Replies to post #198058 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[F6]

UTA Student Discovers Forgotten Poem by Nation's First African-American Writer

Video [embedded]

A student at the University of Texas at Arlington has discovered a piece of American history in the form of a letter written by Jupiter Hammon, it gives insight into how slaves viewed their lives.
Mola Lenghi, NBC 5 Arlington Reporter

Student finds previously unknown poem by Jupiter Hammon

By Mola Lenghi | Wednesday, Feb 13, 2013 | Updated 5:47 PM CST

A University of Texas at Arlington graduate student recently found a piece of American history that offers more insight on U.S. slavery.

Julie McCown, a doctoral student, discovered one of the earliest poems by Jupiter Hammon [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_Hammon ], the nation's first African-American writer.

"He is the first black person, period, that we know of to publish in America," said Cedrick May, a UTA professor and expert on African-American literature.

McCown found the poem while researching the writer, who was born into slavery on Long Island in New York in 1711, for May's Electronic Text Design and Web Publishing class.

She was looking for a specific Hammon writing, but kept falling short.

"[Librarians] kept emailing me: 'No, we don't have what you want. We don't have what you want.' And then finally someone said, 'We don't have what you want, but here's this other poem,'" she said.

The poem was buried in documents at the Manuscripts and Archives at Yale University Library in Connecticut.

"For a 200-plus-year-old manuscript, it was in perfect condition," May said. "I took one look at it and I said, 'This looks pretty authentic. It's either a great hoax or this is the real deal.' This is a poem that we've never seen before."

The poem is dated 1786. Hammon's first work was published in 1760.

"It's both really exciting, but then it's also hard to believe. Who am I to happen across this?" McCown said.

"We get to see what he thought, written by his own words in his own hand, and that's a very rare thing," May said.

In the newly discovered poem, Hammon shifts from the ideology he held in previous writings, in which he described slavery as the will of God, to a new line of thinking that says slavery was a manmade evil.

"There's a big difference in the way that he talks about slavery here than how he talks about slavery in other works," said May, who said the shift is "a game-changer" in how Hammon's writing is viewed.

May said such an anti-slavery perspective could have been viewed as too inflammatory at the time.

"I think Jupiter Hammon's masters thought they were going to keep that out of the public eye and they put [the poem] away," he said.

After time, the poem was likely misplaced and overlooked, he said. But fortunately and, most importantly, it was not destroyed.

Hammon said it gives him hope for future discoveries.

"We know there's more," he said. "We know that Jupiter Hammon has at least one other lost poem that's out there, and there's a lot more out there by other African-Americans. I think it's really important to get that perspective on our history."

© 2013 NBCUniversal Media, LLC

http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/UTA-Student-Discovers-Forgotten-Poem-by-Nations-First-African-American-Writer-190931171.html [with comments]


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Emory president apologizes



UPDATED: After defending the "Three-Fifths Compromise," James Wagner apologizes for "clumsiness and insensitivity"

By David Daley
Saturday, Feb 16, 2013 02:31 PM CST

UPDATED, 3:20 p.m., Sunday:

Emory University president James Wagner has apologized [ http://www.emory.edu/EMORY_MAGAZINE/issues/2013/winter/register/president.html ] for “the hurt caused by not communicating more my own beliefs.” He writes that “To those hurt or confused by my clumsiness and insensitivity, please forgive me. ”

And he says that he considers slavery “heinous, repulsive, repugnant, and inhuman. I should have stated that fact clearly in my essay.”

* * *

The full text of Wagner’s explanation/apology can be read here [id.].

Wagner now insists that “The point was not that this particular compromise was a good thing in itself. It was a repugnant compromise. Of course it is not good to count one human being as three fifths of another or, more egregiously, as not human at all, but property.”

But while he says his point was not to praise this compromise as a good thing in itself, here is his original text:

Some might suggest that the constitutional compromise reached for the lowest common denominator—for the barest minimum value on which both sides could agree. I rather think something different happened. Both sides found a way to temper ideology and continue working toward the highest aspiration they both shared—the aspiration to form a more perfect union. They set their sights higher, not lower, in order to identify their common goal and keep moving toward it.

Later in the essay, he wrote this:

A university by its inclusiveness insists on holding opposing views in nonviolent dialogue long enough for common aspirations to be identified and for compromise to be engaged—compromise not understood as defeat, but as a tool for more noble achievement. The constitutional compromise about slavery, for instance, facilitated the achievement of what both sides of the debate really aspired to—a new nation.

Aside from not ever taking the opportunity in the original piece to call slavery any of the things he did in his statement on Sunday, it’s impossible to read that last statement without the clear suggestion that he believes this compromise was “a tool for more noble achievement.” One certainly would not take from that what Wagner wants us to today, that, of course he believes it was “repugnant.” In reality, it is his very — and only — example of compromise as noble achievement.

It will be interesting to see if this “compromise” statement satisfies the Emory community, and how the university’s trustees react in upcoming days.

* * *

Saturday: In a shockingly horrible column [id.], the president of Emory University held up the “Three-Fifths Compromise” — the deal between Northern and Southern states which counted slaves as three-fifths of a person — as a shining example of political compromise at its best.

In his “from the president” column — titled “As American as … Compromise” — in the winter issue of Emory magazine, president James Wagner writes about the fiscal cliff and the importance of keeping one’s mind open to other points of view. All standard president’s letter dullness so far, right?

Then comes this:

One instance of constitutional compromise was the agreement to count three-fifths of the slave population for purposes of state representation in Congress. Southern delegates wanted to count the whole slave population, which would have given the South greater influence over national policy. Northern delegates argued that slaves should not be counted at all, because they had no vote. As the price for achieving the ultimate aim of the Constitution—“to form a more perfect union”—the two sides compromised on this immediate issue of how to count slaves in the new nation. Pragmatic half-victories kept in view the higher aspiration of drawing the country more closely together.

Some might suggest that the constitutional compromise reached for the lowest common denominator—for the barest minimum value on which both sides could agree. I rather think something different happened. Both sides found a way to temper ideology and continue working toward the highest aspiration they both shared—the aspiration to form a more perfect union. They set their sights higher, not lower, in order to identify their common goal and keep moving toward it.

