 Researching Truth...Tell Hollywood and the Television Networks, Egypt is not in Europe but on the Continent of Africa... and the Holy Lands as in the Bible, were located in and around the Continent of Africa.
I know it comes as a shock to the White Anglo Saxon Protestant Christian Evangelicals but Jesus was not a White European with Blue-eyes and hair hanging down to his shoulders. He certainly could not have hidden as a White baby in Egypt when the angel appeared to Mary and Joseph and told them to go to Egypt to hide Jesus.(Matthew 2:13).
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The headline of an Article on the Daily Beast Web site reads, "I’m a Christian and a Conservative. Trump is Making it Terribly Hard To Be Both." Let's face it Conservatives and Christian Evangelicals ...You are Racists "LED" out of the Closet by the Degenerate-in-Chief who is also the Racist-in-Chief. Your moral values are totally defined, that is, IF, you ever had any, by the Immoral Racist Incompetent Petulant Juvenile sitting in the Oval Office. You SIT quietly on your Blessed ASS-urances as you watch an Idiot take your country apart. So let's discard the labels "Conservatives" and "Christian Evangelicals" and replace them with "Racists." Pretty Pathetic. The Struggle Continues! “WHEN YOU'RE ACCUSTOMED TO PRIVILEGE, EQUALITY FEELS LIKE OPPRESSION.” This is so obvious when you hear Whites in America, and especially White males, “whine” that THEY are the most discriminated people in the history of this country. And as usual, for them, Slavery just happened. In fact, for many Whites in America, Blacks were responsible for Slavery and Loved Slavery. Ahh...the Lies White folks Teach in American classrooms. White America does not even try to mask its White Racism and its White Privilege today with the election of a card-carrying Racist president. White America today is wallowing in its abject Racism and Privilege just as it did 100 years ago, when there were more than 5 million Klan members in America. No robes and hoods today, just suits and coveralls and Rebecca dresses and skirts. White Christian America continues to live the White Christian American Lie that Racism and White Privilege does not exist! It does White America, and YOU enjoy it and more Every Day, egged on and supported by your White Anglo Saxon Protestant and very much Racist Christian Evangelicals. Yet with all Your Racism and Your Privilege, you have this insatiable urge to lie about it. Which is what YOUR Racist president does with abandon. I don’t think in the annals of Lying, anyone has ever lied like the Degenerate you call president. What is truly unfortunate and comical at the same time, is your president LIES so that those of you who slurp when he goes to the bathroom, can reinforce his Lies and his Deception and his Sincere Ignorance and Conscientious Stupidity and his Infantile Ego. Your Privilege and your Racism does not frighten anyone and certainly gets you NO Respect...not from many of us Black folks anyway...which is what many of you demand. You cannot demand Respect and control Respect and make me Respect you. WE do not watch FOX. Well maybe some of us do, but they cannot help you anyway. You have craved Respect since the inception of this country to the extent that you tried to Make US Respect you with chained subservience. Yet, we laughed at your pretense of power, and we escaped your chains as best we could. Of course, in YOUR Revisionist History, you claimed we “Loved” Slavery and Loved “being Enslaved” and even better yet, Slavery was our fault. And none of those Lies, coerced the Respect you so fervently desired. Now your president takes the Racist cake. He simply, literally and figuratively, cannot handle the lack of Respect. Which is why as we demand the Equality and the Freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution, your president and you are so quick to laughingly feel oppressed. But your Draft Dodging-No War Zone Visiting-FOX Only Appearances-president is so typical of the gutless and cowardly Racist Wimps, Black Americans have known and laughed at over many lifetimes. Yes, we laugh at you Racist White America, and we disparage you at the same time. You have control, but you are also quite pathetic. Racist president donald trump makes an Ass of himself and many of you in the process. And you know what, YOU deserve each other. The Struggle Continues!   
