The Peculiar Blindness, Part 5: Missing Dates

 

Museum and Tourist's Center list of Important Dates in history of Washington, Louisiana. March 2015.

I'm in Birmingham, Alabama.

Juneteenth 2021 is coming up this weekend.  

I've been going through past photos, editing and organizing. 

I bumped into a photo I took in 2015: A list of Important Dates in the history of the historic village of Washington, in Louisiana. 

Apparently not a thing in Washington, Louisiana:

• Slavery
• Civil War
• Emancipation
• Opelousas Massacre (with its catalyst in Washington) (or heck, even call it the Opelousas "Riot")

Nor are these noteworthy events: 

April 9, 1866: The first civil rights act in the United States, which overturned the Black Codes and which established that "all persons" (including Black persons) born in the U.S. are citizens. [But: The Act specifically excluded most Native Americans from citizenship.]

July 9, 1868: The 14th Amendment to the Constitution re-affirmed that all persons born in the U.S. are citizens. [Note: But voting rights were denied to all women and to most Native Americans. The 14th Amendment was generally interpreted to deny citizenship to most Native Americans, as well.]

June 2, 1924 (less than 100 years ago!): The Indian Citizens Act allowed as how Native Americans are U.S. citizens, too.

Here in Alabama, the state scrubs out the federal holiday that commemorates Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday by bleaching it with a state holiday that honors Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general. 

In fact, Alabama has three PAID holidays that honor those who fought and died to protect their right to enslave fellow human beings.

In good news, there are efforts afoot to make Juneteenth a federal holiday. 

 

A couple of days ago, the U.S. Senate voted unanimously to make Juneteenth a federal holiday. 

Yesterday, the U.S. House voted in favor of same, over the objections of, yes, two of Alabama's four representatives. (On the other hand, Governor Ivey recently proclaimed Juneteenth as an important day.)

Related posts

• The Peculiar blindness, Part 1: Introduction
• The Peculiar Blindness, Part 2: The "Yes, But" Mask
• The Peculiar Blindness, Part 3: You Don't See What I Don't See
• The Peculiar Blindness, Part 4: Casual Contempt

 

Birmingham, AL: "... Such Beautiful Scenery. We Didn't Have a Sense of Fear."

USPS stamp, Alabama.

Before I moved to Alabama, if I were on a shrink's couch and she ran me through an associations exercise, and she said, "black," I'd say "white," and if she said "Alabama," I'd say "racism."

One day, I went to the post office in Tucson to buy stamps. They didn't have many artistic choices that day, but they did have one - just one - of the state stamps from its series of state stamps. It was Alabama. My hand practically recoiled from the proffered page of stamps. An Alabama stamp?! On my mail?! Never!

The only positive whisper I had about Alabama was the comment of a friend who'd gone to Birmingham on a business trip some years ago. I asked him what he thought of Birmingham. He replied: "It's pretty and the people are friendly."

I share all of this backstory to build up to this point: When I drove into Alabama in July, I thought: Wow! It is so pretty here!

On a subsequent weekend trip to Oxford and Anniston, I thought: Wow! It is so pretty here!

Every time I move through Birmingham's forested neighborhoods, up hills, across ridges, over the mountain, I think: Gosh almighty, it's so pretty here. 

And then I think: If it weren't for Alabama's racism brand, the state could be a paradise!

Which leads me to the documentary I just watched,  PBS American Experience: Freedom Riders [the link takes you to the entire documentary].

Here is the trailer to the documentary:

 

 

Before the virgin voyage of the Freedom Rider campaign, Dr. Martin Luther King counseled the students: "... and if I were you, I probably wouldn't go into Alabama."

But this is the quote that grabs me, from one of the first wave of Freedom Riders, Mae F. Moultrie Howard: 

"It was such a beautiful day. It was such a quiet feeling that day ... it was bright and sunny. The sky was blue. And it was such beautiful scenery. We didn't have a sense of fear."

How can such horrible acts occur in such a beautiful land?

Julian Bond: "The people on the Trailways bus going to Birmingham don't know that the Greyhound bus in Anniston has been burned, ..... now the [people on the Trailways bus are] going to a city which is the worst city for race in the whole United States. It literally is a police state, ruled by one of the worst figures in American history, Bull Connor, who must have been some kind of psychopath, just rabid on the subject of race."

Unknown: "I think when they learn that when they go somewhere to create a riot, that there's not going to be somebody there to stand between them and the other crowd, they'll stay home."