So under Wagner’s formulation, one of the basest and demeaning political deals of American history, if not the basest, is an example of working toward a “highest aspiration.” Counting slaves as three-fifths of a person becomes an example of American politicians setting their sights high!

Wagner, thankfully, is at least not a history professor. His academic specialty is electrical engineering. But he has held some awfully important positions for a man of such strange historical views: he’s taught at Johns Hopkins, served as dean and provost at Case Western Reserve University. and is on the board of The Carter Center in Atlanta.

Copyright © 2013 Salon Media Group, Inc. (emphasis in original)

http://www.salon.com/2013/02/16/emory_president_holds_up_three_fifths_compromise_as_noble_honorable/ [with comments]


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How Did Ex-Slave’s Letter to Master Come to Be?


This combination picture shows an undated image of Jordon Anderson, left, and the beginning of a letter dated Aug. 7, 1865 from Jordan Anderson to his former master, Patrick H. Anderson, published in the Cincinnati Commercial newspaper. Jordon Anderson was a former slave who was freed from a Tennessee plantation by Union troops in 1864 and spent his remaining 40 years in Ohio. He lived quietly and likely would have been forgotten, if not for the remarkable letter published shortly after the Civil War.
(AP Photo)
[ http://mymajicdc.com/3064118/former-slave-letter-published-worldwide/ ]




Old trees line the drive to a house in Lebanon, Tenn. The land was once part of a plantation where Jordan Anderson was a slave to Col. Patrick Henry Anderson. In September 1865, Professor Roy E. Finkenbine says Col. Anderson sold the nearly 1,000-acre estate to his attorney for a pittance, in an apparent attempt to get out from under his crushing debt. Just two years later, Patrick Henry Anderson died at the age of 44.
(AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)
[ http://mymajicdc.com/3064118/former-slave-letter-published-worldwide/ ]

By Allen G. Breed, Hillel Italie
Jul 15, 2012

NEW YORK (AP) — The photograph, scratched and undated, is captioned "Brother Jordan Anderson [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Anderson ]." He is a middle-aged black man with a long beard and a righteous stare, as if he were a preacher locking eyes with a sinner, or a judge about to dispatch a thief to the gallows.

Anderson was a former slave who was freed from a Tennessee plantation by Union troops in 1864 and spent his remaining 40 years in Ohio. He lived quietly and likely would have been forgotten, if not for a remarkable letter to his former master published in a Cincinnati newspaper shortly after the Civil War.

Treasured as a social document, praised as a masterpiece of satire, Anderson's letter has been anthologized and published all over the world. Historians teach it, and the letter turns up occasionally on a blog or on Facebook. Humorist Andy Borowitz read the letter recently and called it, in an email to The Associated Press, "something Twain would have been proud to have written."

Addressed to one Col. Patrick Henry Anderson, who apparently wanted Jordan to come back to the plantation east of Nashville, the letter begins cheerfully, with the former slave expressing relief that "you had not forgotten Jordon" (there are various spellings of the name) and were "promising to do better for me than anybody else can." But, he adds, "I have often felt uneasy about you."

He informs the colonel that he's now making a respectable wage in Dayton, Ohio, and that his children are going to school. He tallies the monetary value of his services while on Anderson's plantation — $11,608 — then adds, "we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you."

Turning serious, he alludes to violence committed against women back in Tennessee and wonders what would happen to his own family members. "I would rather stay here and starve — and die, if it come to that — than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters."

He asks if there are schools now for blacks. "The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits," he writes.

Then he signs off with a swift, unforgettable kick.

"Say howdy to George Carter," he says, "and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me."

Anderson's words, a timeless kiss-off to a hated boss, are also a puzzle: How could an illiterate man, newly released from bondage, produce such a work of sophisticated satire?

After the letter resurfaced online earlier this year, along with questions about its authenticity, The Associated Press sought answers.

From documents compiled by the AP and in interviews with scholars, Anderson emerges as a very real person and the very real author of his story — though, from the beginning, it was reported to have been "dictated." His letter is an outstanding, but not unique, testament to the ability of slaves to turn horror into humor.

"The sly irony is very much in the Mark Twain style," Twain biographer Ron Powers says of the letter, especially the request for unpaid wages. "Whammo."

"It is that wonderful combination of serious thought and satirical chastisement," says Yale University history professor David Blight, who loves to read the letter during a lecture class on Reconstruction. "It represents so many definitions of freedom — dignity, access to education, family. And in the end, it also meant wages."

According to available records, Jordan Anderson was born somewhere in Tennessee around 1825 and by age 7 or 8 had been sold to a plantation owned by Gen. Paulding Anderson in Big Spring, Tenn. Patrick Henry Anderson was one of the general's sons and, by the mid-1840s owned Jordan and other slaves. Jordan Anderson married Amanda McGregor in 1848 and they apparently had 11 children.

Union troops camped on the plantation, and Jordan was freed in 1864 by the Provost-Marshall-General of the Department of Nashville.

Roy E. Finkenbine, a professor at the University of Detroit-Mercy who is planning a biography of Anderson, thinks it's likely Jordan was given to Patrick (born in 1823) as a playmate and personal servant when they were young. According to the 1860 slave schedules in the U.S. Census, Patrick had five "slave houses" totaling 32 people — 19 males and 13 females.

While the schedules don't list the slaves by name, there were two men, aged 34 and 35, who would have been about the age Jordan was in 1860. Finkenbine says Jordan appears to have been the oldest male slave of working age, and that might be why the plantation owner was so eager to entice him back. Many of the slaves had fled, and Anderson was mortgaged to the hilt.

"Harvest is coming on. Jordan's a guy who's played … sort of a quasi-managerial role in the past," he says. "And if he can convince this guy to come back, here's a guy who can not only maybe get the harvest in, but convince some of these other slaves that have gone …, get them to come back and be workers on the plantation. It's kind of his last-ditch effort to save it."

But he doesn't save it. In September 1865, Finkenbine says, Anderson sold the nearly 1,000-acre estate to his attorney for a pittance, in an apparent attempt to get out from under his crushing debt. Just two years later, Patrick Henry Anderson died at the age of 44.

That's what's known of the famous letter's recipient. What of its writer?

