Tuesday Muse Day

Think about this tomorrow

Random Thoughts for the day AFTER Independence Day. We only get one day to mumble ‘yay’ for that, then it comes time to store the pom-poms and Patriot Whiny Little Punk Fronts away for another 364 days. Yeah they upset people in Boston where the first fight for US liberty began. It’s not about being woke or lefty loosie righty tighty. It’s about knowing the history and why that’s what real patriots do.

History doesn’t change to fit anybody’s agenda, it changes to fit what the research uncovers. Russia doesn’t own history nor does the USA. No Senator owns it in any party and a bunch of drunken fratboys wearing masks to hide their identities can’t rewrite it.

Our newest federal holiday was long overdue. Juneteenth (June 19th) is the anniversary of the announcement of General Order No. 3 by Union Army general Gordon Granger on June 19, 1865, proclaiming freedom for enslaved people in Texas. It was 68 days after General Lee’s surrender and nearly 2-1/2 years after Lincoln officially freed them.

And the abolitionists of the North were demonized just like anti-fascists are today. Those who would deny liberty to others are as wrong today as they were back then.

Black families would spend decades trying to re-establish contact with their family members torn from easch other by slaveowners. Some succeeded, most did not.

Reconstruction followed that war and a number of Black men were elected to office for the first time. Within a decade, the violent backlash against Black freedom by the KKK and others had restored white supremacy throughout the South. Black men could be arrested for vagrancy and forced to work for peanuts, not unlike slavery. Lynchings occurred to keep Blacks terrorized.

(21 year old Fred Hampton, assassinated by the police in 1969)

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Blacks lynched (by state) 1882 - 1968

539 Mississippi

492 Georgia

352 Texas

335 Louisiana

299 Alabama

257 Florida

226 Arkansas

204 Tennessee

156 South Carolina

142 Kentucky

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86 North Carolina

83 Virginia

69 Missouri

40 Oklahoma

28 West Virginia

27 Maryland

19 Illinois

19 Kansas

16 Ohio

14 Indiana

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6 Pennsylvania

5 Nebraska

5 Wyoming

4 Minnesota

3 Colorado

3 New Mexico

3 North Dakota

2 California

2 Iowa

2 Montana

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2 Utah

1 Delaware

1 Michigan

1 New Jersey

1 New York

1 Oregon

1 Washington

0 Arizona

0 Idaho

0 Maine

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0 Nevada

0 South Dakota

0 Vermont

0 Wisconsin

(Alaska, Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and

Rhode Island aren't on the list, which comes from the Archives at

Tuskegee Institute. So either the research wasn't done in those

six states or they had zero lynchings of Black Americans also).

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With the onset of WWII, Black soldiers performed heroically and after Truman desegregated the armed forces, many were treated as heroes by Europeans. But once again when they returned to the USA white supremacists put them under the thumb. Even the enactment of the GI Bill that lifted many military families into the middle class was initially denied to them.

For every advance, a backlash ensued. During the Civil Rights era in the 1950s and 1960s, churches were bombed, voting rights activists were murdered, the Black Panthers were murdered by legal authorities at multiple government levels, Southern Democrats switched to the Republican Party and white supremacists make up a key part of their base even today.

The backlash occurred again when a Black man became President in 2008. White supremacists, neo-Nazis, praising Hitler or other fascists, still ready to commit murder in the name of “I’m better than you, neener-neener, now die.”

They’re addicted to terror and they’re too often supported by police forces.

I muse about the history every time another Black person is slaughtered. Now it’s Jayland Walker.

Police tried to stop Walker’s Buick about 12:30 a.m. June 27 for investigation of an unspecified traffic violation and chased him when he did not pull over, the Akron Police Department said. Shortly after an officer said he heard a gunshot come from the Buick, Walker jumped out of the car and ran into a parking lot, with officers following — and eventually firing.

Walker was pronounced dead in the parking lot. Among the images police displayed Sunday were those of a gun that they said they found in his car, beside a loaded magazine.

A DoorDash driver, he had no record. He had an unloaded gun in his car. While he wwas driving to escape capture, a flash was seen by his door. The police claim they thought that was a gun, but notably yesterday - 6 days after the man was slaughtered - they still call it an ‘unspecified traffic violation.’ Oh really?

Why did he run? Why did he have a ski mask on? I can speculate. Perhaps he had a drug in his possession. He ran to get rid of it. He put the mask on so if he succeeded in his escape they couldn’t identify him. All speculation, of course, but other than the mask I recall seeing a friend do that 50 years ago.

There’s also no testiomony to determine if the flash was a gunfire and where that gunfire was aimed. Forensics should be able to determine if his gun was even used. And, in any case, why so many bullets. Why was he still being shot while on the ground dying?

And what traffic violation did he die for? Failure to use a turn signal?

Why do these slaughters continue? He hardly looked like an athlete or a big hulking guy. He was guilty as hell of being Black.

I have more that I mused on but will save it for the next newsletter.

Just remember and retell the history. Some politicians want to ban that, criminalizing reality.