 Congressman John Lewis, one of many Selma to Montgomery Marchers beaten by Alabama Police. John was almost killed that day.  Accompanied by Emory University Students, Dorothy Nixon Williams (center) and her husband, Sam Williams, walk through Old Salem Cemeteryto where students found the grave of her father, Isaiah Nixon. WHEN I TALK TO YOUNG PEOPLE ABOUT THE STRUGGLE AND HOW BLACKS WERE BEATEN AND DIED TO PROTECT THEIR RIGHT TO VOTE, in addition to protesting White American Racism, I invariably get the reply, “Mr. Hurst, they would not have done that to me” or “my one vote does not count” or “they are going to do what they want to do anyway.” When you respond like that, Racist White America have you right in the palm of their hands. In the meantime, What part of “they would not have done that to me” do you mean? Racist White America initiated the poll tax (Blacks only) ...literacy tests (Blacks only-No right answers and ALL answers were subject to interpretation) ...“the grandfather clause” (Blacks only)....found the Klan and “nightriders” to terrorize and intimidate Blacks because of the color of their skin, while beating and even killing Blacks who REGISTERED to vote, let alone voting. Vernon Dahmer, Harry T. Moore and Harriette Moore, Isaiah Nixon (the father of Dorothy Nixon Williams of Jacksonville, who had dared to vote in the 1948 Democratic Primary in Montgomery County, Georgia, was gunned down by two white men that evening on the front porch of their home. Dorothy was just six years old), Rev. George Lee, Lamar Smith, Herbert Lee, Louis Allen, James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Henry Schwerner, John Lewis...all were brutally beaten, or killed for either voting or registering Blacks to vote. You say “they” would not have done that to me, yet “they” do that to you everyday and YOU let them. You did not vote, and you could have. Blacks are no longer subjected to poll taxes et al but they are subjected to various kinds of Racist voter suppression and as we have recently seen, vote theft, illegally purging Black voters from the Registered rolls, sending notices to the wrong address, changing and reducing the number of early voting days, changing precincts and not letting Black voters know about their new precincts until election day, and much much more, as we read about every day, just to keep you from voting. Incarcerated persons cannot vote, yet they are still American citizens. Why can’t you vote in prison? And even when the voting public speaks, like they did with Amendment 4 in Florida which will allow convicted felons to vote, White Racist Republicants under the direction and Pathological Racist malaise of the trump Republicant Party, find a way to keep you from voting. YOU, my young Black friend, can do something about it. And leave the, “My one vote does not count” someplace else. Pure Logic, if your one vote does not count, why do Racists spend their every waking moment trying to keep you from voting? Because they know WHEN Blacks finally see Racism for the evil it is, they will do something about it. The sadness is, You and other Black folks have not recognized Voting Racism for the evil it is. When you do not vote, like in 2016, the net results is donald trump. And don’t get angry about the Racist and Sexist and Xenophobe that he is, and the Racist and Sexist and Xenophobic things he and his party have done and continue to do to you individually and collectively, because YOU, my Young Millennial non-voting Friend could have done something about it, and you chose to stand on the sidelines, doing nothing. GET READY FOR NEXT YEAR! Voting and registering to vote is not as “sexy” as a march or other protests where we can put an exclamation on fighting Racism, but arguably IT IS even “sexier” and more important. Voting Can reduce some of the reasons... obviously not all...to protest. Not voting and doing nothing about voting, does not get your "Stand Up, Sit Down or Kneel" Protest Card punched. The Struggle Continues.  I WILL BOYCOTT FACEBOOK FOR THE NEXT WEEK IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE NAACP AND PERHAPS LONGER.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), America’s oldest U.S. civil-rights organizations, announced on Monday that it would boycott Facebook after a Senate report revealed that Russians exploited social media to stop Black voters from heading to the polls to vote in the 2016 election. I am a Proud Life Member of the NAACP, and I certainly support their call for a boycott of Facebook. “NAACP has returned a monetary donation we recently received from Facebook, and we are calling on supporters to log out of Facebook and Instagram on Tuesday, December 18. We implore you, our partners, friends, and supporters to join us. #LogOutFacebook,” the organization tweeted on Monday. Boycotts are inconvenient and require sacrifices of sorts. Certainly, I will miss my Facebook friends for the next week, but just like my Boycott of the NFL for the last 2 years, I will find "something to do." I continue to boycott the NFL because of my solidarity with and support of Colin Kaepernick, and the issue of Police Brutality and Racism. I have also boycotted Starbucks since the Racist incident when the White manager of one of Starbucks' stores “saw