Jordan Anderson's collaborator — to whom he reportedly dictated the letter — was a Dayton banker named Valentine Winters. An abolitionist who once hosted Abraham Lincoln at his mansion, Winters regarded the letter as excellent propaganda, according to Finkenbine. It was originally published in August 1865 by the Cincinnati Commercial, a paper with Republican leanings.

Jordan likely made his way to Dayton with the help of Winters' son-in-law, Dr. Clarke McDermont, the surgeon in charge of the Cumberland Military Hospital in Nashville, where both Jordan and Mandy worked for a time, says Finkenbine, who places Jordan and his family in Dayton by August 1864. Anderson becomes an employee and tenant of Winters.

McDermont expressed concern for the former slaves working as nurses and orderlies and laundresses at the hospital. "And he actually writes back and forth to both his father-in-law and some of the other abolitionists in Dayton, saying, 'Can you raise money for these people? Can you send clothing for these people? "' Finkenbine says.

Anderson's letter comes right out of the life he had survived. From the insanity of slavery, he and others developed a deadpan, absurdist take that revealed their feelings to each other and hid them from their masters.

"Slaves had to be guarded as to what they said because they would be punished if caught critiquing or offending the master class — thus they developed sophisticated forms of indirection and other forms of masking," says Glenda Carpio, a professor of African and African-American studies at Harvard University and author of "Laughing Fit to Kill: Black Humor in the Fictions of Slavery."

Anderson's letter is special in part, Carpio says, because it was written down. Until late in the 19th century, when Joel Chandler Harris' Br'er Rabbit tales were first published, slave humor was essentially an oral tradition. And while newspapers sometimes printed letters to former masters, Finkenbine notes, few were "so challenging" as Anderson's.

"Most were rather supplicating," he says.

Powers finds the letter's tone curious, because Anderson "seems to veer back and forth between irony and aching earnestness. " Twain, he adds, would have given the letter a vernacular voice, as he did in such pieces as "Sociable Jimmy" and "A True Story Just as I Heard It." Anderson's diction, meanwhile, "is pretty much standard English."

The letter was soon reprinted by Lydia Maria Child in her "Freedmen's Book," used by schools in the South for former slaves. Other anti-slavery newspapers in the U.S. published it, and Finkenbine says he has found instances of Anderson's letter appearing as far away as Switzerland, where it was translated into French.

Notes on some of these publications state that Jordan dictated the letter verbatim to Valentine Winters, and that Winters is the one submitting it for publication.

Regarding questions about whether the letter was really Anderson's, Finkenbine says: "It's kind of a racist assumption … that when someone is illiterate, we make the assumption they're stupid." Enslaved people had deep folk wisdom and a rich oral culture, he adds. "Why would we think that he hadn't been thinking about these things and couldn't dictate them to willing abolitionists?"

"I think the letter is clearly his ideas and, for the most part, his own words" — though Winters probably had "some minor role in shaping the language."

In a 2006 speech at a conference on slavery reparations, historian Raymond Winbush retold the story of Anderson's letter. He also revealed that he had tracked down some of Patrick Henry Anderson's descendants, still living in Big Spring.

"What's amazing is that the current living relatives of Col. Anderson are still angry at Jordan for not coming back," knowing that the plantation was in serious disrepair after the war, said Winbush, director of the Institute for Urban Research at Maryland's Morgan State University.

As a boy, Jewell Wilson, Jordan Anderson's great-grandson, lived with Jordan's daughter Jane and remembers some of her stories from the plantation.

"She said that there was a (white) girl there who was about her age," says the 87-year-old Wilson, who still lives in Dayton. "And they would whup her for trying to teach my grandma to read and write."

Jane could have been talking about Col. Anderson's daughter, Martha. Likely the "Miss Martha" to whom Jordan refers in his letter, she would have been around 14 when the black Anderson family left Big Spring.

"She said they came here one time looking for Anderson to take him back," he says. "They wanted him because he was such a good worker and everything. But he said, 'I'm free now. I don't have to go back there.'"

According to probate records, Jordan Anderson died on April 15, 1905. While Wilson has no oral history about the letter's authorship, he has no problem believing that it reflects his great-grandfather's thoughts.

"They said he was smart." And he succeeded in educating his children.

Jordan's son, Dr. Valentine Winters Anderson, was a close friend of African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. The two collaborated on the Dayton Tattler, the city's first black newspaper.

Among Dunbar's works is a 1904 story titled "The Wisdom of Silence." In it, a freed slave named Jeremiah Anderson rebuffs his former master's attempts to woo him back to the plantation.

"No, suh, I's free, an' I sholy is able to tek keer o' myse'f," the freedman in Dunbar's story declares. "I done been fattenin' frogs fu' othah people's snakes too long."

*


[ http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a319/Cackalacky/Page.jpg , via http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=45660 \ http://message.snopes.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=950485 ]

Dayton, Ohio, August 7, 1865

To My Old Master, Colonel P. H. Anderson
Big Spring, Tennessee

Sir: I got your letter and was glad to find you had not forgotten
Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again,
promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt
uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before
this for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never
heard about your going to Col. Martin's to kill the Union soldier that was
left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before
I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are
still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again
and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give
my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better
world, if not in this. I would have come back to see you all when I was
working in Nashville, but one of the neighbors told me Henry intended to
shoot me if he ever got a chance.

I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give
me. I am doing tolerably well here; I get $25 a month, with victuals and
clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy (the folks here call her Mrs.
Anderson), and the children, Milly, Jane and Grundy, go to school and are
learning well; the teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go
to Sunday-School, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly
treated; sometimes we overhear others saying, "Them colored people were
slaves" down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such
remarks, but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Col.
Anderson. Many darkies would have been proud, as I used to was, to call
you master. Now, if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I
will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move
back again.

As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained
on that score, as I got my free-papers in 1864 from the
Provost-Marshal-General of the Department at Nashville. Mandy says she
would be afraid to go back without some proof that you are sincerely
disposed to treat us justly and kindly -- and we have concluded to test
your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served
you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your
justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for
thirty-two years and Mandy twenty years. At $25 a month for me, and $2 a
week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to $11,680. Add to this the
interest for the time our wages has been kept back and deduct what you
paid for our clothing and three doctor's visits to me, and pulling a tooth
for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to.
Please send the money by Adams Express, in care of V. Winters, esq,
Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past we
can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good
Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have
done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations
without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night, but in
Tennessee there was never any pay day for the negroes any more than for
the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those
who defraud the laborer of his hire.

