Black History Book Club

The True Story Of Africans

2011-12-19T08:24:00.000-08:00

The Africans a look back into the history of Africa with scholar Ali Mazrui to examine major influences on this complex continent: indigenous heritage, Western culture, and religion. This series explores in depth Africa’s geography, history, anthropology, and religions.

Discover the rich diversity of Africa and confront the problems that have resulted from different forms of government.

The Africans Episode 1 to 9 on 4 DVDs Written And Presented By Professor Ali. A. Mazrui.

Now on DVD

For More Information click Here: The True Story Of Africa

Discription Of The Africans : The True Story Of Africans

1. The Nature of a Continent Geography’s influence on history is the topic of this episode, which explores the roles that water, desert, and equatorial climate have played in developing African culture and civilization.

2. A Legacy of Lifestyles What constitutes “family” in African culture? This segment examines matrilineal, patrilineal, and polygamous traditions as well as the impact of modern cities on family ties.

3. New Gods The roles of Christian missionaries, Western secularism, Muslim sects, Egyptian pharaohs, and native religions are discussed in visits to Senegal, Zaire, and Egypt.

4. Tools of Exploitation This program traces the colonial economic legacy, the development of slavery, and European control of Africa’s natural resources, with special attention to the roles played by Belgium and Great Britain.

5. New Conflicts Urbanization, warrior traditions, European-created national boundaries, the Islamic jihad tradition, and nationalist movements are problems of Africa’s post-colonial period, examined in this episode.

6. In Search of Stability In a continent where more than 70 coups have taken place in the last 30 years, the question of governing effectively is critical. This segment compares African military regimes, one-party states, Marxism in Mozambique, and the styles of the presidents of Tanzania and Zaire.

7. A Garden of Eden in Decay? More than 70 million Africans suffer from malnutrition while their countries export food to Europe. Economic and agricultural failures and successes are examined in Algeria, Ghana, and Zimbabwe.

8. A Clash of Cultures In every area of life — dress, behavior, law, worship, and language — Africans have a triple heritage that often sends conflicting signals. The African struggle to evolve new, effective, and essentially African ways of doing things is the topic of this episode.

9. Global Africa Africa’s role in international politics and economics, from U.N. participation to cobalt production and the political crisis in South Africa, is the focus of this concluding episode. Other issues include the International Monetary Fund, food aid, and tourism.

The Africans Episode 1 to 9 on 4 DVDs Written And Presented By Professor Ali. A. Mazrui.

Now on DVD

For More Information click Here: The True Story Of Africa

Bill Clinton speaks about Philip Emeka Emeagwali invention

2010-11-12T16:50:00.000-08:00

{ KNOWLEDGE IS KING. }
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BLACK HISTORY BOOK CLUB

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Great Risks Bring Greater Success - Dr. Ben Carson

2010-11-12T16:43:00.000-08:00

Great Risks Bring Greater Success - Dr. Ben Carson

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YOUR NUMBER ONE EDUCATIONAL SOURCE

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KNOW THY SELF!!!

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They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America By Ivan Van Sertima

2009-12-10T13:41:00.000-08:00

Book Description

They Came Before Columbus reveals a compelling, dramatic, and superbly detailed documentation of the presence and legacy of Africans in ancient America. Examining navigation and shipbuilding; cultural analogies between Native Americans and Africans; the transportation of plants, animals, and textiles between the continents; and the diaries, journals, and oral accounts of the explorers themselves, Ivan Van Sertima builds a pyramid of evidence to support his claim of an African presence in the New World centuries before Columbus. Combining impressive scholarship with a novelist’s gift for storytelling, Van Sertima re-creates some of the most powerful scenes of human history: the launching of the great ships of Mali in 1310 (two hundred master boats and two hundred supply boats), the sea expedition of the Mandingo king in 1311, and many others. In They Came Before Columbus, we see clearly the unmistakable face and handprint of black Africans in pre-Columbian America, and their overwhelming impact on the civilizations they encountered.

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Iceman Inheritance : Prehistoric Sources of Western Man's Racism, Sexism and Aggression By Michael Bradley

2009-12-10T13:38:00.000-08:00

Book Description:

Revised 2001 edition of the original text.
New Foreword, Notes and Appendices.
Includes relevant anthropological and DNA research since 1978.

Michael Bradley delves back into our glacial past during the last Ice Age in order to find the prehistoric sources of the white race's aggression, racism and sexism. Relying on the researches of Alexander Marshack, Carleton Coon, Konrad Lorenz, S.L. Washburn, Ralph Solecki and others, Bradley offers a persuasive argument that the white race, the Neanderthal-Caucasoids, are more aggressive than others because of ancient sexual maladaptation. And, in tracing the effects of Caucasian aggression, Bradley offers an uncomfortable and all-too-plausible explanation for the pattern of human history.

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The Destruction of Black Civilization Part 1

2009-07-06T14:00:00.000-07:00

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The Destruction of Black Civilization Dr Chancellor Williams Part 2

2009-07-06T13:57:00.000-07:00

The Destruction of Black Civilization, Dr Chancellor Williams - Part 3 Final

2009-07-06T13:55:00.000-07:00

THE GRAND MASTER TEACHER DR. BEN PT 1

2009-06-07T04:14:00.000-07:00

THE GRAND MASTER TEACHER DR. BEN PT 2

2009-06-07T04:13:00.000-07:00

THE GRAND MASTER TEACHER DR. BEN PT 3

2009-03-08T04:03:00.000-07:00

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THE GRAND MASTER TEACHER DR. BEN PT 4

2009-03-08T03:57:00.000-07:00

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THE GRAND MASTER TEACHER DR. BEN PT 5

2009-03-08T03:54:00.000-07:00

Dr. John Henrik Clarke Interview

2009-03-04T15:20:00.000-08:00

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The Egyptian Forty Two Commandments

2009-03-01T01:44:00.000-08:00

MA'AT - Right and Truth

Long before the so called ten commandments the Ancient Egyptian Developed the highest and most sophisticated cosmic law till our modern times, the Egyptian commandments included Rape and Forced Sex and harming Beasts and animals and much more.

The 42 commandments were split up into 3 classifications of sins: Transgressions against Mankind, sins against God/s and personal transgressions

When Transgressions were against Mankind, the punishment fitted the crime. Egypt was relatively crime free. Crime was mainly as a result of barbaric immigrants. The death penalty was seldom used, and then only under unusual circumstances. Periods as long as 150 years went by without a single execution.

The punishment for sins against God/s was banishment from the religion including banishment from the community where the God was worshipped. Depending on the God against whom the sin was committed this could cause banishment from Egypt.

The Judgement of, and subsequent punishment for, Personal Transgressions was in the hands of the Gods and took place after death during the judgment of Ma'at.

Transgressions Against Mankind

1. I have not committed murder, neither have I bid any man to slay on my behalf;

2. I have not committed rape, neither have I forced any woman to commit fornication;

3. I have not avenged myself, nor have I burned with rage;

4. I have not caused terror, nor have I worked affliction;

5. I have caused none to feel pain, nor have I worked grief;

6. I have done neither harm nor ill, nor I have caused misery;

7. I have done no hurt to man, nor have I wrought harm to beasts;

8. I have made none to weep;

9. I have had no knowledge of evil, neither have I acted wickedly, nor have I wronged the people;

10. I have not stolen, neither have I taken that which does not belong to me, nor that which belongs to another, nor have I taken from the orchards, nor snatched the milk from the mouth of the babe;

11. I have not defrauded, neither I have added to the weight of the balance, nor have I made light the weight in the scales;

12. I have not laid waste the plowed land, nor trampled down the fields;

13. I have not driven the cattle from their pastures, nor have I deprived any of that which was rightfully theirs;

14. I have accused no man falsely, nor have I supported any false accusation;

15. I have spoken no lies, neither have I spoken falsely to the hurt of another;

16. I have never uttered fiery words, nor have I stirred up strife;

17. I have not acted guilefully, neither have I dealt deceitfully, nor spoken to deceive to the hurt another;

18. I have not spoken scornfully, nor have I set my lips in motion against any man;

19. I have not been an eavesdropper;

20. I have not stopped my ears against the words of Right and Truth;

21. I have not judged hastily, nor have I judged harshly;

22. I have committed no crime in the place of Right and Truth;

23. I have caused no wrong to be done to the servant by his master;

24. I have not been angry without cause;

25. I have not turned back water at its springtide, nor stemmed the flow of running water;

26. I have not broken the channel of a running water;

27. I have never fouled the water, nor have I polluted the land.

Sins

28. I have not cursed nor despised God, nor have I done that which God does abominate;

29. I have not vexed or angered God;

30. I have not robbed God, nor have I filched that which has been offered in the temples;

31. I have not added unto nor have I diminished the offerings which are due;

32. I have not purloined the cakes of the gods;

33. I have not carried away the offerings made unto the blessed dead;

34. I have not disregarded the season for the offerings which are appointed;

35. I have not turned away the cattle set apart for sacrifice;

36. I have not thwarted the processions of the god;

37. I have not slaughtered with evil intent the cattle of the god;

Personal Transgressions

38. I have not acted guilefully nor have I acted in insolence;

39. I have not been overly proud, nor have I behaved myself with arrogance;

40. I have never magnified my condition beyond what was fitting;

41. Each day have I labored more than was required of me;

42. My name has not come forth to the boat of the Prince

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Christianity - Fraud Of The Age - Myth Stolen From Egypt 1/3

2009-03-01T01:42:00.000-08:00

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Christianity - Fraud Of The Age - Myth Stolen From Egypt 2/3

2009-03-01T01:40:00.000-08:00

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Christianity - Fraud Of The Age - Myth Stolen From Egypt 3/3

2009-03-01T01:39:00.000-08:00

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IMHOTEP: GOD OF ARCHITECTURE-MATHU ATER PT. 1/10

2009-03-01T01:08:00.000-08:00

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IMHOTEP: GOD OF ARCHITECTURE-MATHU ATER PT. 2/10

2009-03-01T01:07:00.000-08:00

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IMHOTEP: GOD OF ARCHITECTURE-MATHU ATER PT. 3/10

2009-03-01T01:06:00.000-08:00

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IMHOTEP: GOD OF ARCHITECTURE-MATHU ATER PT. 4/10

2009-03-01T01:05:00.000-08:00

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IMHOTEP: GOD OF ARCHITECTURE-MATHU ATER PT. 5/10

2009-03-01T01:04:00.000-08:00

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IMHOTEP: GOD OF ARCHITECTURE-MATHU ATER PT. 6/10

2009-03-01T01:03:00.000-08:00

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IMHOTEP: GOD OF ARCHITECTURE-MATHU ATER PT. 7/10

2009-03-01T01:02:00.000-08:00

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FREEMASONRY EXPOSED!!! PT.2 SETI ON THE HUNT!!

2009-03-01T00:56:00.000-08:00

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FREEMASONRY EXPOSED!!! PT.3 SETI ON THE HUNT!!

2009-03-01T00:54:00.000-08:00

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FREEMASONRY EXPOSED!!! PT.4 SETI ON THE HUNT!!

2009-03-01T00:53:00.000-08:00

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THE BOOK OF KNOWING

2009-03-01T00:39:00.000-08:00

THE EVOLUTION OF RA

Neb-Er-Tchar

The Lord Creator & His Five Manifestations

Ptah Atum RA Aten Amen

Creativity Illumination Energy Architect Invisible

Creative Illumines Justified Constructive Hidden

Lord to the uttermost limit

Lord of time and space,

The Ever lasting God of the Universe.

One who possesses all, the God Almighty

The invisible power which filled all space, Eternity and Infinity

Oh Re, come to me, oh guide

Thus said Ra, the Lord of All, Lord of the Utmost limits,

Neb-Er-Tchar spoke after he had come into Existence:

I am he who came into being in the form of the

Kheper Ra

I am He who comes into being and brings into being.

When I came into being, existence itself came into being.

All Existence came into being after I came into Existence.

Many were the beings that came forth

from the commands of my mouth.

I made the universe, and have created all that there in

I am the Creator of the world,

and it was I who fashioned it with my hands

before there was any beginning

What my heart conceived came to pass

and when I have spoken my word it came to pass,

and it shall endure forever.

All Manifestation came into being out of my Desire,

that aroused me to create the universe.

I am the creator of all which came into being,

I rose out of my own creation,

the celestial Primordial Ocean, My father, Nu,

which existed in a state of inertness and helplessness.

that is to say, I am the Father & the Mother of My own Existence.

I am the creator of everything which came into being:

Now the things which I created,

and which came forth out of my divine Utterance

were exceedingly many.

Heaven had not come into being,

Earth did not exist, nor the children of the earth,

and all the creeping things, had not been created yet.

I myself raised them up from out of Nu

the primeval Cosmic Ocean, from a state of helpless inertness.

I found no place where on I could stand

in the vast empty space which I created

Heka is My Name, I am my own Will,

I uttered the name of the thing, on which to stand,

and all things, and places, came into being.

I laid the foundation of all things

by Thoth my Heart and Maat, my Order

I live with my daughter Maat,

'one within me, the other around me'.

I created everything which had form.

Laying the foundations to all in my heart and Desire.

It was I who came into being in my manner

of being, taking on existence as what exists.

Thus I came into existence in the Primal Time.

After that beginning a host of ways

of being came into existence,

for before then there was no mode

of existence whatsoever in this world.

All that I did I accomplished alone,

before any other being came into existence

to create alongside me in these places.

There I created the modes of being

with the energy in me.

There I created in Nu

Nu,( the cosmos) while still drowsy,

while I had yet to find any ground

on which to stand upright.

But then my heart was filled with energy,

the design of creation appeared before me,

and I accomplished everything I wanted to do, being alone.

Conceiving designs in my heart,

I created a different mode of existence

and multitudinous ways of being were born of the Existent.

I was one by myself,

for I had not emitted from myself the Shu ( Air, Space)

I had not spat out from myself Tefnut; (Moisture, Water)

there existed none, who could create my will.

I laid the foundations of things in my own heart of Divine Conciseness,

and there came into being the multitudes of my creation,

which came into being from my creation

which were born from my created Souls

which arose from what they brought forth.

I embraced my Shadowy Hand as a wife,

I Copulated and had union with my hand,

and I poured seed into my own mouth,

and I sent forth from my seed energies

and begot the form of my energies

I sneezed out Shu (Light & Air) and Spat out Tefnut (Moisture).

Tefnut (Moister & Water) is my living daughter

she shall be together with her brother Shu ( Air, Gas, Space);

his name is Life and her name is Maat (Balance, Truth, Justice and Order).

My father Nu Said:

My Eye was covered up behind Shu and Tefnut,

but after two hen periods had passed

from the time when they departed from me,

from being one, I became three gods, (the Power of Trinity)

and I came into being in Matter.

Then Shu and Tefnut rejoiced from out of the inert watery mass

Where in they and I were,

and they brought to me my Eye (my Vision).

Now after these things I gathered together my members,

and I wept over them, and men and women sprang into being

from the tears which came forth from my Eye.

And when my Eye (my Vision) came to me,

and found that I had made another Eye in place where it was ,

It was wroth with, raged at me,

whereupon I endowed it

(i.e., the (second Vision ) with the splendor which I had made for the first Eye (first Vision),

and I made it to occupy its place in my Face,

and henceforth it ruled throughout all this earth.

When there fell on them their moment through plant-like clouds,

I restored what had been taken away from them,

and I appeared from out of the plant-like clouds.

I created creeping things of every kind,

and everything which came into being from them.

Shu and Tefnut brought forth Seb and Nut;

and Seb and Nut brought forth Osiris, and Heru-khent-an-maati,

and Set, and Isis, and Nephthys at one birth, one after the other,

and they produced their multitudinous offspring in this earth.

I am Ptah, I am not created, but simply Am.

I am who have created existence

by means of my heart and my tongue

by speaking the names of all things,

I Ptah caused them to be.

There came into being as the heart

and there came into being as the tongue

in the form of Atum.

I am The mighty Great One Ptah,

who transmitted life to all Netjeru,

as well as to their kas...

Thus it happened that the heart and tongue

gained control over every other member of the body,

by teaching that I am in every body

and in every mouth of all gods, all humans,

all cattle, all creeping things,

and every thing that lives,

by thinking and commanding everything that I wish

Thus all the gods were formed

and My Ennead was completed.

Indeed, all the divine order really came into being

through what the heart thought

and the tongue commanded.

Thus the ka-spirits were made...

by this speech... Thus were made all work and all crafts,

the action of the arms, the movement of the legs,

and the activity of every member,

in conformance with this command which the heart thought,

which came forth through the tongue,

and which gives value to everything.

from my Utterance of my Name, Word and will.

I am the Heka that existed before duality had yet come into being.

I am Atum who gives sweet air which you breath
for I am this egg which is in the Great Cackler,
I am the guardian of this great prop

which separates the earth from the sky.
If I live, it will live;

if I grow old, it will grow old;
if I breathe the air, it will breathe the air.
I am he who splits iron,

I have gone round about the egg,
I am even the Lord of Tomorrow.

I am who have created Maat, the divine order

I am master of destiny

I died and rose again, I am resurrection,

and the way into a another future life.

I am Ta-Tenen as the primeval mound

I am the breath of life

which emerged from the throat of the Benu bird,

I am Re in whom Atum appeared in the primeval

Naught, infinity, darkness and nowhere."

I am Atum! When I came into being

I rose up as a High Promodial Hill,
I shone as the Benben Stone in the Temple of the Phoenix."

"I am Atum-Kheper Ra, I became high on the height,

I rose up as a benben in the Mansion of the Benu."

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ISIS UNVEILED: MYSTERIES OF BLACK DIVINITY!!

2009-03-01T00:28:00.000-08:00

Isis was a goddess in Ancient Egyptian religious beliefs, whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. She was worshipped as the ideal mother and wife, patron of nature and magic; friend of slaves, sinners, artisans, the downtrodden, as well as listening to the prayers of the wealthy, maidens, aristocrats and rulers.

Shortly after 2,500 B.C., during the fifth dynasty, the first written records concerning the worship of Isis appear. The Romans would spread her worship to the farthest reaches of their empire through cultural contact with the Egyptians, and particularly after Egypt was annexed to the Roman state in 30 B.C.

This followed the invasion of Egypt by Alexander the Great and a Greek occupation for three hundred years beginning in 330 B.C. Although by differing degrees, the Greeks and the Romans adopted deities from the Egyptian pantheon and often interpreted some of their own gods as having a parallel with some of the Egyptian deities. This had the effect of giving Roman and Greek deities an earlier history—and could serve to imply a longer history for themselves. Many of the Egyptian deities were merged and renamed with those of the Greeks and Romans, but a few remained relatively unchanged. Isis, as the protector of all Egypt, would retain her unique Egyptian nature while also being worshipped in other cultures.

The goddess Isis (the mother of Horus) was the first daughter of Geb, god of the Earth, and Nut, the goddess of the Overarching Sky, and was born on the fourth intercalary day. At some time Isis absorbed some characteristics of Hathor a powerful deity. He represented the pharaohs and provided them with protection. In later myths about Isis, she had a brother, Osiris, who became her husband, and she then was said to have conceived Horus. Isis was instrumental in the resurrection of Osiris when he was murdered by Set. Her magical skills restored his body to life after she gathered the body parts that had been strewn about the earth by Set. This myth became very important in later Egyptian religious beliefs.

Isis is also known as the goddess of simplicity, from whom all beginnings arose, and was the Lady of bread, of beer, and of green fields. In later myths, Ancient Egyptians believed that the Nile River flooded every year because of her tears of sorrow for her dead husband, Osiris. This occurence of his death and rebirth was relived each year through rituals. The worship of Isis eventually spread throughout the Greco-Roman world, continuing until the suppression of paganism in the Christian era.

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The Book of Thoth

2009-03-01T00:19:00.000-08:00

Princess Ahura: The Magic Book, c. 1100 BCE

We were the two children of the King Merneptah, and he loved us very much, for he had no others; and Naneferkaptah was in his palace as heir over all the land. And when we were grown, the king said to the queen, "I will marry Naneferkaptah to the daughter of a general, and Ahura to the son of another general." And the queen said, "No, he is the heir, let him marry his sister, like the heir of a king, none other is fit for him." And the king said, " That is not fair; they had better be married to the children of the general." And the queen said, "It is you who are not dealing rightly with me." And the king answered, "If I have no more than these two children, is it right that they should marry one another? I will marry Naneferkaptah to the daughter of an officer, and Ahura to the son of another officer. It has often been done so in our family."

And at a time when there was a great feast before the king, they came to fetch me to the feast. And I was very troubled, and did not behave as I used to do. And the king said to me, "Ahura, have you sent some one to me about this sorry matter, saying, "Let me be married to my elder brother?'" I said to him, "Well, let me marry the son of an officer, and he marry the daughter of another officer, as it often happens so in our family." I laughed, and the king laughed. And the king told the steward of the palace,"Let them take Ahura to the house of Naneferkaptah tonight, and all kinds of good things with her." So they brought me as a wife to the house of Naneferkaptah; and the king ordered them to give me presents of silver and gold, and things from the palace.

And Naneferkaptah passed a happy time with me, and received all the presents from the palace; and we loved one another. And when I expected a child, they told the king, and he was most heartily glad; and he sent me many things, and a present of the best silver and gold and linen. And when the time came, I bore this little child that is before you. And they gave him the name of Merab, and registered him in the book of the "House of Life."

And when my brother Naneferkaptah went to the cemetery of Memphis, he did nothing on earth but read the writings that are in the catacombs of the kings and on the tablets of the "House of Life," and the inscriptions that are seen on the monuments, and he worked hard on the writings. And there was a priest there called Nesiptah; and as Naneferkaptah went into a temple to pray, it happened that he went behind this priest, and was reading the inscriptions that were on the chapels of the gods. And the priest mocked him and laughed. So Naneferkaptah said to him, "Why are you laughing at me? "And he replied, "I was not laughing at you, or if I happened to do so, it was at your reading writings that are worthless. If you wish so much to read writings, come to me, and I will bring you to the place where the book is that Thoth himself wrote with his own hand, and which will bring you to the gods. When you read but two pages in this, you will enchant the heaven, the earth, the abyss, the mountains, and the sea; you shall know what the birds of the sky and the crawling things are saying; you shall see the fishes of the deep, for a divine power is there to bring them up out of the depth. And when you read the second page, if you are in the world of ghosts, you will become again in the shape you were in on earth. You will see the sun shining in the sky, with all the gods, and the full moon."

And Naneferkaptah said, "By the life of the king! Tell me of anything you want done, and I'll do it for you, if you will only send me where this book is." And the priest answered Naneferkaptah, "If you want to go to the place where the book is, you must give me a hundred pieces of silver for my funeral, and provide that they shall bury me as a rich priest." So Naneferkaptah called his lad and told him to give the priest a hundred pieces of silver; and he made them do as he wished, even everything that he asked for. Then the priest said to Naneferkaptah, "This book is in the middle of the river at Koptos, in an iron box; in the iron box is a bronze box; in the bronze box is a sycamore box; in the sycamore box is an ivory and ebony box; in the ivory and ebony box is a silver box; in the silver box is a golden box; and in that is the book. It is twisted all round with snakes and scorpions and all the other crawling things around the box in which the book is; and there is a deathless snake by the box." And when the priest told Naneferkaptah, he did not know where on earth he was, he was so much delighted.

And when he came from the temple, he told me all that had happened to him. And he said, "I shall go to Koptos, for I must fetch this book; I will not stay any longer in the north." And I said, "Let me dissuade you, for you prepare sorrow and you will bring me into trouble in the Thebaid." And I laid my hand on Naneferkaptah, to keep him from going to Koptos, but he would not listen to me; and he went to the king, and told the king all that the priest had said. The king asked him, "What is it that you want?" And he replied, "Let them give me the royal boat with its belongings, for I will go to the south with Ahura and her little boy Merab, and fetch this book without delay." So they gave him the royal boat with its belongings, and we went with him to the haven, and sailed from there up to Koptos.

Then the priests of Isis of Koptos, and the high priest of Isis, came down to us without waiting, to meet Naneferkaptah, and their wives also came to me. We went into the temple of Isis and Harpokrates; and Naneferkaptah brought an ox, a goose, and some wine, and made a burnt offering and a drink offering before Isis of Koptos and Harpokrates. They brought us to a very fine house, with all good things; and Naneferkaptah spent four days there and feasted with the priests of Isis of

Koptos, and the wives of the priests of Isis also made holiday with me.

