Profiles in courage: The men and women who fought for civil rights

"Did you say that President Trump wrote a book?"

The questions came from a middle-aged African-American staffer in the Martin Luther King, Jr., room at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta. I had just turned away from the replica of MLK's library that lines the wall to the gallery. My collegian nephew Morgan, pushing me in a wheelchair, had spotted a book by Nixon on the library shelves. "Nixon wrote a book?" he asked.

I told him that all presidential candidates write books. They're campaign tools, a chance to outline their philosophy and goals should they rise to the highest office in the land. I pointed out a paperback copy of JFK's 1956 "Profiles in Courage." I had devoured that book in the months leading up to President Kennedy's election. I was a voracious reader at 9.

"Trump wrote a book," I replied to the question from the museum staffer."They don't always write them. Some use  ghost writers." It was an attempt to explain the inexplicable.

She seemed bemused by the concept. I was too. Trump's book, "Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again," was published in November of 2015, a year before the election that changed America for the worse. A glowering Trump adorns the cover, reflecting the ugliness that waits inside. He looks like your angry old neighbor, the same kind of person who flocks to Trump's white-power rallies.

"They just threw 200,000 people off the food stamp rolls," the staffer said as Morgan, my sister Mary and I exited.

"Can we be any more cruel?" I replied.

The answer, of course, is yes they can be more cruel. Trumpists demonstrate this every day.

We were in a museum that remembered some of the cruelest chapters in American history. The South's Jim Crow laws, lynchings, murders, sundowner ordinances, miscegenation statutes, segregation.

The exhibits remembered those outrages. And also celebrated the response of outraged Americans involved in the Civil Rights struggle. You know some of the names. Those mostly unknown faces look out from the exhibits. Freedom Riders, college students who came from all over to register black voters, priests, ministers, and rabbis who left their flocks to administer to the dispossessed and disenfranchised in the rural South. There are the murdered and the martyred. Four little girls killed when the KKK bombed a black Birmingham church. Emmett Till, tortured and killed in 1955 by redneck vigilantes for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Medgar Evers, the World War II veteran who challenged segregation at the University of Mississippi and was shot down in 1963 by a member of the White Citizens' Council.

Millions now know the names and faces of these brave people who challenged the  status quo.

The most frightening exhibit recreates the sit-ins at the Greensboro, N.C., Woolworth's. You sit on a lunch counter stool, place earphones over your head, and hands flat on the counter. For the next few minutes, you experience what those black college students went through in the name of equality. Name-calling, threats, slaps upside the head. The lunch counter stool vibrates with the kicks from racists in their jackboots. I was shaken when I stepped down. I've heard the same invective coming from 21st century racists.

On the way to the gift shop, we passed a large mural by Paula Scher that features protest posters from around the world. I really liked it so bought a few items in the shop that celebrates that work of art. Christmas is coming, after all. And I want to always remember this place. I also urge everyone I know to visit it.

During a bad weekend for equality, I ponder the Catholic Church's social justice traditions

By now, everyone has viewed the video of the Catholic school boys mocking tribal elder Nathan Phillips on the National Mall.

To review, students from the all-boys Covington (Ky.) Catholic High  School are shown mocking Phillips as he beats the drum and chants the American Indian Movement song. Phillips is a member of the Omaha tribe, a Vietnam veteran, and one of the organizers of the Standing Rock oil pipeline protests of 2017. Videos show white school boys wearing MAGA hats. They also chant Trumpisms such as "build the wall." Obnoxious brats, sons of privilege. One wonders where their clueless hatred came from. One need look no further than our clueless hate-filled president, who mocks Native Americans with terms such as "Pocahontas" and references to the Wounded Knee massacre. They heard these things on talk radio or watched them on Fox News. Maybe they heard mockery of ethnic minorities around their house, from parents who shouted similar things at Trump rallies. Some teachers may be to blame, not so much for spouting racism but by failing to nip it in the bud. Certainly social media spreads the hate, although to blame the Internet for these boys' behavior is too convenient. It takes them -- and the rest of us -- off the hook. That's part of the problem.

Some Facebook commenters have urged the school to expel these students. Too easy. This is a teaching moment. Boot the kids from school and they will head off to the local suburban public school where they will remain smug in their ignorance. The Catholic Church has many teaching tools at its disposal. The New Testament, especially the Sermon on the Mount, is a good place to start. WWJD when confronted with a situation where empathy and understanding were called for? Phillips said in an interview that he was trying to insert himself into a brawl. He then tried to escape the melee but the smug-faced teen in the MAGA hat stood in his way. Here was a test to show what true Christianity looks like. Big fail, boys from Covington Catholic High.