John Siegenthaler, recounting the phone conversation he had with Freedom Rider leader, student Diane Nash: "'I understand there are more Freedom Riders coming down from Nashville. You must stop them if you can. Do you understand you're going to get somebody killed?' Her response was: 'They're not going to turn back. They're on their way to Birmingham.' .... soon I was shouting, 'Young woman, do you understand what you're doing? ... Do you understand you're going to get somebody killed!?' And there's a pause and she said, 'Sir, you should know, we all signed our last wills and testaments last night before they left. We know someone will be killed. But we cannot let violence overcome nonviolence.'"

Governor Patterson: "... these [freedom riders] are rabble rousers and we can't protect them."

Governor Patterson: "We don't need the federal marshals here in [Montgomery]. The situation here is well in hand, and if the outside agitators who came here and deliberately stirred up this controversy, would go home, and the marshals go home, it'd be best for everybody and the situation would return to normal very quickly."


Right after I finished watching Freedom Riders, I watched a short documentary that centered on James Armstrong, The Barber of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement.

Perhaps the most moving quote in this documentary came from Faya Rose Touré, a civil rights activist and litigation attorney: 

"The only way to freedom land, is on the backs of unknown people whose bodies are stacked so high that you eventually can walk to freedom land. And it's those foot soldiers who really make change. We always remember the Dr. Kings and the Rosa Parks, but we have to remember our foot soldiers."

On the foot soldiers, Ms. Touré added later: "The foot soldiers are some of the most important people in the Civil Rights Movement. These are people who will never be known by name. 'Cause they're people, who left their jobs, who risked their lives, may have been fired from their jobs. Who went out to march, not just one day, but every day. They weren't there just on Bloody Sunday, but they were there on Bloody Monday, fire me Tuesday, can't find a job Wednesday."


".... Such beautiful scenery. We didn't have a sense of fear."

 

I've been other places where the placid beauty of a surface hides the monsters - some still alive, some not - beneath. 

Example 1: The Trinity Site in New Mexico, the site of atomic bomb testing before Hiroshima and Nagasaki

I wrote then: 

... I do experience some cognitive dissonance in the low levels of radiation that exist there today (apparently) versus what we've had pounded into our psyches about how many eons it takes for radiation from an atomic bomb to go to "safe" levels. Does this mean I take away a sense that atomic weapons are "not that bad"? No. The take-away is my inability to reconcile two alleged realities.

Example 2: Bayou Corne the Sinkhole, Part 2

I wrote then: 

Once the immediate shock of the Bayou Corne's suck was over, could I believe what my eyes told me about the apparent return to [a] heretofore idyllic paradise, with the fish still biting, the birds still swooping gracefully, the water still rippling peacefully, the sky still blue, the trees still shading and sheltering?

I couldn't see what was - and wasn't - below my feet. Couldn't feel what was - or wasn't - there. Who could I trust to tell me the truth?

 

 ... such beautiful scenery.

The Day After They Called the Election: A Subdued Jubilation

 

"What Makes America Great." Artist: Michael D'Antuono

 

On Saturday, November 7, 2020, they called the win for Biden-Harris.

A quiet relief filled me, followed by the sobering certainty that most Americans - no, wait - followed by the sobering certainty that a majority of white Americans will fall back into a comfortable somnolence, relieved that things will return to the old normal.

In the old normal, many of us white Americans walked in the special dream state that families of alcoholics or emotional and verbal abusers live in. Where a frothy fog of amnesia settles in, even just a day after our abusers vomit their vitriol on us. Where we want (need!) to dismiss, discount, and deny how wounded all of us are - the targets, the abusers themselves, the bystanders, and the upstanders, so that we can avoid the pain of change from the known to the unknown, in addition to the inevitable, virulent backlash from our abusers (or their proxies).

With Trump dethroned, COVID will still be with us, to be sure, but all the rest of the stressors - Black Lives Matter, children in cages, Karens and Kens, the Wall, Defund the Police, protests (riots!), imprisoned refugees, all those things that make us feel uncomfortable, they will submerge into a dormant state, like a chicken pox virus, the itchiness gone, the red spots faded, thus ignorable. Won't they?

Besides, didn't we settle on Biden because he represented a comforting familiarity? Didn't we approve his selection of Kamala Harris as his running mate?! We are pro-woman! We are anti-racist! We did our duty by going to the polls or mailing our ballots and voting Biden in, and now we can relax, right? 

