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Stop Honoring Confederate Heroes

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2020 //
93

Today is Juneteenth, a day that marks the end of slavery. Juneteenth is the day in 1865 when black people in Texas finally got the news that slavery had been abolished. There is currently a movement to make Juneteenth a national holiday. Many large corporations already recognize its importance.

Now, as the nation is rocked by demonstrations and protests against racism, is a good time to stop honoring Confederate heroes.

Education Week conducted a survey and identified some 174 schools, all in the south, that honor southern heroes, mainly Robert E. Lee. Let’s face it. The leaders of the insurrection were traitors to the United States. Their “sacred cause” was white supremacy. The war they fought to secede cost more than 600,000 lives.

Alan Singer says it’s past time to remove all the statues and memorials honoring Robert E. Lee, who violated his oath to serve his country and waged war against it.

Growing up in Houston, I attended Albert Sidney Johnston Junior High School, named for a Confederate General, the first of his rank to die in the Civil War. I didn’t know anything about him as a student, although everyone memorized the school marching song that honored his name (he died in the Battle of Shiloh in 1862).The school’s name was changed only four years ago, along with those of other schools in Houston named for heroes of the Confederacy.

Recently, the leaders of the military proposed renaming military bases that bear the names of Confederate generals. Trump flatly rejected the proposal, claiming that it would dishonor the military. Strange words from a man who ridiculed Senator John McCain because he was captured in Vietnam. Why praise generals who lost a disastrous rebellion while demeaning a war hero who refused the opportunity to be freed until the other American captives imprisoned with him were released?

Democrats are demanding the renaming of the military bases named for Confederate generals. House Democrats have vowed to attach their demand to the defense funding bill. Senator Elizabeth Warren is attaching an amendment to the Defense Authorization act requiring the renaming of the bases.

Justice Laurence Silberman, a Reagan appointee to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, was outraged by Warren’s amendment. He sent out a blast email to the other judges and their clerks calling her amendment “madness.” A day later, a black clerk responded to Justice Silberman, risking his job, defending Warren’s proposal.

The Intercept reported:

“Hi Judge Silberman,” began the career-risking reply-all email, “I am one of only five black law clerks in this entire circuit. However, the views I express below are solely my own,” they went on. “Since no one in the court’s leadership has responded to your message, I thought I would give it a try.”

[M]y maternal ancestors were enslaved in Mississippi. While the laws of this nation viewed my ancestors as property, I view them as hostages. In a hostage situation, when someone does something that leads to the freeing of the hostages, I am not sure if the hostages would be concerned as to whether the person that saved them, actually intended to save them. In this instance, as people considered to be property, my ancestors would not have been involved in the philosophical and political debates about Lincoln’s true intentions, or his view on racial equality. For them, and myself, race is not an abstract topic to be debated, so in my view anything that was built to represent white racial superiority, or named after someone who fought to maintain white supremacy (or the Southern economy of slavery), see Photo of Liberty Monument attached, should be removed from high trafficked areas of prominence and placed in museums where they can be part of lessons that put them in context.

In your message, you talked about your ancestors, one that fought for the confederacy and one that fought for the Union. This seems to be a true example of a house divided. However, it is very clear what the Confederacy stood for. In 1861, at the Virginia secession convention, Henry L. Benning (for whom Fort Benning is named) in explaining the reasoning for Georgia’s decision to secede from the United States stated, “[it] was a conviction … that a separation from the North was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery…[I]t is probable that the white race, being superior in every respect, may push the other back.” Unfortunately, in this scenario, no matter how bravely your uncle fought for the Confederacy, the foundation of his fight was a decision that he agreed more with the ideals of the Confederacy, than he did with those of the Union. And in the end, he chose the losing side of history.

Finally, I will note that the current movement to rename Government owned facilities is in line with your previous opinions on the importance of names and what they represent. In 2005, you publicly advocated for the removal of J. Edgar Hoover’s name from the FBI Building due to the problematic material you came across in your review of his FBI files after his death. You equated it to the Defense Department being named for Aaron Burr. In view of your opinion of J. Edgar Hoover’s history and your advocacy for renaming the FBI building because of the prominence it provides Hoover’s legacy, it is very strange that you would be against renaming our military facilities, since the legacy of the Confederacy represents the same thing. This moment of confronting our nation’s racial history is too big to be disregarded based on familial ties.