And the morning of the fifth day came; and Naneferkaptah called a priest to him, and made a magic cabin that was full of men and tackle. He put the spell upon it and put life into it, and gave them breath, and sank it in the water. He filled the royal boat with sand, and took leave of me, and sailed from the haven: and I sat by the river at Koptos that I might see what would become of him. And he said, "Workmen, work for me, even at the place where the book is." And they toiled by night and by day; and when they had reached it in three days, he threw the sand out and made a shoal in the river. And then he found on it entwined serpents and scorpions, and all kinds of crawling things around the box in which the book was; and by it he found a deathless snake around the box. And he laid the spell upon the entwined serpents and scorpions and all kinds of crawling things which were around the box, that they would not come out. And he went to the deathless snake, and fought with him, and killed him; but he came to life again, and took a new form. He then fought again with him a second time; but he came to life again, and took a third form. He then cut him in two parts, and put sand between the parts, that he should not appear again.

Naneferkaptah then went to the place where he found the box. He uncovered a box of iron, and opened it; he found then a box of bronze, and opened that; then he found a box of sycamore wood, and opened that; again he found a box of ivory and ebony, and opened that; yet, he found a box of silver, and opened that; and then he found a box of gold; he opened that, and found the book in it. He took the book from the golden box, and read a page of spells from it. He enchanted the heaven and the earth, the abyss, the mountains, and the sea; he knew what the birds of the sky, the fish of the deep, and the beasts of the hills all said. He read another page of the spells, and saw the sun shining in the sky, with all the gods, the full moon, and the stars in their shapes; he saw the fishes of the deep, for a divine power was present that brought them up from the water. He then read the spell upon the workmen that he had made, and taken from the haven, and said to them, "Work for me, back to the place from which I came." And they toiled night and day, and so he came back to the place where I sat by the river of Koptos; I had not drunk nor eaten anything, and had done nothing on earth, but sat like one who is gone to the grave.

I then told Naneferkaptah that I wished to see this book, for which we had taken so much trouble. He gave the book into my hands; and when I read a page of the spells in it, I also enchanted heaven and earth, the abyss, the mountains, and the sea; I also knew what the birds of the sky, the fishes of the deep, and the beasts of the hills all said. I read another page of the spells, and I saw the sun shining in the sky with all the gods, the full moon, and the stars in their shapes; I saw the fishes of the deep, for a divine power was present that brought them up from the water. As I could not write, I asked Naneferkaptah, who was a good writer and a very learned one; he called for a new piece of papyrus, and wrote on it all that was in the book before him. He dipped it in beer, and washed it off in the liquid; for he knew that if it were washed off, and he drank it, he would know all that there was in the writing.

We went back to Koptos the same day, and made a feast before Isis of Koptos and Harpokrates. We then went to the haven and sailed, and went northward of Koptos. And as we went on, Thoth discovered all that Naneferkaptah had done with the book; and Thoth hastened to tell Ra, and said, "Now, know that my book and my revelation are with Naneferkaptah, son of the King Merneptah. He has forced himself into my place, and robbed it, and seized my box with the writings, and killed my guards who protected it." And Ra replied to him, "He is before you, take him and all his kin." He sent a power from heaven with the command, "Do not let Naneferkaptah return safe to Memphis with all his kin." And after this hour, the little boy Merab, going out from the awning of the royal boat, fell into the river: he called on Ra, and everybody who was on the bank raised a cry. Naneferkaptah went out of the cabin, and read the spell over him; he brought the body up because a divine power brought him to the surface. He read another spell over him, and made him tell of all that happened to him, and of what Thoth had said before Ra. We turned back with him to Koptos. We brought him to the Good House, we fetched the people to him, and made one embalm him; and we buried him in his coffin in the cemetery of Koptos like a great and noble person.

And Naneferkaptah, my brother, said, "Let us go down, let us not delay, for the king has not yet heard of what has happened to him, and his heart will be sad about it." So we went to the haven, we sailed, and did not stay to the north of Koptos. When we were come to the place where the little boy Merab had fallen into the water, I went out from the awning of the royal boat, and I fell into the river. They called Naneferkaptah, and he came out from the cabin of the royal boat. He read a spell over me, and brought my body up, because a divine power brought me to the surface. He drew me out, and read the spell over me, and made me tell him of all that had happened to me, and of what Thoth had said before Ra. Then he turned back with me to Koptos, he brought me to the Good House, he fetched the people to me, and made one embalm me, as great and noble people are buried, and laid me in the tomb where Merab my young child was.

He turned to the haven, and sailed down, and delayed not in the northof Koptos. When he was come to the place where we fell into the river, he said to his heart, "Shall I not better turn back again to Koptos, that I may lie by them? For if not, when I go down to Memphis, and the king asks after his children, what shall I say to him? Can I tell him, "I have taken your children to the Thebaid and killed them, while I remained alive, and I have come to Memphis still alive?=" Then he made them bring him a linen cloth of striped byssus; he made a band, and bound the book firmly, and tied it upon him. Naneferkaptah then went out of the awning of the royal boat and fell into the river. He cried on Ra; and all those who were on the bank made an outcry, saying, "Great woe! Sad woe! Is he lost, that good scribe and able man that has no equal?"

The royal boat went on without any one on earth knowing where Naneferkaptah was. It went on to Memphis, and they told all this to the king. Then the king went down to the royal boat in mourning, and all the soldiers and high priests and priests of Ptah were in mourning, and all the officials and courtiers. And when he saw Naneferkaptah, who was in the inner cabin of the royal boat---from his rank of high scribe---he lifted him up. And they saw the book by him; and the king said, "Let one hide this book that is with him." And the officers of the king, the priests of Ptah, and the high priest of Ptah, said to the king, "Our Lord, may the king live as long as the sun! Naneferkaptah was a good scribe and a very skillful man." And the king had him laid in his Good House to the sixteenth day, and then had him wrapped to the thirty-fifth day, and laid him out to the seventieth day, and then had him put in his grave in his resting-place.

I have now told you the sorrow which has come upon us because of this book.

The Tale of Nefrekeptah

There are other tales of magic from Egypt, notably the stories of Prince Setna, son and court scribe of Rameses II, and Setna's young son, Se-Osiris.

While reading ancient texts, Setna discovered the story of Nefrekeptah, who had been a much more powerful magician than he, because he had read the 'Book of Thoth'. Determined to find and read this text, he asked his brother to accompany him to find the tomb of Nefrekeptah, son of Amenhotep.

When Setna had made his way into the tomb, to the central chamber where Nefrekeptah was laid to rest, he found the body of the prince lying wrapped in its linen bands, still and awful in death. But beside it on the stone sarcophagus sat two ghostly figures, the kas of a beautiful young woman and a boy - and between them, on the dead breast of Nefrekeptah lay the 'Book of Thoth'.

Honouring the kas, Setna begged them to let him take the papyrus. If they would not let him take it, he had the magic power to take it from them by force.

The ka of the woman, Ahura, let it be known to Setna that the papyrus brought nothing but trouble to Nefrekeptah. She knew this, because she had been Nefrekeptah's wife, and the ka of the boy had been Merab, their son. She and her son's bodies were lying at Koptos at the very edge of Eastern Waset (Thebes).

She and Nefrekeptah had been children of the pharaoh, and had wed by custom. Soon, their son had been born, yet Nefrekeptah cared more for knowledge. He thirsted after the wisdom of ancient texts and magic spells from ancient tombs. One day, while studying ancient shrines, a priest came and started taunting Nefrekeptah:

"All that you read there is but worthless. I could tell you where lies the 'Book of Thoth', which the god of wisdom wrote with his own hand. When you have read its first page you will be able to enchant the heaven and the earth, the abyss, the mountains and the sea; and you shall know what the birds and the beasts and the reptiles are saying. And when you have read the second page your eyes will behold all the secrets of the gods themselves, and read all that is hidden in the stars."

Nefrekeptah would do anything to get the text. The priest asked for a hundred bars of silver for his funeral and that he would be buried like a pharaoh when he died. Without hesitation, Nefrekeptah did as the priest asked, desperate to find where the ancient wisdom of Thoth was kept.

"The Book of Thoth lies beneath the middle of the Nile at Koptos, in an iron box. In the iron box is a box of bronze; in the bronze box is a sycamore box; in the sycamore box is an ivory and ebony box; in the ivory and ebony box is a silver box; in the silver box is a golden box - and in that lies the Book of Thoth. All around the iron box are twisted snakes and scorpions, and it is guarded by a serpent who cannot be slain."

Hurrying home, Nefrekeptah joyfully told Ahura about his meeting with the priest, and where the 'Book of Thoth' lay. But Ahura feared that evil would come of this. She begged her husband not to search for the papyrus. She felt in her heart that only sorrow would come of this.

Rather than listening to his wife, Nefrekeptah set off to pharaoh, who approved his mission. Setting up the royal barge, Nefrekeptah took his wife and son to Koptos. Reaching their destination, the priests and priestesses of Isis welcomed the family, and Nefrekeptah made sacrifices to the goddess and her son Horus.

On the fifth day, Nefrekeptah left his family and worked great magic at the river.

First he created a magic cabin that was full of men and tackle. He cast a spell on it, giving life and breath to the men, and he sank the magic cabin into the river. Then he filled the Royal Boat with sand and put out into the middle of the Nile until he came to the place below which the magic cabin lay. And he spoke words of power, and cried, "Workmen, workmen, work for me even where lies the Book of Thoth!" They toiled without ceasing by day and by night, and on the third day they reached the place where the Book lay.

Removing the sand, Nefrekeptah raised the Book till they were at a shoal in the river. And it was as the priest had said - around the iron box, snakes and scorpions twined. They were living, moving beings, ready to kill anyone who dared go near the box. Yet at Nefrekeptah's magic cry, they became quiet and still.

Unharmed, Nefrekeptah went to the iron box, which was guarded by the serpent that could not die. His magic was useless against the reptile, so with his sword, Nefrekeptah lopped off its head. Immediately, the serpent joined together, and made ready to stop the magician from reaching the iron box. Once again, Nefrekeptah beheaded the snake, and tried to toss the head into the river. Yet again, the serpent's head flew to the body and the reptile was alive, protecting the iron box.

Nefrekeptah saw that the serpent could not be slain, but must be overcome by cunning. So once more he struck off its head. But before head and body could come together he put sand on each part so that when they tried to join they could not do so as there was sand between them - and the serpent that could not die lay helpless in two pieces.

Opening the iron box, he found a bronze box. Then a box of sycamore wood. A box of ebony and ivory followed, then a box of silver and finally one of gold, as the priest had said. Opening the gold box, Nefrekeptah found the 'Book of Thoth'.

Reading the first page, Nefrekeptah found that he suddenly had power over the heavens and the earth, the abyss, the mountains and the sea. He understood what the beasts and the fishes were saying. Reading the next spell, he found out the secrets of the sun in the heavens, the moon and the stars. He also could see the gods themselves, who were hidden from the eyes of mortals.

Taking the papyrus, he ordered the workmen to return him to Koptos, where his wife was waiting for him. Offering her the papyrus, Ahura read the first and second spells, and had all of the knowledge that her husband had learned from the Book.

Then Nefrekeptah took a clean piece of papyrus and wrote on it all the spells from the 'Book of Thoth'. He took a cup of beer and washed off the words into it and drank it so that the knowledge of the spells entered into his being.

As they left on the Royal Barge to return home, their son Merab fell into the river and sank out of sight. Using the Book, Nefrekeptah said the correct spell, but the little boy was dead. There was no magic that could bring him back to life. Calling Merab's ka, he asked his son what had caused his death. The parents knew that it was not a normal drowning.

And the ka of Merab said, "Thoth the great god found that his Book had been taken, and he hastened before Amen-Ra, saying, 'Nefrekeptah, son of Pharaoh Amenhotep, has found my magic box and slain its guards and taken my Book with all the magic that is in it.' And Ra replied to him, 'Deal with Nefrekeptah and all that is his as it seems good to you: I send out my power to work sorrow and bring a punishment upon him and upon his wife and child.' And that power from Ra, passing through the will of Thoth, drew me into the river and drowned me."

Heartbroken, they left Merab's body for embalming at Koptos. Soon, the burial of their son was done, and, though sad, Nefrekeptah said that they should return home. Pharaoh should know of what happened, and though sad at the loss of his grandson, he would rejoice in the fact that they had the 'Book of Thoth'.

As they set out, they came to the place where Merab had drowned. Ahura felt the power of Ra take her, and snatch her off the barge. She fell into the river, and she too was drowned. Calling for her ka Nefrekeptah heard the same story, and returned once more to Koptos for his wife's burial.

Setting out for home once more, the boat reached Mennefer (Hikuptah, Memphis). Pharaoh boarded the vessel when it reached port, only to find that Nefrekeptah himself was dead, the 'Book of Thoth' bound on his chest. Pharaoh buried Nefrekeptah with the Book, and the kas of Ahura and Merab came to watch over the man they both loved.

"And now I have told you all the woe that has befallen us because we took and read the Book of Thoth - the book which you ask us to give up. It is not yours, you have no claim to it, indeed for the sake of it we gave up our lives on earth."

The Tale of Setna

Rather than heeding the words of the ka, Setna still wished for the knowledge himself. Again he asked for the Book, or he would take it by force. The two ka were in fear of Setna's powers, and drew back. Now the ka of Nefrekeptah came out from his body to face the magician.

Offering Setna the change to win the Book in a game of Senet, Nefrekeptah and the mortal settled down to play. Nefrekeptah's skill at the game was great, and each time Setna lost, magic was cast upon him so he sank into the ground. When Setna's head was the only part of his body above the ground, he called out for his brother to help him. "Anherru! Run to the palace and beg pharaoh for the Amulet of Ptah. Set it on my head before the last game is lost, and I will be saved!"

Doing as bidden, Anherru begged the favour of pharaoh, then rushed to the priests at the Temple of Ptah. They gave him the Amulet, telling him to rescue his brother from the evil contest with the dead. Making it back to the tomb, just as Setna was making his last move, Anherru leapt forward and dropped the Amulet of Ptah on Setna's head. Before Nefrekeptah could make Setna disappear into the ground forever, Setna sprang free and grabbed the papyrus from the corpse. He and his brother fled from the tomb.

As they went they heard the ka of Ahura cry, "Alas, all power is gone from him who lies in this tomb."

But the ka of Nefrekeptah answered, "Be not sad: I will make Setna bring back the Book of Thoth, and come as a suppliant to my tomb with a forked stick in his hand and a fire-pan on his head."

Returning to the palace, Setna told pharaoh all that had happened, returning the Amulet. Rameses counseled Setna to return the Book, as it had caused much evil and he would be forced to return it eventually, but Setna would not listen. He took it with him, and started studying the great spells, reading from it to those who sought his wisdom.

One day, Setna saw a beautiful maiden, who he immediately fell head over heels in love with. Soon he learned that her name was Tabubua, and that she was the daughter of the high priest of Bast, at Per-Bast (Bubastis). Setna soon forgot everything, except Tabubua. He even forgot the 'Book of Thoth', desiring only to win this girl as his own. Before too long, he received a message from her, saying that if he wanted her, he was to meet her in secret at her desert palace outside Per-Bast (Bubastis).

Setna made his way thither in haste, and found a pylon tower in a great garden with a high wall round about it. There Tabubua welcomed him with sweet words and looks, led him to her chamber in the pylon and served him with wine in a golden cup.

Setna, who was already married, spoke of his love for Tabubua. She replied that the two of them were destined to be together, but she could not endure a rival. She asked him to write up a divorce from his current wife, lest she come between them. And she asked him to give her children to him, that they could be given as sacrifices to Bast, lest they plot evil against her, their step mother.

In his ardour, Setna said that it would be as she wished, and immediately wrote out her requests, writing that his wife should be cast out to starve, and that his children should be given to feed the sacred cats at the Temple of Bast.

And when he had done this, she handed him the cup once more and stood before him in all her loveliness, singing a bridal hymn. Presently terrible cries came floating up to the high window of the pylon - the dying cries of his children, for he recognized each voice as it called to him in agony and then was still. But Setna drained the golden cup and turned to Tabubua, saying, "My wife is a beggar and my children lie dead at the pylon foot, I have nothing left in the world but you - and I would give all again for you. Come to me, my love!"

When he reached out for his new bride, a change suddenly came over her, and she became a corpse, and she and the palace disappeared, leaving Setna alone and naked in the desert.

Reaching home, to his great relief, Setna found his wife and children alive and well. He had learned his lesson. He took the 'Book of Thoth', intent on returning it to Nefrekeptah. Telling Rameses what had happened, the pharaoh told his son that the only way he would not die, now, was to return the Book to the tomb 'as a suppliant, carrying a forked stick in your hand and a fire-pan on your head'.

In humility, the Book was returned. Nefrekeptah, though, told him that the dream of Tabubua would come true unless he would bring the bodies of Ahura and Merab to be buried with him in his tomb. They had no wish to be parted forever, wishing to be together when the 'Day of Awakening' came to pass.

Travelling speedily to Koptos, Setna searched for records of the burial details of Ahura and Merab. Search as he might, he could not find a single clue as to their burial spots. In despair, thinking that the death of his family was near, he offered a great reward to any who could help him. Before too long, an old man came to speak with him. He remembered his grandfather's grandfather showing him the tomb of the woman and child.

A house had been built on the spot, at the edge of Waset, and Setna bought the house to pull it down. When the house was demolished by Pharaoh's soldiers, Setna had the men dig beneath it. Soon they came to a rock-cut tomb, deep in the earth. Inside the tomb lay the bodies of Ahura and Merab. The old man suddenly transformed, and he turned into the ka of Nefrekeptah and faded from sight. Setna then took the bodies back, and buried them with great ceremony in Nefrekeptah's tomb.

Then at Pharaoh's command they heaped sand over the low stone shrine where the entrance to the tomb was hidden; and before long a sandstorm turned it into a great mound, and then leveled it out so that never again could anyone find a trace of the tomb where Nefrekeptah lay with Ahura and Merab and the Book of Thoth, waiting for the Day of Awakening when Osiris shall return to rule over the earth.

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WORDS SPOKEN BY HIM WHOSE NAMES ARE HIDDEN.

2009-03-01T00:17:00.000-08:00

RA, The Lord to the Up most Limits speaks
before those who still the storm, at the sailing of the entourage:

'Proceed in peace!
I shall repeat to you four good deeds
that my own heart made for me
within the serpent's coils, for love of stilling evil.
I did four good deeds within the portals of the horizon:

I made the four winds

that every man might breathe in his place.
This is one deed thereof.

I made the great inundation,

that the wretched should have power over it like the great.
This is one deed thereof.

I made every Human like his fellow;
I did not ordain them to do evil,

it was their own hearts which destroyed that which I Uttered.
This is one deed thereof.

I made that their hearts should refrain from ignoring the Death,
for love of making offerings to the Gods of the nomes.
This is one deed thereof.

I created the Gods from my sweat.

Humans are from the tears of my eye.

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The Proverbs of Amenemope also known as: The Instruction of Amenemope

2009-03-01T00:14:00.001-08:00

Introduction

The beginning of the instruction about life,
The guide for well-being,
All the principles of official procedure,
The duties of the courtiers;
To know how to refute the accusation of one who made it,
And to send back a reply to the one who wrote,
To set one straight on the paths of life,
And make him prosper on earth;
To let his heart settle down in its chapel,
As one who steers him clear of evil;
To save him from the talk of others,
As one who is respected in the speech of men.

Written by the superintendent of the land, experienced in his office,
The offspring of a scribe of the Beloved Land,
The Superintendent of produce, who fixes the grain measure,
Who sets the grain tax amount for his lord,
Who registers the islands which appear as new land over the cartouche of His Majesty,
And sets up the land mark at the boundary of the arable land,
Who protects the king by his tax rolls,
And makes the Register of the Black land.
The scribe who places the divine offerings for all the gods,
The donor of land grants to the people,
The superintendent of grain who administers the food offerings,
Who supplies the storerooms with grain
A truly silent man in Tjeni in the Ta-wer nome,
One whose verdict is "acquitted" in Ipu,
The owner of a pyramid tomb on the west of Senut,
As well as the owner of a memorial chapel in Abydos,
Amenemope, the son of Kanakht,
Whose verdict is "acquitted" in the Ta-wer nome.

For his son, the youngest of his children,
The least of his family,
Initiate of the mysteries of Min-Kamutef,
Libation pourer of Wennofre,
Who introduces Horus upon the throne of his father,
His stolist in his august chapel,

...........................................................................

The seer of the Mother of God,
The inspector of the black cattle of the terrace of Min,
Who protects Min in his chapel,
Hoermmaakheru is his true name,
A child of an official of Ipu,
The son of the sistrum player of Shu and Tefnut,
The chief singer of Horus, the Lady Tawosret.

He Says: Chapter 1

Give your years and hear what is said,
Give your mind over to their interpretation:
It is profitable to put them in your heart,
But woe to him that neglects them!
Let them rest in the shrine of your insides
That they may act as a lock in your heart;
Now when there comes a storm of words,
They will be a mooring post on your tongue.

If you spend a lifetime with these things in your heart,
You will find it good fortune;
You will discover my words to be a treasure house of life,
And your body will flourish upon earth.

Chapter 2

Beware of stealing from a miserable man
And of raging against the cripple.
Do not stretch out your hand to touch an old man,
Nor snip at the words of an elder.
Don't let yourself be involved in a fraudulent business,
Not desire the carrying out of it;
Do not get tired because of being interfered with,
Nor return an answer on your own.
The evildoer, throw him the canal,
And he will bring back its slime.
The north wind comes down and ends his appointed hour,
It is joined to the tempest;
The thunder is high, the crocodiles are nasty,
O hot-headed man, what are you like?
he cries out, and his voice (reaches) heaven.
O Moon, make his crime manifest!
Row that we may ferry the evil man away,
For we will not act according to his evil nature;
Lift him up, give him your hand,
And leave him the hands of god;
Fill his gut with your own food
That he may be sated and ashamed.
Something else of value in the heart of God
Is to stop and think before speaking.

Chapter 3

Do not get into a quarrel with the argumentative man
Nor incite him with words;
Proceed cautiously before an opponent,
And give way to an adversary;
Sleep on it before speaking,
For a storm come forth like fire in hay is
The hot-headed man in his appointed time.
May you be restrained before him;
Leave him to himself,
And God will know how to answer him.

If you spend your life with these things in your heart,
Your children shall behold them.

Chapter 4

The hot-headed man in the temple
Is like a tree grown indoors;
Only for a moment does it put forth roots.
It reaches its end in the carpentry shop,
It is floated away far from its place,
Or fire is its funeral pyre.

the truly temperate man sets himself apart,
He is like a tree grown in a sunlit field,
But it flourishes, it doubles its yield,
It stands before its owner;
Its fruit is something sweet, its shade is pleasant,
And it reaches its end as a statue.

Chapter 5

Do not take by violence the shares of the temple,
Do not be grasping, and you will find overabundance;
Do not take away a temple servant
In order to acquire the property of another man.
Do not say today is the same as tomorrow,
Or how will matters come to pass?
When tomorrow comes, today is past;
The deep waters sink from the canal bank,
Crocodiles are uncovered, the hippopotamuses are on dry land,
And the fishes gasping for air;
The wolves are fat, the wild fowl in festival,
And the nets are drained.

Every temperate man in the temple says,
"Great is the benevolence of Re."
Fill yourself with silence, you will find life,
And your body shall flourish upon earth.

Chapter 6

Do not displace the surveyor's marker on the boundaries of the arable land,
Nor alter the position of the measuring line;
Do not be greedy for a plot of land,
Nor overturn the boundaries of a widow.

As for the road in the field worn down by time,
He who takes it violently for fields,
If he traps by deceptive attestations,
Will be lassoed by the might of the moon.

To one who has done this on earth, pay attention,
For he is a weak enemy;
He is an enemy overturned inside himself;
Life is taken from his eye;
His household is hostile to the community,
His storerooms are toppled over,
His property taken from his children,
And to someone else his possessions given.

Take care not to topple over the boundary marks of the arable land,
Not fearing that you will be brought to court;
Man propitiates God by the might of the Lord
When he sets straight the boundaries of the arable land.

Desire, then, to make yourself prosper,
And take care for the Lord of All;
Do not trample on the furrow of someone else,
Their good order will be profitable for you.

So plough the fields, and you will find whatever you need,
And receive the bread from your own threshing floor:
Better is the bushel which God gives you
Than five thousand deceitfully gotten;
They do not spend a day in the storehouse or warehouse,
They are no use for dough for beer;
Their stay in the granary is short-lived,
When morning comes they will be swept away.
Better, then, is poverty in the hand of God
Than riches in the storehouse;
Better is bread when the mind is at ease
Than riches with anxiety.