We need the answer to be yes because it is so hard to stay awake, and so easy to follow old scripts. We're mentally and emotionally exhausted after 1500+ days of unrelenting emotional and verbal violence rained upon us by the garden-variety abuser at the White House.

We need the answer to be yes because change - systemic change - that raises the water level so that all of our boats can rise - demands discomfort, uncertainty, fear of losing the security of our accustomed spot at the table, having to listen to voices we didn't hear before, of having to learn new rules, and of making mistakes while learning new rules.

It's a truism that most of us don't change until our backs are against the wall and the wall is on fire. 

Our wall is on fire. To go back to sleep is to miss our appointment with history to change the future. 

 

On the Road: Kansas: COVID-19 Unfolding, Part 25: Meade and The Situation

Meade City Park in Meade, Kansas. Campground and playground. June 2020.

En route from Tucson to Missouri, I stopped in Meade, Kansas, for two nights.

On Wednesday evening, I visited the pleasant city park. There is a campground there, making it a welcome and comfortable retreat for RVers passing through.

There is a pretty playground, too, and it gave a nod to COVID.

Meade City Park in Meade, Kansas. Playground. June 2020.

Meade City Park in Meade, Kansas. Playground and COVID sign. June 2020.

Meade City Park in Meade, Kansas. Playground and COVID sign. June 2020.

I noticed a clutch of people with musical instruments across a parking lot from the playground. Ah! A small outdoor concert! Fabulous - a safe event outdoors with everyone able to choose their physical distance and still enjoy the music and (careful) conviviality of being with other humans IRL. If they chose to be careful, that is.

The musicians: Talented! Old-timey Christian songs, pleasantly nostalgic.


The music ended, and I learned that several clergy had pulled together to host this event for the purpose of offering solace and fellowship in this Difficult Time.

I reckoned, at first, that the clergy intended to talk about COVID, and maybe also some about the Black Lives Matter protests. 

COVID didn't come up at all. They talked about the protests. But they didn't use the word "protest."



Here are words I heard from the four ministers, all uttered with calm, reasonable, and pastoral tones of voice:

• Race riots
• Fear
• Mobs
• Riots
• Fear
• "The events"
• "The situation"
• Fear
• Arson
• Looting
• Criminal acts

As I listened to the four members of the clergy from Meade, I felt confused. It was like they spoke in code. I understood the words. I understood the usual meanings of the words. But there was an overlay of meaning that kept me asking myself: "What is he really saying here?"

A minister of Meade, Kansas, at Meade City Park. June 2020.

There was much talk by each minister about how the protesters (my word) should turn to God and find peace and healing. There seemed to be an assumption that protesters (or, as the Meade ministers might call them: "rioters") are not people of faith. It seemed to be further implied that people of faith do not protest (my word). Maybe the thinking is: They protest (my word), therefore they have no faith. 

This talk of fear. Fear .... that Meade residents have? 

Fear of what? This wasn't explained. But maybe for Meade residents, it was understood.

A minister of Meade, Kansas, at Meade City Park. June 2020.

When a Black clergy woman strode to the stage, I had two thoughts:

• "Oh! I am pleasantly surprised at Meade! A person of color is at this table!" (Because I have my own biases about small Kansas towns.)
• "I want to hear what she has to say! Surely she'll bring some balance to this talk about riots, arson, looting and the lack of God in the protesters' (my word) lives." (Yes, I profiled her perspective based solely on her complexion.)

But no.

The minister, originally from Kenya, described a harrowing experience back home in which white folks shot at her husband while he and she were in their car, and threatened to cut off her hands! The minister related how she called to Jesus in her mind, and felt supreme confidence that Christ was not going to allow these men to harm her and her husband any further, and they did not! ..... And, she declared, it's this kind of faith and confidence that all of us should embrace.

For one, oh my gosh! What a horrific experience to have suffered! I cannot imagine the terror she must have felt.

But: George Lloyd called out for heavenly intervention, and the police murdered him anyway.

What is it the minister from Kenya - and the other Meade clergy - want African-Americans to do?

Be quiet, keep their heads down, pray?

Maybe the message is for African-Americans to do nothing. Maybe the message is that age-old one that colonizers and oppressors and their compliant missionaries disseminated to the oppressed: Accept your lot and get your reward in heaven.

I puzzled over this during the event, and afterward, and again when I arrived at my friend, Kate's, house in Missouri, who is a faithful follower of Christ, and who also protests in the streets, alone and with others. She is not a quiet Christian. Kate couldn't decipher the code either.