The MAGA crowd loves to poke fun of "social justice warriors." Some of us, me included, proudly claim the term. Where did I learn the precepts of social justice? First, at home, then through the Catholic Church during mass and at Father Lopez Catholic High School. The nuns and priests and lay people taught us well. It's fashionable to criticize the church for its many transgressions throughout its 2,000 years. In recent history, we have the scandal of priest sexual abuse. Over he years, Catholic orphanages turned "unwed" mothers into pariahs and treated their young charges like cattle. The church loved its crusades and its bloody Inquisition. Spain and Portugal sent its men to the New World to convert the heathen and kill any who resisted. Nathan Phillips may be a product of one of many Catholic boarding schools, where youngsters were ripped away from their families and bullied into becoming good Catholics. The Catholic Church was a major player in the horror show of history.

It also offers me solace. Not lately, as I quit going to church. I used to find peace in the ritual of the mass. In adulthood, when sinking in the swamp pf depression, I found as much relief in prayer as I did from therapy and meds. I still pray. The main thing that turned me away from the church is what I sometimes refer to as its deal with the devil. The devil is represented by the evangelicals and their handmaidens, the Republican Party. The church decided decades ago that the war against abortion was more important than the spiritual health of its millions of members in the U.S. They allied themselves with the fundamentalists to impose a litmus test on its members. There are only a few questions on the test, I guess you can call it a quiz if you want. You are in the in-crowd if you oppose abortion, birth control, sex outside of marriage, women in leadership roles (including priests), and LGBT rights. This makes you a fellow traveler with the Evangelical Right Wing, a group whose roots are in anti-Catholic bigotry. Of course, Catholics did their own Protestant-bashing. When I was a kid, I was told it was a sin to go to a Protestant church service. I've sinned repeatedly in my adulthood.

So I'm a Cultural Catholic. My roots are in Catholicism but my present is not. I can't ignore memory. My final thoughts may be of a snippet of Latin from the old mass. My Irish grandfather and his rosary beads. Sister Norbert winding up to whack one of us misbehaving boys. Thankfully, I won't be thinking of how I hated Native Americans, Hispanic immigrants, Jews, Liberals, Obama, the transgender kid who just wants to use the bathroom, and all those other people who might look or think differently from me. I won't make others feel small so I can look big. That's a blessing right there.

LATER: Just returned from the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Black Tie Banquet at the Red Lion Inn. Full house. Sat at the Laramie County Democrats' table with Chris and Dem friends. Saw so many people I've met over the years, people I've met through the NAACP, Juneteenth and the arts. All of us were celebrating Dr. King. Guest Speaker was Dr. Olenda E. Johnson, Ph.D., a Cheyenne native who was the first African-American full professor at the U.S. Naval War College. Uplifting speech from an uplifting person. She talked about the late Wyoming State Senator Liz Byrd of Cheyenne who brought up the King holiday in the legislature nine times before it was finally adopted by that body's white majority. Talk about persistence and dedication. Now I'm home and realizing how wonderful it is to get out to meet people who make a difference day by day by day. Another blessing...

No more Mr. Nice Guy

Our young people feel betrayed.

Youngsters are getting murdered at a sickening rate. After the Florida high school attack, survivors are angry. They are speaking out, staging sit-ins and planning protest marches. 

Their elders have abandoned them. As one of those elders, I am ashamed of my country. And I see myself as one of the good guys. I've worked for decades to derail the nefarious plans of crackpot right-wingers. I have allies in the fight. Fellow travelers, in the terminology of the Red Scare 1950s. In a small place such as Wyoming, we tend to know one another. Right now, we have our eyes on a state legislature dominated by wingnuts. I would say wingnuts from the hinterlands, but some of the worst ones are from the state's most populated county -- Laramie. My county. 

Sad to say, being a good guy is not enough. 

The children can teach us. Today, 100 teens from Parkland, Fla., got on a bus and took their pleas to their legislators in Tallahassee. We send them our thoughts and prayers. Scratch that. Thoughts and prayers have already been tried. I send my anger with them. They will confront a building filled with earnest faces.  Good guys -- mostly guys. They are involved in their churches, love their wives and children, are kind to animals, and care for the state of the nation.

Sad to say, being a good guy is no excuse.