Chapter 7

Do not set your heart upon seeking riches,
For there is no one who can ignore Destiny and Fortune;
Do not set your thoughts on external matters:
For every man there is his appointed time.

Do not exert yourself to seek out excess
And your wealth will prosper for you;
If riches come to you by theft
They will not spend the night with you;
As soon as day breaks they will not be in your household;
Although their places can be seen, they are not there.

When the earth opens up its mouth, it levels him and swallows him up,
And it drowns him in the deep;
They have made for themselves a great hole which suites them.
And they have sunk themselves in the tomb;
Or they have made themselves wings like geese,
And they fly up to the sky.
Do not be pleased with yourself (because of) riches acquired through robbery,
Neither complain about poverty.
If an officer commands one who goes in front of him,
His company leaves him;
The boat of the covetous is abandoned the mud,
While the skiff of the truly temperate man sails on.
When he rises you shall offer to the Aten,
Saying, "Grant me prosperity and health."
And he will give you your necessities for life,
And you will be safe from fear.

Chapter 8

Set your good deeds throughout the world
That you may greet everyone;
They make rejoicing for the Uraeus,
And spit against the Apophis.
Keep your tongue safe from words of detraction,
And you will be the loved one of the people,
Then you will find your place within the temple
And your offerings among the bread deliveries of your lord;
You will be revered, when you are concealed your grave,
And be safe from the might of God.

Do not accuse a man,
When the news of an escape is concealed.
If you hear something good or bad,
Say it outside, where it is not heard;
Set a good report on your tongue,
While the bad thing is covered up inside you.

Chapter 9

Do not fraternize with the hot-tempered man,
Nor approach him to converse.
Safeguard your tongue from answering your superior,
And take care not to speak against him.
Do not allow him to cast words only to entrap you,
And be not too free in your reply;
With a man of your own station discuss the reply;
And take care of speaking thoughtlessly;
When a man's heart is upset, words travel faster
Than wind and rain.

He is ruined and created by his tongue,
And yet he speaks slander;
He makes an answer deserving of a beating,
For its work is evil;
He sails among all the world,
But his cargo is false words;
He acts the ferryman in knitting words:
He goes forth and comes back arguing.

But whether he eats or whether he drinks inside,
His accusation (waits for him) without.
They day when his evil deed is brought to court
Is a disaster for his children.
Even Khnum will straightway come, even Khnum will straightway come,
The creator of the ill-tempered man
Whom he molds and fires....;
He is like a wolf cub in the farmyard,
And he turns one eye to the other (squinting),
For he sets families to argue.
He goes before all the wind like clouds,
He darkens his color in the sun;
He crocks his tail like a baby crocodile,
He curls himself up to inflict harm,
His lips are sweet, but his tongue is bitter,
And fire burns inside him.

Do not fly up to join that man
Not fearing you will be brought to account.

Chapter 10

Do not address your intemperate friend in your unrighteousness,
Nor destroy your own mind;
Do not say to him, "May you be praised,: not meaning it
When there is fear within you.
Do not converse falsely with a man,
For it is the abomination of God.
Do not separate your mind from your tongue,
All your plans will succeed.
You will be important before others,
While you will be secure in the hand of God.

God hates one who falsified words,
His great abomination is duplicity.

Chapter 11

Do not covet the property of the dependent
Nor hunger for his bread;
The property of a dependent blocks the throat,
It is vomit for the gullet.
If he has engendered it by false oaths,
His heart slips back inside him.
It is through the disaffected that success is lost,
Bad and good elude.

If you are at a loss before your superior,
And are confused in your speeches,
Your flattering are turned back with curses,
And your humble action by beatings.
Whoever fills the mouth with too much bread swallows it and spits up,
So he is emptied of his good.

To the examination of a dependant give thought
While the sticks touch him,
And while all his people are fettered with manacles:
Who is to have the execution?
When you are too free before your superior,
Then you are in bad favor with your subordinates,
So steer away from the poor man on the road,
That you may see him but keep clear of his property.

Chapter 12

Do not covet the property of an official,
And do not fill (your) mouth with too much food extravagantly;
If he sets you to manage his property,
Respect his, and yours will prosper.

Do not deal with the intemperate man,
Nor associate yourself to a disloyal party.

If you are sent to transport straw,
Respect its account;
If a man is detected in a dishonest transaction,
Never again will he be employed.

Chapter 13

Do not lead a man astray reed pen or papyrus document:
It is the abomination of God.
Do not witness a false statement,
Nor remove a man (from the list) by your order;
Do not enroll someone who has nothing,
Nor make your pen be false.
If you find a large debt against a poor man,
Make it into three parts;
Release two of them and let one remain:
You will find it a path of life;
You will pass the night in sound sleep; in the morning
You will find it like good news.

Better it is to be praised as one loved by men
Than wealth in the storehouse;
Better is bread when the mind is at ease
Than riches with troubles.

Chapter 14

Do not pay attention to a person,
Nor exert yourself to seek out his hand,
If he says to you, "take a bribe,"
It is not an insignificant matter to heed him;
Do not avert your glance from him, nor bend down your head,
Nor turn aside your gaze.
Address him with your words and say to him greetings;
When he stops, your chance will come;
Do not repel him at his first approach,
Another time he will be brought (to judgment).

Chapter 15

Do well, and you will attain influence.
Do not dip (your) reed against the one who sins.
The beak of the Ibis is the finger of the scribe;
Take care not to disturb it;
The Ape (Thoth) rests (in) the temple of Khmun,
While his eye travels around the Two Lands;
If he sees one who sins with his finger (that is, a false scribe),
he takes away his provisions by the flood.
As for a scribe who sins with his finger,
His son shall not be enrolled.

If you spend your life with these things in your heart,
Your children shall see them.

Chapter 16

Do not unbalance the scale nor make the weights false,
Nor diminish the fractions of the grain measure;
Do not wish for the grain measures of the fields
And then cast aside those of the treasury.
The Ape sits by the balance,
While his heart is the plummet.
Where is a god as great as Thoth
The one who discovered these things, to create them?

Do not get for yourself short weights;
They are plentiful, yea, an army by the might of God.
If you see someone cheating,
At a distance you must pass him by.
Do not be avaricious for copper,
And abjure fine clothes;
What good is one cloaked in fine linen woven as mek,
When he cheats before God.
When gold is heaped upon gold,
At daybreak it turns to lead.

Chapter 17

Beware of robbing the grain measure
To falsify its fractions;
Do not act wrongfully through force,
Although it is empty inside;
May you have it measure exactly as to its size,
Your hand stretching out with precision.

Make not for yourself a measure of two capacities,
For then it is toward the depths that you will go.
The measure is the eye of Re,
Its abomination is the one who takes.
As for a grain measurer who multiplies and subtracts,
His eye will seal up against him.

Do not receive the harvest tax of a cultivator,
Nor bind up a papyrus against him to lead him astray.
Do not enter into collusion with the grain measurer,
Nor play with the seed allotment,
More important is the threshing floor for barley
Than swearing by the Great Throne.

Chapter 18

Do not go to bed fearing tomorrow,
For when day breaks what is tomorrow?
Man knows not what tomorrow is!
God is success,
Man is failure.
The words which men say pass on one side,
The things which God does pass on another side.

Do not say, "I am without fault,"
Nor try to seek out trouble.
Fault is the business of God,
It is locked up with his seal.
There is no success in the hand of God,
Nor is there failure before Him;
If he turns himself about to seek out success,
In a moment He destroys him.

Be strong in your heart, make your mind firm,
Do not steer with your tongue;
The tongue of a man is the steering oar of a boat,
And the Lord of All is its pilot.

Chapter 19

Do not enter the council chamber in the presence of a magistrate
And then falsify your speech.
Do not go up and down with your accusation
When your witnesses stand readied.
Do not overstate oaths in the name of your lord,
pleas the place of questioning.

Tell the truth before the magistrate,
lest he gain power over your body;
If you come before him the next day,
He will concur with all you say;
He will present your case court before the Council of the Thirty,
And it will be lenient another time as well.

Chapter 20

Do not corrupt the people of the law court,
Nor put aside the just man,
Do not agree because of garments of white,
Nor accept one in rags.
Take not the gift of the strong man,
Nor repress the weak for him.
Justice is a wonderful gift of God,
And He will render it to whomever he wishes.
The strength of one like him
Saves a poor wretch from his beatings.

Do not make false enrollment lists,
For they are a serious affair deserving death;
They are serious oaths of the kind promising not to misuse an office,
And they are to be investigated by an informer.

Do not falsify the oracles on a papyrus
And (thereby) alter the designs of God.
Do not arrogate to yourself the might of God
As if Destiny and Fortune did not exist.

Hand property over to its (rightful) owners,
And seek out life for yourself;
Let not your heart build in their house,
for then your neck will be on the execution block.

Chapter 21

Do not say, I have found a strong protector
And now I can challenge a man in my town.
Do not say, I have found an active intercessor,
And now I can challenge him whom I hate.

Indeed, you cannot know the plans of God;
You cannot perceive tomorrow.
Sit yourself at the hands of God:
Your tranquility will cause them to open.

As for the crocodile deprived of his tongue,
the fear of him is negligible.
Empty not your soul to everybody
And do not diminish thereby your importance;
Do not circulate your words to others,
Nor fraternize with one who is too candid.

Better is a man whose knowledge is inside him
Than one who talks to disadvantage.
One cannot run to attain perfection;
One cannot create (only) to destroy it.

Chapter 22

Do not castigate your companion in a dispute,
And do not him say his innermost thoughts;
Do not fly up to greet him
When you do not see how he acts.
May you first comprehend his accusation
And cool down your opponent.

Leave it to him and he will empty his soul;
Sleep knows how to find him out;
Take his feet, do not bother him;
Fear him, do not underestimate him.
Indeed, you cannot know the plans of God,
You cannot perceive tomorrow.
Sit yourself at the hands of God;
Your tranquility will cause them to open.

Chapter 23

Do not eat a meal in the presence of a magistrate,
Nor set to speaking first.
If you are satisfied with false words,
Enjoy yourself with your spittle.

Look at the cup in front of you,
And let it suffice your need.
Even as a noble is important in his office,
He is like the abundance of a well when it is drawn.

Chapter 24

Do not listen to the accusation of an official indoors,
And then repeat it to another outside.
Do not allow your discussions to be brought outside
So that your heart will not be grieved.

the heart of a man is the beak of the God,
So take care not to slight it;
A man who stands the side of an official
Should not have his name known (in the street).

Chapter 25

Do not jeer at a blind man nor tease a dwarf,
Neither interfere with the condition of a cripple;
Do not taunt a man who is in the hand of God,
Nor scowl at him if he errs.

Man is clay and straw,
And God is his potter;
He overthrows and he builds daily,
He impoverishes a thousand if He wishes.
He makes a thousand into examiners,
When He is in His hour of life.
How fortunate is he who reaches the West,
When he is safe in the hand of God.

Chapter 26

Do not stay in the tavern
And join someone greater than you,
Whether he be high or low in his station,
An old man or a youth;
But take as a friend for yourself someone compatible:
Re is helpful though he is far away.

When you see someone greater than you outside,
And attendants following him, respect (him).
And give a hand to an old man filled with beer:
Respect him as his children would.

The strong arm is not weakened when it is uncovered,
The back is not broken when one bends it;
Better is the poor man who speaks sweet words,
Than the rich man who speaks harshly.

A pilot who sees into the distance
Will not let his ship capsize.

Chapter 27

Do not reproach someone older than you,
For he has seen the Sun before you;
Do not let yourself be reported to the Aten when he rises,
With the words, "Another young man has reproached an elder."
Very sick in the sight of Re
Is a young man who reproaches an elder.

Let him beat you with your hands folded,
Let him reproach you while you keep quiet.
Then when you come before him in the morning
He will give you bread freely.
As for bread, he who has it becomes a dog,
He barks to the one who gives it.

Chapter 28

Do not expose a widow if you have caught her in the fields,
Nor fail to give way if she is accused.
Do not turn a stranger away your oil jar
That it may be made double for your family.
God loves him who cares for the poor,
More than him who respects the wealthy.

Chapter 29

Do not turn people away from crossing the river
When you have room in your ferryboat;
If a steering oar is given you in the midst of the deep waters,
So bend back your hands take it up.
It is not an abomination in the hand of God
If the passenger is not cared for.

Do not acquire a ferryboat on the river,
And then attempt to seek out its fares;
Take the are from the man of means,
But (also) accept the destitute (without charge).

Chapter 30

Mark for your self these thirty chapters:
They please, they instruct,
They are the foremost of all books;
They teach the ignorant.
If they are read to an ignorant man,
He will be purified through them.
Seize them; put them in your mind
And have men interpret them, explaining as a teacher.
As to a scribe who is experienced in his position,
He will find himself worthy of being a courtier.

[Colophon]

It is finished.
By the writing of Senu, son of the god's father Pamiu.

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Parallels between Jesus and Horus, an Egyptian God

2009-02-21T05:05:00.000-08:00

Quotations:

"The Christian myths were first related of Horus or Osiris, who was the embodiment of divine goodness, wisdom, truth and purity...This was the greatest hero that ever lived in the mind of man -- not in the flesh -- the only hero to whom the miracles were natural because he was not human." 1

"...I am the LORD thy God from the land of Egypt, and thou shalt know no god but me: for there is no saviour beside me." Hosea 13:4, King James Version. This passage may have an additional and completely different meaning from that usually assigned.

Background:
About Yeshua of Nazareth: He is commonly referred to as Jesus Christ, although Joshua would be a more accurate translation of his first name. "Christ" is not his last name; it is simply the Greek word for "Messiah," or "anointed one." Theologians have discovered about 50 gospels which were widely used by Jewish, Pauline and Gnostic groups within the early Christian movement. Only four of these were chosen by the surviving group, Pauline Christianity, and were included in the Bible. Those four Gospels describe Jesus as a Jew who was born to a virgin in Palestine circa 4 to 7 BCE. He is portrayed as a rabbi, teacher, healer, exorcist, magician, prophet, and religious leader who had a one year (according to Mark, Matthew and Luke) or a three year (according to John) ministry in Palestine, starting when he was about 30 years old. Most Christians believe that he was executed by the Roman occupying army, visited the underworld, was resurrected, spent 40 days with his disciples, and then ascended to heaven. Most Christian denominations view Jesus as God, and as the Son of God, the second person in the Trinity.|

Conservative Christians view the Gospels as being inerrant whose authors were inspired by God. The Gospels and other passages in the Bible are mostly interpreted literally. Muslims revere Jesus as a great prophet -- next only to Muhammad in importance. They regard the assertion that Jesus is God to be blasphemy.

About Horus: Various ancient Egyptian statues and writings tell of Horus, (pronounced "hohr'-uhs;"
a.k.a. Harseisis, Heru-sa-Aset (Horus, son of Isis), Heru-ur (Horus the elder), Hr, and Hrw), a creator sky God. He was worshipped thousands of years before the first century CE -- the time when Jesus was ministering in Palestine. 2 Horus was often represented as a stylized eye symbol, symbolizing the eye of a falcon.

He was also presented "in the shape of a sparrow hawk or as a man [or lion] with a hawk's head." 3 He is often shown as an infant cradled by his mother Isis. He was considered to be the son of two major Egyptian deities: the God Osirus and and the Goddess Isis. In adulthood, he avenged his father's murder, and became recognized as the God of civil order and justice. Each of the Egyptian pharaohs were believed to be the living embodiment -- an incarnation -- of Horus.

"A list of the names of all the gods of Egypt would fill pages. But all these gods were only forms, attributes or phases of Ra, the solar god, who himself was the supreme symbol or metaphor for God....Horus, the son of Osirus and Isis, is himself an aspect of Ra.

Life events shared by Horus and Jesus
Stories from the life of Horus had been circulating for centuries before Jesus birth (circa 4 to 7 BCE). If any copying occurred by the writers of the Egyptian or Christian religions, it was the followers of Jesus who incorporated into his biography the myths and legends of Horus, not vice-versa.

According to author and theologian Tom Harpur: "[Author Gerald] Massey discovered nearly two hundred instances of immediate correspondence between the mythical Egyptian material and the allegedly historical Christian writings about Jesus. Horus indeed was the archetypal Pagan Christ."

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Frederick McKinley Jones (1893-1961)

2009-02-07T13:29:00.000-08:00

Frederick McKinley Jones was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on May 17, 1893. Growing up as an orphan and not attending school beyond grade eight, Jones was ultimately to become one of the most prolific black inventors. His genius, as well as his skill and knowledge of mechanical and electrical devices, is evidenced by his 60 patents in divergent fields. Forty of those patents were related to refrigeration.

Jones invented the first practical and automatic refrigeration unit for trucks, which eliminated the problem of food spoilage over long hauls, thus making fresh produce available over wide areas. Subsequently, the unit was adapted to a variety of other carriers, including ships and railway cars.

His invention facilitated the development of international markets for food crops; led to the creation of total industries such as frozen foods, fast foods and container shipping; and altered consumers' eating habits.

Jones's contribution to the World War II effort includes several timely and necessary inventions such as a portable refrigeration unit, which was used to transport vitally needed blood serum and medicines on the battlefields of Europe; an air conditioning unit for military field hospitals designed for the primary purpose of maintaining the temperature of blood serum; and a portable x-ray unit.

Some of his other inventions were specifically designed for the then-fledgling movie industry and include the first process that enabled movie projectors to play back recorded sound—talking pictures—and a box-office device that automatically distributed tickets and change to customers.

Despite his exploits in the movie industry, Jones was primarily concerned with refrigeration. Recognized as an authority in the field and elected to membership in the American Society of Refrigeration Engineers, he also served as a consultant for the Defense Department and the U.S. Bureau of Standards.

Jones also founded a company jointly with his former boss in the motion picture business, Joseph Numero. The company, Thermo King Corp. (initially called the U.S. Thermo Control Company), is a world leader in transport temperature control equipment today, operating on a global scale with manufacturing plants in various countries and accessing global markets.

In 1991, Frederick Jones and his partner were awarded the National Medal of Technology posthumously.

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Genetic Mutation of Skin, From Black to White

2009-02-07T13:05:00.000-08:00

There are millions of Blacks who do not exhibit real pride in themselves and this is partly due to the pigmentation of their skin. It takes courage to do what Lee Thomas is doing. Whites must understand that they were once Black. This condition is in Leviticus 13, Numbers 12, and 2nd Kings 5. There must be balance and truth can bring balance.

The World Media rediculed Michael Jackson when he told the world he skin was changing ferom black to white.

Never judge anyboby or anyone till you know all the facts.

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Top 20 Black History Month Quotations

2009-02-05T16:20:00.000-08:00

1. "I am America. I am the part you won't recognize. But get used to me. Black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own; get used to me."
-- Muhammad Ali The Greatest (1975)

2. "Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise."
-- Maya Angelou "Still I rise," And Still I Rise (1978)

3. "Racism is not an excuse to not do the best you can."
-- Arthur Ashe quoted in Sports Illustrated

4. "Just like you can buy grades of silk, you can buy grades of justice. "
-- Ray Charles

5. "The past is a ghost, the future a dream. All we ever have is now. "
-- Bill Cosby

6. "There is no negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough, to live up to their own constitution..."
-- Frederick Douglass

7. "You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation."
-- Billie Holiday

8. "Greatness occurs when your children love you, when your critics respect you and when you have peace of mind. "
-- Quincy Jones

9. " Do not call for black power or green power. Call for brain power."
-- Barbara Jordan

10. "Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better."
-- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

11. "The battles that count aren't the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself—the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us—that's where it's at."
-- Jesse Owens, Blackthink (1970)

12. "I have learned over the years that when one's mind is made up, this diminshes fear."
-- Rosa Parks

13. "Have a vision. Be demanding. "
-- Colin Powell

14. "Be black, shine, aim high. "
-- Leontyne Price

15. "God gives nothing to those who keep their arms crossed. "
-- African Proverb

16. "Freedom is never given; it is won."
-- A. Philip Randolph in keynote speech given at the Second National Negro Congress in 1937

17. "When I found I had crossed that line, [on her first escape from slavery, 1845] I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything."
-- Harriet Tubman

18. "Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed."
-- Booker T. Washington

19. "Black people have always been America's wilderness in search of a promised land."
-- Cornel West, Race Matters

20 "We should emphasize not Negro History, but the Negro in history. What we need is not a history of selected races or nations, but the history of the world void of national bias, race hate, and religious prejudice."
-- Carter Woodson on founding Negro History Week, 1926

Resource Box - © Danielle Hollister (2005) is the Publisher of BellaOnline Quotations Zine

- A free newsletter for quote lovers featuring more than 10,000 quotations in dozens of categories like - love, friendship, children, inspiration, success, wisdom, family, life, and many more. Read it - online

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Black History Month Speaker Empowerment Principles to Live Like a King

2009-02-05T16:02:00.000-08:00

Live like a King! Remember, honor, and prophetically be guided into the future by the outstanding legacy of the King family. Had not Africans arisen to confront injustice in America, there would be no human or civil rights in this country.

Capture the greatness of African American civil rights leaders and impart their spirit today in the hearts of a new culture. Let us once again properly identify with their struggle. For me my personal history and interaction with Africans is rather unusual as I as a white man have been numerous times to Africa. The 8 countries I have spoken to audiences in are the impoverished war-torn nations of East Africa.

We must honestly acknowledge the historical atrocities at the hands of white supremacists and the nations they duped into following their ideology. Unlike many white speakers and ministers who go through Africa, I encouraged my African brothers to not emulate white men in their dress, but rather be authentic in their individuality. I tell my African friends: "You were born an original. Do not die a copy."

I personally deeply love and identify with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his family. In fact I had the privilege of meeting his daughter Bernice King in Southern California, when she spoke on great expectations for the future. The King family was spied on by the FBI for 4 years after the assassination of Rev. King the great Civil Rights leader.

The King family's forward struggle and refusal to yield our universal human rights should be an inspiration to us all. Even when faced with personal danger, threats, violence, and death they boldly carried on full force to overthrow injustice and the farce of government that claimed to represent we the people. The King family peaceably achieved reformation taking America out of the Dark Ages and one step closer into the light. Let us continue the fight for freedom lest we lose what Dr. King accomplished for us.

History curiously repeats itself. While America bombed and burned Vietnam with napalm, Hoover's FBI was assassinating civil rights leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King and Fred Hampton of the Black Panther Party. Today the ATF kills women & children and burns & bulldozes churches (Waco, TX). Police brutalize WTO peaceful protestors on Seattle's streets. NYPD murder African Americans celebrating a bachelor party. Eight Florida boot camp workers punch, kick, and kill a 14-year-old African American boy and are acquitted of manslaughter. Is this democracy and the kind of America Dr. King gave his life for?

Unless we as a people continue to stand up to injustice, the freedoms our forefathers fought for shall be lost as America becomes a police state to serve the military-industrial complex. No government for the profiteers can also be for the people. Nevertheless what we tolerate will continue to dominate. Therefore it is time for us to arise, raise the standard, and take a stand to redeem the homeland.

The White House could use some color to again feel, get real, and heal the homeland.

African Americans have always led the way and been at the tip of the spear to pierce through evil and injustice. In this hour more than ever, African Americans must fight for people of every color who are being exploited and disenfranchized. The voice of African Americans must be heard throughout our land!

Interacting with the victims of genocide in war-torn Rwanda and Burundi (East Africa) where 1.2 million brothers divided and killed one another had a deep effect upon me. My travels deep into "the bush" of Africa (Malawi and Mozambique) where villagers had never before seen a white man, provided me a wonderful cross-cultural experience and the chance to experience being a minority myself.

When times get tough, we must ask ourselves:

Are you a thermometer or a thermostat?

Are you a mover and a shaker, or being moved and shaken?

Are you part of the problem, or part of the solution?

Are you living and loving fearlessly?

What are you living for and for what will you be remembered?

Is what you are living for, worth dying for?

Do you have a dream? Are you daily moving toward making it a reality or is it merely a fantasy?

What you refuse to confront, you can never correct.

What you tolerate, will continue to dominate.

You don't need a high IQ, if you have a strong "I will" and unflinching determination.

It's time we know ourselves by the spirit and the content of our character, rather than the color and shade of our skin. When we arise within and stop being distracted with conversations of color, we shall truly show the world what it is to transcend racial prejudice and live powerfully.

This Black History Month don't just celebrate and reflect upon the courageous journey toward liberty and equality embarked upon by African Americans of the past. Let us recommit ourselves to the continued pursuit of freedom and equality for all.

African Americans represent every aspect of this country's heritage and hope. Only with the involvement and leadership of African Americans can this country truly unite and achieve civil, social, and economic justice for all.