There was only one time when any of the ministers used the word justice.

One time.


Meanwhile, the ants on a tree went about their usual business.

Ants at Meade City Park. June 2020.

Tucson, AZ: Casa Alitas: "My Name is Elenita"

I was cleaning out a room at Casa Alitas. A family had passed a night or two there, and had since departed to a city somewhere in the United States, into the arms and home of a sponsor, a temporary-permanent place. Safe, presumably. A place to take some deep breaths, maybe get the kids into school.


Among the used bedding, the towels, an errant toothbrush, I saw atop the mattress a notepad.

On the cover, in a blend of letter styles: "Mi nombre es Elenita."

My name is Elenita.



I thought immediately of Hushpuppy, the valiant wee girl who lived in the drowning Louisiana community called The Bathtub, in the movie, Beasts of the Southern Wild.

Hushpuppy said:

I see that I'm a little piece of a big, big universe. .... In a million years, when kids go to school, they gonna know, once there was a Hushpuppy, and she lived with her Daddy in The Bathtub.

I smoothed the palm of my hand across Elenita's claim for her seat in the universe.

I thought, this little girl doesn't know it - though maybe she will one day - but she is a little piece of a big, big human wave of other little girls, and of boys, women, and men who are taking part in a natural process, eons old, to lay claim to their places on the planet, to survive and thrive as we all wish to survive and thrive.

Once there was Elenita, who passed through Tucson, Arizona, on her way to her future.

El Paso 2019: Ron Stallworth, Black Klansman

Ron Stallworth, El Paso, Texas. February 2019.

I was lucky enough to be in the El Paso area to see Ron Stallworth speak at the local Barnes & Noble.

Ron Stallworth holding up his KKK membership card, El Paso, Texas. February 2019.

Mr. Stallworth is the author of Black Klansman, which Spike Lee interpreted in his movie, BlackkKlansman.

Ron Stallworth and Patsy Terrazas-Stallworth, El Paso, Texas. February 2019.

I watched the movie with fellow members of the Ferguson Municipal Library book club, Readings on Race. So it was especially nice to have my spheres - Ferguson, Missouri, and El Paso, Texas - connect.

Ron Stallworth and Patsy Terrazas-Stallworth, El Paso, Texas. February 2019.

The day I heard Mr. Stallworth was a couple of days before Donald Trump's visit to El Paso. Mr. Stallworth references this upcoming visit, and Trump, in the two pieces I filmed below:

Mr. Stallworth draws a straight line between David Duke, the KKK, and Donald Trump.

Now, Ron Stallworth points out the lack of intelligence on the part of the Colorado KKK folks he infiltrated. He suggests that modern-day white supremacists are also not-bright.

Whether he's right or not, I can't say.

What I can say is this: Stupid people can maim and kill just fine. Heck, brainless bacteria and viruses have brought down billions of humans over the millennia. They have done so despite the efforts of brilliant human minds.

I might almost argue that one must fear so-called stupids more than so-called smart people.

Ron Stallworth and his wife, Patsy Terraza-Stallworth, distributed pins that said: "Infiltrate Hate." It feels good to wear mine.

Ferguson: Movie: BlackkKlansman

OK, no, BlacKkKlansman isn't about Ferguson. But, of course, it is, too. So I'm putting it into my Ferguson group.

Many members of the Ferguson Readings on Race Book Club went to see the movie together or within several days of each other.


The movie trailer below:

As entertainment, the movie is a winner. It kept my attention throughout; the two-plus hours flew by. A mix of humor, action, sadness, romance, fear, anger, injustice, justice - all of the things that make up a life were there.

I also appreciated how the movie pressed some buttons on how we, as individuals, have so many intersections of being-ness, and how these sections can conflict. Two examples from the movie:

1. Being a cop and a person of color
2. Being a cultural member of a religion often discriminated against versus being a practicing member of that religion 

Two other angles that Mr. Lee finessed well:

• The devaluation of women as co-actors by white supremacist groups; and
• How particularly insidious racism is when the person who carries the disease is "nice," such as the wife of one of the KKK members

There was a big ol' Fuck You out loud to David Duke, arching back to the 1970s and into the present. This felt satisfying.


With all that I liked about the movie, there was a fluffiness to it that didn't set right. For example, the happy outcome regarding the bad cop was Disneyesque in its sugar-coated superficiality.