To paraphrase Jesus: "You will know them by their actions." Matthew 7:20: "...by their fruits you shall recognize them." These legislators, many of them from rural America, are good Christians and read the Bible. Perhaps they neglected this section of Matthew. To use another phrase, "actions speak louder than words." What are their actions? They rail against immigrants. They demonize their LGBTQ neighbors. They cut food and medical benefits for those who need it most. They hatch plans to stop blacks and Hispanics from voting. They cut funds to education. They give carte blanche to gun dealers. 

You know them by their actions. So why do you keep voting for them? I ask these questions of Wyomingites, too. Florida may be in the news but we are seeing some ridiculous behavior in our own reps. In Wyoming, we are looking at a bill to allow conceal and carry in churches. Really? Have these people no sense of right and wrong? Didn't they get their butts paddled if they lied and cheated and bore false witness against their neighbors? Didn't they get Atticus Finch or Andy of Mayberry-style lectures when they broke the rules? They show no evidence of this. Apparently, you can't trust the words of good guys.

Our children and grandchildren now show us the way. I am not going to rain on their parade. Tread carefully, I could say. Be patient. After all, the world won't change with one fit of outrage, one speech, one march. But they will have to discover these hard facts as they work for change. 

As many aging activists will tell you, the struggle for black civil rights took hundreds of years. Women's Movement veterans can tell you the same thing. The struggle for gay rights didn't begin with Stonewall. Environmentalists have been publicly advocating for change since the first Earth Day in 1970.  But those battles have been going on a lot longer as people discovered that their fate is tied to that of the planet. 

This is beginning to sound like a graduation speech. I apologize. Aging good guys see themselves as founts of wisdom even though they may be just tired and afraid. I advise you -- wear sunscreen and don't take any wooden nickels.  

And don't let the good guys get in your way. 

Those long drawn-out arguments among Baby Boomers brought us Trump

"Wow, so disappointed in America right now."

That was my daughter Annie's reaction this morning on Facebook.

I said similar things during my 65 years, even before the arrival of social media. I said it in November 1972 after Nixon clobbered McGovern. I was 21 then, even younger than Annie. I lived in Massachusetts, a little bubble of Democratic blue among all the red. We thought McGovern would stop the war and make the U.S. a kinder and more peaceful place. I worked the graveyard shift at a Boston hospital. While all of us orderlies and nurses and techs walked around like zombies, one of the physicians made the rounds and said that Nixon is the one now, suckers, and all of you lefties are in trouble. We were, but somehow we made it through. Most of us anyway. More than 22,000 more Americans and another million Vietnamese died between November's election and the declared end of the war in April 1975. Many GIs returned with wounds to the body and the soul. The rest of us moved on, or thought we did.

Despite the election landslide, Nixon won by less than 1 percent of the popular vote. As always, it was the Electoral College who clinched the win. And the southern strategy, which counted on turning all of those white middle class Democrats into Republicans. He used their hatred of civil rights and college activists to stoke the flames of hatred. Fear and hatred can work, as we just rediscovered.

Nixon went to China. He resigned, which made us lefties all warm and fuzzy. Jimmy Carter won the election over Gerald Ford. Carter was a Southerner but we thought he had warm and fuzzy feelings about America. He would usher in a new progressive era. Instead, in 1980, we go the shining city on the hill with Reagan. I lost friends over that election. Many arguments with family members. Those arguments continued into the presidencies of both Bushes.

The arguments continue. It has been important to act, to be involved. It's a life's work, not something you do for a couple weeks every four years. It helps me get out of bed in the morning. I continue to live my life as the best possible human being I can be.

One thing is clear. The arguments of 1972 continue. They will continue as long as the cohort of Baby Boomers remain upright. The scared ones will continue to be fearful and to vote those fears. Liberals like me will keep open minds and welcome the new, including those children who make up the Millennials. We've left them in the lurch. Perhaps it was the argumentative nature of our generation, caught in the whirlwind of civil rights, women's rights, LGBT rights, and the changing demographics of immigration. We never quite resolved all of those differences. And now they have emerged again with the presidency of Donald Trump.

Presente! Keep on making trouble.

For Baby Boomers, the arguments go on forever

Big news from the Brookings Institution: Baby Boomers are in each other’s faces – again. According to a Brookings report:

“The primary political output of the divided boomers has been frustrating gridlock and historically low evaluations of congressional performance.”