Contact Paul to speak at your next event! He captivates audiences, transcends limitations, & brings transformation while empowering people to live their dreams!

Paul Davis is a highly sought after professional speaker, life purpose coach, worldwide minister, and change master. He is the author of several books including United States of Arrogance, Breakthrough for a Broken Heart; Poems that Propel the Planet; God vs. Religion; and many more.

Paul's compassion for people & passion to travel has taken him to over 50 countries of the world where he has had a tremendous impact. Paul's organization Dream-Maker Inc. builds dreams, transcends limitations & revives nations.

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Lethal Weapon: When what you watch on TV begins to matter

2009-02-05T11:05:00.001-08:00

Several psychologists, authors, & media personalities discuss how television and images impact the human mind's subconscious perception of race and racism. It is suggested that images on television can have an unconscious influence on your decision making and behavior beyond your conscious awareness. Some psychologists have created "Implicit Association Tests" (IAT) to measure the level of racial influences we may have latent within our subconscious. The results of these studies suggest that it is possible to harbor certain unconscious attitudes toward race/racism that are in direct conflict with our conscious belief system. The video concludes that the environments in which we live, where television is mostly dominated by White images, may affect how you feel and behave toward yourself and others without your conscious realization.

Self Education Is The Best Education
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Additional Research Information:

University of Michigan Health System: Your Child & Television http://www.med.umich.edu/1libr/yourch

The Media Awareness Network: Kids & Racial Stereotypes
http://www.media-awareness.ca/english...

University of Washington: The Unconscious Roots of Racism
http://web.psych.washington.edu/news/...

Gladwell.com: The Second Mind (Blink)
http://www.gladwell.com/blink/blink_e...

WashingtonPost.com: See No Bias
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-...

Scientific American: The Implicit Prejudice
http://sciam.com/print_version.cfm?ar...

Harvard University: Research Matters
http://www.researchmatters.harvard.ed...

Project Implicit®
http://www.projectimplicit.net/

Also see the following videos on the 4TruthAndJustice YouTube channel:
"Unconscious Prejudice"
"Scientific American Frontiers"
"Psychological Dispositions in Black & White"
Category: Education

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Celebrating Mothers: Worshipping the Black Madonna

2009-02-05T06:28:00.000-08:00

One of the most sacred icons of the Catholic Church is the Black Madonna and Christ child. Statues representing her are in Europe's most venerated shrines and cathedrals. Each year, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims ritually humble themselves before the image of Mary and her child Jesus at Black Madonna sites throughout France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Portugal and other Catholic countries.

Why do we not hear more about the Black Madonna? Pilgrims throughout the ages have visited Black Madonna sites and left inspired, confident, relieved, or healed of their afflictions. Today, there are over 300 documented Black Madonna sites in France alone. Sometimes Black Madonna statues are hidden away in vaults, while the public is shown Madonnas with European features.

There are theories that the dark representation of the skin color of the statues is dues to the materials used or changes in the material over time or my personal favorite --- candle soot. Give me a break. The Black Madonna is black because she is black.

Article source: http://www.blackhandside.net/2008/05/worshipping-the.html

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Rosa Parks (1913-2005)

2009-02-05T05:09:00.000-08:00

did not get on the bus to get arrested. I got on the bus to go home.

—Rosa Parks

How she sat there
Right inside a place so wrong it
Was ready

—From "Rosa," in On the Bus with Rosa Parks by Rita Dove

There comes a time that people get tired. We are here ... to say to those who have mistreated us for so long, that we are tired, tired of being segregated and humiliated, tired of being kicked about by the brutal feet of oppression.

—Martin Luther King, Jr.

On December 1, 1955, Mrs. Rosa Parks sat down so that we could all stand up for our rights. Coming home from work as a dressmaker in Montgomery, Alabama, she refused to yield her seat on the bus to a white passenger as required by law, and was promptly arrested. This action/reaction/inaction was the catalyst for the civil rights movement in the South and catapulted Dr. Martin Luther King from the pulpit of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery onto the national and international stage as a champion of civil rights. On that fateful night, Mrs. Parks was simply tired, not sick and tired of being sick and tired as most black folk in the South were at that time.

Rosa Parks' "no" reverberated across the black social and political spectrum, challenging black and white America. The civil rights movement; its step-child the Black Power movement; and its flip side, the Black Nationalist movement heightened the contradictions in America. A resurgence of black pride, dignity and power shook America at its roots as black folk asserted that, as the popular saying went, "We ain't what we ought to be, we ain't what we want to be, we ain't what we gonna be, but thank God we ain't what we was."

On October 31, 2005, Mrs. Rosa Parks lay in state in the Capitol rotunda in Washington, D.C. As thousands filed past her coffin, America paid its homage and debt to the woman who sat down so that we could stand up.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Books

Dear Mrs. Parks: A Dialogue With Today's Youth, Rosa Parks and Gregory J. Reed. Lee & Low Books, 1996.

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Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey

2009-02-03T15:16:00.000-08:00

The Journey of Man is a documentary that talks about our evolution, our recent history, and how we came to be to the way we are today. It looks at the Y chromosome, that's passed down from male to male, and tracks the marker mutations to map our ancestors' journey. It's how we conquered the Earth in just the last 59,000 years.

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Ernest Everett Just (1883-1941)

2009-02-02T10:38:00.000-08:00

Ernest E. Just was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1883. As a sophomore at Dartmouth, he enrolled in his first biology class and read an article which attempted to explained the process of fertilization and egg development, which sparked a lifelong interest in embryology. Graduating from Dartmouth with special honors in zoology and history (although his major was English), he immediately went to a teaching job at Howard. He received his Ph.D. from Chicago and continued teaching at Howard while returning to Woods Hole, a haven for biologists, every summer. He attempted to explain the process of fertilization and egg development, a subject on which he became an international authority.

He was a "scientist's scientist". Dr. Charles Drew, a pioneer in blood plasma research himself, described Dr. Just as "a biologist of unusual skill and the greatest of our original thinkers in the field".

He was invited to work at many European laboratories, including The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Germany, the Sorbonne, the Naples Zoological Laboratory and various Russian Laboratories. No such invitation came from laboratories in the United States, as segregation was firmly entrenched in the American way of life.

Dr. Frank Lillie, his old friend and teacher, eulogizing Dr. Just, alludes to this fact:

"His death was premature and his work unfinished; but his accomplishments were many and worthy of remembrance. That a man of his ability, scientific devotion and of such strong personal loyalties as he gave and received should have been wasted in the land of his birth must remain a matter of regret."

Books

Black Apollo of Science: The Life of Ernest Everett Just, Kenneth R. Manning. Oxford Univ Press, 1984.

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African-American Astronauts

2009-02-02T10:34:00.000-08:00

Many of us possess talents and abilities but do not excel because we don't take the chances or act on the challenges that come our way. We need to walk over to the edge of our abilities and then move beyond that edge ... From the outside this can look difficult. However, once you've acquired the skills to perform the task, it seems almost easy. Like most things in life, it's easy if you know how.

—Ronald. E. McNair

Guion S. Bluford became the first African-American to go into space in August 1983 aboard the Challenger. It was the first launch and landing of a space shuttle at night. His mission on this flight included the deployment of an Indian communications satellite. He later served as a mission specialist on Challenger (October 30, 1985) and Discovery (April 28, 1991 and December 2, 1992).

Charles F. Bolden was the pilot on the space shuttle mission aboard the Discovery (April 24, 1990) which launched the Hubble space telescope and set an altitude record at 640 kilometres. He was also the pilot on Columbia (January 12, 1986) and Atlantis (March 24, 1992); and mission commander on Discovery (February 3, 1994).

Frederick D. Gregory became the first African-American Space Commander on the space shuttle mission aboard the Discovery (November 22, 1989) which deployed a satellite for the Department of Defense. On his first space flight, he was the pilot on Challenger (April 29, 1985) and he served as commander on Atlantis (November 24, 1991).

Mae C. Jemison became the first African-American woman to travel in space on the shuttle mission aboard the Endeavor (September 12, 1992), where she conducted experiments to study the effects of zero gravity on people and animals.

Bernard J. Harris became the first African-American to walk in space during the space shuttle Discovery's mission (February 2, 1995), which included a rendezvous with the Russian Space Station, Mir. He was also a mission specialist on Columbia (April 26, 1993), where he conducted research in physical and life sciences.

Ronald E. McNair was one of the seven crew members who were killed when the Challenger exploded 73 seconds after its launch on January 28, 1986. On this mission, he was supposed to carry out extensive studies on Halley's Comet. He previously served on the Challenger (February 3, 1984).

Books

African-American Astronauts, Gail Saunders-Smith, L. Octavia Tripp, Stanley P. Jones. Capstone Press, 1998.

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The Emancipation Act

2009-02-02T10:29:00.000-08:00

Freedom, More or Less

On August 1, 1834, the Emancipation Act came into force, after fifty years of bitter debate in Britain over the morality and profitability of slavery. It did not abolish servitude, but it was the first significant promise of freedom.

This act did not make a difference to the more than half million slaves in Britain's Caribbean colonies, for although the Emancipation Act outlawed slavery in theory, the slaves had to wait another four years for the most elementary liberties.

The government was afraid of liberating half a million slaves without controls, while the planters did not want their estates to collapse, as forced labour would no longer be available.

The Emancipation Act simply transformed the slaves into apprenticed labourers for a further four to six years. The only slaves to be immediately free were those under six years old, while the incubus of slavery persisted for the others.

Books

British Slave Emancipation: The Sugar Colonies and the Great Experiment, 1830-1865, William A. Green. Clarendon Press, 1991.

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Granvillle T. Woods (1856-1910)

2009-02-02T10:26:00.000-08:00

Granville T. Woods, the greatest colored inventor in the history of the race and equal, if not superior, to any inventor in the country, is destined to revolutionize the mode of street car transit.

—Catholic Tribune (Cincinnati, Ohio), January 14, 1886

Woods's inventions were ... part of the everyday lives of millions of people. They rode street cars and subways powered by Woods's motors, supplied with electricity by Woods's electric transfer devices, and brought to safe stops by Woods's improved air brakes.

—Aaron A. Klein, The Hidden Contributors: Black Scientists and Inventors in America

Born on April 23, 1856 in Columbus, Ohio, Granville T. Woods attended school sporadically until he was ten years old and then went to work in a machine shop. At sixteen, his wanderlust led to the augmentation of his elementary engineering knowledge via a series of related jobs and eventual formal training at an eastern college.

Despite his engineering skill and credentials, it was obvious to him that advancement in these jobs was virtually nil. Taking a proactive approach, he formed his own company, Woods' Railway Telegraph Company, to produce and market his telegraph and other inventions.

During his lifetime, he held over thirty-five patents. More than a dozen of these patents were inventions for electric railways but most of them were focused on electrical control and distribution.

His most remarkable invention, however, was the induction telegraph, a system for communicating to and from moving trains. Woods successfully defended lawsuits against his patent—two by Thomas Edison and one by another inventor named Phelps. In the wake of his loss, Edison tried to offer Woods a job and buy his company, but his offer was flatly rejected. Edison upped the ante by offering Woods a partnership in one of his various companies, but Woods preferred to remain independent.

Woods's inventions include:
a device that coupled the function of the telephone and telegraph—purchased by Alexander Graham Bell
an air-brake system—purchased by George Westinghouse
the power system known as "the third rail"—a conductor of electricity set parallel to the subway's tracks
a thermostatically controlled egg incubator

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Jackie Robinson (1919-1972)

2009-02-02T10:21:00.000-08:00

Jackie Robinson was born January 31, 1919. Graduating from UCLA, he began to play baseball with the Kansas City Monarchs. When Branch Rickey decided to pioneer in hiring Black baseball players, he hired Robinson on October 23, 1945.
On April 18, 1946 he made his debut in Jersey City as second baseman for the Montreal Royals. The next season Jackie moved up to the National League as first baseman.

In 1947, the Dodgers won the pennant and did so five more times in the following ten years. In 1949, he was chosen as the National League's Most Valuable Player, and was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962.

Jackie Robinson died on October 24, 1972.

Books

Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy, Jules Tygiel. Oxford University Press, 1997.

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Dr. Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950)

2009-02-02T10:16:00.000-08:00

We should emphasize not Negro History, but the Negro in history. What we need is not a history of selected races or nations, but the history of the world, void of national bias, race, hate, and religious prejudice. There should be no indulgence in undue eulogy of the Negro. The case of the Negro is well taken care of when it is shown how he has far influenced the development of civilization.
—Carter G. Woodson

Dr. Carter G. Woodson was born of slaves in New Canton, Virginia. Mainly self-taught, he mastered the fundamentals of common school subjects by the time he was seventeen. At age 20, he entered Douglas High School in Huntington, West Virginia where he earned his teaching diploma after two years (he later returned as principal). He subsequently obtained his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Chicago and his Ph.D. in History from Harvard, becoming the second African-American to receive this degree.

In his career as an educator, Dr. Woodson became convinced that the role of his people in history was either ignored or misinterpreted. As a result of this conviction, Dr. Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History to conduct research into the history of African people throughout the world. It is worth noting that he did not believe in "Negro history" as a separate discipline but instead viewed so-called "Negro history" as a missing segment of world history, and he devoted his life to reconstructing this segment.

One year later, in 1916, he published the influential Journal of Negro History, which has not missed an issue to this day. In 1921, he established Associated Publishers to provide a forum for publication of valuable books on African history not then acceptable to most publishers. In addition, he authored numerous scholarly works and publications.

In 1926, Dr. Woodson inaugurated Negro History Week. The chosen week included February 12th (Abraham Lincoln's birthday) and February 14th (Frederick Douglass's birthday). In cases where only one of these days fell within the week, Frederick Douglass's birthday had priority. It is worth noting that Dr. Woodson realized that Negro History Week would be no longer necessary once this segment of World history was integrated into the curriculum and taught with respect and sensitivity.

In the 1960's the name was changed to Black History Week to reflect the increasing racial awareness of African-Americans. In 1976, the celebrations were extended to include the entire month of February.

Books

Carter G. Woodson: A Bio-Bibliography, Jacqueline Goggin. Louisiana State University Press, reprint edition, 1997

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Elijah McCoy (1843-1929)

2009-02-02T10:05:00.000-08:00

Elijah McCoy was born in Colchester, Ontario in 1843. His parents were escaped slaves who made it to Canada from Kentucky via the Underground Railroad.

The family relocated to the U.S. and settled near Ypsilanti, Michigan. Young Elijah McCoy developed a penchant for mechanical engineering and, unable to acquire the necessary training in the U.S., he left for Scotland to work as an apprentice in mechanical engineering. Returning to the U.S. as a certified engineer, he was unable to get a job in his field and had to settle for a menial job as a fireman on the Michigan Central Railroad.

Part of the fireman's duties involved oiling the train's many parts at frequent intervals, with the train having to stop for this operation. McCoy sought to develop a solution to this problem. In 1872, he applied for a patent for his "lubricating cup", which "provides for the continuous flow of oil on gears and other moving parts of a machine in order to keep it lubricated properly and continuously and thereby do away with the necessity to shut down the machinery periodically".

Concerned initially with the lubrication of stationary engines, McCoy continued with his ultimate goal to lubricate the machines while they were in operation. Eventually, no heavy duty machinery was without his automatic oiling devices and the term the "real McCoy" became linked with the pioneering achievement of Elijah McCoy.

Books

African-American Inventors: Lonnie Johnson, Frederick McKinley Jones, Marjorie Stewart Joyner, Elijah McCoy, Garrett Augustus Morgan, Fred M. B. Amram. Capstone Press, 1998.
Buy it in school & library binding

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CNN Student News One-Sheet: Black History Month

2009-02-02T09:58:00.000-08:00

(CNN Student News) -- February marks the beginning of Black History Month, a federally recognized, nationwide celebration that provides the opportunity for all Americans to reflect on the significant roles that African-Americans have played in the shaping of U.S. history. But how did this celebration come to be, and why does it take place in February?

We should emphasize not Negro History, but the Negro in history. What we need is not a history of selected races or nations, but the history of the world void of national bias, race hate, and religious prejudice.

- Dr. Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950) on founding Negro History Week, 1926
Dr. Carter G. Woodson, considered a pioneer in the study of African-American history, is given much of the credit for Black History Month, and has been called the "Father of Black History." The son of former slaves, Woodson spent his childhood working in coalmines and quarries

He received his education during the four-month term that was customary for black schools at the time. At 19, having taught himself English fundamentals and arithmetic, Woodson entered high school, where he completed a four-year curriculum in two years. He went on to receive his Master's degree in history from the University of Chicago, and he eventually earned a Ph.D from Harvard.

Disturbed that history textbooks largely ignored America's black population, Woodson took on the challenge of writing black Americans into the nation's history. To do this, Woodson established the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. He also founded the group's widely respected publication, the Journal of Negro History. In 1926, he developed Negro History Week. Woodson believed that "the achievements of the Negro properly set forth will crown him as a factor in early human progress and a maker of modern civilization."

Woodson chose the second week of February for the celebration because it marks the birthdays of two men who greatly influenced the black American population: Frederick Douglass (February 14), an escaped slave who became one of the foremost black abolitionists and civil rights leaders in the nation, and President Abraham Lincoln (February 12), who signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which abolished slavery in America's confederate states. In 1976, Negro History Week expanded into Black History Month. The month is also sometimes referred to as African-American Heritage Month.

(Source: http://blackhistorypages.net/pages/cgwoodson.php, http://www.chipublib.org/002branches/woodson/woodsonbib.html)

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Missouri trail leads into a gold mine of black history

2009-02-01T16:01:00.000-08:00

Visitors can tour area once known as 'Little Dixie'

By Pamela Selbert | Special to the Tribune

History books may tell us a lot about the past but not necessarily all of it. So says St. Louis storyteller/historian Angela da Silva, whose ancestors were slaves on a central Missouri grain and cattle plantation for several generations. They and many other African-Americans, free or enslaved, helped settle the land and helped shape its history.

In search of this "forgotten Missouri," da Silva, 55, has spent the last decade poring over genealogical records and other historical documents at museums, courthouses and other archives across the state, primarily in the counties along Interstate Highway 70. The highway roughly parallels the Missouri River in an area once known as "Little Dixie" for the large number of slaves who lived there.

Da Silva, head of the Black Tourism Network in St. Louis, has recently developed a "trail" of several dozen sites spanning the state, where visitors can learn more about "what the history books don't tell." February, which is Black History Month, offers an opportunity to consider a trip there deep into African-American history that is relevant far beyond Missouri.

The trail begins in St. Louis, a pivotal point on the Underground Railroad, the network of safe havens that helped slaves escape to freedom. One of the city's newest attractions is the Mary Meachum Freedom Crossing, named for the free black woman who helped slaves cross the Mississippi into Illinois. She eventually was arrested and charged in court, though her fate is unknown. But at the crossing, dedicated by the National Park Service, visitors learn about Meachum's efforts, and an annual May re-enactment recalls the 1855 morning of her arrest.

Among St. Louis' many other black history sites are the George Washington Carver Garden at the Missouri Botanical Garden; the Old Courthouse, where the celebrated Dred Scott freedom trial took place; the St. Louis Art Museum African Arts Collection; the Black World History Museum; and "Seeking St. Louis" at the Missouri History Museum, an extensive exhibit that explains the important role African-Americans played in the city's history. The History Museum is hosting a George Washington Carver exhibit through March 1 and a "Katherine Dunham, Beyond the Dance" exhibit through Nov. 8.

St. Louis also is home to lesser known but significant sites, such as the hotel where the events in the song "Frankie and Johnny" actually played out and the tree not far from the Mississippi where a hapless slave, escaped from a riverboat, was chained and burned to death in the early 1830s. One observer was abolitionist/newspaper publisher Elijah Lovejoy, who wrote of the gruesome event in detail. Several years later he was murdered in Alton, Ill., for his anti-slavery stance.

The trail moves west to the Daniel Boone Home and 1,000-acre Boonesfield Village (now a campus of Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Mo.). Here Boone, who arrived from Kentucky in 1799, helped son Nathan build a fine stone manse, now open for tours, and lived out his final years. A dozen or so historic buildings have been moved here to create the village, where early Missouri history, including slavery on the frontier, is interpreted.

Grady Manus, chief interpreter, explained that when the Boones and other settlers came, they brought with them slaves and free blacks, many of whom were skilled artisans who played an important role in building homes and other structures on the frontier. He added that until recently it was not widely known that the Boones owned slaves or that a slave named Derry was one of Daniel Boone's closest companions. "To omit that from Boone history would be telling less than the truth," Manus said.

Historical re-enactments are held at the village throughout the year, and da Silva, an authority on the Underground Railroad, gives a powerful performance as Lila, a slave woman. (Lila will also appear on Oct. 4, 11 and 18 in three St. Louis parks as yet to be announced.)

Other stops on the trail include Lincoln University in Jefferson City, the only "historically black college started by African-American Civil War veterans," said Lori Simms of the Missouri Division of Tourism. The school, now on the National Register of Historic Places, was begun in 1866 by the enlisted men of the 62nd and 65th United States Colored Infantry and their white officers. At the time there was no college for African-Americans in the state. A fine bronze and granite memorial to the soldiers by sculptor Ed Dwight was dedicated at the school in 2007.

The trail continues west through Arrow Rock, a distinctly Southern town frozen in time to Civil War days, when a third of its 1,000 residents were slaves who labored on area hemp plantations. The town shriveled after the railroad bypassed it following the war, and today it counts just 66 residents. Nearby Prairie Park, an elegant plantation home with slave quarters, can be toured. Just to the south is Pleasant Green, which includes a two-story Federal-style plantation home built in 1830, plus slave cabins, all furnished as they might have been in antebellum days.

On to Pennytown, a community founded in 1871 by former slave Joe Penny. It grew to include 200 residents on 65 acres but now consists only of tiny Pennytown Freewill Baptist Church. A handful of former residents maintain the church and hold a homecoming every August. To the west near Lexington, where the Civil War Battle of the Hemp Bales took place in September 1861, the trail passes 1,000-acre Hickland Heathstone, the "only intact slave-breeding plantation in the country that we know of," da Silva said. Adjacent to the fine home, still owned by Hickland descendants, is a five-cell birthing cabin and the overseer's cabin.

Kansas City is on the trail with several black history sites, including the American Jazz Museum, where exhibits tell the stories of Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie Parker and others; the first-rate Negro Leagues Baseball Museum; and the Arabia Steamboat Museum, a destination unto itself.

The steamboat, loaded with 200 tons of supplies bound for the frontier, sank in the Missouri River near Kansas City in 1856, explained David Hawley, who 20 years ago, helped unearth the boat, which he calls a "19th Century Wal-Mart" for its thousands of artifacts. By then the steamboat wreckage was beneath a cornfield, as the river had long since changed course. Slaves, Hawley said, would have loaded the supplies aboard in St. Louis.

After the Civil War had ended and the 1866 Missouri Constitution mandated "free public schools for Negroes," soldier/educator/civil rights activist James Milton Turner, a former slave, was appointed second assistant state superintendent of schools. His only duty was to establish black schools, among them the log Banneker School, built that year in Parkville just north of Kansas City. The logs were replaced with bricks in 1885, and until 1904, when the school closed, it had held about 70 students in eight grades.

One of the principal supporters of the school was none other than Jesse James, da Silva said. Considering the outlaw's radical Southern sympathies, this may seem surprising, she said. But according to the Missouri Historical Society, Jesse James' mother, Zerelda, had married a Dr. Samuels, the father of two mixed-race children, when her own sons were small, and the children grew up together. One of Jesse James' stepbrothers was headmaster at the Banneker School.

Today, the tiny school at the end of a very steep street, empty for more than a century, is dilapidated and forlorn. But according to a sign, work has begun to turn it into a black interpretive center.

The trail ends at the Jesse James Home in St. Joseph, which was also the end of the line for the notorious outlaw. Under the assumed name Tom Howard, James and his family had moved into the small frame house only a few months before fellow gang member Bob Ford gunned him down April 3, 1882.

James, 34, was standing on a chair to straighten a needlepoint wall hanging when he was shot from behind, said museum director Gary Chilcote. The bullet that killed him left a large hole in the wall (now protected with plastic) near a faded needlepoint, still crooked, embroidered with the words "God Bless Our Home."

The house, moved a few blocks to its current site in 1977, is now part of the Patee House Museum, one of the finest, most extensive museums anywhere. The Patee opened as a luxury hotel with 140 guest rooms in 1858, and today is a National Historical Landmark for its role as headquarters for the Pony Express (1860-61). Over the years the building was a hotel three times and a women's college twice before serving 80 years as a shirt factory that closed in 1957. Six years later it opened as a museum.

