Riffin on Art: Between Place and Time in the Vacant Spaces

The Work

Venetia Dale

Between: Styrofoam Inserts 

Pewter   

The Riff

Vacant spaces made to accommodate the everyday are remade, reformed again in durable metal to recall yesterday’s everyday, and to influence tomorrow’s. Between has physical, also predetermined, forms that are intended to protect the vacant spaces, and the work finds itself superimposed on vacant spaces as they once existed in the world, where there exist boxes intended to protect the forms themselves.

Now, they're exposed and vulnerable.

Space conspires with light, memory, and familiar textures to cast the illusion of lightweight transience; and the vacant spaces, the nothings-but-light-and-shadow, think they're safe inside their forms. Just as the first piece of everyday determined the shape of the vacant spaces, the last piece of everyday to separate the forms and vacate the spaces we shaped, shapes us even before we decided to either abuse the forms and toss them aside, or to keep the vacant spaces safe, in case the everyday needs them again. But I suppose it depends on the tenant, and whether we're willing (able?) to reshape the spaces to accommodate some(one)thing different. Lightweight transience notwithstanding.

     The Series            Tributaries

  The Exhibit             Next After The First In Order, Place And Time

      The Place            Keeler Galleries inside the main building at one of my new haunts, the Metal Museum

The First Penny

They called him Colonel Galloway. That’s odd, because during the War Between the States he was General Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Aide-de-camp, and I’m not certain his position carried a rank in the Confederate Army.  I can’t prove it, but I suspect he held the rank of Colonel in one of Memphis’s home guard militias (Memphis Minute Men perhaps) that was formed between 1857, when he arrived in Memphis, and late June of 1862 when he left Memphis to fight the Union invaders on other fronts.

Before and after the war, Galloway was the editor and part owner of the Avalanche, a staunch Democrat newspaper that never backed down from defending the cause of the South long after the war was over.

By mid June of 1862, Federal authorities in Memphis had suspended the Avalanche and Galloway was in Grenada, MS. His wife, Fannie Barker Galloway stayed behind in their house on the northeast corner of Court and Third.

Like another notable Confederate Memphis wife, Mrs. Elizabeth Avery Meriwether, Mrs. Galloway was expelled from Memphis by the Union occupiers. Mrs. Meriwether would be exiled by General Sherman in response to guerrilla activity in and around West Tennessee. Mrs. Galloway, who was suspected of passing information to the Confederates, was forced to leave days before Grant issued his infamous Special Order No. 14 (later revised and reissued as Special Order No. 15). 

Galloway revived the Avalanche by New Year’s Day of 1866 in a Memphis that remained under Federal occupation and was overrun not only by black soldiers, carpetbaggers, and abolitionist teachers, but by thousands of formerly enslaved people who mostly occupied South Memphis, Presidents Island, and Fort Pickering (the area south of the Overton Tract and the Mississippi and Tennessee Rail Road depot.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the city itself was in the hands of Irish Fenians who apparently ran roughshod over a drunken mayor, and most of the old citizens had been disfranchised as a consequence of their loyalties.

Five months later, the day the last black soldiers in Memphis were mustered out of the Union Army (and thus disarmed), the Irish cops instigated a three day massacre that targeted blacks who were beginning to enjoy a measure of economic success and making remarkable advances in their children’s education.

The role Galloway and the Avalanche played in the atrocities can’t be ignored. It was the Avalanche that laid the blame for the atrocities squarely on the heads of the blacks themselves. When we consider that the investigations revealed that aforementioned abolitionist teachers were on the mobs' (plural) hit lists, it’s more than a little odd that the the Avalanche's call for restraint marked the end of the violence.

In the course of the (politically motivated) investigations that followed, it was made clear by the “old citizens” that they deplored the actions of the low born Irish, but that they were rendered helpless by order of General Stoneman. What is missing from their denouncements is any effort or expression of desire to hold the guilty parties accountable after the fact. Worse was the lack of aid to help South Memphis recover from the losses.