As an early cohort Boomer (born 1950), I’ve been engaging in political arguments since my high school days. I grew up Catholic, attended Catholic school and went to mass regularly with my large family – I’m the oldest of nine children. For most of my childhood and teenhood, arguments with my parents revolved around curfews and whether rock was devil music (Parents: Hell Yes; Mike: Hell No.)  Vietnam wasn’t a hot topic – not yet, anyway. Civil rights, drugs, abortion, and all of the rest.

My first two years if college was one long political argument. I was a ROTC guy, but didn’t want to be. But I also didn’t want to go to Vietnam. I solved this by smoking pot, skipping classes and engaging in dorm-room political arguments that raged into early mornings, punctuated with long sessions of devil music. 

Over the decades, family gatherings have been filled with toasts to our continued good health and raging political arguments that may last an entire Thanksgiving weekend.  Most of my friends are boomers. Many are liberals, even here in Wyoming, but others are not. I no Longer have lunch with some conservative friends because it leads to indigestion on all of our parts.

These arguments will rage until we can rage no more. They can be traced back to the divisions caused by the Vietnam War. You might say: “That was a long time ago, guys – can’t you get over it?”

In a word, no. The divisions are deep and will only be solved by cohort replacement – death of all of the Boomers.

Go back to spring of 1970. On April 30 of that year, Pres. Nixon announced that U.S. troops would be sent into Cambodia. We had been told that Vietnam was winding down and now here was news that is was winding up instead. That led to protests in college campuses across the U.S. The most radical one was held at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, a place I had never heard of until then. On May 2, KSU students burst down the ROTC building. That was a bit off a shock to us ROTC guys at University of South Carolina. We spent quite a bit of time there. Attended naval science classes there during the week. Played basketball in its gym at night and on weekends. We assembled there in uniform weekly for our drills. Following Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968, demonstrators had trashed our ROTC building. There were no real signs of the damage when I arrived in September 1969.

Ghosts remain.

We make enormous decisions when we’re young. We hope to receive guidance from our elders. We don’t always get it, or the right kind. So we end up making decisions on our own that come back to haunt us later. Then, at 64, we have to forgive our younger selves for our ignorance and our passion. I can remember how lonely and afraid I was at 19. It’s as if it happened yesterday. I was supposed to be a man but I was just a little boy.

I was sensitive and gifted with a great memory. That helped me lead a life of empathy. It also contributed to my passion as a writer. I could have turned out otherwise. Nixon parlayed a natural distrust of pointy-headed intellectuals and anti-American college brats into an election strategy. At a NYC demonstration after Kent State, hard hats rallied for Nixon. Most of these blue collar guys were Democrats then. By the next election (1972), Vietnam and student protestors and civil rights had turned them all into resentful Republicans. Many of their sons and daughters continued this policy of resentment. Some of them remained liberals and activists who continued to march for peace and justice. After the Vietnam War and civil rights struggles came the women’s movement and LGBT rights. The anti-nuke movement and swarms of environmentalists. All of these people looking for special treatment! Reagan and his policies arose from that resentment. That, eventually, gave rise to the Tea Party, that privileged group of Boomers who are wildly indignant about nearly everything.

But for me and my fellow liberals, there were more struggles ahead, more wars to protest, more inequalities to be addressed.

So Baby Boomers continue to argue. Not sure how our descendants will see us. Hippies. The Me Generation. Warmongers. Peaceniks. The generation who brought us the Millennials with all of their faults (everybody gets a trophy!). The generation that despoiled the planet with their excesses and stood by and did nothing.

Argumentative? You bet. And don’t expect the conflict to cease as long as we have breath enough to hurl an invective.

Wyoming ACLU shares some tips for election day

Many people in Wyoming have already voted. I'm not one of them, as I'm an election day voter kind of guy. Not sure why really. Voting has always been a pleasurable experience, even when the results don't turn out as you hoped. It is a civic duty, crucial to our democracy. Too bad that half of all Americans don't bother to vote. Wonder how they sleep at night?

I've heard all of the arguments. It doesn't matter who you vote for. It's all rigged. Democrats and Republicans are all the same. I can't get off work. That last one is a real problem, especially for those who work hourly jobs or more than one job or don't have their own transportation or speak English as their second language. Republicans have been working overtime to make voting harder.

Here are some voting tips from the Wyoming ACLU:

Are you ready for Election Day? With less than a week until Election Day, it’s important to remember that every vote counts! 

In order to participate in the democratic process all voters need to understand the rules in our state, register on time, and show up at the correct polling place.  

