Breaks my heart to hear young folk say they don’t vote because their vote doesn’t matter. How did we get THIS far off course from the work of the Freedom Riders of the 1960s? College students and teenagers lead that Movement—risking their lives against police with billy clubs, cattle prods and water hoses to make… Continue reading Think your vote doesn’t count? THINK AGAIN.
Tag: Civil Rights Movement
My Father ~ Silas Jones ~ An Inspiration
Independence Day Musings ~ My father, Silas Jones, was born in 1921 in Putney, Georgia—a widening-in-the-road near Albany. I remember one summer when I was home—most likely during my Brooklyn, New York years: 1979-1985, we drove “down home” to visit my mother’s people in Bainbridge/Camilla. We were at a cousin’s house where the TV played… Continue reading My Father ~ Silas Jones ~ An Inspiration
Please Sign Petition to Support the 15 Leesburg Stockade Women’s Nomination for Presidential Medal of Freedom
From a change.org petition started by Brittany Dawson ~ On July 15, 1963 fifteen outstanding and brave adolescent girls took a stand for their rights and were imprisoned for it, enduring terrible conditions and circumstances while confined within an abandoned Civil War stockade – a large holding cell that contained a broken shower head and… Continue reading Please Sign Petition to Support the 15 Leesburg Stockade Women’s Nomination for Presidential Medal of Freedom
JFK’s Civil Rights Speech: June 11, 1963
50 years ago last month, President Kennedy spoke boldly and eloquently from the Oval office in response to the National Guard being sent to protect African-American students at the University of Alabama. Kennedy’s words ~ “We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the scriptures and as clear as the… Continue reading JFK’s Civil Rights Speech: June 11, 1963
Angela Glover Blackwell: Intelligent passion personified
I love it when a person makes so much sense that you can’t help but understand them. That’s the case with Angela Glover Blackwell who says ~ “America doesn’t want to talk about race,” and also, “America can see its future. And it’s a five-year-old Latina girl. It is a seven-year-old black boy. What happens to them… Continue reading Angela Glover Blackwell: Intelligent passion personified
Harlem Barbershop ~ Tells Its Own Stories
June 2011 ~ ALBANY, GA Nope. Not talking about the infamous Harlem in New York City, but rather its namesake 1000 miles south in Albany, GA. It’s hot as the dickens that day, but nice and comfortable inside the barbershop on the corner of W. Highland and S. Jackson Streets in this historic district. When… Continue reading Harlem Barbershop ~ Tells Its Own Stories
Red Tails Movie Salutes Tuskegee Airmen
Bring on the buzz! We all need to be makin’ lots-o-noise for this movie, which is now in theaters everywhere. My family went opening night, and as hard has it is to hold back, I’ll wait to write a review until more of you have seen it. IT IS WORTH SEEING, even if you don’t… Continue reading Red Tails Movie Salutes Tuskegee Airmen
The First Bite
America has a multitude of best-kept secrets. The Albany Georgia Civil Rights Movement is one of them. It started in the fall of 1961. I was seven years old, and my late sister, Betty, was just shy of twelve.To my knowledge our late parents—like most of the more than 20,000 blacks in Albany at the… Continue reading The First Bite
Growing up on Hazard Drive
Our house was #325 Hazard Drive, one door down from Hazard Laboratory School in Albany, Georgia. During the late 50s and into the 60s when I was growing up there, Hazard Drive was a dichotomous slice of black life, one of the east side communities closest to the Flint River. On the north end of… Continue reading Growing up on Hazard Drive