Thoughts from Sunday, November 18, 2012

We sang “Behold the Great Redeemer Die” today at church. In part, the words go like this: “Yet, if thou wilt, I’ll drink it up./I’ve done the work thou gavest me,”. This was particularly touching to me today because I’d been thinking of one of my favorite dead people today—Daniel. I was thinking that there are times I’d like to just crawl into a hole or dark corner or forgotten cave and not bother with anything because I miss Daniel and I wish so much that he could be here, physically, with us. I miss hearing his voice, I miss seeing his rare smiles. I miss watching his interactions with his brothers and sisters. I miss watching him pass the Sacrament at church. What is there about him not to miss? I realize that Jesus Christ did for us something that we cannot do for ourselves in his ultimate sacrifice and atonement. The pain and agony he suffered is incomprehensible to me, as a mere mortal. It was such that he would have not gone through with it had he been able to not. Yet, it was necessary and the Father could not “remove this cup.” This being the case, Christ continued on and did what only he could do; he drank. Knowing that part of the pain he suffered was for me is incredible. Knowing that even though many people would not take advantage of what he was offering, he still did it. How can I add to his pain by not accepting it? And yet it is hard, so hard. In spite of the arduous journey in front of me, I must drink my share. I must do the work that I have been given. How can I do less? Until I meet Daniel at some future date, I must carry on and do my best to get there.

KKK Involvement in the Harlem Renaissance

Pamela S Flint (Roper)

Professor Susan Goldstein

English

October 1, 2012

KKK Involvement in the Harlem Renaissance

When I was in high school, I worked at our local library after school and during the summer. The woman I worked for, whom I liked very much, was very typical of the general populace of the town I grew up in: Italian and Catholic. She told me stories of her husband driving the black members of the high school basketball team to games because they were not allowed on the busses and I got the feeling from her that she felt this was very big of him and that not many people were willing to do this. I remember thinking it was extremely stupid that they weren’t allowed to ride the bus. I was born on January 15, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, and every report I did in high school that could be about him, was. I spent much time with my grandparents and I learned from them, my grandfather especially, that people are people. One of my favorite stories, although I did not completely understand it at the time, from him was about a couple of men at work arguing about whom was better: the man from northern Italy or the man from southern Italy. My grandfather told them the only difference was who raped their grandmothers. Over time, my family has become racially diverse. I have a cousin whose father is African American. My oldest daughter’s father is Mexican. Her son is half Korean. My youngest sister is married to a Chilean man and they now have a son. I have long held the belief that while the outward appearance may be different, the insides are the same and we all bleed red. In an effort to understand why some people can be so intolerant of others based on color of skin or political affiliation or any other difference, and given my interest in MLK, Jr., and his work, the Ku Klux Klan drew my interest. What makes them tick? What was their involvement in the Harlem Renaissance? In spite of the fact that the Ku Klux Klan was, for most intents and purposes, latent toward the end of Reconstruction until 1915, their activities did influence the migration of African Americans to Harlem mainly because the Klan was inherently violent and one of its main methods of assuring compliance was through lynchings.

We know that the Klan was responsible, in part, for the downfall of Marcus Garvey. He met with Edward Young Clarke who was the acting imperial wizard of the Klan. Clark actually sought Garvey out to offer him financial help for his Africa for African’s endeavor. What better way to accomplish one of their goals, the riddance of black people from American society, than by sending anyone with dark skin to Africa? However good an idea this seemed to the Klan and to Garvey, most African Americans were livid (Hill 23).

We also know that while the Ku Klux Klan was very active during the period of Reconstruction, it had died back a bit. Then, in the early 1900’s there was a resurgence of activity. This movement in the early part of the 1900s appears to be the second of three distinct such movements of the Ku Klux Klan, the first occurring when it was originally organized just after the Civil War and the third in the 1960s. The 1920s movement seems to have been the largest, recruiting “the greatest number of supporters from the greatest number of places.” Even though each individual Klan had similar goals as others, it appears that there was no specific national objective and that each Klan acted independently of others and focused on whatever nearby group was most troublesome (Wilkinson). It has been suggested that this revival is due in part to the fact that African American soldiers were returning from Europe and World War I and that they could no longer be considered weak; after all, in bleeding and dying for a country that still would not completely accept them as full-fledged citizens, they had learned how to fight. Another reason for renewed interest in the Ku Klux Klan seems to be in direct correlation with the release of Birth of a Nation which captivated audiences and led them to believe that somehow the docile slave of yesteryear had become a mindless brute who was intent on wreaking havoc (Ethnic Notions). While it was a major breakthrough for film, this movie romanticized the Klan based as it was on two historical novels, one of which was written by Thomas Dixon, Jr. who said, “My object is to teach the North, the young North, what it has never known—the awful suffering of the white man during the dreadful Reconstruction period. . . Almighty God anointed the white men of the South by their suffering during that time . . . to demonstrate to the world that the white man must and shall be supreme” ("The Birth of a Nation and Black Protest."). Would they now band together and fight for their rights? It appears that the Klan had no intention of finding out. Once Klan activity was renewed in 1915/1916, there were over 200 meetings throughout the United States, and not just in the south (Hill 29).