The massacre of 1866 was followed by the appearance of the KKK in Memphis in 1867.

In Chapter XXIV of her memoir, Recollections, Elizabeth Avery Meriwether herself rationalizes the atrocities committed by the KKK (her husband, Minor, was one of “Supreme Grand Wizard” Forrest’s counselors and lieutenants), and reveals how Galloway played a role in obscuring the mere existence of the outlaw organization.

Fast forward ten years.

General Nathan Bedford Forrest died on the twenty-ninth of October, 1877 and the funerary rites that followed were the topic of National news. The local papers that reported on the proceedings read like a who’s who of Memphis and the Mid South, unless you count the absence of the Independent Order of Pole Bearers or any other notable black people.

The year after that, 1878, yellow fever made its annual appearance in Memphis, and it wouldn’t leave until October because it was accompanied by the warm mosquito friendly winds of El Niño. The old citizens (with notable exceptions, the Mayor for example) fled the city, and for the first time in our History, Memphis had a black majority. Who is going to say they didn’t protect and indeed rescue Memphis that year?

Of course, the white families who returned to Memphis properly thanked them, and then proceeded to send them back to South Memphis.

I would say that things went back to business as usual, but 1878 was two years after Hayes-Tilden, one year after the death of Gen N B Forrest, and less than a year before Memphis surrendered her charter.

Eighteen seventy nine was a significant year for our purposes because that was the year that M C Galloway donated the very first penny for the Forrest monument.

Let’s be careful about how we throw the “white supremacist” label around, but it is clear that M C Galloway did believe that white supremacy was a natural, if not God ordained, fact of life (I suspect a number of black people believed it as well).

It would be twenty six years before the monument was installed, and Memphis's attitude of white supremacy hardly changed for the better, what with lynch law, the pattern of bartering for and coercing black votes, and the ascendancy of a very young E H Crump that marked the turning of the century.

More specific to the funding of the statue, I have to wonder why Bob Church’s support is never mentioned.

You can object to my assertions on the grounds that we are in no way accountable for the sins of the father, but how can we deny that the noble symbolism of this particular monument is forever tainted by an image that was considered appropriate matter for a city newspaper?

One last question: How can Memphis be expected to embrace her Confederate Heritage, if we can’t bring ourselves to own our History?

Peace Y’all

A Peace Offering

What Happened

I really put my foot in it, the day before April 4, 2018. The Hell of the whole situation is that the “it” I put my foot in was my own crap, and I did it because I violated the standards I believe Memphis is beginning to remember.

Here's the link to the Facebook thread that brought me to this point.

Basically, I threw out a juicy morsel of Confederate statue bait and Christopher Rice set the hook.

Christopher was right; while my assertion was based on evidence I personally gathered from sources that include the microfilm files at Benjamin Hooks Library and the Chronicling America website, my statement was not backed up with readily available facts. Then there’s the further fact that while I claimed I intended no insult toward anyone’s family, my entire approach (“imagined History” was a cheap shot) is insulting.  And I call myself a teacher…

From where things stood on the third, it appeared I had two Facebook expected choices. I could have stepped up my “game” and turned an opportunity for constructive conversation into a self defeating data-dump sideshow. The other choice was to tuck tail and slink away.

I chose neither.

Sincerely:

I apologize to all Confederate Memphians. I have been painting you in with the alt-right version of white supremacy and that was nothing but mean. There can be no Memphis without you.

I apologize to Christopher. Thank you for your regard for your fellows and for stepping up to the bully.

Most importantly, I apologize to you, Memphis. I broke a rule Jesus doesn’t want us breaking, and I let you down.

Tactical Retreat

You probably didn’t notice, but I haven’t made my Face Book rounds since then. If it matters to you at all, my absence is part of what I hope is a constructive act of penance I set for myself when I found my own words wrapped around my ankles. 