This doesn't take away from my strong recommendation to watch the movie.

Boots Riley (screenwriter and director of the movie Sorry to Bother You) wrote a critique of BlacKkKlansman via Twitter. Fortunately for our eyes, Monthly Review Online laid out the full text nicely for us here. I encourage you to read it; the essay is an appropriate companion for the movie, either before or after you watch it.

The trailer for Mr. Riley's movie:

Ferguson: "Michael Brown Died Today."

Michael Brown, Ferguson, Missouri. Photo: Found at St. Louis Post Dispatch, attributed to a friend of Michael Brown's.

A few days before August 9, 2018, I created a reminder on my calendar for that date, which synced to my cell phone.

The reminder said: "Michael Brown died today."

On August 9, each time I accessed my phone, there it was:

Michael Brown died today.
Michael Brown died today.
Michael Brown died today.
Michael Brown died today.
Michael Brown died today.
Michael Brown died today.
Michael Brown died today.
Michael Brown died today.
Michael Brown died today.


When I think of Michael Brown, I think of:

.... an image burned into my brain, put there by a racist, hate-mongering individual in South Louisiana who is a minor celebrity. On his social media page, which he proudly affiliates with his employer, was a disgusting image of a "memorial" to Michael Brown, comprised of human excrement.

... the draconian military response to Ferguson protests by then-Governor Jay Nixon.

... people who are dear to me, who must always be ready for that surprise slap in the face, at any given moment, in any given place, by any unexpected person, that reminds them they can't move through their days with the same thoughtless presumption of emotional and physical safety as others can.

Ferguson: History I Don't See

History mural, Ferguson, Missouri. June 2018.

On the corner of North Florissant and Airport/Hereford, there is a US Bank. The bank has a mural on its side depicting Ferguson history.

History mural, Ferguson, Missouri. June 2018.

Who's not there?

History mural, Ferguson, Missouri. June 2018.

We've got to stop being so blind.

St. Louis: History Museum: #1 in Civil Rights Exhibit

#1 in Civil Rights Exhibit, Missouri History Museum, St. Louis, Missouri. March 2018.

I learned about the #1 in Civil Rights Exhibit at the Missouri History Museum through the Readings on Race Book Club at the Ferguson Municipal Library.

Although I'm not much of a museum person, the exhibit captured my attention for about an hour.

I plucked the bits that I ingested on the spot or that I will investigate more deeply in the future.

#1 in Civil Rights Exhibit, Missouri History Museum, St. Louis, Missouri. March 2018.

Harriet Scott?! Why had I only heard about Dred Scott all these decades of my life? Here is one story of Harriet Robinson Scott's adult life. In this account, we learn that Harriet Robinson was only 16 when she married Dred Scott. This suggests another story, untold. Further, because the legal status of children of enslaved persons followed the maternal line (i.e. if the mother was enslaved, then her children were also enslaved), one could argue that Harriet Scott's name should have been the more prominent one on the Supreme Court case, as the futures of their two children depended on the outcome of the case.

#1 in Civil Rights Exhibit, Missouri History Museum, St. Louis, Missouri. March 2018.

It was only a few weeks before I visited the History Museum that I learned about the East St. Louis Massacre. The confounding range of estimated killed between 40 and 200 reminds me of the similar obliqueness about the Opelousas Massacre.

#1 in Civil Rights Exhibit, Missouri History Museum, St. Louis, Missouri. March 2018.

 The above quote by William Wells Brown countered the mealymouthed exhibit on slavery in the state capitol's history exhibit.

Ferguson: Our Lady of Guadalupe and One of Her Stolen Sons

Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, Ferguson, Missouri. December 2017.

December 2017

Beauty, sadness, membership, anger, quiet, fear, song, powerlessness, power.

Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, Ferguson, Missouri. December 2017.

All of these wavelets lapped around me at the Spanish Mass I attended at Ferguson's Our Lady of Guadalupe Church.

Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, Ferguson, Missouri. December 2017.

Forefront in my mind was the St. Louis Public Radio story I'd read the day before about a parishioner, Jose Garcia. In November, the United States of America deported him to Mexico, yanking him from the arms of his wife, Ana, and his three little girls - Amanda, Julissa, and Dana.

Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, Ferguson, Missouri. December 2017.

Who benefited from this action?

Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, Ferguson, Missouri. December 2017.

No one, other than a pyramid scheme of ICE operatives to whom a man is a commodity for meeting quotas and adding ticks to a quarterly report.

Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, Ferguson, Missouri. December 2017.

A tiny little stat thrown into a virtual mass grave of thousands of other data blips, all denuded of their names, ties to families and communities - their very humanity.

Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, Ferguson, Missouri. December 2017.

Marks on a report that will be covered by a fresh sediment layer when government operatives dump new nameless, faceless expendables into the ditch.


'tis the season.

St. Louis: A Sister of Selma Dies

Sister Antona Ebo. Source: Franciscan Media.

"[A friend told me:] 'Now, you know you don't know the Deep South. Go down there, stay with your group, and keep your mouth shut.' .... Well, I couldn't imagine that."

Source: 2014 interview with Mike Bush

St. Alphonsus Liguori "Rock" Catholic Church, St. Louis, Missouri. November 2017.

Shortly after I moved to Ferguson, Sister Antona Ebo died.

I heard about Sister Ebo's death at my first meeting of the Ferguson Readings on Race Book Club.

I didn't know who she was, but I soon learned she was famous.


2014 interview with Mike Bush, a KSDK news anchor below: 

I take issue with the reporter's statement: "They weren't activists; they were nuns." So many nuns are and have been activists. I recall today the nuns slaughtered in El Salvador. I follow the Global Sisters Report for inspiration from activist sisters, and as a counter-weight against the dark side of Catholicism: its reactionary, anti-woman side.

But anyhoo.

Article about Sister Ebo in the St. Anthony Messenger: Antona Ebo, FSM: Brave Sister of Selma

Sister Antona Ebo's rosary. St. Alphonsus Liguori "Rock" Catholic Church, St. Louis, Missouri. November 2017.

 "If we don't get involved when we know that it's happening, and we know that injustice is happening, then we are failing also." Sister Ebo in the 2014 KSDK interview

Sister Ebo had things to say about Ferguson, almost 50 years after her walk in Selma. From The Passionists: 

Sister Ebo’s advocacy did not stop at Selma. Throughout her life she continued to advocate for social justice issues, particularly to end the injustice of racism, and even at age 90 she led a prayer vigil for peace [at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church] after the events in Ferguson.  In an interview with the Missouri History Museum she said, “The one thing that I didn’t want to do was to become a sweet little old nun that was passing out holy cards and telling people, ‘I’ll pray for you.’”

St. Alphonsus Liguori "Rock" Catholic Church, St. Louis, Missouri. November 2017.

I attended Sister Ebo's funeral at the St. Alphonsus Liguori "Rock" Catholic Church. One of my maternal aunts attended high school here back in the 1940s.

Sister Antona Ebo's funeral. St. Alphonsus Liguori "Rock" Catholic Church, St. Louis, Missouri. November 2017.

I invite you to pause for a few minutes to share in this passing of history, which took the form of a tiny, but not quiet, woman.

Below is the procession of clergy, as they accompany Sister Ebo's casket to the altar:

A praise song:

And a couple more segments here and here (the latter I include for my mom, as Ave Maria is so dear to her for both weddings and funerals).

And a slide show:

Missouri: Silver Dollar City: Roller Coasters, the Swamp, and the People I Didn't See

Spring flower, Missouri. April 2007.

October 2017


Roller coasters

On my way to Missouri from El Paso via Big Bend National Park via Louisiana via Arkansas, I had some time to kill, and what better way to kill time than to ride roller coasters at Silver Dollar City?

When I say ride roller coasters, I mean just do that and nothing else. I was by myself, so I could choose to ride only the rides I wanted to ride. All day. ALL.DAY.


And a bag of kettle corn for lunch.


Jesus, it was fine.



The swamp


I noticed there were other solo visitors moving from roller coaster to roller coaster and then making the rounds again. So I guess I was part of a thing.

I chatted with one gentleman doing the coasters, and we exchanged the usual introductory questions, the almost-first of which: Where are you from?

He replied, "Washington."

I said, "Oh, the state of or D.C.?

He sniffed in contempt, "The state - not the swamp!"

I asked, "Oh, have you been to D.C.?"

He said, "No!"

I said, "Oh, it's a great place to visit. Once you get your travel and accommodations squared away, the museums and monuments and parks are free! The history, the art, the culture! It's a wonderful place to visit!"

But, of course, that's not what he was talking about.


Which brings me to:

The people I didn't see

This falls into the peculiar blindness category. Well, for those of us who are white folks, anyway.