The Ku Klux Klan had rather a humble beginning. Six young men in Pulaski, Tennessee, apparently had nothing better to do than to form a club for “merrymaking.” They came up with ridiculous titles, dressed in sheets and pillow cases, and terrified recently freed slaves who mistook these young hoodlums for ghosts. While the reaction of the African Americans was noted, the new club did not grow until, in the eyes of white southerners who valued a society in which white Christians were the only ones of any real value, the south began to be overrun by people who did not fit their ideal (“Editorials”).

When the Civil War came to an end, the slaves had been freed but there was much uncertainty in the air. How were blacks and whites supposed to relate to each other? Blacks had been the slaves and had had to submit to the whites. Whites had been the masters and expected blacks to do their bidding. Now they were equal? What an odd concept. The Ku Klux Klan, which had been started by those six young men who had nothing better to do, was joined by men who had been officers, generals even, in the Confederate Army. This was made possible due to President Andrew Johnson, who was himself a southerner, pardoning all but the highest ranking officers in the Confederate army. Now there was a secret army. An army above the law, an army that was law unto itself (Abolition: Broken Promises).

From early on, it became clear that it was not just African Americans who were victims of Klan violence. They were active across the south but most especially in areas where an African American minority was large enough to make a difference politically. Members of the Ku Klux Klan were ultra conservative Democrats. They did not like Republicans. They did not like Jews. They did not like Catholics. They did not like the idea of a strong federal government and they did not like anyone who worked for the government. They did not like anyone who was not white and Protestant Christian. In some southern counties where there was not a large African American population but there were many people who made their own whiskey or brandy, the Klan was active in attacking Internal Revenue agents. They wanted “to ‘oppose and reject Radicalism’ and achieve ‘an intelligent white man’s government’” (Stewart).

Once Reconstruction was ‘over,’ the Union army went back to the north and left the southern states alone. Sharecropping was the order of the day but it was no way to earn a living. One year a few pennies would be earned for a years’ worth of backbreaking labor. The next year, there were no pennies, just more debt and the year after that still more debt. It was just another form of slavery and one that was hard to get away from. If a slave ran away, they might be beaten but because a slave represented somebody’s money, was someone’s property, there were laws protecting them as such. Freemen weren’t slaves. They did not belong to anyone. How, then, were they to be made to stay in their proper place (Abolition: Broken Promises)?

Not property? Well, then, there was nothing to stand in the way of punishing the sharecropper who might think he or she wanted to try a better life somewhere else. No longer able to rely on the law, lynching became the common mode of punishment; the method of keeping blacks ‘in their place’ (Abolition: Broken Promises). Lynch law in the United States had its beginnings during the Revolution when Colonel Charles Lynch and some who worked with him took it upon themselves to come up with some rules for dealing with “Tories and criminal elements.” Over time, because lynching was used mainly by mobs to exert control and mobs generally act against diverse minority groups, and because African Americans were a major target, they suffered greatly under this law. Dependable statistics on lynching did not begin until1882. From then until 1968, there are 4,743 recorded deaths from lynching and 3,446 of them were African American, most occurring in the last ten years of the nineteenth century and first ten of the twentieth. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, “lynchers increasingly employed burning, torture, and dismemberment to prolong suffering and excite a ‘festive atmosphere’ among the killers and onlookers’ ("About Lynching").  They became so common, what did it matter if others knew who was doing this? Everyone was involved. Everyone turned out to see. Typically, no one was ever accused of a lynching as they were carried out by ‘unknown’ participants (Abolition: Broken Promises).

Lynching, no matter who carried it out, was not pleasant. One incident which took place in Texas, was actually recorded with a gramophone. The man being lynched, Henry Smith, was photographed as well. He was “flogged and cut with knives. An iron was heated and plunged down his throat when his captors tired of hearing his pleas for mercy.” Even those watching were allowed to mock and maim him. When this torture had been going on for upward of two hours, fire was set to the platform on which he was. For weeks, the record and pictures could be bought on the streets (Abolition: Broken Promises).