I basically demoted my statement to a theory, and banned myself from Face Book until I:

• Reexamined my own motives

• Found the first penny

• Produced a composition appropriate to the conversation (I have since upped that to two, this first one being the second one assigned).

Where I Stand

Make no mistake: I’m still convinced that removing the statues was the right thing to do because of the message (intended or otherwise) they send, and the oppression they engender.

That being said, I don’t believe that this should mark the latest victory in an ongoing effort to rewrite Memphis History with a gigantic eraser. I do believe that the statue's removal can, at least in Memphis, be turned into an opportunity for constructive conversation that honestly reassesses and even embraces our shared History. When I say honestly, I mean it in the uncomfortable often painful sense of the word.

Look at it this way, without  getting into the technicalities of what defines a funerary monument just this minute, there is still the question of what is to become of the graves of General and Mrs. Forrest. Who's looking forward to that conversation? I’ll just ask y'all this: Are we going to gear up for another season of reality show news featuring the Alt-Right White Boys vs the Antifa Snowflakes, or are we going to continue to keep family (however dysfunctional) business in the family?

Who’s going to define Memphis? Fox CNN and the social media news-trolls who are bent on division, or a more mature Memphis bent on reconciliation?

Peace Y’all

Now, about that First Penny…

Justice Begins With Mercy

Jesus, on Mercy:

Matt 9:27,29&30a

27 As Jesus went on from there, two blind men followed Him, crying out, "Have mercy on us, Son of David!”

29 Then He touched their eyes, saying, "It shall be done to you according to your faith." 

30 And their eyes were opened. NASU

Matt 17:15,18

15 Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is a lunatic and is very ill; for he often falls into the fire and often into the water.

 18 And Jesus rebuked him, and the demon came out of him, and the boy was cured at once.

NASU

This next one is one of my favorites:

Matt 15:22-28

22 And a Canaanite woman from that region came out and began to cry out, saying, "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is cruelly demon-possessed." 23 But He did not answer her a word. And His disciples came and implored Him, saying, "Send her away, because she keeps shouting at us." 24 But He answered and said, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."  25 But she came and began to bow down before Him, saying, "Lord, help me!" 26 And He answered and said, "It is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs."  27 But she said, "Yes, Lord; but even the dogs feed on the crumbs which fall from their masters' table." 28 Then Jesus said to her, "O woman, your faith is great; it shall be done for you as you wish." And her daughter was healed at once.

NASU

This is Easter…Resurrection Sunday…Rites of Spring…another day, except that it’s the day, this year, on which most of us are remembering what took place on that particular first day of the week; the manifestation of God’s Mercy working to satisfy the Justice that Judgment demands.

Here’s a half-rhetorical question for you:

Does Jesus have the relationship between Mercy Judgment and Justice in the wrong order? 

Don't we behave as if Mercy, if there is to be any, is supposed to come some time between Judgment and Justice? 

Isn't that the time when the convict is supposed to throw himself on the "mercy" of the court?

Jesus shows mercy to people whose pain had nothing to do with anything he did, or any kind of divine retribution inflicted by God. There is no question of guilt, no question of future punishment. The only question is: Why come to him in search of mercy?

The answer is not just that they knew he could bestow whatever mercy they were seeking, but that they knew he would.

It looks to me like Jesus believes that: 

Justice begins with Mercy

before Judgment is even an issue.

I'm not going to argue with him, because well, I believe him, but just in case you do need a little fear-of-God put it you, here’s what James says:

James 2:8-13

8 If, however, you are fulfilling the royal law according to the Scripture, "YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF," you are doing well. 9 But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. 10 For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all. 11 For He who said, "DO NOT COMMIT ADULTERY," also said, "DO NOT COMMIT MURDER." Now if you do not commit adultery, but do commit murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. 12 So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty. 13 For judgment will be merciless to one who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.

NASU

• But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.
• For judgment will be merciless to one who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.

