Black Lives Matter

Moral Lessons Learned From Historical Black Leaders, Guest on BMK Podcast
Civil Rights

What Moral Lessons Can We Learn From Black Civil Rights Leaders? From the Brahim Kellon Podcast

10/30/2024 Bruce Strom 0

Will the Civil Rights movement ever be fulfilled? It has not yet been fulfilled. But I can tell you when it’ll be fulfilled. It will be fulfilled when you make that last trip across the river, and you go to that place where everybody’s kind to you, and everybody’s nice to you, and where there is no discrimination. But once you go to that place, you’re not coming back. It’s a one-way trip, because when you are singing with Elvis, you know, you can’t come back.
Civil Rights is just an eternal struggle, the struggle for encouraging everyone to love their neighbor, and to be kind to their neighbor, which is really what the Civil Rights movement is all about. From the minute that President Nixon got elected, the Republicans have been trying to rollback civil rights, and the Republican Supreme Court justices have been pushing back against civil rights ever since. So, it is a never-ending, eternal struggle. It just never ends. […]

President Ulysses S Grant, White Supremacy Triumphs, and Gilded Age Corruption During his Second Term
Civil War and Reconstruction

President Ulysses S Grant, White Supremacy Triumphs, and Gilded Age Corruption During his Second Term

10/27/2024 Bruce Strom 0

Why was President Grant easily reelected to second term, when there were so many problems faced in his first term? Why did the Liberal Republican Party become a third party? Was it truly liberal? Why did the Union Army fight several battles in Louisiana after the Civil War? How did […]

President Ulysses S Grant, First Term, Battling the KKK, Fighting for Civil Rights
Civil War and Reconstruction

President Ulysses S Grant, First Term, Defeating the KKK, Fighting for Civil Rights

10/26/2024 Bruce Strom 0

Ulysses S Grant won the presidential race handily. Although he won only 53% of the popular vote, he won the electoral college vote by a landslide, 214-80. “Bolstered by black and white carpetbagger votes, all southern states, with the notable exception of Georgia and Louisiana, where Klan violence was rife, tumbled into the Republican column. White violence had also diminished Republican turnout in Tennessee, Alabama, and South Carolina.”
Grant’s acceptance speech was curt, as usual. “The responsibilities of the position I feel, but accept them without fear, if I can have the same support which has been given to me thus far.”
Former General Grant too often made decisions without asking for advice from more politically astute advisors, behaving like a general fearful of leaks tipping off enemy forces. His success as a general made him too complacent. Many years later, in hindsight, Grant expressed his regrets. “I entered the White House as President without any previous experience either in civil or political life. I thought I could run the government of the United States as I did the staff of my army. It was my mistake, and it led me into other mistakes.” […]

Carter on the Virtues of Aging and Retirement
Current Events and History

Jimmy Carter on the Virtues of Aging and Retirement

10/01/2024 Bruce Strom 0

Who do we consider to be old? Jimmy Carter recollects: “In general, our own age determines who we consider to be an old person. When I was in the navy and serving on my first ships, I assumed that officers and men who were retiring after twenty years of service were old, and that those who held on for a maximum of thirty years were almost too set in their ways to deal with the changing realities of modern navy life.” […]

General Grant Post-Civil War and Reconstruction
Civil War and Reconstruction

General Grant Supporting Civil Rights and Reconstruction After the Civil War, and His Conflicts with Andrew Johnson

08/30/2024 Bruce Strom 1

When the new Congress convened, the House Judiciary Committee voted by a 5 to 4 vote to impeach President Johnson. When the Senate overwhelmingly voted to restore Stanton as Secretary of War, Grant vacated his interim position. In the upcoming political struggle, as Chernow relates, “The worse things looked for Andrew Johnson, the brighter was the political future for Grant. In early February, the New York Republican Convention endorsed Grant for President.”
During the Senate trial, Grant argued privately with Congressmen on the need to convict Johnson, but he thought it would be inappropriate for him to appear during the Senate trial. Chernow puts it best: “During the war, Grant had learned that it was better to let power seek him rather than to pursue it; a good general waited to be summoned by his superiors.”
In the end, Johnson was acquitted by one vote. Seven Republicans in total voted to acquit, as they did not think that Johnson’s actions were not the high crimes and misdemeanors that the Constitution declared were needed for impeachment. Ulysses S Grant would handily win the 1868 Presidential election, and Grant’s Presidency will be featured in a future reflection. […]