In answering this letter please state if there would be any safety for my
Milly and Jane, who are now grown up and both good-looking girls. You
know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here
and starve and die if it comes to that than have my girls brought to shame
by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also
please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children
in your neighborhood, the great desire of my life now is to give my
children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.

From your old servant,

Jourdon Anderson

P.S. -- Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol
from you when you were shooting at me.

[ http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=45660 ]

*

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press

http://blackamericaweb.com/21922/how-did-ex-slaves-letter-to-master-come-to-be/


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French couple 'pay €4,500 for African slave girl'


As many as 76 percent of those victims helped by France's Committee against Modern Slavery are from Africa.
Photo: 300td.org

By Ben McPartland
Published: 14 Feb 2013 16:05 GMT+01:00
Updated: 14 Feb 2013 16:05 GMT+01:00

Slavery may have been abolished in France over 160 years ago but word has clearly taken a while to get around after reports emerged on Thursday that a couple living in France had allegedly paid €4,500 for a 14-year-old girl from the Ivory Coast to be a maid at their home.

The couple, both in their twenties, allegedly bought the girl on a recent trip to Africa and brought her back in September, when she began working as a housemaid in the couple’s home in the Vaucluse region of France, French regional La Depeche reported on Thursday [ http://www.ladepeche.fr/article/2013/02/14/1560950-vaucluse-une-jeune-fille-ivoirienne-utilisee-comme-esclave.html ].

The girl, who had no official papers, was barred from going to school, worked without being paid and was even punished by being whipped with a belt when her cleaning was judged to be not up to scratch, reported La Depeche.

“This is a case of slavery in the true sense of the word,” Sylvie O’dy, president of the Committee against Modern Slavery told French daily Le Parisien.

The girl, named as Charlotte, finally managed to escape the clutches of her captors this week and fled to a nearby police station, where she is being cared for.

After hearing the girl’s recount of what happened, police arrested the couple. The woman, who is French, has been released but her partner, who is originally from the Ivory Coast has been kept in custody. They both face trial in March on charges of human trafficking and violence.

“This is a classic case. It is very common for people of foreign origin living in France to go back to their country, where they are connected and where it is easy to find someone poor to exploit,” said O’dy.

“The fact that they purchased her, however, is extremely rare,” she said, adding that it was more common to make deals over travel expenses or schooling than to exchange cash.

According to O’dy, 76 percent of the victims dealt with by her association are from Africa.

*

Related

• Charity staff jailed for African child-smuggling (12 Feb 13)
http://www.thelocal.fr/page/view/charity-workers-jailed-for-african-child-smuggling

• Algeria: minister demands French own up to 'crimes' (30 Oct 12)
http://www.thelocal.fr/page/view/algeria-minister-demands-french-own-up-to-crimes

*

Copyright 2013 The Local Europe AB

http://www.thelocal.fr/page/view/french-couple-pay-4500-for-african-slave-girl [with comment]


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After 148 years, Mississippi finally ratifies 13th Amendment, which banned slavery

By Stephanie Condon
February 18, 2013, 10:51 AM

The 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished slavery, was ratified in 1865. Lawmakers in Mississippi, however, only got around to officially ratifying the amendment last month -- 148 years later -- thanks to the movie "Lincoln."

The state's historical oversight came to light after Mississippi resident Ranjan Batra saw the Steven Spielberg-directed film last November, the Clarion-Ledger reports.

After watching the film, which depicts the political fight to pass the 13th Amendment, Batra did some research. He learned that the amendment was ratified after three-fourths of the states backed it in December 1865. Four remaining states all eventually ratified the amendment -- except for Mississippi. Mississippi voted to ratify the amendment in 1995 but failed to make it official by notifying the U.S. Archivist.

Batra spoke to another Mississippi resident, Ken Sullivan, who contacted Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann about the oversight. Finally, on Jan. 30, Hosemann sent the Office of the Federal Register a copy of the 1995 resolution, and on Feb. 7, the Federal Register made the ratification official.

According to the Clarion-Ledger, it's unclear why the state never sent the U.S. Archivist its 1995 resolution. "What an amendment to have an error in filing," Dick Molpus, who served then as secretary of state, told the paper.

© 2013 CBS Interactive Inc. (emphasis added)

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57569880/after-148-years-mississippi-finally-ratifies-13th-amendment-which-banned-slavery/ [with comments]


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[F6]

Lawmakers Vote To Pardon The Scottsboro Boys


FILE - In this July 26, 1937 file photo, New York attorney Samuel Leibowitz, center, stands in his office in New York with four of the "Scottsboro Boys," from left, Willie Robertson, Eugene Williams, Roy Wright, and Olen Montgomery. Levin is credited with saving from death all but one of the nine black teens who were wrongly convicted of raping two white women in 1931.

By BOB JOHNSON and JESSE WASHINGTON
04/05/13 04:31 AM ET EDT

MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- The legacy of the "Scottsboro Boys" is secure: The nine black teens were wrongly convicted more than 80 years ago in one of America's most infamous racial tragedies. Alabama is now moving to repair its own legacy, and correct past injustices, with a bill to allow posthumous pardons for the group.

On Thursday, the state House voted 103-0 in favor of legislation setting up a procedure to pardon the teens, who were falsely accused of rape by two white women in 1931. The Senate had passed the bill earlier, 29-0. Gov. Robert Bentley has indicated he will sign it.

"This is great for Alabama. It was long overdue," said Democratic state Rep. Laura Hall of Huntsville, who sponsored the bill in the House.

The Senate sponsor, Republican Arthur Orr, said it was unfortunate that the pardons are coming after all the Scottsboro Boys have died – but the bill lets Alabama write a "better final chapter."

"Their lives were ruined by the convictions," he said. "By doing this, it sends a very positive message nationally and internationally that this is a different state than we were many years ago."

All but the youngest member of the group, whose ages ranged from 13 to 19, were imprisoned on death row after convictions by all-white juries. All were eventually freed without executions, although several suffered for many years in prison.