Follow these steps to make sure can vote in this year’s election:

• Election Day is Tuesday, November 4

• Wyoming polls are open from 7 am to 7 pm 

• Make sure you are registered to vote. If you are not already registered, Wyoming allows qualified voters to register at the polls on Election Day. However, you must bring an acceptable form of ID to the polls for same day registration. (example: passport or Wyoming driver’s license)

•  Locate your polling place.

• Get to the polls early to avoid the rush

• Contact your Wyoming County Clerk’s office with any further questions

• Learn more about the ACLU’s efforts to protect voting rights.

We encourage all Wyoming voters to make their voice heard and vote in the upcoming election.

Voting is one of our most basic rights, and it is the fundamental right which all of our civil liberties rest. 

Freedom to read under threat in South Carolina

As a Wyomingite, I can't really complain about another state's legislature's interference in the affairs of higher learning without bringing up some of our own home-grown depredations.

Remember how loudly Wyoming Republican lawmakers complained when former leftie radical Bill Ayers was invited to speak at UW? And, to be fair, it wasn't only Republicans. UW grad and Democratic Governor Dave Freudenthal lodged a complaint about Ayers. And remember how lawmakers screamed about the climate-change-themed "Carbon Sink" sculpture at UW? They fulminated long and loud enough to force the UW administration to spirit away the sculpture in the dead of night, burning parts of it in the UW power plant. 

So now the South Carolina Legislature wants to slash the budgets of the College of Charleston and University of South Carolina Upstate for forcing their delicate southern flowers to read LGBTQ-themed books. Conservatives in the S.C. Legislature discovered that College of Charleston and USC students were reading gay literature. Ironic in that a South Carolina-based press published Out Loud: The Best of Rainbow Radio -- that's Hub City in Spartanburg. I hate to bring this up but publishing is one of the "creative economy" enterprises that has helped Spartanburg show up on all those "best places to live" lists the past few years. Maybe that's what really upset the legislators. After all, literacy and creative economy and smart growth are all part of the liberal conspiracy to ruin America. Next thing you know, the U.N. will be making all of us read gay books, forcing us to live in Hobbit homes, confiscating our cars and making us ride fat-tire bicycles.

This comes from Friday's The Guardian:

The College of Charleston ran into trouble after assigning Alison Bechdel's acclaimed Fun Home to students; the graphic novel details Bechdel's coming out as a lesbian as a teenager, and her relationship with her closeted father. The University of South Carolina Upstate, meanwhile, was teaching a collection of radio stories about being gay, Out Loud: The Best of Rainbow Radio. Earlier this year, funding to the two schools of almost $70,000 (£40,000) was threatened because of the choices, described as pornographic and "forcing an agenda on teenagers" by their opponents; the issue has been under debate in the state senate this week, and authors have been coming together to stand up for LGBTQ rights.

I know a bit about the conservative South Carolina Legislature. I was a student at USC in Columbia for two years, 1969-1971. Those were stormy years.Vietnam and Kent State and riots in the streets. The Lege met right down the street from USC and its members fumed when long-haired hippies marched on the storied campus, its horseshoe once the site of a field hospital for troops wounded defending the city from that devil Sherman. Big Daddy Gov sent in the National Guard and state goons to put an end to it, busting a few heads in the process. It wasn't the National Guard who did the dirty work. They were mostly our age and not nearly as angry about protesters as the billy-club-swinging white state cops who were the age of our fathers. Heavy-handed techniques against students are not new to South Carolina or any other state. We saw some prime examples during the Occupy Movement.

So what to do? Hell, it's graduation time! Who has time to pay attention to anal-retentive legislators when there are parties to attend and beer to drink? And we still don't have a job!

Some of the most outspoken and radical people I ever met were in Columbia during that earlier trying time. You have to remember that Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. were southerners, as were Jimmy Carter and Millard Fuller, the founder of Habitat for Humanity. Not to mention all of those wonderful southern writers such as Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor and Harry Crews and Lee Smith and all the rest. Richard Ford has been outspoken in his opposition to this latest travesty (witness the graphic above).

Go to Writers Speaking Out Loud to voice your discontent. Remember that many outspoken peace and civil rights and free speech and freedom to read advocates walked before you. Speak out like you mean it!

Reading Mark Kurlansky, from "Salt" to "Dancing in the Street"

The first book I read by Mark Kurlansky was called "Salt: A World History."

I picked up a paperback copy when it came out in 2002 or 2003. I was at one of those midnight release parties for a Harry Potter book, don't remember which one. I had my 10-year-old daughter Annie in tow, along with her friend Crystal. They each hugged a copy of a Harry Potter tome.

