Woolworth's Lunch Counter Sit-In

from NPR

On Feb. 1, 1960, four students from all-black North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College walked into a Woolworth five-and-dime with the intention of ordering lunch.

But the manager of the Greensboro Woolworth had intentions of his own — to maintain the lunch counter's strict whites-only policy.

Franklin McCain was one of the four young men who shoved history forward by refusing to budge.

McCain remembers the anxiety he felt when he went to the store that Monday afternoon, the plan he and his friends had devised to launch their protest and how he felt when he sat down on that stool.

"Fifteen seconds after ... I had the most wonderful feeling. I had a feeling of liberation, restored manhood. I had a natural high. And I truly felt almost invincible. Mind you, [I was] just sitting on a dumb stool and not having asked for service yet," McCain says.

"It's a feeling that I don't think that I'll ever be able to have again. It's the kind of thing that people pray for ... and wish for all their lives and never experience it. And I felt as though I wouldn't have been cheated out of life had that been the end of my life at that second or that moment."

McCain shares his recollection of the exchanges the four African-American men had with the lunch-counter staff, the store manager and a policeman who arrived on the scene — and also a lesson he learned that day.

An older white woman sat at the lunch counter a few stools down from McCain and his friends.

"And if you think Greensboro, N.C., 1960, a little old white lady who eyes you with that suspicious look ... she's not having very good thoughts about you nor what you're doing," McCain says.

Eventually, she finished her doughnut and coffee. And she walked behind McNeil and McCain — and put her hands on their shoulders.

"She said in a very calm voice, 'Boys, I am so proud of you. I only regret that you didn't do this 10 years ago.'" McCain recalls.

"What I learned from that little incident was ... don't you ever, ever stereotype anybody in this life until you at least experience them and have the opportunity to talk to them. I'm even more cognizant of that today — situations like that — and I'm always open to people who speak differently, who look differently, and who come from different places," he says.

On that first day, Feb. 1, the four men stayed at the lunch counter until closing. The next day, they came back with 15 other students. By the third day, 300 joined in; later, 1,000.

The sit-ins spread to lunch counters across the country — and changed history.

Flash forward 57 years... what have we learned?

#noshame #MAGA pic.twitter.com/h14x9pAo9x

— al (@allie_vandee) August 19, 2017

Right here in Annex white people gettin real bold we don't stand w trump pic.twitter.com/zoit7UpC2h

— Brit (@britnianise) August 19, 2017

We will take any action necessary to ensure that HU students feel safe& comfortable in our dining spaces. This group is no longer on campus.

— HUDining (@HUdining) August 19, 2017

We've learned that if we don't leave, Trump supporters will be called NAZI's, Racists, White Supremicists, and get punched in the face.

The New Jim Crow... it's not "written down" and in the "law" books. It's a "legacy" of 43 years of "Affirmative Action," where any and all lack of "affirmation" (ie - criticism) has become proof positive of racist discrimination.

The Day Free Speech Died in America

Boston Common, August 19, 2017
Meanwhile, the media (and Boston's free speech counter-protesters) insist that President Trump is continuing his un-civil behavior and his moral authority has been compromised... perhaps he should shout a few people down and re-establish it!

Later that same afternoon...

Whilst organizations committed to the violent overthrow of the current American Government like "Its Going Down" and "Refuse Fascism," supported by notorious terrorist and former Weathermen Biil Ayers, go unreported by the so-called "mainstream" media. Focus on Nazi's and the Klan, sheeple. Even the venerable Washington Post assures us that the Left has renounced violence....

Can Someone Please Tell Me Which Speakers at this Event were NAZI's, White Supremicists, or Racists?
Who were they? Find out here...

Tear Down This Monument to Northern Aggression!

Cleveland Civil War Soldiers and Sailors Memorial
It's Demeaning and Eulogizes the Destruction of State's Rights, Southern Culture, and Murder of 258,000 Southern Americans by the Tyrant, Abraham Lincoln
Note - Attributing Motives to Others can be a Tricky Business.

...but You Can Leave This One Up as a Testament to Northern Atrocities

Hogan Wastes His Political Capital to Placate the Unplacatable

from the Baltimore Sun

Gov. Larry Hogan’s decision to remove a controversial Confederate-era statue from the State House grounds has prompted a backlash within some facets of his Republican base.