The correspondence was provided to The Intercept by a member of the Court staff on the condition the identity of the clerk (who was not the source) and judges who replied be kept confidential.

After the clerk’s response came out, others spoke up, including two black judges.

Slam dunk.

This flurry of activism is a response to the outrage kindled by the murder of George Floyd. It is a response to a newly awakened public opinion. It is a testament to the work of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Rename the schools. Rename the bases. Honor heroes of freedom and democracy. Put the statues of Confederate military leaders in a museum where their words and deeds and legacy can be studied as part of American history. To be discussed but not to be honored as heroes.

Categories Accountability, History, Racism

What Bill Barr Did in 1968

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2020 //
5

Politico writes here about Bill Barr’s role in the Columbia University student protests of 1968. Radical students occupied several buildings to protest Columbia’s ties to the defense industry and the construction of a new gym in Morningside Park that would be closed to the local black community.

The confrontations on campus were tense, and the administration called in the police (which many provocateurs welcomed, assuming that battles with police would expand their ranks).

One student group, calling themselves the Majority Coalition, opposed the student protesters. Composed mainly of student athletes and conservatives, this group included Bill Barr. He wanted the police to sweep out the radical students who were disrupting the campus. Looking back over half a century, Barr remains consistent in his support of military force to beat back civil protest.

Categories History

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on Non-Violence

By dianeravitch
June 3, 2020 //
19

The following assemblage of citations from Dr. King’s life was prepared by the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute at Stanford University.


Nonviolence

As a theologian, Martin Luther King reflected often on his understanding of nonviolence. He described his own “pilgrimage to nonviolence” in his first book, Stride Toward Freedom, and in subsequent books and articles. “True pacifism,” or “nonviolent resistance,” King wrote, is “a courageous confrontation of evil by the power of love” (King, Stride, 80). Both “morally and practically” committed to nonviolence, King believed that “the Christian doctrine of love operating through the Gandhian method of nonviolence was one of the most potent weapons available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom” (King, Stride, 79; Papers 5:422).

King was first introduced to the concept of nonviolence when he read Henry David Thoreau’s Essay on Civil Disobedience as a freshman at Morehouse College. Having grown up in Atlanta and witnessed segregation and racism every day, King was “fascinated by the idea of refusing to cooperate with an evil system” (King, Stride, 73).

In 1950, as a student at Crozer Theological Seminary, King heard a talk by Dr. Mordecai Johnson, president of Howard University. Dr. Johnson, who had recently traveled to India, spoke about the life and teachings of Mohandas K. Gandhi. Gandhi, King later wrote, was the first person to transform Christian love into a powerful force for social change. Gandhi’s stress on love and nonviolence gave King “the method for social reform that I had been seeking” (King, Stride, 79).

While intellectually committed to nonviolence, King did not experience the power of nonviolent direct action first-hand until the start of the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955. During the boycott, King personally enacted Gandhian principles. With guidance from black pacifist Bayard Rustin and Glenn Smiley of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, King eventually decided not to use armed bodyguards despite threats on his life, and reacted to violent experiences, such as the bombing of his home, with compassion. Through the practical experience of leading nonviolent protest, King came to understand how nonviolence could become a way of life, applicable to all situations. King called the principle of nonviolent resistance the “guiding light of our movement. Christ furnished the spirit and motivation while Gandhi furnished the method” (Papers 5:423).

King’s notion of nonviolence had six key principles. First, one can resist evil without resorting to violence. Second, nonviolence seeks to win the “friendship and understanding” of the opponent, not to humiliate him (King, Stride, 84). Third, evil itself, not the people committing evil acts, should be opposed. Fourth, those committed to nonviolence must be willing to suffer without retaliation as suffering itself can be redemptive. Fifth, nonviolent resistance avoids “external physical violence” and “internal violence of spirit” as well: “The nonviolent resister not only refuses to shoot his opponent but he also refuses to hate him” (King, Stride, 85). The resister should be motivated by love in the sense of the Greek word agape, which means “understanding,” or “redeeming good will for all men” (King, Stride, 86). The sixth principle is that the nonviolent resister must have a “deep faith in the future,” stemming from the conviction that “The universe is on the side of justice” (King, Stride, 88).

During the years after the bus boycott, King grew increasingly committed to nonviolence. An India trip in 1959 helped him connect more intimately with Gandhi’s legacy. King began to advocate nonviolence not just in a national sphere, but internationally as well: “the potential destructiveness of modern weapons” convinced King that “the choice today is no longer between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence” (Papers 5:424).