Article Source: http://www.chicagotribune.com/travel/chi-0201-black-historyfeb01,0,5937421.story

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Frederick Douglass: Chronology

2009-02-01T04:50:00.000-08:00

February 1818 Born Frederick Baily near Easton, Maryland
1824 Works for Captain Aaron Anthony
1826 Travels to Baltimore, Maryland to work for Hugh Auld
March 1833 Returns to Anthony farm to work for Thomas Auld
January 1834 Works for Edward Covey
1835 Works for William Freeland
1836 First escape plan fails; is imprisoned; sent back to Hugh Auld
1837 Meets Anna Murray
September 1838 Escapes to New York; sends for and marries Anna Murray; changes name to Frederick Douglass
August 1841 Asked to speak at American Anti-Slavery Society meeting; invited to go on lecture tour
May 1845 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is published; Douglass begins tour of England
1847 Returns to the United States and begins lecture tour
December 1847 Begins printing the North Star
1848 Attends first women's rights convention
1850 Becomes involved in the underground railroad
1851 Breaks with William Garrison
November 1859 Sales to England to begin lecture tour
May 1860 Returns to the United States
1863 Meets with President Abraham Lincoln to discuss the treatment of black soldiers during the Civil War
1864 Meets with Lincoln to formulate plans to lead blacks out of the South in case of a Union defeat
February 1866 Meets with President Andrew Johnson to discuss black suffrage.
July 1867 Declines Johnson's offer to head Freedman's Bureau
Mary 1870 The Fifteenth Amendment is adopted and blacks are granted the right to vote; becomes editor of the New National Era
1874 Becomes president of the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company
1877 Becomes U.S. Marshal
1880 Appointed recorder of deeds for Washington, D.C.
August 1882 Anna Douglass dies
January 1884 Douglass marries Helen Pitts of Rochester
1889 Accepts post of American consul-general to Haiti
1891 Resigns post and returns home

February 20, 1895: Dies in Washington, D.C.

Article Source: http://www.history.rochester.edu/class/douglass/part6.html

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Frederick Douglass: Life After the 13th Amendment

2009-02-01T04:46:00.000-08:00

With the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in December 1865, slavery was officially abolished in all areas of the United States. The Reconstruction era was under way in the South, the period during which the 11 Confederate states would be gradually reintroduced to the Union. In the meantime, Norhern armies continued to occupy the South and to enforce the decrees of Congress. Frederick Douglass was then 47 years old, an active man in the prime of his life. No longer enlisted in the war on slavery, he thought about buying a farm and settling down to a quiet life. But black Americans still desperately needed an advocate, and Douglass soon rejected any notion of an early retirement.

In many parts of the South, the newly freed slaves labored under conditions similar to those existing before the war. The Union army could offer only limited protection to the ex-slaves, and Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, clearly had no interest in ensuring the freedom of southern blacks. The new president's appointments as governors of sourthern states formed conservative, proslavery governments. The new state legislatures passed laws designed to keep blacks in poverty and in positions of servitude. Under these so-called black codes, ex-slaves who had no steady employment could be arrested and ordered to pay stiff fines. Prisoners who could not pay the sum were hired out as virtual slaves. In some areas, black children could be forced to serve as apprentices in local industries. Blacks were also prevented from buying land and were denied fair wages for their work.

At a meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society in May 1865, one month after the end of the Civil War, William Lloyd Garrison had called upon the organization to disband, now that its goal was achieved. Douglass came out against Garrison's proposal, stating that "Slavery is not abolished until the black man has the ballot." The society voted to continue the struggle for black rights, but many abolitionists left the movement. Fortunately, abolitionists were not the only ones interested in giving blacks the right to vote. The Republican party was worried that the Democrats would regain their power in the South. If this happened, the Republicans would lose their dominant position in Congress when the southern states were readmitted to the Union. Led by two fierce antislavery senators, Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner, a group of radical Republicans joined with abolitionists in a campaign for voting rights for black men, who, they believed, would naturally support the Republicans. During the later part of 1865, Douglass traveled throughout the North, speaking out for black suffrage and warning the country that the former slaveholders were regaining control of the South. In February 1866, he addressed his most important audience, President Andrew Johnson. Along with his son Lewis and three other black leaders, Douglass met with Johnson to impress upon him the need for changes in the southern state governments. The president did most of the talking, and he told the delegation that he intended to support the interests of southern whites and to block voting rights for blacks. Douglass and Johnson parted, both saying that they would take their cases to the American people.

Despite the president's opposition, Douglass and the supporters continued to battle for black rights with some success. The public mood gradually turned against Johnson and his attempts to install governments in the South that were controlled by Confederate loyalists. The Republican-controlled Congress became increasingly resistant to Johnson's plans for a limited reconstruction of the southern states. The radical Republicans wanted to see sweeping changes enforced that would end the former slaveholders' power in the South. Thaddeus Stevens urged that the estates of the large slaveholders be broken up and the land distributed to ex-slaves, or freedmen, as they were then known.

In the summer of 1866, Congress passed two bills over the president's veto. One, the Freedmen's Bureau Bill, extended the powers of a government agency that had been established in 1865 for the purpose of providing medical, educational, and financial assistance for the millions of impoverished southern blacks. Congress also passed the Civil Rights Bill, which gave full citzenship to blacks, along with all the rights enjoyed by other Americans. President Johnson's supporters, mainly Democrats and conservative Republicans, organized in the summer of 1866 to stop the movement for further black rights. The radical Republicans also held a meeting in Philadelphia to vote on a resolution calling for black suffrage, and Douglass attended the convention as a delegate from New York. Unfortunately, he encountered much prejudice from some Republican politicians, who were unwilling to associate with blacks on an equal level. Nonetheless, Douglass went to the convention and spoke out for black suffrage. The vote on the resolution was a close one, for some of the delegates were afraid that white voters would not support a party that allied itself too closely with blacks.

Speeches by Douglass and the woman suffragist Anna E. Dickinson helped turn the tide in favor of black suffrage. For Douglass, the convention also held a more personal note. While marching in a parade of delegates, he spotted Amanda Sears, whose mother, Lucretia Auld, had given him his first pair of pants and arranged for him to leave the Lloyd plantation. Sears and her two children had traveled to Philadelphia just to see the famed Frederick Douglass. The movement for black suffrage grew rapidly after the Philadelphia convention. With President Johnson's supporters greatly outnumbered, in June 1866, Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment, which was designed to ensure that rights guaranteed earlier to blacks under the Civil Rights Bill were protected by the Constitution. The amendment was finally ratified in July 1868 after all the states approved it. Although the new amendment declared that no state could deny any person his full rights as an American citizen, it did not guarantee blacks the right to vote. In most states, however, blacks were already voting.

During July 1867, Douglass was asked by President Johnson to take charge of the Freedman's Bureau, a position that would have allowed him to oversee all the government programs administering to the needs of southern blacks. Douglass was tempted by the offer, the first major post to be offered to a black man, but he realized that by associating with the Johnson administration, he would be helping the president appear to be the black man's friend. Instead, he refused to serve under a man whose policies he detested. By 1867, Douglass could see that Johnson's days in office were numbered. The president was unable to stop Congress's Reconstruction acts, which divided the South into five military districts and laid out strict guidelines for the readmission of the Confederate states into the Union. The new laws required the southern states to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment and to guarantee blacks the right to vote. The radical Republicans were angered by Johnson's attempts to block the Reconstruction measures, and they instituted impeachment proceedings against him, the first time a president underwent this ordeal. The impeachment measure fell one vote short of the two-thirds majority in the House and Senate needed to remove Johnson from office, but the president exercised little power during the last two years of his term.

During the 1868 presidential contest, Douglass campaigned for the Republican candidate, Ulysses S. Grant, the former commander in chief of the Union army. In a famous speech, "The Work Before Us," Douglass attacked the Democratic party for ignoring black citizens and warned about the rise in the South of white supremacist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan. These secret societies attempted to intimidate blacks with fire and the hangman's noose. They also attacked "Yankee carpetbaggers" (northerners who had flooded into the South at the end of the Civil War) and "scalawags" (southern whites who cooperated with the federal Reconstruction authorities). Douglass feared that the terrorist tactics of the Klan would succeed in frightening blacks into giving up the civil rights they had gained in the South. "Rebellion has been subdued, slavery abolished, and peace proclaimed," he said, "and yet our work is not done.....We are face to face with the same old enemy of liberty and progress.....The South today is a field of blood."

Black voters came out strongly for the Republicans in the 1868 elections, helping Grant win the presidency. With Grant in office, the Fifteenth Amendment passed through Congress and was submitted to the states for ratification. This amendment guaranteed all citizens the right to vote, regardless of their race. Douglass's push for state approval of the amendment caused a breach between him and the woman suffragists, who were upset that the measure did not include voting rights for woman. Old friends such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton accused Douglass of abandoning the cause of women's rights. At the annual meeting of the Equal Rights Association in May 1869, Douglass tried to persuade the woman suffragists that voting rights for blacks must be won immediately, while women could afford to wait. "When women because they are women are dragged from their homes and hung upon lampposts, .....then they will have the urgency to obtain the ballot," said Douglass. One of the women in the crowd cried out, "Is that not also true about black women?" "Yes, yes," Douglass replied, "but not because she is a woman but because she is black." The women in the audience were not convinced by Douglass's argument, and some of them even spoke out against black suffrage. Douglass's relationship with the woman suffragists eventually healed, but women would not receive the right to vote until 1920.

The campaign for state ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment was successful. On March 30, 1870, President Grant declared that the amendment had been adopted. Later, at the last official meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society, Douglass spoke gratefully about the new rights blacks had won. "I seem to be living in a new world," he said. While thanking all the men and women who had struggled for so long to make this new world possible, he modestly omitted his own name. However, no one had fought harder for black rights than Douglass. By 1870, he could look proudly upon some of the fruits of his labors. Between 1868 and 1870, the southern states were readmitted to the Union, and large numbers of blacks were elected to the state legislatures. Blacks also won seats in Congress, with Hiram Revels of Mississippi becoming the first black senator and Joseph Rainey of South Carolina being the first black to enter the House of Representatives. In 1870, Douglass was asked to serve as editor of a newspaper based in Washington, D.C., whose goal was to herald the progress of blacks throughout the country. Early on, the paper, the New National Era, experienced financial difficulties, and Douglass bought the enterprise. The paper folded in 1874, but for a few years it provided him with the means to publish his opinions on the developing racial situation in the United States.

Another misfortune occurred in 1872, when Douglass's Rochester home went up in flames. None of his family was hurt, but many irreplaceable volumes of his newspapers were destroyed. Although friends urged him to rebuild in Rochester, Douglass decided to move his family to the center of political activity in Washington, D.C. During 1872, Douglass campaigned hard for the reelection of President Grant. He supported the president even though many of the Republican party leaders he most respected, including Senator Charles Sumner, chose to back the Democratic candidate, Horace Greeley. Although personally honest, Grant was harshly criticized for not controlling the corrupt officials who served in his administration. Douglass stuck with the president, believing that blacks needed a strong friend in the White House. At the time, the Ku Klux Klan and other white terrorist organizations were burning black schools and murdering schoolteachers in an effort to keep southern blacks from learning how to read. Grant easily won the 1872 election, and Douglass was given an unexpected honor. He was chosen as one of the two electors-at-large from New York, the men who carried the sealed envelope with the results of the state voting to the capital. After the election, Douglass expected that he would be given a position in the Grant administration, but no post was offered, so he returned to the lecture circuit.

A third financial loss struck Douglass in 1874. That year he was offered and accepted the position of president of the Freedmen's Savings and Trust Company, a bank that had been founded to encourage blacks to invest and save their money. The previous management had made huge loans to speculators at extremely low interest rates. By the time Douglass was put in charge, the bank was on the verge of collapse. He immediately appealed to Congress for help and tried to restore confidence by investing much of his own money in the bank. Even so, the prestigious Freedmen's Bank failed, and many black depositors lost their money. For Douglass, it was a blow to his pride as well as to his pocketbook. Fortunately, Douglass had the means to recoup his losses on the lecture circuit. He no long spoke simply about black rights but included other topics on which he was an authority, such as Scandinavian folklore. On whatever subject he lectured, he combined his humor, intelligence, and passion to create a memorable experience for his audiences. Many people described him as one of the world's greatest speakers.

As Douglass traveled, he continued the battle against the daily humiliations that blacks were forced to endure throughout the country. Whenever he encountered discriminatory practices in a restaurant, hotel, or railway car, he would write a letter of protest to the local newspapers. In such ways, he retained his position as the foremost spokesman for black Americans. In 1875, he was cheered by Congress's passage of the Civil Rights Bill, which gave blacks the right to equal treatment in theaters, inns, and other public places. In 1877, after the inauguration of the new Republican president, Rugherford B. Hayes, Douglass was finally rewarded with a political post, the largely ceremonial position of marshal for Washington, D.C. However, in order to court southern votes for the close presidential election of 1876, the Republicans had agreed to remove the bulk of the federal troops in the South. The rights that had been granted to blacks after the Civil War could no longer be protected in the sothern states. Douglass was criticized for accepting his post after the Rebpulcians' betrayal of their black supporters, but he saw the appointment as simply another milestone for his people. In any case, Douglass did speak out against the Republicans for abandoning southern blacks to the discriminatory practices of the South.

Nearing the age of 60, Douglass was ready to give up his life on the road. In his undemanding job as a U.S. marshal overseeing the criminal justice system in the nation's capital, he was aided by a large staff of employees. Following his appointment, he purchased a new home in the Washington area. The 15 acre estate that he christened Cedar Hill included a 20 room house, which held a huge library and whose walls were decorated with the portraits of Abraham Lincoln, William Lloyd Garrison, Susan B. Anthony, and other people who had influenced him. His children were frequent visitors to Ceder Hill, and he greatly enjoyed playing the role of family patriarch. In 1877, Douglass traveled to St. Michaels, Maryland, to visit old friends and to see the farms and plantations where he had worked as a slave. While there, he took the opportunity to visit his old master, Thomas Auld. Aged and feeble, Auld greeted his former slave as Marshal Douglass, and the two men spoke for a long time. Auld both justified and apologized for his actions as a slaveholder. Overall, the former master and slave were able to part on good terms. After the 1880 election of the Republican candidate James Garfield as president, Douglass was appointed to the post of recorder of deeds for Washington, D.C. He liked his new job, which entailed managing the department that made records of property sales in the capital. During his five years in this position, he had ample time for his writing projects and speaking engagements. In 1881, he published the third of his autobiographical volumes, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. In August 1882, Anna Douglass died after a long illness. Douglass observed a traditional year of grieving, but he was hardly ready to settle into the life of a widower. He had never shrunk from controversy, and his next act upset both black and white society. In early 1884, Douglass announced that he was marrying Helen Pitts, a white woman who was nearly 20 years younger than he was.

Douglass enjoyed 9 years of marriage to Helen Pitts, on February 20, 1895, Douglass was struck by a massive heart attack and died at the age of 77. As news of Douglass's death spread throughout the country, crowds gathered at the Washington church where he lay in state to pay their respects. Black public schools closed for the day, and parents took their children for a last look at the famed leader. His wife and children accompanied his body back to Rochester, where he was laid to rest. No one has struggled more resolutely for the rights of his people than Frederick Douglass. Born at a time when strong voices were desperately needed to cry out for freedom, he established himself as a powerful speaker for all men and women.

Article Source: http://www.history.rochester.edu/class/douglass/part5.html

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Frederick Douglass: The Civil War Years - The Fight For Emancipation

2009-02-01T04:44:00.000-08:00

The election year of 1860 produced many candidates. The Democrats had split into factions; those who were proslavery supported Vice President John Breckinridge, while moderates in the North favored the Illinois senator Stephen Douglas. Abraham Lincoln was the candidate of the Republicans, who were opposed to the spread of slavery into new territories. The candidate from the newly formed Constitutional Union Party, Gerrit Smith, was running on a strong antislavery platform.

At first, Douglass campaigned for Smith. However, a few months before the election, Douglass decided that Smith had no chance of winning and chose instead to back Lincoln. The two Democratic candidates received far more votes than anyone else did, but the division in the party gave the presidency to Lincoln. South Carolina, unwilling to accept the results of the election, seceded from the Union in December 1860. Abolitionists became the targets of angry mobs in the North, which blamed them for dividing the nation. Northern attempts to win back the South were to no avail. In February 1861, six more southern states - Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas seceded and established a separate government under the name of the Confederate States of America.

The country waited for Lincoln to respond to the crisis. The president's address in March was disappointing to Douglass because Lincoln promised to uphold the fugitive slave laws and not interfere with slavery in the states where it was already established. His first priority was to restore the Union, not to end slavery. On April 12, 1861, Confederate troops bombarded Fort Sumter, a federal installation in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. The fort surrendered a day later. Lincoln then called for 75,000 troops to be formed and sent to the South to stop the rebellion. Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Arkansas immediately joined the Confederacy. The four other slave states - Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, and Kentucky, remained in the Union. The two sides prepared for battle, the North with its 23 states and population of 22 million against the South's 11 states and 9 million people, including 3 and a half million slaves.

The North was fighting to preserve the Union; the South was fighting for the right to secede and establish a nation that guaranteed a person's right to own slaves. For Frederick Douglass and the abolitionists, the war was a battle to end slavery. Douglass's response to the surrender of Fort Sumter was one of thanksgiving. As the Civil War got under way, Douglass marked out two goals for which he would fight: emancipation for all slaves in the Confederacy and the Union border states, and the right of blacks to enlist in the armies of the North. As the war progressed, more and more people in the North would come to agree with these aims. While battles raged throughout the South, Douglass traveled on the lecture circuit, calling for Lincoln to grant slaves their freedom. On April 16, 1862, the president signed a bill outlawing slavery in Washington, D.C., but he was slow to approve congressional measures confiscating slaves in captured areas of the South. Lincoln believed that if he passed laws that emancipated the slaves, the Union's border states might rebel and join the Confederacy.

Douglass continued to insist in his speeches and newspaper editorials that the aim of the war must be to abolish slavery and that blacks must be allowed to join in the battle for their freedom. Battlefield casualties were frighteningly high, and antidraft riots erupted in northern cities. Gradually, as the costly war dragged on, with no final victory in sight for the North, Lincoln began to realize that stronger actions needed to be taken against the Confederacy. In the summer of 1862, Lincoln read to his cabinet a draft of an order that would emancipate slaves in the Confederate states. He decided to issue the proclamation as soon as the North won a major battle. In September, Lincoln got his victory when northern troops pushed back a Confederate army at the bloody battle of Antietam in Maryland. On the night of December 31, 1862, the president issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that as of the next day all slaves in areas not held by Union troops were free. Slavery was not abolished in the border states or in already captured areas of the South. Nevertheless, Lincoln's act freed millions of blacks, who fled from their masters and took "freedom's road" to areas controlled by Union forces.

In Boston on the night that the proclamation was announced, Douglass wrote of the spirit of those who had gathered with him at the telegraph office to witness slavery's death: "We were waiting and listening as for a bolt from the sky...we were watching...by the dim light of the stars for the dawn of a new day...we were longing for the answer to the agonizing prayers of centuries." The crowds cheered. The end of slavery was in sight. Douglass next turned his attention to the struggle of blacks to be allowed to fight for their freedom. In 1863, Congress authorized black enlistment in the Union army. The Massachusetts 54th Regimate was the first black unit to be formed, and the governor of the state asked Douglass to help in the recruitment. Douglass agreed and wrote an editorial that was published in the local newspapers. "Men of Color, to Arms," he urged blacks to "end in a day the bondage of centuries" and to earn their equality and show their patriotism by fighting in the Union cause. His sons Lewis and Charles were among the first to enlist.

Douglass's recruitment speeches promised black soldiers equality in the Union army, unfortunately they were not treated equally. They were paid 1/2 of what the white soldiers received and were given inferior weapons and inadequate training. Blacks were not allowed to become officers. Worst of all, black soldiers who were captured by Confederate troops were often shot. Douglass stopped his recruitment efforts when he learned of these conditions. Douglass published his complaints and then requested to meet with the president. His request was granted in the summer of 1863 and Douglass expressed his concerns about the way black soldiers were being treated by Union officers and Confederate captors. President Lincoln did give Douglass some encouragement that changes might be made in the future. Although Douglass was not entirely satisfied with Lincoln's response, he decided to begin recruiting again. Shortly after the meeting, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton offered Douglass a commission on the staff of General Lorenzo Thomas. Douglass accepted the offer and returned to Rochester, where he published the last issue of his newspaper. He waited at home for notice of his commission as an officer, but it never arrived. Apparently, Stanton decided that Douglass would never be accepted by other officers. Douglass was extremely disappointed that the commission fell through, but he continued his recruiting work. By now, Frederick, Jr., had joined his brothers in the Union lines. More than 200,000 blacks enlisted in the Union army and 38,000 were killed or wounded in Civil War battles. Comprising about 10 percent of the North's troops, the black soldiers made their numbers felt on the battlefields and distinguished themselves in many engagements. By mid 1864, with the help of the spirited black troops, the war was slowly turning in favor of the North.

In 1864, Douglass was becoming concerned about the fate of black Americans once they were all free. Douglass not only wanted liberation of the slaves, he wanted equality for his people as well. In the North, discrimination against black soldiers and civilians continued. In May 1864, with the presidential elections approaching, Douglass attended a convention of abolitionists and antislavery members of the Republican party, who were known as radical Republicans. The delegates nominated the former Free Soil party candidate and Union general John C. Fremont for president. The Democrats selected the popular general George McClellan to run against Lincoln on a Copperhead platform. Copperhead was the derogatory name used to refer to anyone who favored making immediate peace with the South and leaving slaves in bondage. Worried that McClellan might win the election, Douglass and other Fremont supporters decided to back Lincoln.

Douglass and Lincoln had a second meeting in August 1864. The president had begun to doubt that the war could be won, and he was worried that he might have to sign a peace with the Confederacy that would leave slavery intact. Lincoln asked Douglass to draw up plans for leading slaves out of the South in the event that a Union victory seemed impossible. Douglass left the interview convinced that the president was a friend of blacks. The president's policies were hated not only by the South but by many people in the North who had grown tired of war. The evacuation plan that Douglass sent to Lincoln never had to be used. In the summer of 1864, General William T. Sherman and his Union troops left a path of destruction as they marched through the heart of the South. In September, Sherman entered Atlanta, the capital of Georgia, burned the city to the ground and left a path of destruction as he headed on to Savannah. The victories gave the North renewed heart and helped Lincoln win easy reelection in November.

By the end of 1864, the South was hungry and bankrupt. As the Confederate armies retreated before their better-supplied opponents, Douglass took the occasion to visit Maryland and Union - controlled areas of Virginia. He lectured in his old home town of Baltimore. On this trip, he was reunited with his sister Eliza, whom he had not seen in 30 years. He was very proud of his sister, who through her own hard work had managed to buy the freedom of herself and her nine children. Back in the North, Douglass attended Lincoln's second inaugural address. Standing among crowds gathered in the nation's capital, Douglass felt himself to be "a man among men." As though to prick that bubble, government officials refused to allow Douglass or any other black to attend the evening reception in the White House. But when Douglass sent word of this refusal to the president, he was quickly ushered in to the ceremony. Lincoln personally greeted him with the words, "Here comes my friend Douglass."

In the beginning of April, the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, was captured. A few days later, the commander of the Confederate forces, General Robert E. Lee, surrendered to the Union commander, Ulysses S. Grant, at Appomattox Court House in Virginia. On April 9, 1865, the Civil War was over. To the horror of the newly reunited nation, President Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, while attending a play at Ford's Theater in Washington on April 14. He died the next day. With the rest of the country, Douglass mourned the man he had grown to respect. No sadness could completely overshadow Douglass's joy at this time, however. A single, glorious fact remained: the war to end slavery had been won.

Article Source: http://www.history.rochester.edu/class/douglass/part4.html

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Frederick Douglass: The Rochester Years

2009-02-01T04:41:00.000-08:00

Douglass bought a two story home in Rochester, New York for Anna and the children and on December 3, 1847, Douglass began his second career, when his four page weekly newspaper, the North Star, came off the presses. On the masthead appeared the motto, "Right is of no sex - Truth is of no color - God is the Father of us all, and we are all Brethren." Once the North Star began to circulate, Douglass's friends in the abolitionist movement rallied to join in praising it. However, not everyone was pleased to see another antislavery paper - especially one edited by an ex-slave. Some local citizens were unhappy that their town was the site of a black newspaper, and the New York Herald urged the citizens of Rochester to dump Douglass's printing press into Lake Ontario. Gradually, Rochester came to take pride in the North Star and its bold editor.