The Facebook comments on the social-media-savvy governor’s page came fast and furious this week, as one-time supporters turned his posts about job gains and ribbon cuttings into hundred-person-long chains calling the Republican governor names.

Even some of his most ardent supporters have spoken out against him, baffled that their “common sense” champion reversed course.

In a blog post bluntly titled “Governor Hogan is wrong on this,” conservative blogger Greg Kline of RedMaryland wrote, “I am, and remain, a proud and unabashed apologist for Governor Hogan … But this. I don’t get this.”

Hours after the Hogan administration presided over the pre-dawn removal of Supreme Court Justice Roger B. Taney’s 145-year-old statue on Friday, Kline said he can’t explain away Hogan’s shift. The governor called the removal of historical statues in 2015 “political correctness run amok” but said this week “it was the right thing to do.”

“I would have sworn on Monday, if you asked me, that this governor would have never done this," Kline said Friday. "I woke up today feeling a bit confused."

Compared to the online vitriol aimed at Hogan’s Facebook page, Kline’s criticism is muted.

“He sided with the liberals,” wrote one critic. “I lost a lot of respect of you,” wrote another. “One term Larry, what a disgrace,” said a third.

A fourth, writing in all caps, demanded Hogan’s immediate resignation in the comments section of every item the governor has posted this week, including photos of First Lady Yumi Hogan celebrating a new boutique that employs people with autism.

Hogan joined a national groundswell reconsidering Confederate monuments that have become a rallying point for white nationalists. The violent protests in Charlottesville, Va., last weekend started as a rally against the removal of a monument to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

The Taney statue on the east lawn of the State House has been controversial since it was installed in 1872. Taney, Maryland’s only chief justice and former attorney general, is best remembered for writing the infamous Dred Scott decision that upheld slavery and argued blacks “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

Efforts to take down the statue, however, have been opposed by many in both political parties who see the State House as a living museum and the statue as a sign of how far the state has come.

Hogan dismissed calls to remove Taney after the 2015 mass shooting in a black Charleston, S.C., church, questioning when efforts to replace monuments would stop.

But after Charlottesville, Hogan backed calls to remove it.

“While we cannot hide from our history — nor should we — the time has come to make clear the difference between properly acknowledging our past and glorifying the darkest chapters of our history,” Hogan wrote in a statement Tuesday.

That shift, though welcomed by many Democrats and some Republicans, was not universally well received by his supporters.

Some posted on Facebook to tell Hogan they removed bumper stickers bearing his name. Another person commented on a photo of Hogan reclining on an Ocean City bench, quipping “maybe I’ll sit on that bench during the next election.”

Hogan’s spokesman Doug Mayer acknowledged the onslaught of criticism but declined to comment on it specifically.

"If the events of the last several weeks have taught us anything, it is that we want to focus on what unites us and not what divides us,” Mayer said.

While some GOP leaders declined to comment on Hogan's position, House Minority Whip Kathy Szeliga said she was "proud" of the governor. Szeliga said when she read the Dred Scott decision at the urging of a constituent, she was appalled that it compared slaves to merchandise and described black Americans as unworthy of human rights.

"We just need people to read that decision," said Szeliga, a Baltimore County Republican.

Hogan’s support among Republicans has been near unanimous since his upset win in 2014. Mileah Kromer, director of the Sarah T. Hughes Field Politics Center at Goucher College, said Hogan’s approval rating among Republicans in her last poll was 91 percent.

She called the recent displeasure with Hogan a “flash in the pan,” and said Republicans would likely still come out to support him in the 2018 election. What, she asked, were their alternatives?

“Are they ready to vote for Ben Jealous?” she said, referring to one of the governor’s more progressive Democratic challengers.

“It seems clear that it upsets his base,” Kromer said of the Taney statue removal. But she said voters will always care more about the economy and education than statues.

Hogan’s support is so broad among Republicans, she said, “He has very, very, very far to fall.”

The governor is not the only public official facing heat for his position on Taney’s statue.

Democratic Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller abstained from a vote by the State House Trust on whether to take it down. He said later in a letter to the governor that the four-member panel should have voted after a public hearing, rather than by email.

When Baltimore Sen. Joan Carter Conway heard her presiding officer sat out the vote, she was “taken aback.”