After Black Power advocates such as Stokely Carmichael began to reject nonviolence, King lamented that some African Americans had lost hope, and reaffirmed his own commitment to nonviolence: “Occasionally in life one develops a conviction so precious and meaningful that he will stand on it till the end. This is what I have found in nonviolence” (King, Where, 63–64). He wrote in his 1967 book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?: “We maintained the hope while transforming the hate of traditional revolutions into positive nonviolent power. As long as the hope was fulfilled there was little questioning of nonviolence. But when the hopes were blasted, when people came to see that in spite of progress their conditions were still insufferable … despair began to set in” (King, Where, 45). Arguing that violent revolution was impractical in the context of a multiracial society, he concluded: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. The beauty of nonviolence is that in its own way and in its own time it seeks to break the chain reaction of evil” (King, Where, 62–63).

Footnotes

King, “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence,” 13 April 1960, in Papers 5:419–425.

King, Stride Toward Freedom, 1958.

King, Where Do We Go from Here, 1967.

This entry is part of the following collection

Martin Luther King, Jr. – Political and Social Views
Martin Luther King, Jr. – Travels
Montgomery Bus Boycott

Nonviolence

Related Events

King begins freshman year at Morehouse
King hears Mordecai Johnson preach on Gandhi
Montgomery bus boycott begins
Bayard Rustin visits Montgomery
King discusses nonviolence with Bayard Rustin
Glenn Smiley interviews King in Montgomery
“Stride Toward Freedom” officially released; King signs copies at Harlem’s Empire Baptist Bookstore
The Kings and Lawrence Dunbar Reddick depart for India and Middle East
King’s “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence” published in Christian Century

Categories Bigotry, Civil Rights, History, Hope, Love

Ohio Legislators Reject the Vision of the Founding Fathers

By dianeravitch
May 28, 2020 //
29

Denis Smith, former official in the Ohio State Education Departnent, describes here the commitment of the Founding Fathers of the nation and Ohio to “common schools” or public schools.

In our own day, however, radical libertarians—anarchists, in fact—have opposed the Founders’ vision and sought to replace the common schools with consumer choice. In place of the goal of equality of educational opportunity, these anarchists—such as Jeb Bush and Betsy DeVos—have promoted individual choice through privately managed charter schools and vouchers for religious schools.

The anarchists are repudiating our history and traditions in their efforts to eliminate any sense of social responsibility and they do so cynically, claiming that they are doing it “for the kids” who will be abandoned as the rich get richer and the poor get vouchers are low-quality schools.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, History, Hoax, Ohio, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Smithsonian: What Can We Learn from the Pandemic of 1918?

By dianeravitch
May 24, 2020 //
22

What I learned from this article, among other things, is that the “Spanish flu,” which caused 50 million deaths around the world in 1918, did not start in Spain. The author argues that it actually started in Kansas and was brought to Europe by American troops who had come to make the world “safe for democracy.” And one other thing: the author, John M. Barry of Tulane, believes that Woodrow Wilson did not die of a stroke while at the Paris Peace Conference, but of the influenza.

This was no ordinary flu. It was deadly and devastating. The first wave was bad. The second wave was even worse.

For a fascinating look at the 1918 pandemic, read this article. It was written in 1917.

Categories Health, History

Denis Smith: The Mystery of the Memorial to Governor Rhodes

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2020 //
13

Denis Smith wrote the following, to commemorate a date that is notorious to those of us who recall the Kent State Massacre, when the Ohio National Guard opened fire on unarmed college student protesters:

May 4, 2020, marks the 50th anniversary of the deaths of four students at Kent State University. The shootings by a contingent of the Ohio National Guard, which were ordered into the city by Ohio Governor James Rhodes, were in response to rioting that took place on the campus in protest to the escalation of the Vietnam War and the destruction of the campus ROTC building.

At the time, many people felt that Rhodes inflamed the situation when he said that the students were worse than the “Brown Shirts” of the Hitler era. Rhodes, who holds the distinction of being one of only seven four-term governors in the history of this nation, is still a divisive figure a half-century after the Kent State Massacre, where in addition to the four dead, nine other students were also severely wounded and one paralyzed.

