Read his post, Towards a Manifested Courage: http://www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2010/05/toward-a-manifested-coura...
But first, alas, I need the 3GS. Waiting for the next model this summer.
Stokely Carmichael’s cry for Black Power in ‘66 was a cry of frustration. It did not have planning behind it, and in some ways I feel Stokely — whom I loved, whom I liked a good bit personally in 1960 when I first met him — betrayed the movement.
That’s Rev. James Lawson on the moment in June 1966 when Stokely Carmichael (above) unveiled his idea of Black Power.
Read the rest: http://breachofpeace.com/blog/?p=278
John Atkins
Dan Prince
Jeff Carr
Fanny Haynes
Terry Dugan
David Brooks
Ferrell Alman and Ferrell Alman
Almans Ferrell, Ferrell, Mom & Olivia
Joan, Jim's niece
John Egerton
Libby and Stephen Bolt
Hunter Kay
I meant to take more, but eating, drinking and visiting got in the way.
Unfortunately, it was broken.
Googling around for some Freedom Rider info, I came across a 2004 interview with Claude Sitton, the New York Times correspondent in the south during the late '50s and early '60s, in which he describes the kind of direction and supervision he got from his editors.
[Sarah] Buynovsky: Was there any sort of rules set up for you, from your bosses perhaps, did they communicate with you how they wanted the story covered? Or was there any sort of angling between you and management as far as how the story should be covered?
[Claude] Sitton: None whatsoever with The New York Times. They said, “Here are the resources you need. Go get the story.” And my only complaint about my supervision was the lack of suggestions as to what the readers of The New York Times might be interested in. They really left it to me. I have no complaints whatsoever, they never told me how or frequently what to cover. They’d say, “You go to the South, the most important story of that day, you should be on the scene” – whether it takes rental cars, chartered plans, or what have you.” And I chartered a few planes. In fact, when I was covering the desegregation of the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi, I had – because I had back-stop, other reporters who came into help me from New York. I had, as I recall, five rental cars checked out, and I had a small plane on standby at the Oxford airport because that story was breaking both in Jackson, Mississippi, and in Oxford. And I had to move quickly between the two places on the same day, frequently, to you know, get to the scene and get the story. You had to be there, you had to see it because if you didn’t, then you had to rely on what others told you, by members of the movement, or by officials. And you know this, they shape what they were telling you to their own interest.
Sarah Buynovsky interviewed Sitton as part of a Syracuse University symposium on Civil Rights and the media.
The full transcript is here: http://bit.ly/9VK0F5
Jim Leeson and Pete, photographed on October 10, 2008
From Alex Heard:
My friend Jim Leeson—to whom The Eyes of Willie McGee is dedicated—died earlier this week, in a manner that left hundreds of people who knew and loved him shocked and saddened but not completely surprised. Jim took his own life, and his body was found in the countryside close to where he lived, in a beautiful home he’d designed and built himself on a woodsy ridge south of Nashville, Tennessee. Part of Jim’s famously independent nature was a dread of becoming an invalid, of having to be taken care of and losing control of his own fate. He’d been suffering various health problems for a while, and he had a nagging sense that his memory was eroding, so he obviously decided the time was now. Many people who knew him assumed he might go out this way at some point. We just didn’t think it would be so heartbreakingly soon. . . .
http://eyesofwilliemcgee.com/2010/05/06/james-t-leeson-1930-2010/
From E. Tom Wood:
If you've never heard of James T. Leeson Jr., that's just how he wanted things.
Ask him about his role in the Civil Rights Movement, and he would steer the conversation from his own activities to the tragicomic foibles of people on all sides of it, white and black. Ask him about the neurotics, cranks, paupers and princes he mentored in Vanderbilt's Sarratt Tunnel as adult supervisor of the university's student journalists, and he could cite an instance when just about every one of them had shown his or her (usually his) ass. . . .
http://www.nashvillescene.com/pitw/archives/2010/05/06/a-man-in-full-jim-lees...
Ted Nugent on Sarah Palin, from Time magazine's 100 most influential people issue:
The independent patriotic spirit, attitude and soul of our forefathers are alive and well in Sarah. In the way she lives, what she says and how she dedicates herself to make America better in these interesting times, she represents the good, while exposing the bad and ugly. She embraces the critical duty of we the people by participating in this glorious experiment in self-government.
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1984685_1984864_19...
Taylor Branch on the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, from a recent interview after attending SNCC's 50th anniversary conference:
Properly viewed – and history will one day see it this way – the Civil Rights movement in general, and SNCC people as the young shock troops, playing the same role as the Founding Fathers did. They confronted systems of hierarchy and oppression, and set into motion a new politics of equal citizenship that benefited everybody.
http://www.brennancenter.org/blog/archives_books/civil_rights_in_america_sncc...
via time.com
Andrew Sullivan's latest on the Tea Party is gaining some traction:
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/04/the-tea-party-ag...
More and more, this feels to me like an essentially cultural revolt against what America is becoming: a multi-racial, multi-faith, gay-inclusive, women-friendly, majority-minority country. The "tea-party" analogy is not about restricting government as much as it is a form of almost pathological nostalgia. That's why there's much more lashing out than constructive proposals. And yes, a bi-racial president completes the picture. And no, that doesn't mean they're all racists. Discomfort with social and cultural change is not racism. But it can express itself that way.
I especially like the bit about "pathological nostalgia."
Maybe the right way to think about Sarah Palin is as a Ghost Dancer.
Ghost Dance fever raged among "the more recently defeated Indians of the Great Plains" and other tribes from 1889 to 1891.
http://www.crystalinks.com/paiute.html (scroll down a bit)
The revitalization movement was led by a Northern Paiute named Wovoka.
[Wovoka's] pronouncements heralded the dawning of a new age, in which whites would vanish, leaving Indians to live in a land of material abundance, spiritual renewal and immortal life. Like many millenarian visions, Wovoka's prophecies stressed the link between righteous behavior and imminent salvation. Salvation was not to be passively awaited but welcomed by a regime of ritual dancing and upright moral conduct.
In another description:
http://www.crystalinks.com/paiute.html
The Ghost Dance religion promised an apocalypse in the coming years during which time the earth would be destroyed, only to be recreated with the Indians as the inheritors of the new earth. According to the prophecy, the recent times of suffering for Indians had been brought about by their sins, but now they had withstood enough under the whites. With the earth destroyed, white people would be obliterated, buried under the new soil of the spring that would cover the land and restore the prairie. The buffalo and antelope would return, and deceased ancestors would rise to once again roam the earth, now free of violence, starvation, and disease. The natural world would be restored, and the land once again would be free and open to the Indian peoples, without the borders and boundaries of the white man.
Which brings us to Ted Nugent, who sings Sarah Pailn's praises in Time this week :
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1984685_1984864_19...
The independent patriotic spirit, attitude and soul of our forefathers are alive and well in Sarah. In the way she lives, what she says and how she dedicates herself to make America better in these interesting times, she represents the good, while exposing the bad and ugly. . . . Her rugged individualism, self-reliance and a herculean work ethic resonate now more than ever in a country spinning away from these basics that made the U.S.A. the last best place. . . .
I'd be proud to share a moose-barbecue campfire with the Palin family anytime, so long as I can shoot the moose.
Ghost Dance at Nugent's this weekend!