“What does that mean, Mike didn't vote?” said Conway, a Democrat. Conway, a committee chair, has also held leadership posts in the Legislative Black Caucus, which has long advocated for Taney’s statue to be removed.

She said she’s gone many rounds over the years with Miller about the propriety of a variety of Confederate statues on public grounds in Maryland.

“We're not saying take them down and break them into pieces and give every neo-Nazi a relic,” Conway said. “We're just saying put them someplace else. They don't belong on public property.

“He has a lot of conservatives in his district,” Conway said of Miller’s Southern Maryland home. “Maybe he's placating his constituents?”

Miller, who through a spokesman declined to be interviewed about the statue, also outlined several arguments in his letter for why Taney should stay.

He defended what he called Taney’s "complex history.” Miller noted that Taney freed slaves during his lifetime, comparing him favorably to George Washington, who freed them only after his death.

"We all know that the inflammatory and derogatory language and holding of the Dred Scott decision created great and lasting wounds in our Country and incited rather than avoided a Civil War," Miller wrote. "And yet, many do not know that Roger Brooke Taney also served with distinction in many State and National Offices."

Sen. William C. Smith, Jr., a first-term lawmaker from Montgomery County and member of the Black Caucus, said Miller’s position does not resonate with him.

“I can understand where he's coming from, I just don't agree with it,” Smith said. “Taney's legacy has been litigated for over a hundred years now.”

The monument's removal “is something that we've got to applaud, and I appreciate that I will no longer have to walk past the statue on my way to the chamber,” he said.

The State of Maryland Willfully Commits an Act of Objective Symbolic Violence on Southern Conservatives

Is this an Act of Attempting to Perform *Divine Violence (alter myths of sovereignty/Drive a nail into the coffin of a principle that States have rights?)?
A Democrat who "get's it"

*Divine Violence looks at the question of political theology and its connection to sovereignty. It argues that the practice of sovereignty reflects a Christian eschatology, one that proves very hard to overcome even by left thinkers, such as Arendt and Derrida, who are very critical of it. These authors fall into a trap described by Carl Schmitt whereby one is given a (false) choice between anarchy and sovereignty, both of which are bound within―and return us to―the same eschatological envelope. In Divine Violence, the author argues that Benjamin supplies the correct political theology to help these thinkers. He shows how to avoid trying to get rid of sovereignty (the "anarchist move" that Schmitt tells us forces us to "decide against the decision") and instead to seek to de-center and dislocate sovereignty so that it’s mythological function is disturbed. He does this with the aid of divine violence, a messianic force that comes into the world to undo its own mythology, leaving nothing in its wake. Such a move clears the myths of sovereignty away, turning us to our own responsibility in the process. In that way, the author argues,Benjamin succeeds in producing an anarchism that is not bound by Schmitt’s trap but which is sustained even while we remain dazzled by the myths of sovereignty that structure our world.

Divine Violence will be of interest to students of political theory, to those with an interest in political theology, philosophy and deconstruction, and to those who are interested in thinking about some of the dilemmas that the ‘left’ finds itself in today.

- James R. Martel, "Divine Violence"

For how much longer will we be able to sing the State Song?

Maryland, My Maryland

I
The despot's heel is on thy shore,
Maryland!
His torch is at thy temple door,
Maryland!
Avenge the patriotic gore
That flecked the streets of Baltimore,
And be the battle queen of yore,
Maryland! My Maryland!

II
Hark to an exiled son's appeal,
Maryland!
My mother State! to thee I kneel,
Maryland!
For life and death, for woe and weal,
Thy peerless chivalry reveal,
And gird thy beauteous limbs with steel,
Maryland! My Maryland!

III
Thou wilt not cower in the dust,
Maryland!
Thy beaming sword shall never rust,
Maryland!
Remember Carroll's sacred trust,
Remember Howard's warlike thrust,-
And all thy slumberers with the just,
Maryland! My Maryland!

IV
Come! 'tis the red dawn of the day,
Maryland!
Come with thy panoplied array,
Maryland!
With Ringgold's spirit for the fray,
With Watson's blood at Monterey,
With fearless Lowe and dashing May,
Maryland! My Maryland!