fit” to have two Black customers arrested because they were waiting on a client in the Starbucks. Boycotts are designed to bring pressure and to show solidarity and bring pressure for an issue or issues. The Municipal buses in Montgomery were not integrated just because of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Montgomery, like all Southern cities, had a Jim Crow Bus Ordinance which read, “Whites seat from front. Coloreds seat from rear.” The plan was for Rosa Parks, Montgomery Branch NAACP Secretary, to sit in the “White” section knowing she would be arrested, so that her arrest would make its way into the courts and then the NAACP's Thurgood Marshall and the "Fellas" could take it from there. Mrs. Parks' arrest eventually wound its way to the United States Supreme Court which ruled the Segregated Montgomery Bus Ordinance ”Unconstitutional." The Boycott did not directly lead to the integration of the buses, but it DID send a message that by boycotting the buses for 381 days, Blacks were steadfast in their solidarity to fight Racism. Young Black people here in Jacksonville also sent a message when the Jacksonville Youth Council NAACP led the Successful Boycott of ALL downtown Jacksonville Stores AFTER Ax Handle Saturday...because of the Racism ...and because Black shoppers were insulted daily by those Stores. The 1960 sit-ins by the Jacksonville Youth Council NAACP at heretofore White Lunch Counters, enabled us to dramatize our strong opposition to Jacksonville's Racism at these Visible Vestiges of Segregation.That boycott DID lead to the “integration” of the heretofore White lunch counters in early 1961. Another Message Sent. I am not implying these issues are the same as Boycotting Facebook...Different Time...Different Era. But Racism is still Racism, even with a Russian Flavor, and in Corporate America, as exported and exploited by Racist America. It is still the "800 pound Gorilla in the Room." As a Civil Rights Movement Veteran, I am very supportive of boycotts that deal with Race and Racism, and not just because they are boycotts. Boycotts represent a way of Fighting Racism and making our voices heard. Boycotts send a message of solidarity as we FIGHT RACISM BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY! You make allowances for the inconveniences and the sacrifices ...no matter what they are. So I am off Facebook until after Christmas. Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas. I will be back, I guess, to wish everyone Happy Kwanzaa, and if not, The Struggle Continues.  In the academic arena there is a saying, “If it is not written down, it did not happen,” and Black history is seldom written on the pages of American history. Racism is also subject matter that does NOT make its way onto the pages of American history, and is often treated as a taboo subject or a four-letter word. Author and Atlantic columnist Ta-Nehisi Coates has said that, for Black people in America, Racism is a physical experience of fear and violence.
Slavery created racial segregation and institutionalized Racism. Most dictionaries define “Racism” as racial hatred based on the color of one’s skin. As Dick Gregory said, “White is not a color; it’s an attitude.” Some add that Racism is racial prejudice plus the institutional and systemic power to dominate, exclude, discriminate against, abuse, and "CONTROL" targeted groups of people based on a designation of race. Racism is an insidious Pathological disease. White folks like to call Blacks, Racist. Yet, historically and traditionally and culturally, Blacks cannot be Racist. We DO NOT Control anything in America. In their book Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America, the late Black activist Kwame Ture (formerly Stokely Carmichael) and university professor Charles V. Hamilton further explore the term “Institutional Racism,” which they define as being any system of inequality based on race. It can occur in public government bodies, private business corporations (such as media outlets), and universities (public and private). All of Racism’s many Pathological definitions trigger White America’s misrepresentations, lies, anger, frustration, self-defense, and denial. America’s “prove it” syndrome requires Blacks to provide irrefutable proof of Racism. In other words, “if you can’t definitively prove Racism, or that I AM a Racist, it isn’t so.” The implication is if one cannot produce irrefutable evidence of clear, blatant, and intentional bias, then Racism must be banned as a possibility. But this is both silly as an intellectual claim and dangerous as a policy standard, especially in a nation with the Racist history of the United States. White America’s Racism and the concomitant White Privilege allows White America to act as its own judge and jury in determining they are not Racist. Black America, without having a judge and a jury but with the “negative advantage” of being the Targets of White Racism and White Privilege, know better. The Struggle Continues.
 RAINES HIGH SCHOOL WINNING BACK TO BACK STATE CHAMPIONSHIPS IS A MAJOR ACCOMPLISHMENT THAT SOME WILL TAKE FOR GRANTED. IN FACT, WINNING BACK-TO-BACK CHAMPIONSHIPS IN ANYTHING—EVEN TIDDLY WINKS—IS DIFFICULT, LET ALONE A STATE CHAMPIONSHIP. IT IS SOMETHING THAT RARELY HAPPENS.
