Motley Moose – Archive

photo of 1977 Marie Laveau painting by Charles Massicot Gandolfo  




Every year in two of my classes, I introduce students to the living history of Voudou-the religion, and its role in shaping the Caribbean island of Ayiti (Haiti) as well as in the Caribbean basin area of the U.S. in Louisiana-from Baton Rouge down to New Orleans.

In women’s studies, I include the myths and legends, as well as modern interest in Marie Laveau, known to practitioners and tourists as Queen Marie. Most of the students have been completely unfamiliar with her, and with the history and the roles of free women of color in Louisiana and throughout the south.  

This year, much to my surprise, most students knew the name Marie Laveau (sometimes spelled Leveaux) simply because of a pop culture FX series “American Horror Story: Coven” which most of them have seen.  

Chiara, Dante, Chirlane, and Bill de Blasio

Was reading The New York Times this morning, and found this article of interest. “Many Black New Yorkers Are Seeing de Blasio’s Victory as Their Own” It opened with quotes, from black folks around town.

A black janitor in Brooklyn almost shouted out the name when asked about his vote in the mayoral race. Bill de Blasio, he said, “knows my struggle.”

In the Bronx, some African-American voters defaulted to a shorthand: “the man with the black wife.” Nobody thought it necessary to explain whom they meant.

And in a Brooklyn housing project, a lifelong resident said he was tired of mayors who, in his mind, had pitted blacks against whites. Mr. de Blasio, he declared, “is black and white.”

The quote that stood out and caused me to think was this one:

“His biracial family represents so many things and possibilities, too many to even get into,” said Leon Ellis, a Harlem restaurateur. “When people saw his family, they felt, ‘Here is someone who understands and relates to me on a level on which I can be comfortable.’ ”

Let us know about winners and losers in your part of the Moose pond!

Solomon Northup

With all the movie talk centering around the film 12 Years a Slave, the plot, the cast, the director, critical reviews and audience responses, it is important that we don’t forget that this film is taken from real life…our history and yet, bound to our present.  

Solomon Northup’s tale is one of many narratives of the era of enslavement, and its aftermath.

I haven’t seen this film yet, years ago I saw the version directed by Gordon Parks, “Solomon Northup’s Odyssey, reissued as Half Slave, Half Free” and read Northup’s published narrative many years before then, several times.  

Given my own interests in genealogy and history, reading his harrowing tale, and about his eventual escape, even though his fate in later years is buried in mystery, I thought about his wife, his children and his descendants.  

A headline in an upstate New York newspaper threw me back 42 years, to a time I will never forget, and to a massacre I hope to never see repeated.

State attorney general seeks to unseal long-secret volumes on Attica prison tragedy

“The passage of time has made clear that – like the shootings at Kent State, the violent police attacks on civil rights demonstrators in the 1960s, the My Lai massacre and the Watergate scandal – Attica is more than just a profoundly tragic event; it is an historic event of significance to generations of Americans,” State Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman’s court papers argue in trying to end the permanent seal that courts ordered for the documents.

“Attica was a tragic event in the history of our state,” Schneiderman said in a statement provided to The Buffalo News. His office has asked the State Supreme Court in Wyoming County to release the remaining approximately 350 pages of a 1975 report that some families hope will bring at least more closure regarding the revolt’s death toll.

“It is important, both for families directly affected and for future generations, that these historical documents be made available so the public can have a better understanding of what happened and how we can prevent future tragedies,” the attorney general said.

The article concludes with:

In 1972, the New York State Special Commission on Attica wrote, “With the exception of Indian massacres in the late 19th century, the State Police assault, which ended the four-day prison uprising, was the bloodiest one-day encounter between Americans since the Civil War.”

The documentary, Criminal Injustice:Death and Politics at Attica, co-produced and directed by David Marshall, co-produced and written by Chris Christopher, tells parts of the story many people are still unaware of.

“Rockefeller pulled the trigger, Nixon Gave him the blessing”

Some of us were alive when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Brown v. the Board of education. Few of us who were around in 1959 can forget photos documenting the reactions like this one depicting a rally at state capitol of Little Rock in Arkansas, protesting the integration of Central High School. The protesters were carrying U.S. flags and signs that read “Race Mixing is Communism” and “Stop the Race Mixing March of the Anti-Christ”.