V
Come! for thy shield is bright and strong,
Maryland!
Come! for thy dalliance does thee wrong,
Maryland!
Come to thine own anointed throng,
Stalking with Liberty along,
And chaunt thy dauntless slogan song,
Maryland! My Maryland!

VI
Dear Mother! burst the tyrant's chain,
Maryland!
Virginia should not call in vain,
Maryland!
She meets her sisters on the plain-
"Sic semper!" 'tis the proud refrain
That baffles minions back again,
Maryland!
Arise in majesty again,
Maryland! My Maryland!

VII
I see the blush upon thy cheek,
Maryland!
For thou wast ever bravely meek,
Maryland!
But lo! there surges forth a shriek,
From hill to hill, from creek to creek-
Potomac calls to Chesapeake,
Maryland! My Maryland!

VIII
Thou wilt not yield the Vandal toll,
Maryland!
Thou wilt not crook to his control,
Maryland!
Better the fire upon thee roll, Better the blade, the shot, the bowl,
Than crucifixion of the soul,
Maryland! My Maryland!

IX
I hear the distant thunder-hum,
Maryland!
The Old Line's bugle, fife, and drum,
Maryland!
She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb-
Huzza! she spurns the Northern scum!
She breathes! she burns! she'll come! she'll come!
Maryland! My Maryland!

The Angel of History (flies looking backwards)

Baltimore Whitewashes Its' History in the Dead of Night...

from CBS Baltimore

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — Baltimore city crews took down confederate monuments across the city overnight.

All four — the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument on Mount Royal Avenue, the Confederate Women’s Monument on West University Parkway, the Roger B. Taney Monument on Mount Vernon Place and the Robert E. Lee and Thomas. J. “Stonewall” Jackson Monument in the Wyman Park Dell — have been removed.

On Monday night, the Baltimore City Council passed a resolution calling for the immediate deconstruction of these monuments, days after a “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia that drew white nationalists and counter-protesters turned violent.

“Unite the Right” organizers said one of the reasons behind the event was the city’s plan to remove a Robert E. Lee monument from a park there.

One woman died and several were injured when a car was plowed into a crowd of counter-protesters. Shortly after, a Virginia State Police helicopter that officials said was assisting with the rally crashed outside Charlottesville, killing the pilot and a trooper.

Hogan Colludes with Fake News to Whitewash Maryland History

from the Baltimore Sun

Gov. Larry Hogan joined a groundswell of opposition to Confederate-linked monuments on Tuesday, calling for the removal of a statue of the Supreme Court chief justice who wrote an 1857 decision that upheld slavery and denied citizenship to black Americans.

The statue of Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, a Calvert County native and author of the infamous Dred Scott decision, has stood on the front lawn of the State House in Annapolis since 1872, withstanding multiple efforts to remove it.

Hogan’s announcement probably ensures that the bronze likeness of Taney will be removed from its prominent perch in the state capital. Hogan acknowledged the statue may send an inappropriate message in a country that continues to struggle over civil rights and equality.

“While we cannot hide from our history — nor should we — the time has come to make clear the difference between properly acknowledging our past and glorifying the darkest chapters of our history,” Hogan said in a statement. “With that in mind, I believe removing the Justice Roger B. Taney Statue from the State House grounds is the right thing to do, and we will ask the State House trust to take that action immediately.”

Hogan previously supported keeping Taney in his spot at the State House, and in 2015 called removing monuments to the Confederacy “political correctness run amok.” Hogan did recall more than 100 Sons of Confederate Veterans commemorative license plates that year.

A spokesman said Tuesday that the governor was moved to change his mind following the weekend events in Charlottesville, Va., where white supremacists held demonstrations and one woman was killed and others injured when a car plowed into a crowd of counter-protesters.

“The governor was disgusted by the events in Charlottesville and rightly concluded that these memorials had become a rallying point for white supremacists and bigots,” Hogan spokesman Doug Mayer said. “Their presence on prominent public land was sending a confusing and ultimately inappropriate message.”

Following the violent and disturbing events in Charlottesville, officials around the country have re-examined their statues and memorials to Confederate figures.

Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh has pledged to take down four Confederate-inspired monuments in the city, possibly moving them to Confederate cemeteries elsewhere in the state. The memorials include the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument on Mount Royal Avenue, the Confederate Women’s Monument on West University Parkway, the Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson Monument in the Wyman Park Dell and a Taney monument on Mount Vernon Place.