In a nutshell, James is saying that if you want to insist on the rule of law, you should know that the law has to be your advocate. If, however you choose to live by the royal law, Mercy will be your advocate at the throne of Judgment (pssst...that's the big One that Jesus sits next to).

Here's an example we might want to follow:

 Have Mercy. Say his name then have some more.

Stephon Clark

Peace Y'all

#SayTheirNames

This is one of the books I'm reading

A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses Of Civil Rights History 

by Jeanne Theoharis

It's going to take me a while to finish it because I give into the temptation to vet Theoharis's subjects and sources, so I can't give you a comprehensive critique. The point I want to make with this post however can't wait, because this is a movie I bought Wednesday and am watching for the third time today. (It's what I do. I dissect the Historical record (and the Historians) so I can discover the dynamics beneath the story of US)

Hero's Quest or Holy Man's Test? (Part One)

Now the Lord said to Abram,

"Go forth from your country,

And from your relatives

And from your father's house,

To the land which I will show you;

And I will make you a great nation,

And I will bless you,

And make your name great;

And so you shall be a blessing;

And I will bless those who bless you,

And the one who curses you I will curse.

And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed."

So Abram went forth as the Lord had spoken to him...

Genesis 12:1-4

No actually, I kind of need you to read that again, only slower this time.

The Sons of Terah Through Nahor

In case you haven't figured it out yet, I believe Abram was in his forties when the people of the kingdom of Shinar, where the construction site in Babel was abandoned, were being swallowed up by those they sought to rule.

the Bible math says the Exalted Father was forty-three in 340 PD.

What Happened to Peleg?

A large hole in my research

"Also to Shem, the father of all the children of Eber [Shem's Great-grandson]...children were born."  Genesis 10:21 (NASB) 

Or, put another way:

Also to Name (reputation, memorial), the father of all the children of The Region Beyond...children were born."

Aside from Eber's Grandfather Arphacshad, the Bible mentions four other sons (descendant tribes and kingdoms) of Shem, along with five grandsons, two great grandsons, and 14 great great grandsons.

As much as I'd like to display at least some of the 23 tribes of Shem on the Google Earth Chart, that's a research project all by itself since I never really delved into those branches of the Seed's family tree, and very few of the sources I know of agree with each other.

Maybe as we go along, I can start making educated guesses about some of them, so here's my safest bet:

From what I can gather, after the confusion of Babel the tribes of Shem lived between Cush and Canaan, and on the Sinai Pennisula.

***

Teacher Talk: Working with Tables

I already showed you the chart of the sons of Adam down to Noah. Here's another one that covers the generations from Noah to Jacob.

Don't feel like you have to understand every piece of information before you move on, but if you can compare the next two sentences to the chart, and answer two simple questions, you're in good shape to let the story explain why I'm including it:

Noah was born in the year 1056 AA (Age of Adam); Shem was born 500 years later, and lived to be 600.

Arphacshad was born in the year 1658 AA or 2 PD (Post Diluvium (after the flood)).

Name	Yr Born	Yr Died	Age
Noah	1056 AA	2006AA/350 PD	950
Shem	1556	2156       500	600
Arphacshad	1658 AA / 2 PD	2096       440	438
Shelah	1693          37	2126       470	433
Eber	1723          67	2187       531	464
Peleg	1757          101	1996       340	239
Reu	1787          131	2026       370	239
Serug	1819          163	2049       393	230
Nahor	1849          193	1997       341	148
Terah	1878          222	2083       427	205
Abram	1953          297	2128       472	175
Ishmael	2039          382	no record	???
Isaac	2053          397	2233       577	180
Jacob	2113          457	2260       604	147

AA = Age of Adam  PD = Post Diluvium (after the flood)

Now for the questions:

• What year AA did the flood hit? [ 1656 ]
• How old was Shem at the time?    [  98  ]

You can highlight the space between the brackets to check your answers. If you like, you can share how you arrived at your answers in the comments below.

