facility after Curtis ‘Bombs Away’ LeMay" (2019-08-16, rt.com/usa/466686-base-name-bomber-nebraska/) [archive.is/PUzWV]
* "The U.S. war crime North Korea won’t forget" (2015-03-24, washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-us-war-crime-north-korea-wont-forget/2015/03/20/fb525694-ce80-11e4-8c54-ffb5ba6f2f69_story.html) [archive.is/ZGutJ] [begin excerpt]: The story dates to the early 1950s, when the U.S. Air Force, in response to the North Korean invasion that started the Korean War, bombed and napalmed cities, towns and villages across the North. It was mostly easy pickings for the Air Force, whose B-29s faced little or no opposition on many missions.
The bombing was long, leisurely and merciless, even by the assessment of America’s own leaders. “Over a period of three years or so, we killed off — what — 20 percent of the population,” Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, told the Office of Air Force History in 1984 [is.gd/wx2bls]. Dean Rusk, a supporter of the war and later secretary of state, said the United States bombed “everything that moved in North Korea, every brick standing on top of another.” After running low on urban targets, U.S. bombers destroyed hydroelectric and irrigation dams in the later stages of the war, flooding farmland and destroying crops.
Although the ferocity of the bombing was criticized as racist and unjustified elsewhere in the world, it was never a big story back home. U.S. press coverage of the air war focused, instead, on “MiG alley,” a narrow patch of North Korea near the Chinese border. There, in the world’s first jet-powered aerial war, American fighter pilots competed against each other to shoot down five or more Soviet-made fighters and become “aces.” War reporters rarely mentioned civilian casualties from U.S. carpet-bombing. It is perhaps the most forgotten part of a forgotten war. [end excerpt]
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* "Consequences of UK colonialism still felt in Kashmir, Hong Kong; We are still reminded of the consequences of British colonialism with the ongoing volatile situations in places such as Indian-controlled Kashmir and Hong Kong" (2019-08-16, presstv.com/Detail/2019/08/16/603702/UK-colonialism-still-felt-in-Kashmir-Hong-Kong) [archive.is/wkvMc]
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* "UK Defence Secretary announced end to investigations of army abuses in Northern Ireland" (2019-08-18, presstv.com/Detail/2019/08/18/603847/UK-Northern-Ireland-Ben-Wallace-Army-Torture) [archive.is/ownDP]
- image caption: The British army committed widespread human rights abuses in Northern Ireland during the "troubles"
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