The time is over in America when we can be blind to what we don't see. When it comes to Silver Dollar City, here's what I didn't see:

• Employees of color. Of course, out of 1700+ full-time and part time employees, there are those of color, but I did not observe any measurable presence. 
• Activities, exhibits, or stations that represent or include African-American participation in history or cultural traditions. Silver Dollar City purports to demonstrate traditional Missouri or Ozarkian - let's say rural Missouri - traditions and values. It needs to step up to share our comprehensive history in Missouri. Some historical stuff Silver Dollar City might look at here and here and here and here. 

I don't have any stats to support my perception of what I didn't see. .... Maybe Silver Dollar City is more inclusive in its hiring and exhibits than what appeared to be the case on the day I went.

All I've got is what I didn't see.

Arkansas: Racist Harrison Again

En route from Lake Catherine State Park to Branson, Missouri, I passed through Harrison, Arkansas, again.

Again, the same loathsome billboard from my last drive-through struck me. As did another one new to me, which proclaimed the local "white pride radio."

As I begrudgingly passed through Harrison's busy commercial section, and I saw all of the familiar signs for chain restaurants, retail stores, etc., I wondered how - or if - they ensure legal compliance for nondiscrimination in recruiting, hiring, and workplace practices. Does the composition of the local judicial system, including law enforcement, reflect the demographic composition of the town's population? Do any government-unit organizations tacitly approve Harrison's white supremacist influences by holding county, regional, or state meetings here, infusing this rotted-core dominion with cash? Do any religious groups do the same, staining the cloth of their espoused faiths? What about service organizations - Rotary, Lions, and the like, betraying their missions?

When I stopped at a red-lighted intersection, I wondered about the occupants of the vehicles next to me. White supremacists?


Next time I do a north-south run, I will re-route my trip to avoid Harrison. The sight of such blatant inhumanity to man brings up too much disgust.

Arkansas: Lake Catherine State Park, Part 2: "Two White Boys Nervous ... "

Lake Catherine State Park, Arkansas. October 2017.

October 2017
On the way to Missouri


At Arkansas' Lake Catherine State Park, I encountered a couple who had recently moved to a private development on the lake. Young, robust retirees with two sons in and just-out of college. When they learned I'd lately come from El Paso, the wife shared that their younger son had been there in early September for the Sun City Music Festival!

Cool, I thought! Along with a wistful wish that I might still be in El Paso.

Then the wife remarked that her son and his friend had tried out one of the famous eateries in El Paso - one that Food Network had spotlighted - Chico's Tacos.

I asked how they liked it, and her response startled me.

Her son had described the visit, and as she related it to me, his story began with "two white boys nervous about" going in to Chico's.

Wha?!

This statement has stuck with me. "Two white boys nervous about ...."

What the holy fuck did these two young, upper-middle class, presumably educated men think might happen when they visited this restaurant?

It's a myth that only the so-called "uneducated" carry irrational fears about people, places, and things which represent the unknown, the Other.

I'm using the word "irrational" as a bucket to hold: statistically unlikely, untrue, untested, uninformed, racist (conscious or unconscious), classist, and, yes, thoughtlessly stupid.

Through my domestic and international travels, I've observed that irrational fears are not bound by education, socio-economic status, race, culture, religious beliefs, age, gender, and no, not even by allegedly-enlightening travels.

Irrational fear is a terrible, terrible thing. We exclude people we fear. We demonize people we fear. We de-humanize people we fear. We denigrate people we fear. We kill people we fear.

Out of fear, we imprison ourselves in enclaves - in bubbles - of pretend safety. We deny ourselves access to the entire banquet table that life offers us, partaking only of certain foodstuffs available in one small section of the buffet.

"Two white boys nervous" about going to Chico's Tacos in El Paso. 

Jesus. Such statements believed and uttered by men who, in their future professional lives, will likely make decisions that impact dozens, hundreds, perhaps thousands of people in their circles of influence.

Such things just make me want to cry.

Missouri: The Travel Warning

The Negro Motorist Green Book, 1940, by Victor H. Green. Credit: Wikipedia

Not long before I left El Paso to wend my way to a year in Ferguson, Missouri, the NAACP issued its first ever travel warning to people of color for an entire state.

That state was Missouri.

In the light of events - the local systemic culture of racism, more accurately said - in Ferguson and the University of Missouri-Columbia, this seems sadly inevitable.

(In 2015, I updated Part 5 of my Take a Budget Road Trip Guide to include a section on Road-Tripping While Brown.)