The last of the men died in 1989.

Their celebrated case has been memorialized in songs, books, museums, films and a 2010 Broadway play. Their twisting legal saga set important precedents, including Supreme Court decisions outlawing the practice of systematically excluding black people from juries and guaranteeing the right to effective counsel.

"You can't change history," said House Speaker Mike Hubbard, a Republican. "But you can take steps to right the wrongs of the past. The fact that this passed unanimously shows that today's 21st century Alabama is far removed from the one that caused such pain for so many so long ago."

That distance is still being measured.

Benjamin Todd Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP, applauded the correction of "an historic miscarriage of justice." But he noted that Alabama is involved in a Supreme Court case over the Voting Rights Act and has passed laws that critics say are discriminatory against immigrants in the country illegally.

"Like so many communities that have had tried to move beyond their ugliest chapters, Alabama has learned you can only move forward if you are honest about your past," Jealous said. "It's heartening that this was a unanimous vote."

"Unfortunately," he continued, "Alabama still needs to confront its present."

Susan Glisson, executive director of the Institute for Racial Reconciliation at the University of Mississippi, also was gladdened by the measure. "It is an opportunity for us to understand that period, especially the ways in which blacks were deemed inferior and therefore not worthy of equal treatment before the law," she said.

But she found it ironic that it happened while Alabama is challenging its requirements under the Voting Rights Act, and said that the amount of time it took to pass may lead some to consider it an "empty gesture."

"For those of us who care about where our country's headed, I would hope we would take the opportunity to ask difficult questions about what reconciliation really means and also to understand the critical role that education and justice plays in its accomplishment," Glisson said.

The episode began on a freight train traveling through Alabama during the Great Depression.

During that time, many people would sneak aboard for free rides between cities. There was a fight between whites and blacks on the train, and the two women made the false rape accusations in hopes of avoiding arrest.

Lynch mobs gathered outside the jail, but were warned off by the white sheriff and rebuffed by National Guardsmen called in by the governor.

After the defendants were convicted, the Communist Party seized on the case as an opportunity to make inroads among black people and liberals. It got one of its lawyers named as defense counsel, and also secured the services of famed defense attorney Samuel Liebowitz.

There were years of appeals – some successful, as one of the women recanted and said their claim was a lie.

Decades later, when the idea of pardons was raised, the governor and parole board said they didn't have the legal authority to pardon the deceased. But Sheila Washington, founder of the Scottsboro Boys Museum, which opened in 2010, pursued the legislation.

Washington said Thursday that the pardons would finally shine a light on "this dark injustice."

If the governor signs the bill as expected, a petition would need to be filed for each of the men, said Eddie Cook, executive director of the state parole board. The parole board would then decide whether to grant each pardon.

Previously, there had not been a procedure for pardoning someone who is dead.

Johnson reported from Montgomery. Washington covers race and ethnicity for The Associated Press.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/05/scottsboro-boys_n_3019923.html [with comments]

[fuagf]

In S Africa 10-year-olds take a cue from Mandela

.. Rosa Parks and Nelson Mandela, two of many top role models for all ..

AFP Johannesburg, June 14, 2013
First Published: 10:34 IST(14/6/2013)
Last Updated: 10:37 IST(14/6/2013)

Breathlessly, the 10-year-olds at Rosebank Primary School in Johannesburg clamour to explain all about Nelson Mandela's life.

For them, Mandela is the hero they love but never knew -- as he is for the kids who this week have delivered cards, flowers and get-well messages to his
Johannesburg home a short distance away as the 94-year-old icon of the struggle against apartheid fights a recurrent lung infection in hospital.

Madiba -- as he is affectionately known in South Africa -- retreated from public office in the decade before these children were born.

But they quickly go deep into details of his life, not forgetting to translate Mandela's Xhosa name, Rolihlahla -- which colloquially means "troublemaker".

Even if he came from a poor family, they are proud that Mandela caused enough trouble to end white-minority rule and became the father of the "Rainbow Nation".

He was so "poor that his father cut his own trousers so he can wear it on his first day to school," said Junior Luthuli, 10, during break time.

"And the (pair of) trousers was big, and he didn't have a belt, so his father used a string to tie it," interjected classmate Sibusiso Ncube, also 10.

South African children start to learn about "Tata", or father Mandela, as early as pre-school.

By primary school Mandela is firmly on the syllabus along with lessons about Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi, both offered as examples of good leadership.

Images of Mandela feature prominently in social science and history textbooks.

South African children are supposed to be taught about the American political system when the subject of democracy is first introduced in primary schools, but teachers find that irrelevant.

"These children need to know about their own history first, about Mandela, about (his apartheid predecessor and negotiating counterpart FW) De Klerk, before we start teaching them about other countries," said history teacher Mia Flourentzou.

Meanwhile the pupils eagerly await their turn to speak about Mandela.

"I have heard he has problems with his lungs. I feel sad because I don't want him to go away. He has done a lot for this country and he deserves the best," said Refiloo Mtheya.

In the course of a few minutes she retells Mandela's life story from the day he was born to him voting in the 1994 elections that ushered him in as South Africa's first black president.

"Mandela is important because he stopped apartheid. If he had not done that I probably would not have been in this school," said Luthuli, who commutes from the predominantly black Soweto township to his school in an upmarket suburb of Johannesburg.

"I just want to be like him, I don't want to be corrupt like some people."

The children may not understand what it is like to be in a jail, but they certainly know it was tough for Mandela to spend 27 years in apartheid prisons.

"South Africans are trying to push Mandela to go up to 100 years because he spent a lot of his life on Robben Island," said Masiko Dlamini, daughter of an expatriate Swazi lawyer.

"Mandela has made this a beautiful country. There is no more white rule because of him. If it wasn't because of him, I wouldn't be here, I wouldn't have seen South Africa because I am from Swaziland," said Dlamini.

Ncube, who recounted the story of Mandela's trousers, says the former president is his role model.

"He is very brave, he fought for freedom and he wasn't scared of anything, he fought against HIV/AIDS.

"And I am scared that if he dies maybe apartheid will come back."

Teacher Geraldine Nadas says the children "understand the role that Mandela played for us to be where we are. It's a subject that excites them."