"What did you get, Dad?" Annie asked.

I showed her the Kurlansky book.

"Salt? What's it about?"

"The history of salt."

"The history of salt?" She looked over at Crystal.They burst out laughing.

"What's so funny?"

"Wow, sounds exciting."

They were giddy as I paid for my book and Harry Potter's latest adventure. As we drove home, I could hear the duo in the back seat. They'd be quiet and one would say "salt." Gales of tween laughter. It went on for a week or so and, as happens with most things, the glee faded.

I recently picked up a copy of Kurlansky's latest book at the library (thanks to Rodger McDaniel for mentioning in one of his posts).

"What are you reading Dad?" asked Annie, now in college.

"I showed her the cover of 'Ready for a Brand New Beat: How Dancing in the Street Became the Anthem for a Changing America." I told her that it was the history of one of Motown's most famous songs.

A vocal music major, Annie knows about Motown. I took out the laptop and played for her the Motown video of "Dancing." It's black and white in more ways than one. Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, garbed in striped dresses, sing on stage and in front of a group of white people gathered in a park. The group obviously is lip-synching. But the song? It's amazing.

Annie thought so too. I've been hearing her sing a line or two from the song. It's a catchy tune, one I remember blasting from my transistor radio in 1964, my first summer in Florida.

Calling out around the world
Are you ready for a brand new beat?

I was 13. I was ready for a brand new beat. And a new school. And a whole new atmosphere, one that included steamy heat, hurricanes, bugs, beaches and segregation.

I wasn't quite ready for all of that. We'd moved from Denver, where it was rare to see a black person. It was the same for the other places I'd lived -- eastern Washington state and Wichita, Kansas. Most of what I knew about "negroes" was what I gleaned from the evening news broadcasts of lunch counter sit-ins and white cops turning fire hoses on marchers. There had been lynchings in other parts of the South -- our neighboring Confederate states of Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi. Florida had plenty of "sundown towns." If you were black and found in one after sundown, you got your ass beat or dragged to jail or maybe even lynched, if the law had links to the KKK.

Now, a sweeping new study of lynching in the South has found that blacks were more likely to be lynched in Florida than in any other state. Mississippi had the most lynchings, although Florida had the most per capita (black population).

The five-year study, by researchers at the University of Georgia, has uncovered previously unrecorded lynchings, found that some never happened and provided new details of the brutal practice, which flourished in the South between 1882 and 1930

But it wasn't all bad.

Daytona is also the home of Bethune-Cookman University, founded in 1904 by educator and civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune.

The baseball stadium at Daytona's City Island now is called Jackie Robinson Stadium.

From Wikipedia:

One reason the stadium is named for Jackie Robinson is the fact that Daytona Beach was the first Florida city to allow Robinson to play during the 1946 season's spring training. Robinson was playing for the Triple-A Montreal Royals, who were in Florida to play an exhibition game against their parent club, the Brooklyn Dodgers. Both Jacksonville and Sanford refused to allow the game due to segregation laws. Daytona Beach permitted the game, which was played on March 17, 1946. This contributed to Robinson breaking the Major Leagues' color barrier the following year when he joined the Dodgers. The refusal by Jacksonville, previously the Dodgers' spring training home, led the team to host spring training in Daytona in 1947 and build Dodgertown in Vero Beach for the 1948 season. A statue of Robinson is now located at the south entrance to the [Daytona] ballpark.

Sanford, of course, was the site of the infamous Trayvon Martin shooting.

Summer's here and the time is right
For Dancing in the Street

Great book. Recommended read.

Jack Pugh takes on the intolerance of Rep. Lynn Hutchings in latest WTE column

Wyoming boasts a number of thoughtful and erudite commentators on the Liberal side. You can find some of the on my right sidebar under WY Progressives: Rodger McDaniel, Jeran Artery and Meg Lanker-Simons. There are others, too. Jack Pugh writes and occasional column for our local paper, the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle. He wrote a terrific op-ed in yesterday's WTE focused on the recent legislative debates over a proposed domestic partnerships bill. Since the WTE has a very hinky and incomplete web site, Rodger reprinted the column on Facebook. Here's Jack's column:

Martin Luther King, Fred L. Shuttlesworth and Charles K. Steele founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957. It became the driving force in the civil rights movement. Its principal tactic was non-violent civil disobedience. “We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline”, said Dr. King.

I thought of that when I read Laramie County Republican Representative Lynn Hutchings’ crude, brutish, and ignorant comments about homosexuals in her testimony against the Domestic Partnership bill. 