Enough Teacher Talk, Lets tell a story:

Ur of the Chaldeans, the ancestral home of Noah, was situated on the southwest edge of Shinar (Sumer). There's no way to tell if Ur was part of the kingdom Nimrod started there, but it's hard to imagine that there was no interaction between the two.

The Sumerians were farmers, and looked down on shepherds, but they had to have meat, animal skins, and wine. Ur, the Chaldeans, had all those things.

I don't know about you, but if I wanted to expand my kingdom to the north, I couldn't think of better neighbors to have in the south than my own cousins, as long as they fueled my ambition.

The dangerous thing about ambition is that it's never satisfied. Look how far north the Sumerians extended themselves. The first rule of empire being grow or die, sooner or later it becomes necessary to turn to your neighbors for additional lebensraum, elbow room.

The Four Horsemen ride again...or still.

It took about 300 years from the time the ark landed for the conditions between Shinar and Ur to reach the point of mutual paranoia, and another forty years for paranoia to mature into aggression and rebellion.

"Two sons were born to Eber; the name of the one was Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided..."  Gen 10:25 (NASB)

Eber was the father of the Hebrews.*

Peleg (Division), a second generation Hebrew, joined or maybe even mounted the insurgency that swallowed Babel and scattered the peoples. It's just as possible that the infant race of Hebrews didn't want any part of it, but got caught up in it. Either way, the apparent fallout would be the same.

"Peleg lived thirty years, and became the father of Reu; and Peleg lived two hundred and nine years after he became the father of Reu, and he had other sons and daughters."  Gen 11:18-19 (NASB)

Peleg only lived for 239 years, making him the first son of Noah to die (Shem lived long enough to see the birth of Jacob). It was the year 340 PD.

Peleg wasn't the only casualty of the events surrounding Babel's fall. Peleg's great-grandson, Nahor died a year later, at the tender age of 148, and conditions must have been too hot for his son, Terah who had lost his own son, Haran.

"Haran died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldeans." 
Gen 10:28 (NASB)

Terah gathered what was left of his family and beat feet to points north, to a place called, coincidentally or not, Haran, in order to prepare another of his sons to turn south and plant the Seed in the land of Canaan.

Next time: The Sons of Terah Through Nahor

Peace Y'all

*All Hebrews were Semitic, but not all Semites were Hebrew.

Civil Conversation

This is an article from the Commercial Appeal that showed up on my Facebook feed, and my answer's too long for the comment section, so I'm posting it here.

Why can’t we hold a civil conversation on race?

Because we ask, "Why can't we?" The question (intentionally ironic or not) is a roadblock. It sounds like we're already prepared to accept disappointment. 

If you'd like to talk about some of the things that are holding us back from the most necessary conversation we've never had (the one W E B Duboise tried to start over a hundred years ago), I might have a few useful insights.

Why we say can't

• Because a civilized conversation requires getting personal about our History and Heritage without being swift to defend the past with arguments that are older than the concept of racism itself.

• It would mean rewriting our learned memory, and developing a new narrative; one that admits History and owns the burdens of Heritage.

• We would have to stop using History to cast and deny blame, and start assuming responsibility for the Heritage that got us to here-we-are-now.

• We would have to get over our fear that our not-white neighbors want to put the shoe on the other foot, without expecting written assurances to the contrary, 'cause there's a lot of pissed-off brown people out there.

• It would require us to let go of the anger that blooms from the frustration of accepting the fact that we can't go on being Large and in Charge, and nor should we be. Nor should any other classified and cataloged group. This is America dammit, there's more than enough good to go around. Good grows here like fishes and loaves when we share it.

• We would have to accept the disparity between forgetting our anger and validating theirs.

• We would have to admit that we're part of the problem every time we insist we know the solution.

• We would have to stop expecting the government to fix everything, and try to get this whole We the People thing right.