Kudos and proper Respect also to Mandarin High School on their first State Football Championship, but this is a post about Raines’ THREE Championships. Let’s place a few things in perspective. The first public high school to win a State Championship was The Rev. Matthew William Gilbert High School from Jacksonville’s Eastside in 1958...back during the days of abject Segregation. Yet you would not have known it if you had to read it in the local press or see it on television. That was the Racism of the Media Then. Rev. Matthew William Gilbert, for whom Gilbert was named, was the pastor of Bethel Baptist Institutional Church, and later became the President of Florida Baptist Academy here in Jacksonville, which eventually evolved into Florida Memorial University, located in Miami. Gilbert was a Segregated “Negro” high school. You know, that “Separate But Equal” thing. Black schools did not play White schools during those days. Black and White Students did not attend school together during those days. Of Special Note...William Marion Raines who is the Namesake of Raines High School was the principal of Matthew William Gilbert High School from 1938 until his death in 1950. Even though the press called it a Black High School Championship, as did everyone else at the time, including the Florida High School Athletic Association, it WAS a State Football Championship, nonetheless. For those who scoff at Gilbert’s 1958 “Segregated” Championship against another Segregated Black High School, Gilbert’s Championship was as Legitimate as Segregated White High Schools Championships, and even more so because of the “hoops” Black schools had to jump through just to make it to the “next level.” It was not Gilbert’s “fault” that White schools could not “legally” play Black schools, not that they would have wanted to anyway. In fact, the Florida High School Athletic Association would later name the 1958 Matthew William Gilbert High School Panthers, THE FLORIDA TEAM OF THE 1950’S. Gilbert High School Panthers of Jacksonville were so talented that future Olympian and NFL Hall of Famer, Bob Hayes played that year as a backup junior running back. Coached by the legendary Earl Kitchings, the Panthers finished 12-0, winning the Florida Interscholastic Athletic Association Black school state championship (as it was called then) with a 14-7 victory over Dillard (Fort Lauderdale) before more than 11,000 spectators, in Fort Lauderdale. Jacksonville would go almost 40 years before another public high school would win a State Championship and that was Raines High School in 1997 with former Raines Alum, Welton Coffey II as Raines Head Coach. Welton’s parents, Cheryl Coffey, and Welton Coffey Senior were both students at Gilbert, and Welton Sr. was there when Gilbert won its Championship. Last year’s Raines Championship came 20 years after their first, and this year’s Championship comes 50 years after Gilbert’s Championship. Even during those days of Segregation, the Eastside or “Out East”, as we and they would say, took a lot of pride in this Celebratory Achievement. And even though we live in an “Integrated Society”, Raines is the hub of several predominantly Black Neighborhoods, on Jacksonville’s much maligned Northwest Side, who also take Pride in Raines’ Signal Achievements. Someone at Raines saw fit, why I do not know, and I think erroneously so, to call Raines The High School Harvard. With, Harvard’s history of Racism and Slavery that is not a Good Fit. What is a Good Fit is calling Harvard, the Collegiate Raines. Maybe it will inspire them to greatness, and to do the right thing. In the meantime, Hats off and Much Props and Congratulations to the Late Coach Earl Kitchings for his Championship, Raines Former Head Football Coach Welton E. Coffey II for his Championship, and current Raines Head Football Coach, Deran Wiley, for Back-to-Back Championships, AND for all the many students on those teams Then and Now, who made all of this Happen. TALK about your accomplishments...because...Unless WE Tell It...It Never Gets Told!    THE NATHAN BEDFORD FORREST STORY...WHICH HAPPENED 5 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK!