Rep. Hutchings is an African-American. It is always breathtaking to encounter raw, naked bigotry from someone whose race has endured so much of it. 

Describing homosexuals as dirty, diseased and dangerous, Rep. Hutchings told the committee that sexuality has no genetic basis, and that sexual orientation is a choice that can be changed “through the help of others”. 

She went on to express offense at comparing the struggle for full citizenship rights for homosexuals to the black struggle for civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s. 

I sent Rep. Hutchings an email asking her some questions about her comments. I didn’t expect an answer, and didn’t get one. 

I asked for her source for the statement “science does not have evidence of a genetic involvement in sexuality”. 

I asked her about her understanding of sexuality as it relates to gender. 

I asked her if her homophobia was religion based. 

I asked her what her experience in civil rights activism was.

And I asked her this: were the principles and philosophy that fueled the civil rights movement limited to the movement or were they universal in scope? 

When ten percent of a species shows a particular trait, as humans do with homosexuality, biologists want to know why. In 1993 Dean Hamer and Simon LeVay published scientific papers in which they offered evidence of a genetic trigger that they said was a biological basis for homosexuality. Other scientists over the next few years supported their findings. Still others have challenged them. 

Debate among biologists and geneticists about the biological origins of homosexuality continues and the question is not scientifically settled. 

Many, if not most, psychologists and psychiatrists assume that homosexuality has a biological basis, and is not a choice based on environment or nurture. Testimony from people subjected to the “help of others” cited by Rep. Hutchings has revealed an ugly form of psychological brutality, and has led to these practices being outlawed in California. 

It was the denial of the civil rights comparison that interested me most. 

Rep. Hutchings wasn’t around when the civil rights movement started and she was a little child when the great events of the movement unfolded. She is one of those lucky ones who never had to run the personal risk of fighting for her rights. Others did that for her. 

That good fortune carries with it a responsibility, however, and that is to understand the nature of the freedom that was fought for, to forever nurture it, and to include everyone in its embrace. 

When Rep. Hutchings denies full citizenship rights to homosexuals she betrays the sacrifices of those who preached and marched and were beaten and sometimes killed in the name of those rights. 

She betrays the courage of the four college students in Greensboro, North Carolina, whose lonely sit-in at a Woolworth’s lunch counter became a national symbol of injustice. 

She betrays the courage and the memory of the Freedom Riders, who endured insult and beatings as they rode their buses across the South to witness against racism. 

She betrays the memory of the civil rights workers, black and white, murdered and buried in an earthen dam in Mississippi because they were registering blacks to vote. 

She betrays the sacrifice of James Reeb of Casper, Wyoming, a Unitarian minister serving in Boston, who was beaten to death with steel pipes by racist thugs at the march from Selma to Montgomery in Alabama.

She betrays the courage and conviction of all those, black and white, who linked arms and stood with each other as brothers and sisters and demanded justice from their country. 

And she betrays Martin Luther King’s vision that all of us, no matter who we are, will know the dignity of the Free. That is what the civil rights movement was about for those of us who joined it, and it is what the movement for civil rights for our homosexual brothers and sisters is about. 

Rep. Hutchings and others like her have won the day for now. But they are on the wrong side of history and the wrong side of the future and the wrong side of a vast moral question.

Just as racial discrimination was beaten, so this discrimination shall be beaten. The wall will be taken down, one brick at a time if necessary, but it will come down.

UW Days of Dialogue features screening of film about civil rights pioneer Bayard Rustin

The Martin Luther King, Jr., Days of Dialogue at the University of Wyoming in Laramie features a full slate of events Jan. 21-25. On Tuesday, Jan. 22, 6:30 p.m., there will be a screening of the film, "Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin." It will be followed by a reception with the Cheyenne NAACP. Location: Wyoming Union West Ballroom. FMI: http://www.mlkdod.com/

Selma Civil Rights March recalled by photo-essay by Wyoming's Wayne Thomas

EDITOR'S NOTE: This was a grad school project by Wayne Thomas that actually never appeared in Doubletake Magazine, which had folded by 2012. Too bad, as it was a great print mag. 

Wayne Thomas of Powell, Wyo., ranges far and wide for his photographs. His photo-essay examining the 47th anniversary of the Selma, Ala., Civil Rights March is featured in the spring 2012 issue of Doubletake Magazine Online. Wayne returned to Dallas County, Ala., to document the area in photos and story in this very moving piece. Read it (and view it) at http://www.waynethomasphotography.com/selma. 