I am sure there are other roadblocks that we've made for ourselves, but maybe there's a way to start removing some of these by asking:

How do we open a civil conversation on race?

No...really...How?

Peace Y'all

The Tyranny of Babel

"The Lord said, 'Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. and this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them. come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another's speech.'"      (NASB)

So let me get this straight... Civilization is clicking along, everyone's cooperating, people are speaking the same language, building great monuments and temples, and along comes God. He whammies them, and strikes a dissonant chord in the harmony they had created.

Why would he do that?

I Was Going To Write an Essay

But I looked at pictures instead

No...Really.

Refusing to let go of your past is not the same thing as owning your History.

Peace Y'all

The Kingdoms and Nations of Japheth and Ham

This is where the story the Bible tells begins to emerge from the fog of mythology, and into the dim shadows of Legend, Geography and History. The fog isn't going away, but that's one of the cool things about this story of us, we Heirs of Abraham.

After the Flood

Eden had been washed away. The Sumerian population had apparently been nearly wiped out by a natural disaster that may have been made worse by all the irrigation ditches. The people who lived east of the Tigris, and north and west of the Euphrates, however, were poised to come into their own and displace, absorb, or perhaps cleanse the Sumerians (I don't care to guess which, but it's believed that the Sumerians' reputations were based on how bad-ass and rich they were).

Oh, sure, there were Sumerian survivors of the flood, in addition to Noah and his kin. They had a Noah story to, only the man's name was Utnapishtim and his ark landed in the Zagros Mountains (modern Iran), east of the Tigris. 

Whether one both or neither of the myths is the "real" one, or the first one, or even close to actual fact, is a discussion best left to the comments section and/or another post.

What's important to us is that this is the story the Bible tells, and it's an historic fact that Noah's story has been widely believed for millennia (If you can manage it without getting judgmental, spell propaganda).  

What the Bible doesn't make clear (myth and fog) is that anyone who lived near the northern edge of "the world," in the pasture lands west of the Euphrates, or in the Zagros Mountains to the east escaped the disaster.

HEY SOCIAL STUDIES TEACHERS!
I made this chart using Google Earth satellite technology, a digital camera, and Power Point.

We call the people who lived west of the Euphrates, Semites (get it? Shem-- Shemite -- Semite). 

So far, I've called the sons of God; Adawmish, Sumerian, and now Semitic. Before we get to Abram, one of the more talked about men among Shem's descendants, I'll start calling them Hebrews.

We'll get back to Shem and the Hebrews in future posts, because first you need to know what became of Japheth and Ham, and their descendants.

Japheth

Japheth basically took his tribes north and west to contribute Adam's DNA (and culture) to other early ancestors of the Greeks, Phoenicians and other ancient peoples who had yet to assume their identities. 

This is pretty much the last we'll see of Japheth, except for when Solomon buys all that cedar from the Phoenicians, and even then Shem's younger brother isn't mentioned. 

Ham

Ham's sons stayed a little closer to home. Canaan's and Mizraim's descendants weren't the only ones who, in the centuries that followed, would clash with the sons of Shem. In fact, our story implies that the descendants of Canaan's brother, Cush would establish an empire to the east and would be the first to run afoul of the seed God planted in Eve.

The Sons of Cush

Cush had a son named Nimrod, "a mighty hunter before the Lord."

Nimrod started (see that word? started) a kingdom that eventually stretched from Erech to Ninevah. 

Have you downloaded Google Earth yet? 

Look at Ur, where Shem lived. See how it's on the outskirts of the kingdom Nimrod started, on the west bank of the Euphrates where Sumerian farms gave way to Semitic pastures? Well -- You do now, because it's going to be a good thing to remember when we talk about the tower of Babel and how much Abram knew about it.

Canaan

The tribes of Canaan moved away from the banks of the Euphrates to the fat land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, where they adopted different languages and established different kingdoms. The Bible mentions them often, and usually in a list that reads like a rogues' gallery.