The town had a reputation for being pro-abolitionist. Rochester's women were active in antislavery societies, and through them Douglass kept in close contact with the leaders in the fight for women's rights, among them Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Along with the good will of Rochester's abolitionist and female political activists, Douglass received encouragement from the local printer's union. The North Star received a number of glowing reviews, but unfortunately the praises did not translate into financial success. The cost of producing a weekly newspaper was high and subscriptions grew slowly. For a number of years, Douglass was forced to depend on his own savings and contributions from friends to keep the paper afloat. He was forced to return to the lecture circuit to raise money for the paper. During the paper's first year, he was on the road for six months. In the spring of 1848, he had to mortgage his home.

In the midst of these troubles, a friend from England arrived to help Douglass with his financial problems. Julia Griffiths had raised enough money to help launch the paper, and now she was prepared to fight for its survival. Griffiths put the North Star's finances in order, and Douglass was eventually able to regain possession of his home. By 1851, he would be able to write to his friend, the abolitionist publisher and politician Gerrit Smith, "The North Star sustains itself, and partly sustains my large family. It has reached a living point. Hitherto, the struggle of its life has been to live. Now it more than lives." Despite the ups and downs, Douglass's newspaper continued publication as a weekly until 1860 and survived for three more years as a monthly. After 1851, it would be titled Frederick Douglass' Paper. Douglass's newspaper symbolized the potential for blacks to achieve whatever goals they set. The paper provided a forum for black writers and highlighted the success achieved by prominent black figures in American society.

For Douglass, starting the North Star marked the end of his dependence on Garrison and other white abolitionists. The paper allowed him to discover the problems facing blacks around the country. Douglass had heated arguments with many of his fellow black activists, but these debates showed that his people were beginning to involve themselves in the center of events affecting their position in America. By the end of the 1840's, Douglass was well on his way to becoming the most famous and respected black leader in the country. He was in great demand as a speaker and writer, he had proved himself to be and independent thinker and courageous spokesman for black liberty and equality.

During his years in Rochester, Douglass continued to grow in status as the editor of the nation's best known black newspaper, in which he was free to attack slavery with all the power of his intellect. Yet the turmoil of the 1850's would severely test his faith in the ability of America to rid itself of the institution that kept his people in bondage. Some of the turmoil made its way into Douglass's home. While he roamed far beyond his original bounds, his wife, though hard-working, remained uneducated and politically unambitious. Douglass hired a teacher for Anna in 1848, hoping to bridge the gap between them. But his effort failed and Anna remained almost totally illiterate.

Douglass appreciated his wife's domestic skills, but he also admired the educated, politically active women who served in the antislavery and women's rights movements. He was grateful for all the help the women abolitionists had given blacks, and in 1848, he showed his support for the feminist cause by attending the first women's rights convention. The movement drew much hostile press, and the 35 women and 32 men who went to the convention were described as "manhaters" and "hermaphrodites" (people with both male and female sexual features). The women delegates hesitated to make the demand for voting rights (suffrage) a part of their movement's platform, and the feminist leader Elizabeth Cady Stanton asked Douglass to speak on the matter. With an appeal for bold action, Douglass convinced the women that political equality was an essential step in their liberation.

The cause of women's rights continued to remain important to Douglass. Susan B. Anthony and Lucretia Mott among many other feminists would be his lifelong friends. A scandal erupted in 1848 when Julia Griffiths began to serve as Douglass's office and business manager and soon became his almost constant companion. She arranged his lectures, dealt with the paper's finances and accompanied him to meetings. People in Rochester gradually adjusted to the sight of the black leader and the white woman walking arm in arm down the street. Rumors began to fly because Griffiths lived in the same house with Douglass and his wife. Anna Douglas was uneasy about the local talk, but did not speak much about the situation. The controversy was reported in the newspapers, and Douglass was attacked by the Garrisonians for involving the abolitionist movement in a scandal. In 1852, Griffiths decided to spare Douglass further embarrassment by moving out of his home. She remained his close associate until 1855, when she returned to England.

Tensions between Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison began to mount because Douglass's views on how to fight slavery gradually began to change and differed sharply from Garrison's. The first principles of Garrison that Douglass began to question was the idea that resisting slavery through violent means was wrong. In 1847, Douglass met with the militant white abolitionist John Brown, who helped to convince Douglass that pacifist means could not by themselves bring an end to slavery. Brown had told him that slaveholders "had forfeited their right to live, and that slaves had the right to gain their liberty in any way they could." At abolitionist meetings Douglass began telling his audiences that he would be pleased to hear that the slaves in the South had revolted and "were spreading death and destruction." Ten years later, he had completely abandoned the idea that slavery could be ended peacefully. Douglass began widening his circle of abolitionist friends and thus began to question Garrison's opposition to seeking antislavery reforms through the political process.

In 1848, he urged women to fight for the vote. Garrison's view of the Constitution as a proslavery document was not accepted by all abolitionists, as Douglass began to talk with these dissenters, he began to see the matter in a different way. The Constitution, with its emphasis on promoting the general welfare and securing the blessings of liberty for all, clearly seemed to be antislavery. The North, Douglass realized, would never abolish slavery if that could only be done by dividing the Union and dismantling the Constitution. He therefore decided that slavery would have to be ended through political reforms. Garrit Smith, who was a leader in the antislavery Liberty party became associated with Douglass and got him involved in politics. In 1848, he attended a convention of the Free Soil party, which was trying to stop the spread of slavery into areas west of the Mississippi River.

The final split between Douglass and Garrison took place in June, 1851 at the annual meeting of the American Antislavery Society. Douglass shocked his old associates by publicly announcing that he intended to urge the readers of the North Star to engage in politics. The Garrisonian press launched a vicious assault against him during the following months. The disputes between the antislavery factions did not dominate Douglass's life. He was active in any cause that furthered the cause of his people. Douglass also tried to establish a black vocational school, an institution that would train its students to become skilled tradesmen. Among the people he visited in his efforts to raise funds for the school was Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of the immensely popular antislavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin . Unfortunately, Douglass was unable to raise enough money to start the school.

Douglass was a proud and loving father although he was often away from home. A fifth child, Annie, was born in 1849. Rochester's public schools would not admit black students so Douglass enrolled his oldest child, Rosetta, into a private school. However, even there Rosetta was segregated from white students, and Douglass finally hired a woman to teach his children at home. Never one to let racial discrimination go unchallenged, Douglass campaigned to end segregation in Rochester's school system, and in 1857 his efforts succeeded.

In 1850 Douglass became strongly involved in the underground railroad, the system set up by antislavery groups to bring runaways to sanctuaries in the North and in Canada. Douglass's home in Rochester was near the Canadian border, and during the 1850s it became an important station on the underground railroad. Eventually, he became the superintendent of the entire system in his area. He often found runaways sitting on the steps of his newspaper office when he arrived for work. At times, as many as 11 fugitives were hiding in his home. Over the years, he and Anna fed and sheltered hundreds of these men and women. Only a few of the slaves who tried to escape from the South were successful. Douglass fiercely attacked the fugitive slave laws and the many atrocities that were being committed against runaway slaves.

In a speech given in Rochester on Independence Day in 1852, Douglass pointed out how differently blacks and whites viewed the day's celebrations: What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all the other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim...To him your celebration is a sham...a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States. The sufferings of the hunted fugitive slaves reminded Douglass that freedom for his people would not come easily. In a speech he made at a Canandaigua, New York, convention celebrating the 20th anniversary of the emancipation of slaves in the British West Indies, Douglass preached that blacks must unite to gain their liberty and that they must be prepared for a hard struggle. Blacks, he said, would have to pay a heavy price to win their freedom. "We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others."

During the mid-1850s, John Brown was the leader of one of the Free Soil bands fighting the proslavery forces in Kansas. But Brown wanted to start a slave revolt in the South. In 1859, he decided to lead an attack on the northern Virginia town of Harpers Ferry, seize the weapons stored in the nearby federal armory, and hold the local citizens hostage while he rounded up slaves in the area. Gathering a small force of white and black volunteers, Brown rented a farm near Harpers Ferry and made his preparations for attack. From the farm, Brown wrote to Douglass, asking him to come to a meeting in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, in August. There Brown announced his plans and urged Douglass to join in the attack. Douglass refused. He had agreed with Brown's earlier ideas, but he knew that an attack on federal property would enrage most Americans.

This was the last time Douglass and Brown met. On October 16, 1589, Brown and his men seized Harpers Ferry. The next night, federal troops led by Colonel Robert E. Lee marched into the town and stormed the armory where Brown's band was stationed. Brown was captured, and two of his sons were killed in the fighting. In less than two months, Brown was tried for treason, found guilty, and hanged. Douglass was lecturing in Philadelphia when he received the news about Brown's raid, and he was warned that letters had been found that implicated him in the attack. The headlines for the newspapers' accounts of the incident featured his name prominently. Knowing that he stood little chance of a fair trial if he were captured and sent to Virginia, Douglass fled to Canada. While in Canada, Douglass wrote letters in his own defense, justifying both his flight and his refusal to help Brown. One of the men captured during the raid said that Douglass had promised to appear at Harpers Ferry with reinforcements. Douglass denied this accusation, saying that he would never approve of attacks on federal property. But though he could not condone the raid, he praised Brown as a "noble old hero."

In November 1859, Douglass sailed to England to begin a lecture tour, a trip he had planned long before the incident at Harpers Ferry. The news of his near arrest only increased his popularity with his audiences, and his lectures helped to stir up more sympathy for the antislavery cause. In May 1860, just as he was about to continue his lecture tour in France, word reached him that his youngest child, Annie, had died. Heartbroken over the loss of his daughter, Douglass decided to go home. Glad to be back with his family again, Douglass knew that he was home - and home included not just Rochester but all of America, including the states in the South. It was a home filled with strife, but it was his, and he embraced it all: the land, the people, the Constitution, the Union.

Article Source: http://www.history.rochester.edu/class/douglass/part3.html

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Frederick Douglass: From Slave to Abolitionist/Editor

2009-02-01T04:38:00.000-08:00

Alone in New York, Frederick soon realized that although he was free, he was not free of cares. Through word of mouth on the street, Frederick learned that southern slave catchers were roaming the city looking for fugitives in boarding houses that accepted blacks. He learned that no one, black or white, could be trusted. After finding out this news, Frederick wandered around the city for days, afraid to look for employment or a place to live. Finally, he told an honest-looking black sailor about his predicament. The man took him to David Ruggles, an officer in the New York Vigilance Committee. Ruggles and his associates were the City's link in the underground railroad, a network of people who harbored runaway slaves and helped transport them to safe areas in the United States and Canada.

Secure for the moment in Ruggle's home, Frederick sent for his fiancee, Anna Murray. The two were married on September 15, 1838. Ruggles told Frederick that in the port of New Bedford, Massachusetts, he would be safe from slave catchers and he could find work as a caulker. Upon arriving in New Bedford, Anna and Frederick stayed in the home of the well-to-do black family of Nathan Johnson. To go along with his new life, Frederick decided to change his name so as to make it more difficult for slave catchers to trace him. Nathan Johnson was at the time reading The Lady of the Lake, a novel by Scottish author Sir Walter Scott, and he suggested that Frederick name himself after a character in the book. Frederick Baily thus became Frederick Douglass.

Once settled, Douglass was amazed to find that his neighbors in the North were wealthier than most slave owners in Maryland. He had expected that northerners would be as poor as the people in the South who could not afford slaves. Many free blacks lived better than Thomas Auld or Edward Covey. On the New Bedford wharves, he saw how industry made extensive use of labor saving mechanical devices. In loading a ship, 5 men and an ox did what it took 20 men to do in a southern port. To Douglass's eye, men who neither held a whip nor submitted to it worked more quietly and efficiently than those who did.

Still, New Bedford was not a paradise. Although black and white children attended the same schools, some public lecture halls were closed to blacks. Churches welcomed black worshipers but forced them to sit in separate sections. Worst of all, white shipyard employees would not allow skilled black tradesmen, such as Douglass, to work beside them. Unable to find work as a caulker, Douglass had to work as a common laborer. He sawed wood, shoveled coal, dug cellars, and loaded and unloaded ships. Anna Douglass worked too as a household servant and laundress. In June 1839, Anna gave birth to their first child, a daughter which they named Rosetta. A son, Lewis was born the following year.

After living in New Bedford for only a few months, a young man approached Douglass and asked him if he wanted to subscribe to the Liberator, a newspaper edited by the outspoken leader of the American Anti-Slavery Society, William Lloyd Garrison. Douglass immediately became caught up in the Liberator's attacks on southern slaveholders. "The paper became my meat and drink," wrote Douglass. "My soul was set all on fire."

Inevitably, Douglass became involved in the abolitionist movement, regularly attending lectures in New Bedford. The American Anti-Slavery Society, of which he was a member, had been formed in 1833. Like Garrison, most of the leaders in the society were white, and black abolitionists sometimes had a difficult time making their voices heard within the movement. Nonetheless, the black leaders kept up a constant battle to reduce racial prejudice in the North. Douglass also became very involved with the local black community, and he served as a preacher at the black Zion Methodist Church. One of the many issues he became involved in was the battle against attempts by white southerners to force blacks to move to Africa. Some free blacks had moved to Liberia, a settlement area established for them in West Africa in 1822. Douglass, along with others in the abolitionist movement were opposed to African colonization schemes, believing that the United States was the true home of black Americans. In March 1839 some of Douglass's anticolonization statements were published in the Liberator.

In August 1841, at an abolitionist meeting in New Bedford, the 23 year old Douglass saw his hero, William Lloyd Garrison, for the first time. A few days later, Douglass spoke before the crowd attending the annual meeting of the Massachusetts branch of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Garrison immediately recognized Douglass's potential as a speaker, and hired him to be an agent for the society. As a traveling lecturer accompanying other abolitionist agents on tours of the northern states, his job was to talk about his life and to sell subscriptions to the Liberator and another newspaper, the Anti-Slavery Standard. For most of the next 10 years, Douglass was associated with the Garrisonian school of the antislavery movement. Garrison was a pacifist who believed that only through moral persuasion could slavery end, he attempted through his writings to educate slaveholders about the evils of the system they supported. He was opposed to slave uprisings and other violent resistance, but he was firm in his belief that slavery must be totally abolished. In the first issue of the Liberator in 1831, he had written:

"On this subject I do not wish to think, or speak, or write with moderation .....Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of a ravisher.....but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present.....I will not retreat a single inch----AND I WILL BE HEARD."

Ever controversial, Garrison made many enemies throughout the country. He made sweeping attacks on organized religion because the churches refused to take a stand against slavery. He also believed that the U.S. Constitution upheld slavery, for it stated that nonfree individuals (slaves) should be counted as three-fifths of a person in the census figures used for determining a state's share of the national taxes and its number of seats in the House of Representatives. Garrison said that abolitionists should refuse to vote or run for political office because our government was so ill founded. He also called for the Union to be dissolved, demanding that it be split between a free nation in the North and a slavehold confederacy in the South.

Garrison also supported political equality for women and he fought to make it part of the abolitionist program. Some men were entirely against him on this issue, while others thought that it distracted attention from the struggle against slavery. In 1840, when he insisted that women be allowed to serve as delegates to abolitionist conventions, much of the membership of the American Anti-Slavery Society split off and formed a separate organization. The new group, the Foreign and American Anti-Slavery Society, was not opposed to working with political organizations, and many of its members supported the small, newly formed antislavery Liberty party. Although the often abrasive Garrison splintered the antislavery movement, he was a powerful leader. His sincerity and passionate devotion to the abolitionist inspired many people, and his views had a strong effect on Douglass. For three months in 1851, Douglass traveled with other abolitionists to lectures through Massachusetts. Introduced as "a piece of property" or "a graduate from that peculiar institution, with his diploma written on his back," he launched into stirring recollections of his years in slavery. Many of his friends in New Bedford thought that the publicity was dangerous for him, but he was careful to omit details that would identify him as the fugitive slave Frederick Baily.

Douglass was an immediate success on the lecture circuit. "As a speaker, he has few equals," proclaimed the Concord, Massachusetts, Herald of Freedom, the newspaper praised his elegant use of words, and his debating skills. "He has wit, arguments, sarcasm, pathos - all that first rate men show in their master effort." His flashing eyes, large mass of hair, and tall figure added to his performance. Douglass's early speeches dealt mainly with his own experiences. With dramatic effect, he told stories about the brutal beatings given by slaveowners to women, children, and elderly people. He described how he had felt the head of a young girl and found it "nearly covered with festering sores." He told about masters "breeding" their female slaves. But he also used humor, making his audiences laugh when he told how he broke the slave breaker Edward Covey. He especially delighted in imitating clergymen who warned slaves that they would be offending God if they disobeyed their masters. The stories that Douglass told were just what the people wanted to hear. At the time, a flood of proslavery propaganda had been disbursed by southern writers to combat abolitionist literature. According to these articles, most slaves were content with their easy life. Supposedly, slaves worked only until noon, dressed and ate better than most poor whites, and enjoyed job security that would be envied by most northern factory workers. Many people in the North were taken in by the slaveholders' fictions, and abolitionists were often harassed by hostile mobs.

Douglass's life story refuted the proslavery accounts; even so, he declared, his years in bondage would be deemed blissful by many slaves laboring in the Deep South. After a few months of speaking, Douglass began to add comments about the racial situation in the North. He reminded the people in his audiences that even in Massachusetts a black man could not always find work in his chosen profession. He described how he had been thrown out of railroad cars that were exclusively for white passengers. Even here, he said, churches segregated their congregations and offered blacks a second place in heaven. After Douglass's first trial period as a lecturer was over, he was asked to continue with his work, and he eagerly agreed. During 1842, he traveled throughout Massachusetts and New York with William Lloyd Garrison and other prominent speakers. He also visited Rhode Island, helping to defeat a measure that would have given voting rights to poor whites while denying them to blacks.

In 1843, Douglass participated in the Hundred Conventions project, the American Anti-Slavery Society's six month tour of meeting halls throughout the west. Although Douglass enjoyed his work immensely, his job was not an easy one. When traveling, the lecturers had to live in poor accommodations. Douglass was often roughly handled when he refused to sit in the "Negro" sections of trains and steamships, and worst of all some of the meetings that were held in western states were sometimes disrupted by proslavery mobs. In Pendleton, Indiana, Douglass's hand was broken when he and an associate were beaten up by a gang of thugs. Such incidents were common on the western frontier, where abolitionists were often viewed as dangerous fanatics. Despite these incidents, Douglass was sure that he had found his purpose in life.

His abilities as a speaker grew as he continued to lecture in 1844. Many abolitionists thought he was growing in his ability too quickly and that audiences were no longer as sympathetic to him, they thought it was best to keep a little of the plantation speech, it was not a good idea for him to seem too learned. They advised him to stick to talking about his life as a slave and not about the goals of the antislavery movement. To some degree, the fear proved to be correct. People gradually began to doubt that Douglass was telling the truth about himself. Reporting on a lecture that he gave in 1844, the Liberator wrote that many people in the audience refused to believe his stores: "How a man, only six years out of bondage, and who had never gone to school could speak with such eloquence - with such precision of language and power of thought - they were utterly at a loss to devise."

With his reputation at stake, Douglass decided to publish the story of his life. During the winter of 1844-45, he set down on paper all the facts - the actual names of the people and places connected with his years in slavery. When Douglass showed the finished manuscript to abolitionist leader Wendell Phillips, his friend suggested that he dispose of it before he was found out and shipped back to Maryland. Douglass was adamant about having his story printed. He did not care if Thomas Auld and every southern slave catcher learned who he was, the rest of world would hear his story too.

In May 1845, 5,000 copies of the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave was published. William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips wrote introductions to the book. Almost immediately, Douglass's autobiography became a best seller. The success brought by Douglass's Narrative after its publication in 1845 was due in large part to its moral force. His book is a story of the triumph of dignity, courage, and self-reliance over the evils of the brutal, degrading slave system. It is a sermon on how slavery corrupts the human spirit and robs both master and slave of their freedom. The book enjoyed widespread popularity in the North, and European editions also sold very well. However, Douglass's fame as an author threatened his freedom. Federal laws gave Thomas Auld the right to seize his property, the fugitive slave Frederick Baily.

The fear of losing his freedom prompted Douglass to pursue a dream he had long held; in the summer of 1845 he decided to go to England. There he would be free from slave catchers, and also have the opportunity to speak to English audiences and try to gain support for the American antislavery movement. By 1838 all slaves within the British Empire had been given a gradual emancipation and were free. The vigor of the English abolition movement was still very strong.

As the wife of a traveling lecturer, Anna Douglass had probably grown used to her husband's long absences. By August 1845, the Douglasses had 4 children: 6 year old Rosetta, 5 year old Lewis, 3 year old Frederick and 10 month old Charles. Anna not only raised the children, but also toiled in a shoe factory in Lynn, Massachusetts where the Douglasses had moved in 1842. Douglass sailed to England on the British steamship Cambria. He was forced to stay in the steerage (second class) area of the ship, but he made many friends on board and was even asked to give a lecture on slavery by the captain. Some men were so angry at his speech that they threatened to throw him overboard. The captain had to step in and threaten to put the men in irons if they caused any more trouble. The rest of the voyage was peaceful.

For nearly two years, Douglass traveled throughout the British Isles. Everywhere he went, prominent people welcomed him to their homes. Everywhere he spoke, enthusiastic crowds came to hear the fugitive slave denounce the system which he had grown up in. He was quite happy in his new surroundings. As he wrote to William Lloyd Garrison in January 1846, "Instead of the bright blue sky of America, I am covered with the soft gray fog of the Emerald Isle. I breathe and lo! The chattel becomes a man. I gaze around in vain for one who will question my equal humanity, claim me as a slave, or offer me an insult." He was also astonished that he encountered so little racial prejudice among the British.

The main topic of Douglass's lecturers were slavery, but he also discussed a number of other causes that had become important to him. Douglass had hated the way slaveowners would encourage their workers to drink themselves into a stupor during Christmas holidays. He saw alcohol as another means used to humiliate slaves. During his stay in Ireland, he also met with Daniel O'Connell, the Irish Catholic leader who was fighting to end British rule in his country. Douglass spoke out in favor of Irish independence. In the summer of 1846, Douglass was joined by William Lloyd Garrison, and they traveled around England as a powerful team of antislavery lecturers. In Scotland, the two became involved in a campaign against the Free Church of Scotland. The church was partly supported by contributions from American slaveholders of Scottish ancestry. Douglass and Garrison added their voices to the cries of local antislavery activists: "Send the money back." The church kept the money, but the dispute gained publicity for Douglass's battle against American slavery.

The World Temperance Convention that was held in London in August 1846 was the scene of Douglass's most controversial speech. There he attacked the American temperance movement because it failed to criticize slaveowners who used alcohol to pacify their workers. He also felt that the temperance activists were hostile to free blacks. The Reverend Samuel Cox, a member of the American delegation, publicly accused him of trying to destroy the unity of the temperance movement. Douglass responded that Cox was a bigot and, like many other clergymen, a secret supporter of slavery.

By the fall of 1846, Douglass was ready to return home. Garrison and other friends convinced him to stay another six months, but Douglass rejected suggestions that he settle in England. His work lay in America where his people labored in bondage. However, recapture remained a frightening possibility for Douglass if he returned to the United States. The problem was unexpectedly resolved when two English friends raised enough money to buy his freedom. The required amount, $710.96, was sent to Hugh Auld, to whom Thomas Auld had transferred the title to Douglass. On December 5, 1846, Hugh Auld signed the papers that declared the 28 year old Douglass a free man.

Douglass appreciated the gesture of his English friends, even though as an abolitionist he did not recognize Hugh Auld's right to own him. In the spring of 1847, Douglass sailed from England aboard the Cambria. He had left the United States as a respected author and lecturer and was returning with a huge international reputation. Thousands of people heard his lectures and he aroused much goodwill for the abolitionist cause in the British Isles. His tour had been an unqualified success.

Douglass was met by friends and family upon returning home. However, some abolitionists criticized him for letting his freedom be bought because he was thereby acknowledging Hugh Auld's right to own him. Douglass's rebuttal was that his freedom was the gift of friends and that he recognized Hugh Auld as his kidnapper, not his master. Now that the ransom had been paid, he could fight the battle against slavery with a free mind.