In their last exam, the pupils were shown the iconic picture of Mandela walking from prison and were asked to write what they think was going through his mind.

Answers included "Freedom at last; Viva! Viva!" and "Democracy for our country".

http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed/MandelaNelson/In-S-Africa-10-year-olds-take-a-cue-from-Mandela/Article1-1076113.aspx

Then there is Hannity and Rand Paul.

======

Mandela: Qunu keeps the faith in its messiah

14 Jun 2013 00:00 Kwanele Sosibo

Former president Nelson Mandela's influence transformed the village, which, in turn, has cast its brightest son in a biblical light.


Nelson Mandela's association with Qunu has meant that the village children now have access to schools built by benefactors. (Delwyn Verasamy, M&G)

Our Coverage

* 'Beware of selfish prayers for Tata'
http://mg.co.za/article/2013-06-14-00-beware-of-selfish-prayers-for-tata
* ANC plays fashion police in Parliament on Mazibuko dress
http://mg.co.za/article/2013-06-13-anc-plays-fashion-police-in-parliament
* Seven things to do when there's no news on Mandela
http://mg.co.za/article/2013-06-13-8-things-to-do-when-theres-no-more-news-on-mandela

More Coverage

Mandela is responding well to treatment, says Cabinet
http://mg.co.za/article/2013-06-13-mandela-is-responding-well-to-treatment-says-cabinet

If you’re looking to gauge how South Africa is handling the extended hospitalisation of its most famous son, Qunu – where Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela spent a significant portion of his youth – is the wrong place to be.

Although the N2, at least from Mthatha to Dutywa, is dotted with road blocks (“business as usual”, the traffic cops protest), the first clear sign in the town of Madiba’s grave illness are hordes of helpless journalists crisscrossing the 18 villages and, more often than not, homing in on the main stretch of houses belonging to the extended Mandela family.

Across the N2 from the stretch that includes the family graveyard, lies the mansion sometimes referred to as Mandela’s “holiday home”, to the chagrin of the locals, many of whom see it as the former state president’s permanent residence.

Mandela had been spending an increasing amount of time here before his health deteriorated late last year.

Although they are suffering from “Q&A” fatigue, barring the odd, overt request for money most residents will oblige by answering questions and posing for photographs while tastefully relaying social taboos.

“We’re holding silent prayers for him in our homes,” says Nokuzola Thethani, the spokesperson for the Nelson Mandela Museum. “I’m sure in every home here [in Qunu] it’s the same. Before they go to sleep they put him in their prayers. I am also doing that.”

If you’re expecting mass hysteria or people on the edge of their chairs, earlobes glued to the speaker, you may as well pack up and ship out.

“We’re following it with our prayers,” says Nomiki Gcinindawo, echoing her neighbour, Thethani. “In church we pray for him because we want our children to see him.”

Nicodemus

Gcinindawo has impaired vision but she turns to two young children, no older than eight, milling about the yard.

“In December 2010, these little children went to the house and touched him by the hand,” she says.

“They saw him with their own eyes. The old man, he is like a messiah. We pray to Jesus but here we see a new manifestation, from whom we ask and receive. Our hearts and spirits won’t let him go. He showed love to all equally.”

Gcinindawo lives with her sister Nothozamile Majova. The two middle-aged women receive disability grants, which they attribute to the post-1994 dispensation.

Biblical references to Mandela often feature him as a messianic figure or a character swathed in supernatural imagery – like a neighbour’s remark that he should be “born again in a Nicodemus sense”, referring to a story in the Bible of Jesus teaching Nicodemus about the necessity of every person being born again.

These off-the-cuff references make outsiders cringe but, depending on who you talk to in Qunu, the messiah remarks hold gravity.

Facing south from the hilltop location of the Nelson Mandela Museum, one has expansive views of lower Qunu and the surrounding villages.

Mandela’s honour

Using the tome Long Walk To Freedom as your guide, from this vantage point (foregrounded by the familial pastoral lands Mandela roamed as a child), you can see where the young son of the royal counsellor hunted birds with a slingshot, drank milk from the udder of a cow and, humiliatingly, fell off his donkey. But the built environment reveals the patronage he was later to wield.

A confluence of established brands and international governments transformed a village that was not unlike any other into a promised land of sorts, attracting a sizeable number of migrants from other parts of the Eastern Cape.

In the distance you can see the Qunu multipurpose centre, built by Samsung Electronics Africa; the restored Methodist Church that was initially founded by Mandela’s mother, Nosekeni, and the Nelson Mandela No-Moscow Primary School that was rebuilt by the Lyoness Child and Family Foundation.

On the opposite end of the museum there is the Qunu Clinic, built by Southern Sun International and the Milton Mbekela Senior Secondary School, built by Caltex, to name but a few.

There are entire villages – like Nkalane, where Mandela’s mother grew up – that were electrified by international governments in Mandela’s honour.

Mvezo, where he was born, “is shaping up into a little Nkandla” (as one local put it), thanks largely to the fundraising efforts of his grandson, Mandla Mandela.

Then there’s the unmissable facelift in the form of the N2 road reconstruction.

Cultural mores

Over the past few years the world has also taken notice of Mqhekezweni, where Mandela lived under the guardianship of Jongintaba Dalindyebo, regent of the Tembu people and head of the Madiba clan. Jongintaba Senior Secondary School was officially opened in 2008, although building began about a decade before.

Nozolile Mtirara, the spouse of Mandela’s childhood friend and cousin, Justice Mtirara, lives in a modern face-brick structure in Mqhekezweni Great Place (a heritage site where Mandela went to live after his father died). She says Mandela looked after them and even sent them groceries before he fell ill.

In Qunu and the surrounding areas residents differ about the prospects of the town without Madiba – that is if they are willing to flout cultural mores and entertain the question to begin with.

“We were supposed to be getting houses here but I don’t think we’ll getting those houses any more,” says Mandela’s niece, Alice Ngcebetshana.

“Things that were happening happened out of respect for him. Children here can no longer find jobs, they are told to go look underground [in the mines].”

A teacher in Mqhekezweni believes these are irrational fears, “because the association with Mandela will always be there”.

Thethani says that the media hysteria, with hacks trawling the weather-beaten footpaths of lower Qunu conducting door-to-door searches for quotes, has brought merchants of unreliable oral history creeping out of the woodwork.