Our family moved from Colorado to the South in 1964. What had only been a distant struggle seen on TV, now became something we experienced every day. In case you don't remember what happened in Alabama back in 1965, maybe these historic photos will jog your memory:

James Karales (American, 1930–2002). Selma-to-Montgomery March for Voting Rights in 1965. Photographic print. Located in the James Karales Collection, Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University.

John Lewis (on the ground), head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, is beat up by Alabama State Troopers on Bloody Sunday in Selma, Ala. From the Encyclopedia of Alabama.

Martin Luther King, Jr. (center) joins others in the march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., on March 21, 1965.

Felicia Follum's "Make it Plain" exhibit to be held in conjunction with the Shepard Symposium at UW

Artist and fellow progressive blogger Felicia Follum (see blogroll on right sidebar) will be featured in an exhibition "Make it Plain," March 19-April 2 in Gallery 234, room 004 in the lower level of the UW Union. A reception for the exhibit is scheduled for Wednesday, March 28, from 6-8 p.m. Admission to both events is free and open to the public. It’s an African-American view of history and religion, as well as an exploration of the ways we persecute members of society today. This exhibit is being shown in conjunction with the Shepard Symposium for Social Justice , March 28-31.

UPDATE: Occupy Cheyenne's plan for Monday's Martin Luther King, Jr., Day march

Here's an update on the Martin Luther King Day Jr. Day march in Cheyenne.

On Wednesday, after taking our cause to Monday's NAACP meeting, I advised Occupy Cheyenne people not to bring signs to Monday's Martin Luther King, Jr., Day march in downtown Cheyenne. My advice was a bit premature -- my hummingbirdminds' impulsivity took over. Yesterday I heard from Gloradene Stevenson, president of Love & Charity Club, organizer of the march. She was out of town. Gloradene said that Love & Charity has no problem with us bring respectful signs to the march.

So bring your signs. Participate in the march and accompanying MLK Day events.

Cheyenne NAACP and Occupy Cheyenne search for common ground

The next meeting of the NAACP Unit #4108 is scheduled for Monday, January 9, beginning at 6:30 p.m., in the Sunflower Room of the Laramie County Public Library in downtown Cheyenne.  The meeting will focus on finalizing events and activities for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Jan. 16 and February’s Black History Month.


NAACP members are invited to General Assembly meeting sponsored by Occupy Cheyenne on Thursday, Jan. 5, 5:30-7 p.m., at the Paramount Cafe, 1607 Capitol Ave., in downtown Cheyenne. We have common ground in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, philosophy of nonviolent protests against the powers and principalities that join forces to keep us all down. More info at Occupy Cheyenne on Facebook.

Heart Mountain Interpretive Learning Center opens Aug. 20

The Heart Mountain Interpretive Learning Center opens the weekend of Aug. 19-21 at the Park County site of the former World War II Internment Camp. I was at the site most recently in June 2010. The center's building was finished but the interior was still bare. While built of modern materials, the structure duplicates the look of the tar-paper barracks than once housed more than 10,000 Japanese-Americans, most of them U.S. citizens. Reporter Don Amend wrote about his tour of the almost-complete center in the Aug. 9 Powell Tribune.

The center will open officially with a dedication ceremony at 10 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 20, and the foundation is preparing for nearly 1,000 former internees, their families, friends and supporters of the center.

Longtime U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), a decorated World War II, veteran, will present the keynote address. Inouye will be introduced by former U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson and former Congressman Norman Mineta, who became lifelong friends as Boy Scouts while Mineta’s family was interned at the camp.

Others who will participate in the grand opening are Tom Brokaw, former news anchor and current special correspondent for NBC; Los Angeles County Superior Judge Judge Lance Ito; Irene Hirano Inouye, president of the US-Japan Council; and Dr. Melba Vasquez, president of the American Psychological Association.

Brokaw, whose book “The Greatest Generation” describes the experiences of those who fought World War II, will speak at a Pilgrimage Dinner at 6 p.m. Friday, Aug. 19.

Mineta, Ito, Hirano Inouye and Vasquez will participate in a panel discussion on various perspectives of the Japanese-American experience and its lessons for civil rights issues today during a grand opening banquet at 6 p.m. Saturday.

Go to http://www.powelltribune.com/news/item/8608-heart-mountain-relocation-center-final-preparations

"Freedom Riders" asks: Would you put your life on the line?

An amazing documentary. My wife and I saw it on WY Public TV several weeks ago. Donate to Truthout and get a fee copy.