During his travels in England, Douglass had demonstrated some independence from the Garrison abolitionist faction, addressing a meeting sponsored by a rival antislavery group. Upon his return to America, he decided to found and edit a new abolitionist newspaper with the help of funds raised by his English friends. Garrison was opposed to this because he needed Douglass as a lecturer and thought there were already enough abolitionists papers at the time. Douglass dropped the idea for a while. In August 1847, he joined Garrison on a lecture tour throughout the North, Garrison became seriously ill and Douglass was forced to continue the tour without him.

After finishing the tour in the fall of 1847, he again began drawing up plans for a new abolitionist paper. The goal of his paper would be to proclaim the abolitionist cause and fight for black equality. Rather than publish his paper in New England,, where the Liberator was based, Douglass decided to move farther west, to Rochester, New York.

Article Source: http://www.history.rochester.edu/class/douglass/part2.html

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Frederick Douglass: The Slave Years

2009-02-01T04:35:00.000-08:00

Frederick Baily was born a slave in February 1818 on Holmes Hill Farm, near the town of Easton on Maryland's Eastern Shore. The farm was part of an estate owned by Aaron Anthony, who also managed the plantations of Edward Lloyd V, one of the wealthiest men in Maryland. The main Lloyd Plantation was near the eastern side of Chesapeake Bay, 12 miles from Holmes Hill Farm, in a home Anthony had built near the Lloyd mansion, was where Frederick's first master lived.

Frederick's mother, Harriet Baily, worked the cornfields surrounding Holmes Hill. He knew little of his father except that the man was white. As a child, he had heard rumors that the master, Aaron Anthony, had sired him. Because Harriet Baily was required to work long hours in the fields, Frederick had been sent to live with his grandmother, Betsey Baily. Betsy Baily lived in a cabin a short distance from Holmes Hill Farm. Her job was to look after Harriet's children until they were old enough to work. Frederick's mother visited him when she could, but he had only a hazy memory of her. He spent his childhood playing in the woods near his grandmother's cabin. He did not think of himself as a slave during these years. Only gradually did Frederick learn about a person his grandmother would refer to as Old Master and when she spoke of Old Master it was with certain fear.

At age 6, Frederick's grandmother had told him that they were taking a long journey. They set out westward, with Frederick clinging to his grandmother's skirt with fear and uncertainty They had approached a large elegant home, the Lloyd Plantation, where several children were playing on the grounds. Betsy Baily had pointed out 3 children which were his brother Perry, and his sisters Sara and Eliza. His grandmother had told him to join his siblings and he did so reluctantly. After a while one of the children yelled out to Frederick that his grandmother was gone. Frederick fell to the ground and wept, he was about to learn the harsh realities of the slave system.

The slave children of Aaron Anthony's were fed cornmeal mush that was placed in a trough, to which they were called. Frederick later wrote "like so many pigs." The children made homemade spoons from oyster shells to eat with and competed with each other for every last bite of food. The only clothing that they were provided with was one linen shirt which hung to their knees. The children were provided no beds or warm blankets. On cold winter nights they would huddle together in the kitchen of the Anthony house to keep each other warm.

One night Frederick was awakened by a woman's screams. He peered through a crack in the wall of the kitchen only to see Aaron Anthony lashing the bare back of a woman, who was his aunt, Hester Baily. Frederick was terrified, but forced himself to watch the entire ordeal. This would not be the first whipping he would see, occasionally he himself would be the victim. He would learn that Aaron Anthony would brutally beat his slaves if they did not obey orders quickly enough.

Frederick's mother was rarely able to visit her children due to the distance between Holmes Hill Farm and the Lloyd plantation. Frederick last saw his mother when he was seven years old. He remembered his mother giving a severe scolding to the household cook who disliked Frederick and gave him very little food. A few months after this visit, Harriet Baily died, but Frederick did not learn of this until much later.

Because Frederick had a natural charm that many people found engaging, he was chosen to be the companion of Daniel Lloyd, the youngest son of the plantation's owner. Frederick's chief friend and protector was Lucretia Auld, Aaron Anthony's daughter, who was recently married to a ship's captain named Thomas Auld. One day in 1826 Lucretia told Frederick that he was being sent to live with her brother-in-law, Hugh Auld, who managed a ship building firm in Baltimore, Maryland. She told him that if he scrubbed himself clean, she would give him a pair of pants to wear to Baltimore. Frederick was elated at this chance to escape the life of a field hand. He cleaned himself up and received his first pair of pants. Within three days he was on his way to Baltimore.

Upon Frederick's arrival at the Auld Home, his only duties were to run errands and care for the Auld's infant son, Tommy. Frederick enjoyed the work and grew to love the child. Sophia Auld was a religious woman and frequently read aloud from the Bible. Frederick asked his mistress to teach him to read and she readily consented. He soon learned the alphabet and a few simple words. Sophia Auld was very excited about Fredericks progress and told her husband what she had done. Hugh Auld became furious at this because it was unlawful to teach a slave to read. Hugh Auld believed that if a slave knew how to read and write that it would make him unfit for a slave. A slave that could read and write would no longer obey his master without question or thought, or even worse could forge papers that said he was free and thus escape to a northern state where slavery was outlawed. Hugh Auld then instructed Sophia to stop the lessons at once!

Frederick learned from Hugh Auld's outburst that if learning how to read and write was his pathway to freedom, then gaining this knowledge was to become his goal. Frederick gained command of the alphabet on his own and made friends with poor white children he met on errands and used them as teachers. He paid for his reading lessons with pieces of bread. At home Frederick read parts of books and newspapers when he could, but he had to constantly be on guard against his mistress. Sophia Auld screamed whenever she caught Frederick reading. Sophia Auld's attitude toward Frederick had changed, she no longer regarded him as any other child, but as a piece of property. However, Frederick gradually learned to read and write. With a little money he had earned doing errands, he bought a copy of The Columbian Orator, a collection of speeches and essays dealing with liberty, democracy, and courage.

Frederick was greatly affected by the speeches on freedom in The Columbian Orator, and so began reading local newspapers and began to learn about abolitionists. Not quite 13 years old but enlightened with new ideas that both tormented and inspired him. Frederick began to detest slavery. His dreams of emancipation were encouraged by the example of other blacks in Baltimore, most of whom were free. But new laws passed by southern state legislators made it increasingly difficult for owners to free their slaves.

During this time, Aaron Anthony died, and his property went to his two sons and his daughter, Lucretia Auld. Frederick remained a part of the Anthony estate and was sent back to the Lloyd plantation to be a part of the division of property. Frederick was chosen by Thomas and Lucretia Auld and was sent back to Hugh and Sophia Auld in Baltimore. Seeing his family being devided up increased his hatred of slavery, however, he was hurt the most that his grandmother, considered too old for any work, was evicted from her cabin and sent into the woods to die. Within a year of Frederick's return to Baltimore, Lucretia Auld died. The two Auld brothers then got into a dispute, and Thomas wrote to Hugh and demanded the return of his late wife's property, which included Frederick.

Frederick was sorry to leave Baltimore because he had recently become a teacher to a group of other young blacks. In addition, a black preacher named Charles Lawson had taken Frederick under his wing and adopted him as his spiritual son. In March of 1833, the 15 year old Frederick was sent to live at Thomas Auld's new farm near the town of Saint Michaels, a few miles from the Lloyd plantation.

Frederick was again put to work as a field hand and was extremely unhappy about his situation. Thomas Auld starved his slaves, and they had to steal food from neighboring farms to survive. Frederick received many beatings and saw worse ones given to others. He then organized a Sunday religious service for the slaves which met in near by Saint Michaels. The services were soon stopped by a mob led by Thomas Auld. Thomas Auld had found Frederick especially difficult to control so he decided to have someone tame his unruly slave.

In January 1834, Frederick was sent to work for Edward Covey, a poor farmer who had gained a reputation around Saint Michaels for being and expert "slave breaker". Frederick was not too displeased with this arrangement because Covey fed his slaves better than Auld did. The slaves on Covey's farm worked from dawn until after nightfall, plowing, hoeing, and picking corn. Although the men were given plenty of food, they had very little time allotted to eat before they were sent back to work. Covey hid in bushes and spied on the slaves as they worked, if he caught one of them resting he would beat him with thick branches.

After being on the farm for one week, Frederick was given a serious beating for letting an oxen team run wild. During the months to follow, he was continually whipped until he began to feel that he was "broken". On one hot August afternoon his strength failed him and he collapsed in the field. Covey kicked and beat Frederick to no avail and finally walked away in disgust. Frederick mustered the strength to get up and walk to the Auld farm, where he pleaded with his master to let him stay. Auld had little sympathy for him and sent him back to Covey. Beaten down as Frederick was, he found the strength to rebel when Covey began tying him to a post in preparation for a whipping. "At that moment - from whence came the spirit I don't know - I resolved to fight," Frederick wrote. "I seized Covey hard by the throat, and as I did so, I rose." Covey and Frederick fought for almost two hours until Covey finally gave up telling Frederick that his beating would have been less severe had he not resisted. "The truth was," said Frederick, "that he had not whipped me at all." Frederick had discovered an important truth: "Men are whipped oftenist who are whipped easiest." He was lucky, legally, a slave could be killed for resisting his master. But Covey had a reputation to protect and did not want it known that he could not control a 16 year old boy.

After working for Covey for a year, Frederick was sent to work for a farmer named William Freeland, who was a relatively kind master. But by now, Frederick did not care about having a kind master. All Frederick wanted was his freedom. He started an illegal school for blacks in the area that secretly met at night and on Sundays, and with five other slaves he began to plan his escape to the North. A year had passed since Frederick began working for William Freeland and his plan of escape had been completed. His group planned to steal a boat, row to the northern tip of Chesapeake Bay, and then flee on foot to the free state of Pennsylvania. The escape was supposed to take place just before the Easter holiday in 1836, but one of Frederick's associates had exposed the plot and a group of armed white men captured the slaves and put them in jail.

Frederick was in jail for about a week. While imprisoned, he was inspected by slave traders, and he fully expected that he would be sold to "a life of living death" in the Deep South. To his surprise, Thomas Auld came and released him. Then Frederick's master sent him back to Hugh Auld in Baltimore. The two brothers had finally settled their dispute. Frederick was now 18 years old, 6 feet tall and very strong from his work in the fields. Hugh Auld decided that Frederick should work as a caulker (a man who forced sealing matter into the seams in a boat's hull to make it water tight) to earn his keep. He was hired out to a local shipbuilder so that he could learn the trade. While apprenticing at the shipyard, Frederick was harassed by white workers who did not want blacks, slaves or free, competing with them for jobs. One afternoon, a group of white apprentices beat up Frederick and nearly took out one of his eyes. Hugh Auld was angry when he saw what had happened and attempted to press charges against the assailants. However, none of the shipyard's white employees would step forward to testify about the beating. Free blacks had little hope of obtaining justice through the southern court system, which refused to accept a black person's testimony against a white person. Therefore, the case had to be dropped.

After Frederick recovered from his injuries, he began apprenticing at the shipyard where Hugh Auld worked. Within a year, he was an experienced caulker and was being paid the highest wages possible for a tradesman at his level. He was allowed to seek his own employment and collect his own pay, and at the end of each week he gave all his earnings to Hugh Auld. Sometimes he was allowed to keep a little money for himself. But as time passed, he became resentful of having to give up his hard earned pay.

In Frederick's spare time he met with a group of educated free blacks and indulged in the luxury of being a student again. Some of the free blacks formed an educational association called the East Baltimore Mental Improvement Society, which Frederick had been admitted to. This is where Frederick learned his debating skills. At one of the society's meetings, Frederick met a free black woman named Anna Murray. Anna was a few years older than Frederick and was a servant for a wealthy Baltimore family. Although Anna was a plain, uneducated woman, Frederick admired her qualities of thriftiness, industriousness and religiousness. Anna and Frederick were soon in love and in 1838 they were engaged.

Love and courtship increased Frederick's discontent with his status. After Frederick's escape attempt, Thomas Auld had promised him that if he worked hard he would be freed when he turned 25. But Frederick did not trust his master, and he resolved to escape. However, escaping would be very difficult due to professional slave catchers patrolling the boarders between slave states and free states, and free blacks traveling by train or steamboat had to carry official papers listing their name, age, height, skin color, and other distinguishing features. In order to escape, Frederick needed money to pay for traveling expenses. Frederick arranged with Hugh Auld to hire out his time, that is, Frederick would take care of his own room and board and pay his master a set amount each week, keeping any extra money for himself. This also gave him the opportunity to see what it was like living on his own.

This arrangement had been working out quite well until Frederick returned home late one night and failed to pay Hugh Auld on time. Auld was furious and revoked his hiring-out privilege. Frederick was so enraged over this that he refused to work for a week. He finally gave in to Auld's threats, but he also made a resolution that in three weeks, on September 3, 1838, he would be on a northbound train. Escaping was a difficult decision for Frederick. He would be leaving his friends and his fairly comfortable life in Baltimore forever. he did not know when and if he would see Anna Murray again. Furthermore, if he was caught during his escape, he was sure that he would be either killed or sold to slave traders. Taking all of this into consideration, Frederick was resolved to escape to freedom.

With money that he borrowed from Anna, Frederick bought a ticket to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He also had a friend's "sailor's protection," a document that certified that the person named on it was a free seaman. Dressed in a sailor's red shirt and black cravat, Frederick boarded the train. Frederick reached northern Maryland before the conductor made it to the "Negro car" to collect tickets and examine papers. Frederick became very tense when the conductor approached him to look at his papers because he did not fit the description on them. But with only a quick glance, the conductor walked on, and the relieved Frederick sank back in his seat. On a couple of occasions, he thought that he had been recognized by other passengers from Baltimore, but if so they did not turn him in to the authorities.

Upon arriving in Wilmington, Delaware, Frederick then boarded a steamboat to Philadelphia. Even after stepping on Pennsylvania's free soil, he knew he was not yet safe from slave catchers. He immediately asked directions to New York City, and that night he took another train north. On September 4, 1838, Frederick arrived in New York City. Frederick could not find the words to express his feelings of leaving behind his life in slavery. He later wrote, "A new world had opened upon me." "Anguish and grief, like darkness and rain, may be depicted, but gladness and joy, like the rainbow, defy the skill of pen or pencil."

Article Source: http://www.history.rochester.edu/class/douglass/part1.html

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A biography of the life of Frederick Douglass by Sandra Thomas

2009-02-01T04:33:00.000-08:00

Frederick Douglass was one of the foremost leaders of the abolitionist movement, which fought to end slavery within the United States in the decades prior to the Civil War.
A brilliant speaker, Douglass was asked by the American Anti-Slavery Society to engage in a tour of lectures, and so became recognized as one of America's first great black speakers. He won world fame when his autobiography was publicized in 1845. Two years later he bagan publishing an antislavery paper called the North Star.

Douglass served as an adviser to President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War and fought for the adoption of constitutional amendments that guaranteed voting rights and other civil liberties for blacks. Douglass provided a powerful voice for human rights during this period of American history and is still revered today for his contributions against racial injustice.

Article Source: http://www.history.rochester.edu/class/douglass/home.html

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Three Speeches from Frederick Douglass:

2009-02-01T04:20:00.000-08:00

1. THE CHURCH AND PREJUDICE
(Speech delivered at the Plymouth County Anti-Slavery Society, November 4, 1841)

At the South I was a member of the Methodist Church. When I came north, I thought one Sunday I would attend communion, at one of the churches of my denomination, in the town I was staying. The white people gathered round the altar, the blacks clustered by the door. After the good minister had served out the bread and wine to one portion of those near him, he said, "These may withdraw, and others come forward;" thus he proceeded till all the white members had been served. Then he took a long breath, and looking out towards the door, exclaimed, "Come up, colored friends, come up! for you know God is no respecter of persons!" I haven't been there to see the sacraments taken since.
At New Bedford, where I live, there was a great revival of religion not long ago--many were converted and "received" as they said, "into the kingdom of heaven." But it seems, the kingdom of heaven is like a net; at least so it was according to the practice of these pious Christians; and when the net was drawn ashore, they had to set down and cull out the fish. Well, it happened now that some of the fish had rather black scales; so these were sorted out and packed by themselves. But among those who experienced religion at this time was a colored girl; she was baptized in the same water as the rest; so she thought she might sit at the Lord's table and partake of the same sacramental elements with the others. The deacon handed round the cup, and when he came to the black girl, he could not pass her, for there was the minister looking right at him, and as he was a kind of abolitionist, the deacon was rather afraid of giving him offense; so he handed the girl the cup, and she tasted. Now it so happened that next to her sat a young lady who had been converted at the same time, baptized in the same water, and put her trust in the same blessed Saviour; yet when the cup containing the precious blood which had been shed for all, came to her, she rose in disdain, and walked out of the church. Such was the religion she had experienced!
Another young lady fell into a trance. When she awoke, she declared she had been to heaven. Her friends were all anxious to know what and whom she had seen there; so she told the whole story. But there was one good old lady whose curiosity went beyond that of all the others--and she inquired of the girl that had the vision, if she saw any black folks in heaven? After some hesitation, the reply was, "Oh! I didn't go into the kitchen!"
Thus you see, my hearers, this prejudice goes even into the church of God. And there are those who carry it so far that it is disagreeable to them even to think of going to heaven, if colored people are going there too. And whence comes it? The grand cause is slavery; but there are others less prominent; one of them is the way in which children in this part of the country are instructed to regard the blacks.
"Yes!" exclaimed an old gentleman, interrupting him--"when they behave wrong, they are told, 'black man come catch you.'"
Yet people in general will say they like colored men as well as any other, but in their proper place! They assign us that place; they don't let us do it for ourselves, nor will they allow us a voice in the decision. They will not allow that we have a head to think, and a heart to feel, and a soul to aspire. They treat us not as men, but as dogs--they cry "Stu-boy!" and expect us to run and do their bidding. That's the way we are liked. You degrade us, and then ask why we are degraded--you shut our mouths, and then ask why we don't speak--you close our colleges and seminaries against us, and then ask why we don't know more.
But all this prejudice sinks into insignificance in my mind, when compared with the enormous iniquity of the system which is its cause--the system that sold my four sisters and my brothers into bondage--and which calls in its priests to defend it even from the Bible! The slaveholding ministers preach up the divine right of the slaveholders to property in their fellow- men. The southern preachers say to the poor slave, "Oh! if you wish to be happy in time, happy in eternity, you must be obedient to your masters; their interest is yours. God made one portion of men to do the working, and another to do the thinking; how good God is! Now, you have no trouble or anxiety; but ah! you can't imagine how perplexing it is to your masters and mistresses to have so much thinking to do in your behalf! You cannot appreciate your blessings; you know not how happy a thing it is for you, that you were born of that portion of the human family which has the working, instead of the thinking to do! Oh! how grateful and obedient you ought to be to your masters! How beautiful are the arrangements of Providence! Look at your hard, horny hands--see how nicely they are adapted to the labor you have to perform! Look at our delicate fingers, so exactly fitted for our station, and see how manifest it is that God designed us to be His thinkers, and you the workers--Oh! the wisdom of God!"--I used to attend a Methodist church, in which my master was a class leader; he would talk most sanctimoniously about the dear Redeemer, who was sent "to preach deliverance to the captives, and set at liberty them that are bruised"--he could pray at morning, pray at noon, and pray at night; yet he could lash up my poor cousin by his two thumbs, and inflict stripes and blows upon his bare back, till the blood streamed to the ground! all the time quoting scripture, for his authority, and appealing to that passage of the Holy Bible which says, "He that knoweth his master's will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes!" Such was the amount of this good Methodist's piety.
(Foner, Volume I, pages 102-105)

2. FIGHTING REBELS WITH ONLY ONE HAND
(Douglass' Monthly, September 1861)

What on earth is the matter with the American Government and people? Do they really covet the world's ridicule as well as their own social and political ruin? What are they thinking about, or don't they condescend to think at all? So, indeed, it would seem from their blindness in dealing with the tremendous issue now upon them. Was there ever anything like it before? They are sorely pressed on every hand by a vast army of slaveholding rebels, flushed with success, and infuriated by the darkest inspirations of a deadly hate, bound to rule or ruin. Washington, the seat of Government, after ten thousand assurances to the contrary, is now positively in danger of falling before the rebel army. Maryland, a little while ago considered safe for the Union, is now admitted to be studded with the materials for insurrection, and which may flame forth at any moment.--Every resource of the nation, whether of men or money, whether of wisdom or strength, could be well employed to avert the impending ruin. Yet most evidently the demands of the hour are not comprehended by the Cabinet or the crowd. Our Presidents, Governors, Generals and Secretaries are calling, with almost frantic vehemance, for men.--"Men! men! send us men!" they scream, or the cause of the Union is gone, the life of a great nation is ruthlessly sacrificed, and the hopes of a great nation go out in darkness; and yet these very officers, representing the people and Government, steadily and persistently refuse to receive the very class of men which have a deeper interest in the defeat and humiliation of the rebels, than all others.--Men are wanted in Missouri--wanted in Western Virginia, to hold and defend what has been already gained; they are wanted in Texas, and all along the sea coast, and though the Government has at its command a class in the country deeply interested in suppressing the insurrection, it sternly refuses to summon from among the vast multitude a single man, and degrades and insults the whole class by refusing to allow any of their number to defend with their strong arms and brave hearts the national cause. What a spectacle of blind, unreasoning prejudice and pusillanimity is this! The national edifice is on fire. Every man who can carry a bucket of water, or remove a brick, is wanted; but those who have the care of the building, having a profound respect for the feeling of the national burglars who set the building on fire, are determined that the flames shall only be extinguished by Indo-Caucasian hands, and to have the building burnt rather than save it by means of any other. Such is the pride, the stupid prejudice and folly that rules the hour.
Why does the Government reject the Negro? Is he not a man? Can he not wield a sword, fire a gun, march and countermarch, and obey orders like any other? Is there the least reason to believe that a regiment of well-drilled Negroes would deport themselves less soldier-like on the battlefield than the raw troops gathered up generally from the towns and cities of the State of New York? We do believe that such soldiers, if allowed to take up arms in defence of the Government, and made to feel that they are hereafter to be recognized as persons having rights, would set the highest example of order and general good behavior to their fellow soldiers, and in every way add to the national power.
If persons so humble as we can be allowed to speak to the President of the United States, we should ask him if this dark and terrible hour of the nation's extremity is a time for consulting a mere vulgar and unnatural prejudice? We should ask him if national preservation and necessity were not better guides in this emergency than either the tastes of the rebels, or the pride and prejudices of the vulgar? We would tell him that General Jackson in a slave state fought side by side with Negroes at New Orleans, and like a true man, despising meanness, he bore testimony to their bravery at the close of the war. We would tell him that colored men in Rhode Island and Connecticut performed their full share in the war of the Revolution, and that men of the same color, such as the noble Shields Green, Nathaniel Turner and Denmark Vesey stand ready to peril everything at the command of the Government. We would tell him that this is no time to fight with one hand, when both are needed; that this is no time to fight only with your white hand, and allow your black hand to remain tied.
Whatever may be the folly and absurdity of the North, the South at least is true and wise. The Southern papers no longer indulge in the vulgar expression, "free n----rs." That class of bipeds are now called "colored residents." The Charleston papers say:

"The colored residents of this city can challenge comparison with their class, in any city or town, in loyalty or devotion to the cause of the South. Many of them individually, and without ostentation, have been contributing liberally, and on Wednesday evening, the 7th inst., a very large meeting was held by them, and a committee appointed to provide for more efficient aid. The proceedings of the meeting will appear in results hereinafter to be reported."

It is now pretty well established, that there are at the present moment many colored men in the Confederate army doing duty not only as cooks, servants and laborers, but as real soldiers, having muskets on their shoulders, and bullets in their pockets, ready to shoot down loyal troops, and do all that soldiers may to destroy the Federal Government and build up that of the traitors and rebels. There were such soldiers at Manassas, and they are probably there still. There is a Negro in the army as well as in the fence, and our Government is likely to find it out before the war comes to an end. That the Negroes are numerous in the rebel army, and do for that army its heaviest work, is beyond question. They have been the chief laborers upon those temporary defences in which the rebels have been able to mow down our men. Negroes helped to build the batteries at Charleston. They relieve their gentlemanly and military masters from the stiffening drudgery of the camp, and devote them to the nimble and dexterous use of arms. Rising above vulgar prejudice, the slaveholding rebel accepts the aid of the black man as readily as that of any other. If a bad cause can do this, why should a good cause be less wisely conducted? We insist upon it, that one black regiment in such a war as this is, without being any more brave and orderly, would be worth to the Government more than two of any other; and that, while the Government continues to refuse the aid of colored men, thus alienating them from the national cause, and giving the rebels the advantage of them, it will not deserve better fortunes than it has thus far experienced.--Men in earnest don't fight with one hand, when they might fight with two, and a man drowning would not refuse to be saved even by a colored hand.
(Foner, Volume 3, pages 151-154)

(At the Annual Meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in Boston, April, 1865, Douglass delivered the following speech on the subject: The Equality of all men before the law; Note that this was given within days of the close of the Civil War and the assassination of President Lincoln.)