Others believe that by speaking of a living man as if he’s dead, journalists have overstepped cultural sensitivities.

“He’s an icon but he’s also a human being,” said a local petrol attendant who preferred not to be named. “In our culture here, it’s wrong to talk about a person’s death while he’s alive, out of respect for his life.

“For example, the thing of his daughters Zenani and Makaziwe talking about his money while he’s still alive is wrong. We don’t do that. I know it sounds radical but you guys should probably pack up and go now.”

http://mg.co.za/article/2013-06-14-00-mandela-qunu-keeps-the-faith-in-its-messiah

[F6]

In Electric Moments, History Transfigured


Rising Up
The canvas as one-act play, drawing visual inspiration from across the art historical spectrum: Hale Woodruff’s “Mutiny on the Amistad” (1939), on view at 80WSE Gallery at New York University.


Left, "The Building of Savery Library" (1942), by Hale Woodruff, in an installation view of "Rising Up," at N.Y.U.
Emon Hassan for The New York Times

Hale Woodruff’s Talladega Murals, in ‘Rising Up,’ at N.Y.U.

By ROBERTA SMITH
Published: August 15, 2013

There is nothing in American art quite like the elegant, urgent, boldly colored murals that Hale Woodruff [ http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F10C13FD385F13778DDDAF0894DD405B898BF1D3 ] painted between 1938 and 1942 for Talladega College [ http://talladega.brinkster.net/joomla25/ ], a historically black institution in Alabama. Clear in hue, form and narrative, these six canvases constitute the heart of “Rising Up: Hale Woodruff’s Murals at Talladega College [ https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/80wse/events ],” a stunning exhibition at the 80WSE Gallery on the campus of New York University.

This is the first time the murals are being seen in New York, and possibly the last. Precipitated by their removal from Talladega for conservation, the show was organized at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta by Stephanie Mayer Heydt. At the close of a three-year, eight-museum tour, they are to return to Talladega, where they are a revered part of the college’s history.

Crowded with vigorous, brightly attired individuals and spiced with telling details and background scenes, these imposing paintings — two measure 20 feet across — confer an inspiring optimism on different moments from African-American history. Each is a one-act play unto itself.

The strongest of the six are three murals related to the 1839 uprising aboard the Spanish ship Amistad, when a group of West African captives led by Joseph Cinque overwhelmed the crew. The murals depict the mutiny, the trial of the rebels in New Haven and, finally, their repatriation to Africa after their acquittal.

The fourth mural focuses on the Underground Railroad, cast as a panoramic epic of runaway slaves, Northern Abolitionists, plunging vistas and modes of transportation. The remaining two are devoted to the history of Talladega College, founded immediately after the Civil War by two former slaves. One scene is crowded with students, teachers, workmen and the farm animals offered in lieu of tuition; the other depicts an interracial crew’s construction of Savery Library [ http://www.talladega.edu/academics/library.asp ], for whose walls Woodruff painted the murals. The opening of the library in 1939 was timed to the 100th anniversary of the Amistad rebellion.

The Talladega murals teach history by making it visually riveting. The magnetism of the medium makes the message accessible and thrilling. The undeniably powerful impact of form (deliberately deployed color, shape, composition, style) on highly specific subject matter makes this show doubly important; we live in a moment when form, and formalism, are often disparaged as passé diversions, if not downright socially irresponsible. The centrality of form to the strength of these images could not be timelier.

Woodruff’s murals may be the greatest to emerge from the American Social Realist and mural movements of the 1930s and ’40s. This notion will raise eyebrows among admirers of Thomas Hart Benton, who led those movements and exerted an important influence on Woodruff. But this exhibition suggests that Woodruff supersedes Benton in every way — in visual and narrative force, in his assured synthesis of history and also in his humanity.

This is the first New York museum exhibition devoted to Woodruff’s art since the Studio Museum in Harlem mounted a small retrospective of his work in 1979, the year before the artist’s death at the age of 80 in Manhattan. While not a retrospective, it has considerable sweep, supplementing the murals with some 40 additional works by Woodruff: smaller paintings, wonderful mural studies and terse linocut prints that date from roughly the same period. The show could have been much larger, but the smaller works give some indication of where Woodruff was as an artist by 1938, when the Talladega commission materialized.

Born in Cairo, Ill., and raised in Nashville, he studied art in Indianapolis and at the Art Institute of Chicago before spending four crucial years (1927-31) in Paris. Hired as an art instructor at a college in Atlanta, he began trying to bend the lessons of European Modernism, especially Post-Impressionism and Cubism, into a socially aware art. A Cubistic painting of an Atlanta shantytown from 1933-34 is one result; a more bucolic but nonetheless charged landscape indebted to van Gogh is another.

In 1936, Woodruff spent time in Mexico, working as an apprentice to Diego Rivera, the leader of the Mexican mural movement, who taught him the basics of fresco painting. Although it was a medium he would never use, its high-keyed colors clearly influenced the palette of the murals. Rivera’s influence is also visible in “Night Blooming Cereus,” a depiction of two opulent white blooms and a fleshy bud. It suggests a conscientious botanical work by the 19th-century landscape painter Martin Johnson Heade, but as executed by the more emphatic hand of the Modernist Marsden Hartley.

The works make it clear that the Talladega commission spurred a substantial artistic leap in Woodruff’s career. Almost overnight, he seems to have gone from being primarily a landscape painter to an artist at ease with large, multifigure compositions that draw inspiration from all over the art historical spectrum, most prominently African art, Cubism, Social Realism and Renaissance painting, as Ms. Heydt explains in her catalog essay.

Woodruff was not familiar with the story of Amistad when he was invited to do the mural, so he traveled to New Haven to study the trial. There he also found an admiring portrait of Cinque [ http://www.fjc.gov/history/home.nsf/page/tu_amistad_media_2.html ] by Nathaniel Jocelyn (1796-1881) and fine pencil likenesses [ http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/collections/highlights/drawings-amistad-prisoners-new-haven ] of each of the other defendants by William H. Townsend (1822-1851). These contribute to the power of the trial scene, where the captives, layered in shallow space like angels in a Fra Angelico painting, are extremely expressive and individualized. (Woodruff included a self-portrait in the crowd.)