"The Jebusite and the Amorite and the Girgashite and the Hivite and the Arkite and the Sinite..."

The list gets shorter after Moses leads a million plus people out of Egypt, but it's here that the account describes the territory the Canaanite tribes would inhabit hundreds of years later:

The territory of the Canaanite extended from Sidon as you go toward Gerar, as far as Gaza; as you go toward Sodom and Gomorrah and Admah and Zeboiim, as far as Lasha.   (NASB) 

Google Earth lets you use grid coordinates to make sure your location markers are accurate.
Don't research without it.

MIZRAIM

Mizraim, another son of Ham, had seven sons, one of those sons, Casluhim was a forefather of the Philistines.

As you build your collection of locations and save them to "My Places" on Google Earth, making custom charts is easy enough for your students to learn how to make their own charts.

This one took a total of five minutes to make. What could you do if you put Google Earth in your classroom toolbox?

Segue

Remember: the nations that sprang from the sons of Noah did not form in the time it takes to read one verse then the next. It took hundreds of years and many generations to make names for themselves and to build their kingdoms. They also developed at different rates and in different cultural directions.

That being said, we're all set to continue tracing the path of the seed, the one God planted in Eve over 1000 years earlier, as we try to discover who was where when the Tower of Babel was the symbol of Human ambition and accomplishment.

Next Time: The Tyranny of Babel

Teachers, my caption questions weren't rhetorical. The paradigm is shifting, if our strategies don't shift with it History may become a thing of the past, and STEMSS (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics and Social Studies) will never be a thing.

What are your thoughts on the flood myths? How much can we really say about what happened 4000 years ago?

How do our separate but equal memories (myth, legend, and propaganda for example) often override more plausible constructs of our shared past (History)?


Peace Y'all

Rule Of Law: a Quizzical Survey

Here's an opportunity for you to test your knowledge of that vaunted concept we call "rule of law," and the History that shaped it. 

It's really just a survey, but once you're finished, I'm going to tell you how to grade it anyway (I promise I won't record your scores and turn them into St. Peter at the end of the semester).

Six multiple choice items -- Go

1.         The 13^th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1865 because of

A.    Slavery

B.    Black people

C.    White people

D.    Harriett Tubman

2.         The 14^th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1868 because of

A.    Abortion

B.    Black People

C.    White People

D.    Wanda Rushing

3.         The 15^th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1870 because of

A.    Russian interference with US elections

B.    Black People

C.    White People

D.    Lymus Wallace

4.         Congress ordered the KKK hearings because of

A.    Poor crop yields

B.    Black people

C.    White people

D.    Bob Church

5.         We had Jim Crow laws because of

A.    A shortage of bird feeders

B.    Black people

C.    White people

D.    Rosa Parks

6.         The US has more black prisoners than other countries have prisoners because of

A.    Drugs

B.    Black people

C.    White people

D.    Kalief Browder

Grading Guide

Come on y’all, it’s multiple choice. Don’t you know the answer is always -- SEE?

If you did answer C, there’s a good chance you can develop an honest, educated Historical perspective that will actually come in handy as the World moves ahead -- which it’s going to do with or without you.

If you answered A or D, you are either a smart ass, or someone taught you a lot of wrong things. Good news: this blog can help you with that.

If you answered B, I don’t have time for your cracker ass unless you change your attitude. How’s that for separate and equal -- BEOTCH?

Now for the Shelby County Bonus Question:

Memphis is the black half of a segregated county because of

A.    The appeal of double taxation

B.    Black people

C.    White people

D.    The Memphis 13

So, how’d you do? Do you think you’re ready to learn our History, and learn to share our History?

Feel free to share your grades and discuss your answers in the comments section or on Facebook, and I’ll do my best to respond to your questions, if not right away, then in future posts.

A question for you:

The paradigm is shifting, and the narrative is being rewritten. My question to you is, are we going to participate in writing this new, shared History, or would we rather be written out of it?

Peace Y'all