Prior to the school opening in 1959, many Jacksonville organizations suggested names for a new segregated White high school. A name was finally chosen that had been proposed by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The new school would be named “General Nathan Bedford Forrest High School.” Nathan Bedford Forrest? What an insult! Prior to the Civil War, Nathan Bedford Forrest was a slave trader. Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest’s men were responsible for the massacre of three hundred Blacks-men, women and children-at Fort Pillow, Tennessee under a flag of surrender. Nathan Bedford Forrest was a founder of the Ku Klux Klan, and he was the Klan’s first Grand Wizard. Did these accomplishments warrant giving his name to a high school in Jacksonville? This was Jacksonville's Racist Response to the Brown Decision. This viciously racist and insulting decision to name a public school for Nathan Bedford Forrest was tremendously insulting to Jacksonville’s Black community—as it should have been to the entire community—that there was a school in Jacksonville named for one of the founders of the Ku Klux Klan. In August 2013, Duval County School Board member Dr. Constance Hall submitted a letter to the board and to the school superintendent formally asking them to change the name of Nathan Bedford Forrest High School. At about the same time, Omotayo Richmond of Jacksonville started a petition, “Rename Nathan Bedford Forrest School,” which garnered more than 160,000 signatures. The existence of Richmond’s petition led to a letter being sent to the School Board by a Klan chapter from Missouri, saying that Forrest and the organization he helped found following the Civil War --The Ku Klux Klan--were not necessarily racist, and asking the board not to change the name. I was asked by Superintendent Nikolai Vitti to participate in the final name change meeting (or hearing), a panel discussion at the school on December 11, 2013, after which Forrest students would vote on keeping, or changing the name of Nathan Bedford Forrest. The four-person panel discussion... whom some characterized as a debate, although it wasn't ...had been established as part of the School System process for changing the name, so that students at Nathan Bedford Forrest High School would hear from the community on both sides of the issue. I gladly accepted, as did Professor Lance Stoll, the FSCJ sociology professor who with his students had raised the issue with the School Board five years earlier, and the two of us spoke in favor of changing the name of the high school. The other two members of the panel would speak in favor of keeping the name of the school as Nathan Bedford Forrest. Let’s just say Lance and I handled ourselves Quite Well in making the case to these students to change the name of their school. After the panel discussion, Students at Forrest did indeed vote 67% to 33% to change the name of Nathan Bedford Forrest. THEY took the lead as Young Decision Makers. Papers across the country blared: “Florida School Named After KKK Leader Gets New Name.” “A Jacksonville high school named in 1959 after a former Confederate general and the co-founder of the Ku Klux Klan has a new name. Following the vote of the students attending Nathan Bedford Forrest High School, the Duval County School Board voted on January 7, 2014, to change the name of Nathan Bedford Forrest High School to Westside High School effective July, 2014, thus ending a fifty-four-year battle to remove the name of the first Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan from a Duval County public school." I thought back more than fifty years to 1960, and to the sit-ins and other activities of the Jacksonville Youth Council NAACP. Without considering the political ramifications or those who did or did not agree with their decision, students at Forrest High School decided they needed to do the right thing and removed the name of Racist Nathan Bedford Forrest from their school building. They decided they would be a part of the solution and not a part of the problem. Youth leadership emerged in Jacksonville during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Youth leadership emerged again in Jacksonville in 2013. BTW...I included this picture of H. K. Edgerton, a Black "Whatever" who supports confederate causes and the confederate flag and shows at a various locations throughout the South with HIS confederate flag. He was picketing Forrest with his "White colleagues" when I showed up that morning. The Struggle Continues! For those Whites, who were uncomfortable with my WORDS in a recent conversation about the Pathology of White American Racism and its collateral ravages...a reminder again, YOU were uncomfortable with Just Words. Blacks have to deal with the physical and the psychological uncomfortability, as the human targets, of perpetual White American Racism. BTW...NEVER expect me to soft-peddle White American Racism.
The Struggle Continues! WHITE ANGLO SAXON PROTESTANTS AND OTHER WHITE CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS WERE USED BY AMERICAN CAPITALISM to help create, develop, and rationalize the Christian American Holocaust of Slavery ... which gave birth to the Christian American Institution of Racism.
How flawed is a Christian country whose founding documents speak of “freedom,” yet criminally holds a portion of its population enslaved in chained bondage and slavery? How flawed is a Christian country that passes Racist laws, creates discriminatory governmental policies, and develops arcane societal categories designed to keep that same portion of its population in their place based on the color of their skin? How flawed is a Christian country whose history is built on "a free labor economy" based on slave labor and the degradation of millions of human beings? How flawed is a Christian country that refuses to apologize for slavery and refuses to acknowledge the wrongs done to millions of its citizens? How flawed is a Christian country that creates and designs its own special brand of racism? How flawed is a Christian country that elects a Racist as president and then tries to label him as anything else but a Racist? How academically pure, and historically and culturally informative it would be, to include in classroom textbooks, and teach, an honest and an Inclusive American history, with the names of the many Black Americans who impacted us as a nation? Robert Kennedy said, “Truth is the token of trust.” Not teaching the honest history of the role that Black Americans played in the development of this country keeps the playing field eternally uneven, and undermines Respect and Trust. The infrastructure of Racism is Truly rooted in Dishonesty and Disrespect. The Struggle Continues! |
AuthorRodney. L. Hurst, Sr.
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RODNEY L. HURST, SR. - THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES!
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