Under former Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, a commission recommended getting rid of the Taney and Lee-Jackson statues, while adding signs with more historic context to the others.

In Frederick, city officials removed a bust of Taney and another of Thomas Johnson, the state’s first governor and a slaveowner, in March. The busts had flanked the entrance of Frederick’s City Hall.

In a news conference at Trump Tower in New York, President Donald J. Trump defended the cause of those who gathered in Charlottesville to protest the removal of a statue there honoring Gen. Robert E. Lee and the Confederacy. He suggested that removing such monuments could lead to others coming down, too.

“Was George Washington a slave owner? So will George Washington lose his status?” Trump said. “What do you think of Thomas Jefferson? Do you like him? ... You’re changing history. You’re changing culture.”

In Maryland, it’s up to the State House Trust to officially decide the fate of the Taney statue in Annapolis. It wasn’t clear Tuesday when the group would next meet or how long it could take to move the statue.

The Trust oversees the historic building and its grounds and has four members: Lt. Gov. Boyd Rutherford, who is Hogan’s appointee; House of Delegates Speaker Michael E. Busch; Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller and Charles L. Edson, who is chairman of the Maryland Historical Trust’s board of trustees.

Busch offered his support on Monday for getting rid of the Taney statue, while Miller said he preferred to keep the statue but would not block its removal if that was the governor’s wish.

Busch and Miller previously supported keeping Taney in his place, and pointed to the installation of a statue of Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American Supreme Court justice, in a visible and heavily trafficked spot on Lawyers Mall on the other side of the State House, as a counter to the Taney statue.

Busch, Miller and Hogan have also offered support for installing statues of abolitionist leaders Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass inside the State House.

Edson could not be reached for comment.

Busch said once the statue is removed, Hogan should set up a group to figure out what to do with it, such as destroy it or display it elsewhere.

“I’m not an expert on where the statue should go, but I don’t believe when you have a State House as historic as ours, you have Taney on the front grounds,” said Busch, an Anne Arundel County Democrat.

Even when lawmakers considered spending money on the Taney statue in 1867, there was disagreement. Some preferred the statue, sculpted by artist William Henry Rinehart, to be put in Frederick, where Taney was buried, instead of Annapolis.

Various lawmakers over the years have sponsored legislation that would have required the statue to be moved or destroyed, but the bills have never advanced in the General Assembly. The state’s Department of Legislative Services estimated last year that it would cost $77,000 to remove the statue and another $5,000 per year to store it.

Hogan’s office said the administration would find the money necessary for the statue’s removal.

An online petition asking the state to remove the Taney statue gathered nearly 850 signatures by the time Hogan announced his support for the removal.

Patrick Murray, a spokesman for the group Our Maryland, which launched the petition on Sunday, said Hogan was slow to act.

“Speaker Busch was out front on this issue, while Governor Hogan led from behind,” said Murray, who used to be director of the Maryland Democratic Party. “The governor should be embarrassed that it took two days and collective action by 848 Marylanders to get him to do the right thing.”

The likelihood that the Taney statue would be moved spurred mixed emotions in Kate Taney Billingsley, a New York woman who is descended from the chief justice.

Billingsley and her family have worked over the years to understand their ancestor’s actions and connected with Dred Scott’s descendants in an effort toward reconciliation.

Representatives from both families visited the Taney statue at the State House together in March to promote a plan to place a statue of Scott next to Taney. Over the weekend, as demonstrations took place in Charlottesville, Billingsley took part in a panel discussion in St. Louis with Scott’s descendants.

Billingsley said she wasn’t surprised by the momentum to remove the Taney statue and said she understood the reasons behind it. She said she won’t oppose the statue’s removal.

“If the community wants it gone, then it should be gone,” Billingsley said.

Still, she worries the focus on statues may distract from the broader work that Americans need to do to improve race relations and justice. Besides statues, there are roads, bridges, schools and even towns named for Taney and other figures from the Civil War era. It may be politically expedient to remove statues and symbols, Billingsley said, but much more difficult work needs to be done.

“You can tear down every single statue, but at the end of the day, the system is still broken,” she said.

Meanwhile, President Trump speaks the truth and the media fakers melt down.