In December 1982, a 6 foot- 6 inch tall bronze statue of Rhodes was dedicated on the grounds of the State Capitol in Columbus. It didn’t take long for the statue to be vandalized and hit by a car in 1983, according to Wiki. It was later moved and placed in front of the entrance of the Rhodes State Office Tower, where it remains.

Which brings me to this nugget.

We relocated to the Columbus area five years after the statue was dedicated. In the early 1990s, someone told me that there was a legend about some type of secret message that was contained inside the bronze statute. After Rhodes’ death in 2011, that rumor was confirmed.

Here is an excerpt from the Columbus Monthly Magazine of November 2019:

A Bronze Bombshell

“When James Rhodes died in 2001, a longtime Capitol Square rumor was confirmed. It turned out that the 700-pound bronze effigy of the four-term governor in front of the Rhodes Tower includes a hidden tribute to the four students killed at Kent State University in May 1970.

“There is in fact a message engraved into the bronze on the inside of the statue that makes a statement about the Kent State shootings and the victims,” Ron Dewey, former owner of Studio Foundry in Cleveland, told the defunct Columbus alternative weekly The Other Paper, declining to reveal exactly what the message said. —Dave Ghose”

As we commemorate the 50th anniversary of Kent State, I for one would love to know what the sculptor Gary Ross engraved on the inside of the statue. Wouldn’t you?

If there is an update to this story from six months ago, I would love to know further details. How many folks would be itching to write the story about hidden hieroglyphics inside this statue?

Denis Smith posted this on his Facebook page. You can see the statue of Governor Rhodes there.

Categories History, Ohio

NAEP Scores Drop in History, Civics: DeVos Blames Public Schools, Not NCLB, RTTT, ESSA, CCSS

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2020 //
9

The National Center for Education Statistics released NAEP scores in history and geography, which declined, and in civics, which were flat.

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos went into her customary rant against public schools, but the real culprit is a failed federal policy of high-stakes testing narrowly focused on reading and math. If DeVos were able to produce data to demonstrate that scores on the same tests were rising for the same demographic groups in charter schools and voucher schools, she might be able to make an intelligent point, but all she has is her ideological hatred of public schools.

After nearly 20 years of federal policies of high-stakes testing, punitive accountability, and federal funding of school choice, the results are in. The “reforms” mandated by No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, the Every Student Succeeds Act, as well as the federally-endorsed (Gates-funded) Common Core, have had no benefit for American students.

Enough!

When the ESSA comes up for reauthorization, it should be revised. The standardized testing mandate should be eliminated. The original name—the Elementary and Secondary Education Act—should replace the fanciful and delusional title (NCLB, ESSA), since we now know that the promise of “no child left behind” was fake, as was the claim that “every student succeeds” by complying with federally mandated testing.

Restore also the original purpose of the act in 1965: EQUITY. That is, financial help for the schools that enroll the poorest children, so they can have small classes, experienced teachers, a full curriculum including the arts and recess, a school nurse, a library and librarian, a psychologist and social worker.

Here is the report from Politico Morning Education:

MANY STUDENTS ARE STRUGGLING’: Average scores for eighth-graders on the Nation’s Report Card declined in U.S. history and geography between 2014 and 2018 while scores in civics remained flat, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. The results follow disappointing scores for math and reading released in October.

— “The results provided here indicate that many students are struggling to understand and explain the importance of civic participation, how American government functions, the historical significance of events, and the need to grasp and apply core geographic concepts,” stated Peggy G. Carr, the associate commissioner of assessment at NCES, which runs the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, known as The Nation’s Report Card.

— The digitally based assessments were administered from January to March 2018 to a nationally representative sample of eighth-graders from about 780 schools. The results are available at nationsreportcard.gov. They will be discussed at a livestreamed event, beginning at 1:30 p.m.

— Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, in a statement, said “America’s antiquated approach to education is creating a generation of future leaders who will not have a foundational understanding of what makes this country exceptional. We cannot continue to excuse this problem away. Instead, we need to fundamentally rethink education in America

Open the link to find links to the NAEP reports.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Civics, Common Core, Corporate Reform, Curriculum, Education Reform, Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Failure, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, History, NAEP, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Vouchers

Joy Hakim: Online Lessons by a Storyteller

By dianeravitch
April 5, 2020 //
6

Joy Hakim wrote a successful American history book titled A History of Us, which was pUblished by Oxford University Press, not the big textbook corporations, because it was written as factual stories, not by a checklist. She also wrote The Story of Science, which was published by the Smithsonian, for the same reason.

