I am reading a new book. What an eye opener. Oh, my goodness. Of course it might just be me, my tsunami, and every one else is completely aware of what Jefferson Cowie is saying. If you see this book in your locally owned bookstore, grab it. Please don’t order it from Amazon. No need to help Bozo’s girlfriend, Lauren Sanchez get another implant. If she gets larger tits, she’ll fall over. No one wants that.
This is the book marker I am using for this book.
This book is about the definition of freedom. I assumed I knew what the definition of freedom was. I was surprised when I looked up the definition just now. Boy was I wrong.
Hum … do you notice oxford says that similar words to freedom are entitlement to, right to, due and privilege? Well if freedom is similar to entitlement then what is the difference between freedom and anarchy? Governmental authority? Federal vs State control? It really comes down to who can back up their claim to authority. Who has the biggest army. Throw in a couple of Navy Seals for good measure. I never learned to swim so I wouldn’t be eligible to do the Seal part but maybe you could.
In 1963, while by the squeak of my teeth, I was stumbling through my senior year in high school, George Wallace was being sworn in as the new Governor of Alabama. A Confederate flag was draped in front of his podium. He was on a role.
The crowd roared. As Wallace moved on from his tribute to Barbour County, the register of his voice changed. It became louder, less dignified, even forced. The came words that split the frozen Alabama air like fire:’Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever!’ Each syllable, written by a Klansman no less, got its due. That one race-baiting line shot around the country and riveted the nation’s attention. It remains the more famous sentence of George Wallace’s life.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not appeal to him. He called it ‘an act of tyranny’, government overreach. Wallace believed he was a fighter for freedom as defined by the Oxford dictionary.
According to Jefferson Cowie, the author of this eye opening book,
Even superficial familiarity with American political discourse reveals that this word, freedom, is as vague as it is ubiquitous, as contested as it is omnipresent, as reflexive as it is inescapable, as oppressive as it is liberating.
That day Wallace challenged our nation’s most cherished ideal of what Freedom means.
Whose freedom?
Whose rights?
Who decides?
Wallace viewed the Federal Government as nothing more than centralized tyranny, taking away his freedom to dominate black people.
Wallace told his fellow Alabama citizens that when the federal government tried to outlaw white sovereignty, the federal government became their enemy. He called on his fellow white citizens to fight even a hint of the federal government coming into their sacred state. State rights ruled. In Wallace’s state, people had their birthright freedom to dominate people of color. This was the dominant tenant of the Republican party and is very much in vogue today.
For those of you who didn’t live through the 1960’s, this was when Lyndon B. Johnson was compelled to send the Federal Reserve to Wallace’s front door, forcing him to integrate his schools. It didn’t go well. I have never allowed myself to imagine being this very small child. I would have fainted and peed in my pants, but not her. No sir. She attended that school with hundreds of large angry white people shouting at her every single day as she went in and out of that building. Did she eat lunch alone? Did a federal Marshall sit with her to protect her while she was in class? Did a Marshall go with her to the bathroom so she wasn’t maimed trying to use the all white toilet?
In case you are not from this intense, country on fire time in our history, someone shot Wallace. He lived out the rest of his life in a wheelchair. I will not say ‘there is hope’ now, but I might think it.
Can you imagine being this child? 189,306,000 Americans watched this six year old child break the color barrier in 1963. The moment was monumental. It truly was.
I bet she has on a new dress, fully pressed with a little crinoline slip underneath to puff it out as was the style at the time. New socks and shoes. A pin-on flower in her hair. What is she, six? She puts soldiers going into the Battle of the Bulge to shame. I am witnessing raw courage like I’ve never seen before. This moment was on national TV. The entire country was watching to see who would win; Wallace or the Federal Government. You know what? It’s still a toss up.
Did she go to her 25th class reunion, still the only black person in site? What do you think? Made life long friends there the way you and I did?
There was one black kid in my graduating class. Actually he was the only black kid in our large high school. His name was Frank Washington. I never spoke to him. I was taught from birth to be afraid of people whose skin wasn’t the same color as mine. I just checked. Vermont is still about as white as a state can get: 99.9% white. That’s pretty darn white.
I assume we are all familiar with the Southern propaganda of The Lost Cause. It’s South’s romantic myth that they were wrongly defeated by a criminal Federal army. Robert E. Lee was a hero who fought valiantly to uphold the rights of white land owners to own people. The Lost Cause also promoted the belief that blacks were not only happy slaves but also bewildered as to how to live once they were freed.
After the Civil War Southern women began fundraising to erect statutes of Confederate leaders. Artists like Mort Kunstler were hired to paint Confederate leaders as sad, dignified leaders while attending church, displaying that God was actually on their side. Apparently they just couldn’t get their slaves to fight along side them. We don’t know why.
James Baldwin was an exceptional writer and intellectual thinker. I like this quote from him.
The definition of freedom changes, depending on who is defining it. It comes down to the freedom to limit the freedom of others. Trump has taken the polite sheen off of racism. Now it’s so blatantly obvious a person would have to be living on Mars not to see it, feel it. Now our choices are out in the open. We either condone it or rise up against it. The hidden grey choice of denying it while defending it is long gone. For me that’s progress.
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I'll check Jud, but I was looking at a different child. Yes, Ruby Bridges was the first.
Ruby Bridges. New Orleans. 1960. I think it was Eisenhower who ordered the Federal Marshals in. Still alive and active in the Civil Rights movement. A famous quote by her: "Don't follow the path. Go where there is no path and start a trail", "Racism is a grown-up disease", and "You cannot look at a person and tell whether they're good or bad".