The Klan was not the sole force behind blacks leaving the south. In Polk County, Arkansas, specifically in the town of Mena, there were few African Americans to begin with. In 1896, citizens of the town came together to drive out the African Americans who had come to work on the rail road. In 1901, a black man was lynched but it does not seem to be the doings of the Klan as it was before there was much Klan activity. While it is obvious that the whites in the town did not want the blacks there, it seems that economic factors also contributed to their leaving. Once the town was devoid of African Americans, the Klan moved in. It seemed they intended to use the town as a safe base from which to “bring about certain reformations in the religious, political, social and financial life of the nation” and to rid society of “smutty literature, suggestive songs, immoral pictures, jazz dances, jury dodgers, bootleggers, moonshiners, gambling, nigger upstarts, yellow dog politicians, Catholic control of politics and public schools, unrestricted immigration, and Jewish influences in financial and theatrical affairs” (Lancaster). Once they had a secure base for operations, they were able to strike with impunity.

How much did the Ku Klux Klan really have to do with the huge movement of African Americans from the south to cities in the north, specifically to Harlem? That they had an effect, there is no doubt. The extent to which they did remains unknown partially due to the many other factors involved such as economic factors brought about in part by drought and infestations of bugs causing poor crops and by the lack of workers in the north due to World War I (Hill 29). The Klan has always had a stronger presence in the south than other parts of the country and one of their favorite methods of retribution was lynching. The consequences of lynching are varied including, but surely not limited to “paralysis, solidarity; and escape” ("The Birth of a Nation and Black Protest"). It would be reasonable to expect that one of their most obvious targets, African Americans, would want to leave in order not only to get away from the abuse but also those who were most likely perpetrators of it.

 

Works Cited:

Abolition: Broken Promises. Films Media Group, 1992. Films on Demand. Web. 28 September 2012.

“Editorials.” Saturday Evening Post 30 Jan. 1965:88. Academic Search Premier. Web. 28 September 2012.

Ethnic Notions. Films Media Group, 1987. Films on Demand. Web. 28 September 2012.

Hill, Laban Carrick. Harlem Stomp!: A Cultural History of the Harlem Renaissance. New York: Little, Brown, 2003. Print.

Lancaster, Guy. “There Are Not Many Colored People Here”: African Americans In Polk County, Arkansas, 1896-1937.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly70.4(2011):429-449. Academic Search Premier. Web. 24 September 2012.

Stewart, Bruce E. “When Darkness Reigns Then Is The Hour To Strike”: Moonshining, Federal Liquor Taxation, And Klan Violence In Western North Carolina, 1862-1872.” North Carolina Historical Review80.4(2003): 453-474. Academic Search Premier. Web. 24 September 2012.

Wilkinson Jr., William Clayton. “Memories of The Ku Klux Klan In One Indiana Town.” Indiana Magazine of History102.4(2006):339-354. Academic Search Premier. Web. 28 September 2012.

"About Lynching." About Lynching. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Oct. 2012.

"The Birth of a Nation and Black Protest." Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media ». N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Oct. 2012.

 

Highlighters

 When can a highlighter give you an allergy attack? It can on October 9, 2012, or potentially any other day when circumstances are conducive to such things.

This is what my planner looks like. I write down things I want to accomplish in a certain day. As I finish, I highlight them. Right now, I am using a pink pen and a pink highlighter. "Why pink?" you ask. Because I don't like pink, I am using them up.

This is the highlighter that I was using because I couldn't find the pink one I've been using. The act of looking for the pink one and resigning myself to using this one brought on the allergy attack.

This is the pink one. Laura found it on the counter. I'd looked twice.

This is my old planner. See the green highlights? Daniel gave me that highlighter (and a blue one) for Christmas in 2010. I was using the green because he gave it to me and I thought of him every time I did. I used it a lot.

Do you see how much lighter it is here? I'd been using it A LOT. This was during the summer semester. I was hurrying to get done so we could go on our trip to Idaho and California. The ink was disappearing.

This is the blue highlighter that Daniel gave me with the green one. I have only used it a few times and it has lots of ink in it.

If I hold the highlighter do I feel closer to Daniel? In a very real way, I do. I think of the thought that went into the purchase (which I know about because Laura was with him at Staples) of it. I remember how he deliberated over everything that he purchased that year. He had so much money and had figured out exactly how much he could spend on each person. He was so happy when he found things for his younger siblings and Ryan for less than he'd allotted. He wasn't sure what to get for Paul (he is very hard to shop for) and finally settled on a gift certificate for ironing shirts for Sunday. Daniel ironed his own shirt every Sunday morning before church.