Though working in oil on canvas, Woodruff adopted a high-keyed, white-backed palette like that of Renaissance frescoes by painters like Signorelli and Pontormo. He also persisted in the practice evident in his smaller paintings of making every square inch of canvas contribute actively to the whole. Thus the marvelous array of detail: the wood grain of the schooner [ https://www.google.com/search?q=amistad+mutiny+hale+woodruff+high+museum&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ ], the top hats across the foreground of the trial scene [ http://www.high.org/Art/Exhibitions/Rising-Up-Hale-Woodruff.aspx ; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmcOAuWWx88 (next below)],

the parrotlike carpetbag peeking out near the lower left corner of the repatriation mural [ http://coffeewithhallelujah.blogspot.com/2012/07/hale-woodruff-artist-story-teller.html ], the ropelike gingham-covered basket to one side in the Underground Railroad scene [ http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/80wse/ ].

Nothing from the inanimate world enlivens Woodruff’s painting as much as the garments. The artist, who looks quietly natty in photographs, painted many of his figures in bright, often patterned, almost dandyish attire, with soft drapes and folds that catch the light, making it seem as if many of them were clothed in silk. Widespread use is made of windowpane plaids, stripes and especially dotted neckerchiefs. (One is worn by the most raggedly dressed figure in the murals, the young man seated, ready to register for school, in “Opening Day.”)

The runaway slave who kneels like one of the Magi at the center of “The Underground Railroad” wears a shirt of green-on-green polka dots. A handsome man in pinstriped red trousers, a phthalo blue waistcoat and a lime-green vest, gracefully posed like one of Pontormo’s princes, welcomes new students in “Opening Day at Talladega College.” He echoes the near-center position and presence of the regal, well-turned-out figure of Cinque in “The Trial of the Amistad Captives” and, especially, “The Repatriation.” Some of these garments have the starchy look-at-me presence of clothing in limner folk-art portraits from the early 19th century.

In their easy drapes and swirling folds, these garments add visual intensity to the actors in these dramas; moreover, they hint at the bodies beneath them and the complex souls within. They are part of the indomitable optimism that is the glory — and the content — of Woodruff’s great murals.

“Rising Up: Hale Woodruff’s Murals at Talladega College” runs through Oct. 13 at the 80WSE Gallery at N.Y.U. Steinhardt, 80 Washington Square East, Greenwich Village; [phone], [e-mail].

© 2013 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/16/arts/design/hale-woodruffs-talladega-murals-in-rising-up-at-nyu.html


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The Amistad


The Mutiny on the Amistad - In 1839 on the West Coast of Africa, 53 Africans were kidnapped from Mende country (modern Sierra Leone) and sold into Spanish slave trade. The men, women and children were shackled and loaded aboard a ship where they endured physical abuse, sickness, and death during a horrific journey to Havana, Cuba. Led by Senbeh Pieh (Cinque’), the Africans revolted, took control of the ship, which was eventually seized by an American naval vessel. The Africans were jailed and charged with piracy and murder.


The Trial of the Amistad Captives heralds their judicial fight for freedom. The case took on historic proportion when former President John Quincy Adams argued on behalf of the captives before the U.S. Supreme Court. This was the first civil rights case in America. In 1841, the 35 surviving Africans won their freedom when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in their favor. Out of this case and the Amistad Committee, the Mende Association was formed which later became the American Missionary Association (A.M.A.) (Talladega College is one of the distinguished colleges emerging from the efforts of the A.M.A.)


The Repatriation of the Freed Captives - The third panel represents the landing of the repatriated slaves on the shores of Africa. Here, the principal figures are Cinque’, the missionaries, James Steele with his sea chest, and the little Black girl, Marque, who in later years had a son who returned to graduate from Yale University with a Ph.D. degree. In the background lies their ship at harbor, and a boatload of their party just landing on the beach.

The Founding Panels


The Underground Railroad - The story of the Underground Railroad is one of individual sacrifice and heroism in the efforts of enslaved people to reach freedom from bondage. It was perhaps the most dramatic protest against slavery in the United States. Its operation began during the colonial period and later became part of organized abolitionist activity in the late 19th century, and reached its peak in the period of 1830-1865. While most runaways began their journey unaided and many completed their self-emancipation without assistance, each decade in which slavery was legal in the United States saw an increase in the public perception of an underground network and in the number of persons willing to give aid to the runaway.


Opening Day at Talladega College - Freedmen were poor, they are therefore, depicted bartering with their chickens, pigs, barrels of fruits and vegetables, musical instrument, a plow and sugar cane to pay tuition on the first day of registration. They are advised by the counselor and curriculum coordinator relative to classes and what to expect in school. In the background is Swayne Hall, the oldest building on campus.


The Building of Savery Library - Funds raised by Talladega College, individual contributions, grants, sale of college land and insurance on a barn destroyed by fire allowed for the construction of Savery Library. Construction began in September 1937, with Joseph Fletcher, a 1901 alumnus, superintendent of buildings and grounds, in charge. Fletcher engaged an interracial work crew with Talladega students furnishing much of the labor. Fletcher viewed the library as his masterpiece.

from https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/80wse/events ( https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/80wse/ ); hopefully the above images will remain available after the exhibition there ends (October 13, 2013)


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Rising Up: Hale Woodruff's Murals from Talladega College

Published on Jun 7, 2012 by CoolNewMedia123

In 1938 Atlanta-based artist Hale Woodruff was commissioned to paint a series of murals for Talladega College, Alabama, one of the first colleges established for blacks in the United States. Installed in the institution's newly constructed Savery Library, the six murals portray noteworthy events in the rise of blacks from slavery to freedom. Though he painted the murals for a local audience of students and faculty, Woodruff intended their impact to reach beyond Talladega's campus.
This is the video we Cool New Media produced as part of the exhibition for the High Museum of Art. The narration was done by C.S. Treadway.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoGUpQjhWnM


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in addition to (linked in) the post to which this is a reply and preceding and (other) following, see also (linked in):

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=64096475 and preceding and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=83473699 and preceding and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=84137960 and preceding and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=85767399 and preceding and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=87142328 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=90902398 and preceding and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=90995036 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=91031389 and preceding and following