Category: Freedom

Power concedes nothing without a demand

Douglass

The tagline of this occasional blog – “The battles we fight, the wars we wage” — closely describes the life of Frederick Douglass, a Black man born in February 1818 in Talbot County, Maryland, a long-established Colonial community where, up until the Civil War, some one-quarter of all residents were of African or Caribbean descent, and were enslaved.

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James Mercer Langston Hughes – (Feb 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967)

 

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.
Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—
I, too, am America.

Stop for Flashing Lights

IMG_3848When I tell people I want to live in a school bus after I retire, reactions run the gamut. But it’s OK. I’ve already driven a bus – the bus I was riding home from school one Spring day in 1972, in 9th Grade. I wasn’t supervised at all, but only watched by the laughing and licensed bus driver who gave me her seat so that I could drive my own bus down my own street. Continue reading “Stop for Flashing Lights” →