Hannah Arendt Questions Whether School Desegregation Was Wise: Little Rock and Civil Rights
Civil Rights

Hannah Arendt: Was School Desegregation Was Wise? Little Rock & Civil Rights v States’ Rights

08/14/2024 Bruce Strom 0

In 1957 the NAACP registered nine black students to attend a previously all-white high school in Little Rock, Arkansas. At first Orval Faubus, Governor of Arkansas, ordered the Arkansas National Guard to “preserve the peace” by preventing these black students from attending. This civil resistance offended President Eisenhower. As a prior general, he viewed this as insubordination, so he nationalized the Arkansas National Guard, instead instructing them to protect the African American students. This did not stop the bullying and taunting, one of the black students had acid thrown in her face. There was a protracted struggle, the public schools were closed for a year, and after reopening black students had to face both white mobs and bullying for several years. […]

Brutalities Suffered By Slaves on the Plantations of the Antebellum South
Civil War Memories

Brutalities Suffered By Slaves on the Plantations of the Antebellum South

08/03/2024 Bruce Strom 0

In most systems of slavery, in both the ancient world and the Antebellum South, masters could beat, maim, and even murder their slaves, since slaves were property. However, abuse of slaves eased somewhat under the influence of the Stoic Philosophers and early Church Fathers. But it was common, in the Antebellum South, for masters to abuse their slaves, though they rarely killed them, since they were valuable property. But no mercy was shown to slaves who were brutally whipped by their masters, which Frederick Douglass often witnessed. No mercy was shown to suffering slaves in the Antebellum South. […]

Comparing Joe Biden and Lyndon Johnson Withdrawing From Presidential Races of 2024 and 1968
Current Events and History

Comparing Joe Biden and Lyndon Johnson Withdrawing From Presidential Races in 2024 and 1968

08/01/2024 Bruce Strom 0

Johnson told his speechwriter, “I want out of this cage.” To break the stalemate, Johnson delivered a televised speech addressed to all Americans: “Tonight I want to speak to you of peace in Vietnam,” offering to “stop the bombardment of North Vietnam unilaterally.” If Hanoi responded, he would withdraw American forces as Hanoi withdrew its forces to the North.
Then Johnson stunned America further. “With America’s sons in the fields far away, with America’s future under challenge here at home, I do not believe I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office, the Presidency of your country.” […]

Margaret Fleeing to Freedom With Help From Watch, Her Mastiff, and Epictetus on True Freedom
Civil War Memories

Margaret Ward Fleeing to Freedom With Help From Watch, Her Mastiff, and Epictetus on True Freedom

07/26/2024 Bruce Strom 0

Margaret was willing to make the best of her situation, she was willing to serve her master’s family as she served Jesus, she compassionately cared for her master’s family, as long as they respected her human dignity. Once they crossed the line, without hesitation, she immediately fled for freedom with her infant, guided and protected only by God and the North Star.
Epictetus discusses how the Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus that “slavery is no more bad than good, and freedom no more good than bad,” he proclaims proudly: “If I were a slave and one of these men was my master, I would torment him, even if it earned me a thrashing a day.” […]

Arnold Gragston: Slave Conductor on the Underground Railroad Assists Runaway Slaves
Civil War Memories

Arnold Gragston: Slave Conductor on the Underground Railroad Assists Runaway Slaves

07/13/2024 Bruce Strom 2

Gragston remembers: “Mr Tabb was a pretty good man. He used to beat us, sure; but not nearly so much as others did, some of his own kin people, even. But he was kinda funny sometimes; he used to have a special slave who didn’t have nothing to do but teach the rest of us—we had about ten on the plantation, and a lot on the other plantations near us—how to read and write and figger. Mr Tabb liked us to know how to figger. But sometimes when he would send for us and we would be a long time coming, he would ask us where we had been. If we told him we had been learning to read, he would near beat the daylights out of us—after getting somebody to teach us; I think he did some of that so that the other owners wouldn’t say he was spoiling his slaves.” […]