Month: February 2025

Tamara Dawes, On Sex Trafficking and Homelessness, Rotary Club of Sunrise FL Speaker
Philosophy

Tamara Dawes, On Human Trafficking and Homelessness, Rotary Club of Sunrise FL Speaker

02/27/2025 Bruce Strom 0

I’m just a mom that has seen families sleeping in cars, on plazas, and numerous other places with nowhere to turn. Recently, I had a brief encounter with a single mother and her sixteen-year-old son; they were on a plaza with two small black bags containing all their possession asking for money to buy food. The security guard approached and asked them to vacate the premises, because people were complaining about their presence, and she didn’t want to call the police. The kind security guard allowed me to get some personal information from this mother whom I tried to help. The desperate mother related how frustrated she was in her hopeless attempts of trying to find accommodations, as the shelters are unable to accept them because of the Covid-19 mandate that limits their capacity. I informed her that I too have made numerous calls, so I can attest to the information she shared. […]

Who Were More Violent: Black Civil Rights Protestors or White Supremacists?
Civil Rights

Who Were More Violent: Black Civil Rights Protestors or White Supremacists?

02/14/2025 Bruce Strom 0

We had a recent comment on the somewhat peaceful protests organized by Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders during the tumultuous decade of the Sixties: “They were violent rioters, not peaceful protesters.” How violent were these protesters, and how violent where the white supremacists they were confronting? And […]

Jimmy Carter, Raising Crops and Livestock, and Health and Hygiene, in Rural Georgia During the Depression
Civil Rights

Jimmy Carter, Raising Crops and Livestock, and Health and Hygiene, in Rural Georgia During the Depression

02/07/2025 Bruce Strom 0

Although both blacks and whites experienced health and hygiene challenges during the Depression, poor health was more prevalent among black laborers and sharecroppers. Jimmy Carter remembers: “The life expectancy of black men and women was less than fifty years.” “During most of the year, they ate only two meals a day, usually cornmeal, fatback, molasses, and perhaps sweet potatoes. The more industrious families also had small gardens that provided some seasonal corn, Irish potatoes, collards, turnips, and cabbage, with a few rows of peas and beans planted alongside the garden fence. The combination of constant and heavy work, inadequate diet, and excessive use of tobacco was devastating to the health of our poorer neighbors.” His mother encouraged her black neighbors to grow vegetables in their own gardens, and shared with them the vegetables from the Carter family garden. […]

Jimmy Carter, Memories of Sharecropping, Civil Rights, and Life in Rural Deep South Georgia
Civil Rights

Jimmy Carter, Memories of Sharecropping, Hoboes, New Deal, and Civil Rights in Rural Georgia

02/05/2025 Bruce Strom 0

“There was an issue that troubled my mother during my political years, when the news media began to probe our family’s history. One day she said to me, “Jimmy, one thing bothers me. Reporters have criticized your daddy lately about not being for racial integration. What they don’t recognize is that he died in 1953, when there was no such thing as integration, and nobody had ever heard of Martin Luther King or any civil rights movement. Your daddy always rejected all the racist organizations that degraded or persecuted black people, and both races always knew him to be fair and helpful. I was real controversial in the community sometimes, but he supported everything I did to help black people and to treat them well.” […]