They would fit right in with the ideology of modern day Teapublicans. Lest we forget that this phenomena of segregation was not simply a matter of the south, demonstrations and protests around schools and segregation took place in the north as well, like this photo of a 60’s protest in St. Louis.  

(photo by Peter Simon)

“”The story of the African-American people is the story of the settlement and growth of America itself, a universal tale that all people should experience,” said Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. whose new series, “The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross” will premier on PBS October 22.

The series is accompanied by a book with the same name, which Kam Williams reviewed for The Afro:

By and large, history books have marginalized the African-American community by either omitting or minimizing its cornucopia of contributions to the country. Similarly, the African-American psyche has been trivialized by a host of harmful stereotypes which suggest that we aren’t as diverse or as capable of experiencing the same full range of emotions as Caucasians.

How else can you explain that the mayor of New York City might rationalize employing the “stop and frisk” police tactic against blacks in wholesale fashion, as if criminality is a racial trait instead of judging people by the content of their character as envisioned by Dr. Martin Luther King a half-century ago? Fortunately,”The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross” has just been published in the face of such persisting, institutionalized prejudice.

In his recent essay, “On the Sabotage of Democracy” Bill Moyers, who I often think of as the conscience of America, calls out the forces who are trying to demolish democracy, and likens this shut-down to the time this nation was torn asunder by the Civil War.

Like the die-hards of the racist South a century and a half ago, who would destroy the union before giving up their slaves, so would these people burn down the place, sink the ship.

He is blunt in conclusion.

At least let’s name this for what it is, sabotage of the democratic process. Secession by another means. And let’s be clear about where such reckless ambition leads. As surely as night must follow day, the alternative to democracy is worse.

In the essay he calls out the lies told by Rep. Steve King, Fox and Friends, Rush Limbaugh, and hones in on Newt Gingrich, reminding us:

It was Newt Gingrich who twenty years ago spearheaded the right-wing’s virulent crusade against the norms of democratic government. As Speaker of the House he twice brought about shutdowns of the federal government once, believe it or not, because he felt snubbed after riding on Air Force One with President Clinton and had to leave by the backdoor.

It was also Newt Gingrich, speaker Gingrich, who was caught lying to congressional investigators looking into charges of his ethical wrongdoing. His colleagues voted overwhelmingly, 395 to 28, to reprimand him. Pressure from his own party then prompted him to resign.

Yet even after his flame out, even after his recent bizarre race for the presidency bankrolled with money from admiring oligarchs, even after new allegations about his secret fundraising for right-wing candidates, Gingrich remains the darling of a fawning amnesic media.

Thank you Bill Moyers.

And to those Teapublicans who do not remember history, perhaps you should think long and hard about who won that war, and the cost of it to us all.

Cross-posted to Daily Kos

I make no secret of the fact that I think Barbara Jordan was one of the most brilliant women, and politicians of our time. She was “the first African American elected to the Texas Senate after Reconstruction, the first southern black female elected to the United States House of Representatives, and the first African-American woman to deliver the keynote address at a Democratic National Convention”. She is one of my all-time sheroes.

I was driving in my car the other day, listening to my local public radio station (WAMC) and there was her voice coming through the speakers.  

Remarks by the President on the Government Shutdown

Today in Rockville, MD, President Obama visited M. Luis Construction Company to talk about the impact of the government shutdown on the economy and why Congress needs to “just vote.” The President’s Small Business Jobs Act and other SBA programs have helped local businesses like M. Luis Construction grow in recent years, but the government shutdown has disrupted these programs.

POTUS didn’t pull his punches.

He was telling it like it is.

…you don’t negotiate by putting a gun to the other person’s head — or, worse yet, by putting a gun to the American people’s head by threatening a shutdown.

There will be no negotiations over this.  (Applause.) The American people are not pawns in some political game.  You don’t get to demand some ransom in exchange for keeping the government running. You don’t get to demand ransom in exchange for keeping the economy running.  You don’t get to demand ransom for doing your most basic job.  

Just in case the White House website shuts down, the full transcript is posted below.