Like this one.

This little exercise has just been an example of the many things that can begin a certain thought process. It is absolutely amazing how almost anything has the ability, depending upon the mood I am in, to start a though process that leads me to Daniel. I have no desire to change this. In fact, I like to roll with it because sometimes I am led to memories that have been tucked away and their resurfacing helps to keep them alive.

One Year, Two Months

Yesterday was an interesting day. I registered for a workshop called "Compassionate Caregiving When a Baby Dies." I know I hope to be able to use the information I gain there in the future when working with women who may loose or have lost a baby or child. I hope to learn something new. Perhaps I will learn something about myself and how I feel about Daniel's death.

Sometimes, I see a picture of Daniel and it sets my mind to thinking. Daniel was such a presence in all our lives. I am speaking of a physical presence because he still is very  much a part of our lives today, just not in the same way that he was. It is very hard at times to see a picture because when that picture was taken, Daniel was still here. Sometimes I think, "How can he be gone? How can he just not BE here? How can he have been here and not be here now?"

September 21st was an interesting day not only because I finished all of the school work I could and was therefore able to spend the afternoon doing something for fun, but because of little things that just popped out at me. I found a CD/DVD case when I was looking for some tissue paper. This case made the trip to Sioux Falls with us. It was in the accident. The DVDs that were in it suffered no damage. How can this be? How can some DVDs which mean absolutely nothing in the eternal scheme of things survive while a child, my child, could not?

I know that it is just his physical body that was damaged. However, because of that damage, he is no longer physically with us. There are times when I wonder what kind of a mother I am for having let this happen.

Yesterday afternoon, I was going through some things and I found in a pile of blankets a purple frog that Paul gave me for Christmas a couple of years ago. For the longest time, I kept that frog on my bed with its arm around a little pillow that Joanna made for me one year for Christmas while we were in Idaho. My hope was that one day, Paul and Joanna would be able to be reconciled and that we would be able to be a whole family. Well, it worked. After a fashion. Paul and Joanna are reconciled but it didn't happen until after tragedy had struck and Daniel was physically no longer with us. I know that we still can be a whole family, but in this life at least it will not look the way I had thought it would.

 

Sometimes, at night, Joseph has bad dreams. He isn't the only one. Amena has not expressed to me that she does but I know that all the boys do. Cedric surrounds himself with things of Daniel's. I don't know if they help with the dreams. When I was ten, I got a musical teddy bear for Easter. Sometimes at night, I can give Joseph my teddy bear and he's okay. Sometimes I wish my teddy bear still worked that kind of magic for me.

 

I miss Daniel every day. Some days I cry  more than others but still, I believe that in order to miss someone so much, there must have been a mutual love and I believe that love is transcendental. In fact, without love, this world would not exist.

 

I believe that Jesus Christ lived and died for us and that because he lives again, once our mortal lives are over, we will all live again. One day, I know that although we do not have Daniel with us physically now, we will. This knowledge does not take away the pain of missing him and it does not mean that I never doubt. It does not mean that I sometimes wonder why. It does mean that even on those days that I miss Daniel most and I struggle with my feelings of inadequacy and I wonder what kind of a mother I am to have let this happen, I will get through it. As long as I keep going through the teary fog of pain, I will emerge on the other side triumphant, and I will be with those I love.

Joseph and Daniel

This is a picture that Joseph drew in Primary a few months ago. It is of him and Daniel. Perhaps after school I will as for a more detailed explanation.

January 30, 2010

Indiana Jones

This is Lego Indiana Jones (he's the one on the bridge with a hat on). There is a shark under the bridge (check out those teeth!). Indiana Jones shot the bad guy in the mouth and the picture shows him falling down because he is dead. The other two people are the kids the bad guys had captured. There is a "ton of hair" on the girl and the kids are running. There is a nice sun in the corner, don't you think? Joseph did his name with points and then did a pattern of two blue, one brown, two blue, one brown. Pretty cool!
In discussing this after he was done last night, we decided that we were undecided about if Joseph would get in trouble if he drew this at school. It has guns and Seth was called into the office last year for having drawn guns in a notebook. Joseph informed us that someone in his class last year drew a gun in a picture and his teacher did not care. We are still undecided.

Giant Skeleton King

This is a giant skeleton king. The little guy on the right is a drunk guy. The little guy on the left is a guy with long hair. Up at the top is clouds. At the bottom is the ground. The yellow triangle shapes and the black and white shapes and the shape on the skeleton king's crown (blue with black and red squares) are all pieces of a whirligig ball pattern that Joseph colored and cut up and glued on the picture to look cool.