3. WHAT THE BLACK MAN WANTS

I came here, as I come always to the meetings in New England, as a listener, and not as a speaker; and one of the reasons why I have not been more frequently to the meetings of this society, has been because of the disposition on the part of some of my friends to call me out upon the platform, even when they knew that there was some difference of opinion and of feeling between those who rightfully belong to this platform and myself; and for fear of being misconstrued, as desiring to interrupt or disturb the proceedings of these meetings, I have usually kept away, and have thus been deprived of that educating influence, which I am always free to confess is of the highest order, descending from this platform. I have felt, since I have lived out West [Douglass means west of Boston, in Rochester, NY], that in going there I parted from a great deal that was valuable; and I feel, every time I come to these meetings, that I have lost a great deal by making my home west of Boston, west of Massachusetts; for, if anywhere in the country there is to be found the highest sense of justice, or the truest demands for my race, I look for it in the East, I look for it here. The ablest discussions of the whole question of our rights occur here, and to be deprived of the privilege of listening to those discussions is a great deprivation.
I do not know, from what has been said, that there is any difference of opinion as to the duty of abolitionists, at the present moment. How can we get up any difference at this point, or any point, where we are so united, so agreed? I went especially, however, with that word of Mr. Phillips, which is the criticism of Gen. Banks and Gen. Banks' policy. [Gen. Banks instituted a labor policy in Louisiana that was discriminatory of blacks, claiming that it was to help prepare them to better handle freedom. Wendell Phillips countered by saying, "If there is anything patent in the whole history of our thirty years' struggle, it is that the Negro no more needs to be prepared for liberty than the white man."] I hold that that policy is our chief danger at the present moment; that it practically enslaves the Negro, and makes the Proclamation [the Emancipation Proclamation] of 1863 a mockery and delusion. What is freedom? It is the right to choose one's own employment. Certainly it means that, if it means anything; and when any individual or combination of individuals undertakes to decide for any man when he shall work, where he shall work, at what he shall work, and for what he shall work, he or they practically reduce him to slavery. [Applause.] He is a slave. That I understand Gen. Banks to do--to determine for the so-called freedman, when, and where, and at what, and for how much he shall work, when he shall be punished, and by whom punished. It is absolute slavery. It defeats the beneficent intention of the Government, if it has beneficent intentions, in regards to the freedom of our people.
I have had but one idea for the last three years to present to the American people, and the phraseology in which I clothe it is the old abolition phraseology. I am for the "immediate, unconditional, and universal" enfranchisement of the black man, in every State in the Union. [Loud applause.] Without this, his liberty is a mockery; without this, you might as well almost retain the old name of slavery for his condition; for in fact, if he is not the slave of the individual master, he is the slave of society, and holds his liberty as a privilege, not as a right. He is at the mercy of the mob, and has no means of protecting himself.
It may be objected, however, that this pressing of the Negro's right to suffrage is premature. Let us have slavery abolished, it may be said, let us have labor organized, and then, in the natural course of events, the right of suffrage will be extended to the Negro. I do not agree with this. The constitution of the human mind is such, that if it once disregards the conviction forced upon it by a revelation of truth, it requires the exercise of a higher power to produce the same conviction afterwards. The American people are now in tears. The Shenandoah has run blood--the best blood of the North. All around Richmond, the blood of New England and of the North has been shed--of your sons, your brothers and your fathers. We all feel, in the existence of this Rebellion, that judgments terrible, wide-spread, far-reaching, overwhelming, are abroad in the land; and we feel, in view of these judgments, just now, a disposition to learn righteousness. This is the hour. Our streets are in mourning, tears are falling at every fireside, and under the chastisement of this Rebellion we have almost come up to the point of conceding this great, this all-important right of suffrage. I fear that if we fail to do it now, if abolitionists fail to press it now, we may not see, for centuries to come, the same disposition that exists at this moment. [Applause.] Hence, I say, now is the time to press this right.
It may be asked, "Why do you want it? Some men have got along very well without it. Women have not this right." Shall we justify one wrong by another? This is the sufficient answer. Shall we at this moment justify the deprivation of the Negro of the right to vote, because some one else is deprived of that privilege? I hold that women, as well as men, have the right to vote [applause], and my heart and voice go with the movement to extend suffrage to woman; but that question rests upon another basis than which our right rests. We may be asked, I say, why we want it. I will tell you why we want it. We want it because it is our right, first of all. No class of men can, without insulting their own nature, be content with any deprivation of their rights. We want it again, as a means for educating our race. Men are so constituted that they derive their conviction of their own possibilities largely by the estimate formed of them by others. If nothing is expected of a people, that people will find it difficult to contradict that expectation. By depriving us of suffrage, you affirm our incapacity to form an intelligent judgment respecting public men and public measures; you declare before the world that we are unfit to exercise the elective franchise, and by this means lead us to undervalue ourselves, to put a low estimate upon ourselves, and to feel that we have no possibilities like other men. Again, I want the elective franchise, for one, as a colored man, because ours is a peculiar government, based upon a peculiar idea, and that idea is universal suffrage. If I were in a monarchial government, or an autocratic or aristocratic government, where the few bore rule and the many were subject, there would be no special stigma resting upon me, because I did not exercise the elective franchise. It would do me no great violence. Mingling with the mass I should partake of the strength of the mass; I should be supported by the mass, and I should have the same incentives to endeavor with the mass of my fellow-men; it would be no particular burden, no particular deprivation; but here where universal suffrage is the rule, where that is the fundamental idea of the Government, to rule us out is to make us an exception, to brand us with the stigma of inferiority, and to invite to our heads the missiles of those about us; therefore, I want the franchise for the black man.
There are, however, other reasons, not derived from any consideration merely of our rights, but arising out of the conditions of the South, and of the country--considerations which have already been referred to by Mr. Phillips--considerations which must arrest the attention of statesmen. I believe that when the tall heads of this Rebellion shall have been swept down, as they will be swept down, when the Davises and Toombses and Stephenses, and others who are leading this Rebellion shall have been blotted out, there will be this rank undergrowth of treason, to which reference has been made, growing up there, and interfering with, and thwarting the quiet operation of the Federal Government in those states. You will se those traitors, handing down, from sire to son, the same malignant spirit which they have manifested and which they are now exhibiting, with malicious hearts, broad blades, and bloody hands in the field, against our sons and brothers. That spirit will still remain; and whoever sees the Federal Government extended over those Southern States will see that Government in a strange land, and not only in a strange land, but in an enemy's land. A post-master of the United States in the South will find himself surrounded by a hostile spirit; a collector in a Southern port will find himself surrounded by a hostile spirit; a United States marshal or United States judge will be surrounded there by a hostile element. That enmity will not die out in a year, will not die out in an age. The Federal Government will be looked upon in those States precisely as the Governments of Austria and France are looked upon in Italy at the present moment. They will endeavor to circumvent, they will endeavor to destroy, the peaceful operation of this Government. Now, where will you find the strength to counterbalance this spirit, if you do not find it in the Negroes of the South? They are your friends, and have always been your friends. They were your friends even when the Government did not regard them as such. They comprehended the genius of this war before you did. It is a significant fact, it is a marvellous fact, it seems almost to imply a direct interposition of Providence, that this war, which began in the interest of slavery on both sides, bids fair to end in the interest of liberty on both sides. [Applause.] It was begun, I say, in the interest of slavery on both sides. The South was fighting to take slavery out of the Union, and the North was fighting to keep it in the Union; the South fighting to get it beyond the limits of the United States Constitution, and the North fighting to retain it within those limits; the South fighting for new guarantees, and the North fighting for the old guarantees;--both despising the Negro, both insulting the Negro. Yet, the Negro, apparently endowed with wisdom from on high, saw more clearly the end from the beginning than we did. When Seward said the status of no man in the country would be changed by the war, the Negro did not believe him. [Applause.] When our generals sent their underlings in shoulder-straps to hunt the flying Negro back from our lines into the jaws of slavery, from which he had escaped, the Negroes thought that a mistake had been made, and that the intentions of the Government had not been rightly understood by our officers in shoulder-straps, and they continued to come into our lines, threading their way through bogs and fens, over briers and thorns, fording streams, swimming rivers, bringing us tidings as to the safe path to march, and pointing out the dangers that threatened us. They are our only friends in the South, and we should be true to them in this their trial hour, and see to it that they have the elective franchise.
I know that we are inferior to you in some things--virtually inferior. We walk about you like dwarfs among giants. Our heads are scarcely seen above the great sea of humanity. The Germans are superior to us; the Irish are superior to us; the Yankees are superior to us [Laughter]; they can do what we cannot, that is, what we have not hitherto been allowed to do. But while I make this admission, I utterly deny, that we are originally, or naturally, or practically, or in any way, or in any important sense, inferior to anybody on this globe. [Loud applause.] This charge of inferiority is an old dodge. It has been made available for oppression on many occasions. It is only about six centuries since the blue-eyed and fair-haired Anglo-Saxons were considered inferior by the haughty Normans, who once trampled upon them. If you read the history of the Norman Conquest, you will find that this proud Anglo-Saxon was once looked upon as of coarser clay than his Norman master, and might be found in the highways and byways of Old England laboring with a brass collar on his neck, and the name of his master marked upon it. You were down then! [Laughter and applause.] You are up now. I am glad you are up, and I want you to be glad to help us up also. [Applause.]
The story of our inferiority is an old dodge, as I have said; for wherever men oppress their fellows, wherever they enslave them, they will endeavor to find the needed apology for such enslavement and oppression in the character of the people oppressed and enslaved. When we wanted, a few years ago, a slice of Mexico, it was hinted that the Mexicans were an inferior race, that the old Castilian blood had become so weak that it would scarcely run down hill, and that Mexico needed the long, strong and beneficent arm of the Anglo-Saxon care extended over it. We said that it was necessary to its salvation, and a part of the "manifest destiny" of this Republic, to extend our arm over that dilapidated government. So, too, when Russia wanted to take possession of a part of the Ottoman Empire, the Turks were an "inferior race." So, too, when England wants to set the heel of her power more firmly in the quivering heart of old Ireland, the Celts are an "inferior race." So, too, the Negro, when he is to be robbed of any right which is justly his, is an "inferior man." It is said that we are ignorant; I admit it. But if we know enough to be hung, we know enough to vote. If the Negro knows enough to pay taxes to support the government, he knows enough to vote; taxation and representation should go together. If he knows enough to shoulder a musket and fight for the flag, fight for the government, he knows enough to vote. If he knows as much when he is sober as an Irishman knows when drunk, he knows enough to vote, on good American principles. [Laughter and applause.]
But I was saying that you needed a counterpoise in the persons of the slaves to the enmity that would exist at the South after the Rebellion is put down. I hold that the American people are bound, not only in self-defence, to extend this right to the freedmen of the South, but they are bound by their love of country, and by all their regard for the future safety of those Southern States, to do this--to do it as a measure essential to the preservation of peace there. But I will not dwell upon this. I put it to the American sense of honor. The honor of a nation is an important thing. It is said in the Scriptures, "What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" It may be said, also, What doth it profit a nation if it gain the whole world, but lose its honor? I hold that the American government has taken upon itself a solemn obligation of honor, to see that this war--let it be long or short, let it cost much or let it cost little--that this war shall not cease until every freedman at the South has the right to vote. [Applause.] It has bound itself to it. What have you asked the black men of the South, the black men of the whole country to do? Why, you have asked them to incure the enmity of their masters, in order to befriend you and to befriend this Government. You have asked us to call down, not only upon ourselves, but upon our children's children, the deadly hate of the entire Southern people. You have called upon us to turn our backs upon our masters, to abandon their cause and espouse yours; to turn against the South and in favor of the North; to shoot down the Confederacy and uphold the flag-- the American flag. You have called upon us to expose ourselves to all the subtle machinations of their malignity for all time. And now, what do you propose to do when you come to make peace? To reward your enemies, and trample in the dust your friends? Do you intend to sacrifice the very men who have come to the rescue of your banner in the South, and incurred the lasting displeasure of their masters thereby? Do you intend to sacrifice them and reward your enemies? Do you mean to give your enemies the right to vote, and take it away from your friends? Is that wise policy? Is that honorable? Could American honor withstand such a blow? I do not believe you will do it. I think you will see to it that we have the right to vote. There is something too mean in looking upon the Negro, when you are in trouble, as a citizen, and when you are free from trouble, as an alien. When this nation was in trouble, in its early struggles, it looked upon the Negro as a citizen. In 1776 he was a citizen. At the time of the formation of the Consitution the Negro had the right to vote in eleven States out of the old thirteen. In your trouble you have made us citizens. In 1812 Gen. Jackson addressed us as citizens--"fellow-citizens." He wanted us to fight. We were citizens then! And now, when you come to frame a conscription bill, the Negro is a citizen again. He has been a citizen just three times in the history of this government, and it has always been in time of trouble. In time of trouble we are citizens. Shall we be citizens in war, and aliens in peace? Would that be just?
I ask my friends who are apologizing for not insisting upon this right, where can the black man look, in this country, for the assertion of his right, if he may not look to the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society? Where under the whole heavens can he look for sympathy, in asserting this right, if he may not look to this platform? Have you lifted us up to a certain height to see that we are men, and then are any disposed to leave us there, without seeing that we are put in possession of all our rights? We look naturally to this platform for the assertion of all our rights, and for this one especially. I understand the anti-slavery societies of this country to be based on two principles,--first, the freedom of the blacks of this country; and, second, the elevation of them. Let me not be misunderstood here. I am not asking for sympathy at the hands of abolitionists, sympathy at the hands of any. I think the American people are disposed often to be generous rather than just. I look over this country at the present time, and I see Educational Societies, Sanitary Commissions, Freedmen's Associations, and the like,--all very good: but in regard to the colored people there is always more that is benevolent, I perceive, than just, manifested towards us. What I ask for the Negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice. [Applause.] The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us. Gen. Banks was distressed with solicitude as to what he should do with the Negro. Everybody has asked the question, and they learned to ask it early of the abolitionists, "What shall we do with the Negro?" I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are wormeaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them on the tree in any way, except by nature's plan, and if they will not stay there, let them fall. And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone! If you see him on his way to school, let him alone, don't disturb him! If you see him going to the dinner table at a hotel, let him go! If you see him going to the ballot- box, let him alone, don't disturb him! [Applause.] If you see him going into a work-shop, just let him alone,--your interference is doing him a positive injury. Gen. Banks' "preparation" is of a piece with this attempt to prop up the Negro. Let him fall if he cannot stand alone! If the Negro cannot live by the line of eternal justice, so beautifully pictured to you in the illustration used by Mr. Phillips, the fault will not be yours, it will be his who made the Negro, and established that line for his government. [Applause.] Let him live or die by that. If you will only untie his hands, and give him a chance, I think he will live. He will work as readily for himself as the white man. A great many delusions have been swept away by this war. One was, that the Negro would not work; he has proved his ability to work. Another was, that the Negro would not fight; that he possessed only the most sheepish attributes of humanity; was a perfect lamb, or an "Uncle Tom;" disposed to take off his coat whenever required, fold his hands, and be whipped by anybody who wanted to whip him. But the war has proved that there is a great deal of human nature in the Negro, and that "he will fight," as Mr. Quincy, our President, said, in earlier days than these, "when there is reasonable probability of his whipping anybody." [Laughter and applause.]
(Foner, Volume Four, pages 157- 165)

Article Source: http://www.frederickdouglass.org/speeches/index.html

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A Short Biography of Frederick Douglass

2009-02-01T04:12:00.000-08:00

Frederick Douglass was born in a slave cabin, in February, 1818, near the town of Easton, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Separated from his mother when only a few weeks old he was raised by his grandparents. At about the age of six, his grandmother took him to the plantation of his master and left him there. Not being told by her that she was going to leave him, Douglass never recovered from the betrayal of the abandonment. When he was about eight he was sent to Baltimore to live as a houseboy with Hugh and Sophia Auld, relatives of his master. It was shortly after his arrival that his new mistress taught him the alphabet. When her husband forbade her to continue her instruction, because it was unlawful to teach slaves how to read, Frederick took it upon himself to learn. He made the neighborhood boys his teachers, by giving away his food in exchange for lessons in reading and writing. At about the age of twelve or thirteen Douglass purchased a copy of The Columbian Orator, a popular schoolbook of the time, which helped him to gain an understanding and appreciation of the power of the spoken and the written word, as two of the most effective means by which to bring about permanent, positive change.

Returning to the Eastern Shore, at approximately the age of fifteen, Douglass became a field hand, and experienced most of the horrifying conditions that plagued slaves during the 270 years of legalized slavery in America. But it was during this time that he had an encounter with the slavebreaker Edward Covey. Their fight ended in a draw, but the victory was Douglass', as his challenge to the slavebreaker restored his sense of self-worth. After an aborted escape attempt when he was about eighteen, he was sent back to Baltimore to live with the Auld family, and in early September, 1838, at the age of twenty, Douglass succeeded in escaping from slavery by impersonating a sailor.

He went first to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he and his new wife Anna Murray began to raise a family. Whenever he could he attended abolitionist meetings, and, in October, 1841, after attending an anti-slavery convention on Nantucket Island, Douglass became a lecturer for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society and a colleague of William Lloyd Garrison. This work led him into public speaking and writing. He published his own newspaper, The North Star, participated in the first women's rights convention at Seneca Falls, in 1848, and wrote three autobiographies. He was internationally recognized as an uncompromising abolitionist, indefatigable worker for justice and equal opportunity, and an unyielding defender of women's rights. He became a trusted advisor to Abraham Lincoln, United States Marshal for the District of Columbia, Recorder of Deeds for Washington, D.C., and Minister-General to the Republic of Haiti.

Frederick Douglass sought to embody three keys for success in life:
Believe in yourself.
Take advantage of every opportunity.
Use the power of spoken and written language to effect positive change for yourself and society.

Douglass said, "What is possible for me is possible for you." By taking these keys and making them his own, Frederick Douglass created a life of honor, respect and success that he could never have dreamed of when still a boy on Colonel Lloyd's plantation on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

Article Source: http://www.frederickdouglass.org/douglass_bio.html

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Obama's election ties African-American, U.S. history

2009-02-01T04:06:00.000-08:00

By Joye Brown

WASHINGTON

Walking along the Mall the day after Barack Obama was inaugurated as the nation's 44th president, I saw something I'd never seen before.

Clusters of people, of all races and ages, strolling along and talking out loud about U.S. history.

They talked about presidents. Congress and the Capitol. And I watched two teens pause, astonished, as they stood on the Mall and looked back to see the White House in the distance behind them.

In years past, the usual crowd visiting my hometown included excited teachers leading around groups of bored students, or parents working hard to keep up with rambunctious children sprinting toward the Mall's carousel or the head of a dinosaur at one of the many nearby Smithsonian museums.

But, for one day at least, the inauguration of the nation's first African-American president changed that.

History.

Black history.

American history.

Visitors couldn't get enough of it.

Which is a grand notion as the nation plots its next moves forward.

It took more than 200 years for the United States to elect its first African-American president. What's impressive is that the nation, voting across racial, gender, economic and political lines, did it together.

The act itself was a revolution, one built on other revolutions.

The nation's founders had a notion that the United States could be a place that offered liberty and justice for all, even as slavery continued to be a blight on the land.

And when enslaved Africans finally were freed, they faced the harsh reality that being free did not mean they were fully vested citizens.

The fight for civil rights actually began during the Civil War.

That much University of Virginia historian Jennifer Burns makes clear during a fascinating series of lectures on American history (easily downloaded as a podcast at jenniferburns.org).

She says the 4 million enslaved Africans in the South had a hand in freeing themselves. Their desire to be free flew in the face of Southern mythology that slaves were childlike and wanted the security of being slaves. The successful flight of many of the masters' most trusted slaves to the North belied the myth that plantation owners were in charge. And the North's hard-won willingness finally to allow slaves to join the Union Army (in extremely harsh and dangerous jobs) gave African-Americans - including Frederick Douglass - hope that they could work their way toward the privilege of full citizenship.

There's no National Museum of African-American History on the Mall, but there are plans to build one.

No doubt the civil rights movement will be part of it.

Still, it's not too early to begin connecting the dots, from 4 million enslaved Africans and their descendants and their thirst for freedom before and during the Civil War to the stories of modern-day Long Islanders included in this special Black History Month special section to a nation's collective move to elect an African-American president.

Joseph McNeil is in the history books. He's one of the young men who refused to leave a luncheon counter in the segregated South. Barbara Patton, Darlene Harris and Roger Corbin are in the local history books, too. They were the first local African-American state and county legislative representatives. And Marge Rogatz, one of the many Long Islanders active in local civil rights efforts, is still in the thick of things - pushing for affordable housing, among other things.

They're all part of the same story.

History.

Black history.

U.S. history.

Three strands that this year, finally, and firmly, were joined together as one

Article Source: http://www.newsday.com/services/newspaper/printedition/sunday/lilife/ny-bhpage26019667feb01,0,5130028.column

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African American Poetry - The Players, The Times, The Themes, The Struggle!

2009-01-31T17:29:00.000-08:00

African American Poetry is a form of literature that is basically an expressive and colorful form of the emotions of the black and enslaved populations of America. Many of the themes of early African American Poetry revolve around issues such as slavery, murder, familial problems, and lifestyle. The tone of most of the literary works of this era entertain an emotional tone rather than reserved philosophical style. This allows the poems to be more personal and engaging. The journey of African Americans in America from the days of slavery until now can be traced through the history of these poems.

This genre found its roots during the 18th and 19th centuries with poets such as Phillis Wheatley and orator Frederick Douglass, reaching an early high point with the Harlem Renaissance. It continues today with well known authors such as Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou and Walter Mosley. Many of issues explored in African American literature are the role of African Americans within the larger American society, African American culture, racism, slavery, and equality.

One of the first most famous African American authors was poet Phillis Wheatley. She was well known for her book Poems on Various Subjects in 1773 which was published three years before American independence. Originally from Africa, Wheatley was captured and sold as a slave at the tender age of seven. She was then brought to America and owned by a Boston merchant.

At first she spoke no English, but by the time she was sixteen she had mastered the language. Her poetry won praises from many great leaders of the American Revolution, including George Washington. Despite this, many white people found it hard to believe that an African American woman could be so intelligent as to write poetry. Thus, Wheatley found herself in court trying to prove that she actually wrote her own poetry. Perhaps Wheatley's successful defense can be regarded as a true recognition of African American literature.

Jupiter Hammon was another early African American author who was actually considered the first published Black writer in America for his poem "An Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ with Penitential Cries" in early 1761. He was well remembered for his Address to the Negroes of the State of New York in 1786. This speech also planted the idea of a gradual emancipation as a way of ending slavery. According to public records, Hammon remained a slave until his death.

Another great poet was Paul Laurence Dunbar who was known for his poem, "The Poet". He wrote this a mere three years before his untimely death in 1906 at the age of 34. Dunbar was not only the most famous African American poet, but was also one of the most famous American poets, of his time. He was celebrated for his folk poetry about African Americans which was written in dialect—the "jingle in a broken tongue."

For more interesting tidbits on African American history visit http://www.allmattersafrican.com/ a website offering views and topical resources on issues such as African American art, African poetry and even about traditional African music.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sarah_H

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The Myth of Exodus and Genesis and the Exclusion of Their African Origins

2009-01-31T08:56:00.000-08:00

A very good resource
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The myth of genesis and exodus and its modern untrue historical perpetuations by the current self appointed custodians of Christianity, Judaism and Islam are examined and analyzed in this 74 paged document. The author sets the record straight by linking all three to their Afrikan pagan origins and with real individuals, making historical corrections where they are due.

For example there are comparisons, between what was allegedly said by King Solomon and what was actually written by Amenemope, and comparison between the biblical ten commandments with the actual written 147. There are dates along with mapping diagrams showing the approximate time of genesis and exodus and what would have occurred in truth.

In addition, by showing that all involved during the alleged mass movements and cultural war fares were of Afrikan tribal descent, the author shows that biblical events that occurred were mostly Afrikan continental history, and spiritual allegory. A very good reference source with a great bibliography. For more detail see African Origins of the Major Western Religions to get an in-depth outlook on this subject.

Article Source: Amazon.com

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