Missouri also figured in: 

• Dred Scott Decision
• Missouri Compromise

A number of years ago, I mentioned to my mother that I was going to Sikeston, Missouri, for an overnight business trip. Her flash reaction to my comment was, "That's where they lynched a black man."

My mother was born in 1929. The Sikeston lynching occurred in 1942, when she was 13 years old.

For more than 60 years since, Sikeston and that lynching have been mated in my mother's brain like a name carved onto a tree with a knife.

In his 1999 New York Times review of The Lynching of Cleo Wright, Sikeston native, Terry Teachout, wrote: 

"... the only time Sikeston made news was after an event nobody likes to talk about: one Sunday morning in the winter of 1942, a man named Cleo Wright was dragged through the streets by an angry mob, doused with gasoline and burned to death. 

....  Of course I knew a man was lynched in Sikeston. It was no secret: my father watched from his window as Wright's near-naked body bounced over the cobblestones of Center Street."

Note: There is an active KKK contingent in Sikeston, Missouri. 

Missouri's official depiction of slavery in the history exhibit in the state capitol is a weasel-y discounting and distancing from the state's dark history of slavery.


Less than 10 years ago, a relative of mine camped with a caving group in a state park not far from Springfield, Missouri. One evening, while the group sat around a campfire, a figure emerged from the surrounding woods, walking toward the fire. He was dressed in the unmistakable, chilling garb of the KKK. He was apparently lost and had mistaken this campfire for that of his racist brethren.

My Next Home for a Year: Ferguson, Missouri

Welcome to Missouri. November 2014.

Yes, I'm going to break my own rule and move to a place that gets cold - and gray and drizzly and shivvery - in the winter. What in hell would possess me to do such a crazy-ass thing?

The one-word answer: History.

We are in the midst of a new wave of civil rights history, and right now, the heart of this unfolding history beats in Ferguson, Missouri, a tiny, scenic municipality of 21,000 people.

Not far away is Columbia, Missouri, home of the University of Missouri-Columbia, aka Mizzou - my alma mater - and where someone popped an engorged pimple of racism, and its ugly pus splashed into the eyes of Missourians, Americans, and the world.

Being a Missourian, I looked at what happened from distant Louisiana and Texas, aghast, at the militaristic assault by then Governor Jay Nixon.


....... But before I land in Missouri, I'm stopping at Big Bend National Park for a retreat into nature, then in South Louisiana for a retreat into dance, music, and that lil' spark that snaps in the air there.

 

El Paso: Stopped at the West

The end of a road over Segundo Barrio, El Paso, Texas. October 2016.

An El Paso buddy of mine is an American of Yaqui, Spanish, and Mexican descent. Maybe a pinch of Mescalero Apache.

When he was young, his parents moved from Segundo Barrio out to the Lower Valley, which is in southeast El Paso. His was the second family to move into a brand new subdivision there, where they bought a house.

In the 1970s, when he was an adolescent, he would, from time to time, ride his bicycle to El Paso's West Side. Let's say the West Side boundary, at that time, sat just north of the current UTEP campus.

I'm a little blurry on where the west/east boundary was, but I'm not fuzzy about this: Each time my friend rode his bike to the west side of the city, a police officer stopped him and told him he could go no further. He had to stay on the east side of the city.

In He Forgot To Say Goodbye, Benjamin Alire Saenz touches on the geographical demarcations in El Paso in the not-so-distant past:

[Ramiro] We have our own house on Calle Concepcion. …. Mrs. Herrera, my English teacher. She … thinks we’re just a bunch of dumb-ass Mexicans good for nothing but flipping burgers and making breakfast burgers at Whataburger, and that I’ll grow up to be one of the better burrito-makers. Yup, that’s what she pretty much thinks, we’re all a bunch of burrito guys.  … Thomas Jefferson High School [in South-Central El Paso]… “La Jeff.” .. And our rival school, well that would be “La Bowie.” .....

There’s a pre-med magnet school that they built right next to our school …. all the pre-med students that come from the other parts of town all go to their classes in their nice separate building and have their nice separate classes. Put it this way: The good, intelligent pre-med magnet school students attend their classes in a separate facility. So we don’t even have “contact.” That’s the word they use, too. “Contact.” Like they’ve landed on the moon. … What are we gonna do to those kids, kill them? Touch them? Infect them with Mexican ways of thinking? Make them ride burros? Take their English and put it in between two pieces of corn tortillas until it sounds like Spanish? …