When you read her books and compare them to the lifeless textbooks that students are required to read, you will understand the power of story. History and science are intrinsically fascinating. The textbooks make them dull.

Joy has started writing online lessons, also in story form, about history and science. Students will think of them as good stories, that happen to be factual.

Here are her first two lessons.

Categories Education Reform, History, Science

Garrison Keillor: Today is Typhoid Mary’s Birthday

By dianeravitch
March 27, 2020 //
13

Garrison Keillor tells this story at “The Writer’s Almanac”:

On this date in 1915, the woman known as “Typhoid Mary” was put into quarantine in a cottage in the Bronx. Her name was Mary Mallon, and she was a large and fiery Irish-American woman about 40 years old. She worked as a cook in and around New York City, and every household she worked in seemed to suffer an outbreak of typhoid fever. Typhoid is caused by a form of Salmonella bacteria, and is usually spread by contact with human or animal waste. It was common on battlefields — it may have killed more than 200,000 soldiers during the Civil War — and in poor and unsanitary housing conditions, but it was rarely seen in the wealthy households like the ones where Mallon worked.

The first outbreak associated with Typhoid Mary occurred in 1900, in Mamaroneck, New York. She had been cooking for a family for about two weeks when they started to become ill. The same thing happened the following year, when she took a series of jobs in Manhattan and Long Island. She helped take care of the sick, not realizing that her presence was probably making them worse.

In 1906, a doctor named George Soper noticed this strange pattern of outbreaks in wealthy homes. He went to interview each of the families, and found that they had all hired the same cook, but she never left a forwarding address when she moved on to other employment. He finally tracked her down after several cases in a Park Avenue penthouse, so he interviewed her. She didn’t take it well, and swore at him, and threatened him with a meat cleaver when he asked her to provide a stool sample. He finally called in the police and had her arrested.

Urine and stool samples were taken from Mallon by force, and doctors discovered that her gall bladder was shedding great numbers of typhoid bacteria. She admitted that she never washed her hands when cooking, but she didn’t see the point, as she was healthy. No one had ever heard of a healthy carrier of typhoid before, and she refused to believe that she was in any way sick. They wanted to take out her gall bladder, and she refused. They demanded that she give up cooking, and she refused to do that too. They confined her for a while and put her to work as a laundress for the Riverside Hospital, and in 1910 — after she promised to give up cooking and only work as a laundress — she was released. It wasn’t long before she changed her name to Mary Brown and took a job as a cook. For the next five years, she stayed one step ahead of the doctors and the law, spreading disease and death in her wake, until they caught up with her on Long Island. Authorities placed her in quarantine on North Brother Island in the Bronx for the rest of her life, and she died of pneumonia in 1938.

Categories Education Reform, Health, History

Garrison Keillor: It Was on This Day That…

By dianeravitch
March 23, 2020 //
24

The following appeared today in Garrison Keillor’s free daily “Writer’s Almanac”:

It was on this day in 1775 that the lawyer Patrick Henry spoke at the Second Virginia Convention in Richmond, a meeting of American colonial leaders that included George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. The four-day assembly turned into a fierce debate about whether or not to raise a militia and arm Virginia in the fight against the British. On the topic, Patrick Henry delivered a famous speech that probably included the line “Give me liberty or give me death!” At least, some people thought he did.

There was a problem with Henry’s speeches. They were charismatic and passionate, but afterward, no one could remember what he had said. Thomas Jefferson said of Henry: “When he had spoken in opposition to my opinion, had produced a great effect, and I myself had been highly delighted and moved, I have asked myself when he ceased: ‘What the devil has he said?’ I could never answer the inquiry.”

The speech wasn’t written down until 1816, by Henry’s biographer, William Wirt. Wirt talked to people who had been present at the speech and had them reconstruct it from their memories.

It was on this day in 2010 that President Barack Obama (books by this author) signed into law the Affordable Care Act, the most sweeping piece of federal legislation since Medicare was passed in 1965. Universal health care had long been a dream of the Democratic Party. The passage of the bill extended health care to almost 32 million Americans.

Today marks the first day in 1942 when the U.S. government began moving Japanese-Americans from their West Coast homes to internment camps. Between 110,000 and 120,000 people were forcibly relocated.

Some Japanese-American men were drafted into the War even as their families remained incarcerated. The camps remained open until 1945.

Categories History
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