Slavery

Civil Rights

Slavery By Another Name, Convict Labor in the Jim Crow Deep South

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In this blog we will reflect on the Pulitzer Prize winning book by Douglas Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name, with the subtitle, The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II. This book documents both on an individual level and historically how the convict labor system worked in the Deep South. These convict labor camps were often every bit as brutal as the Siberian gulag labor camps in Russia under Stalin, in both systems many of the prisoners died from overwork, neglect, abuse, and starvation. […]

Civil Rights

WEB Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk, Essays on Alexander Crummel, Black Episcopal Priest, and Sharecropping

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How does WEB Dubois start his essay on the life of Alexander Crummell? By how he confronted the temptations and doubts that faced all talented black men in a time when whites could not comprehend that a black man could actually be a true intellectual, that he could think independently of his white overlords. WEB starts his essay, “This is the history of a human heart, the tale of a black boy who” “struggled with life that he might know the world and know himself,” fulfilling the instructions written on the Temple of Delphi so many millennia ago. […]

Bible Stories and Parables

Elisha Cures Naaman of Leprosy, Not With Mighty Deeds, But By Simply Washing in the Jordan

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Naaman, in the story, is not asked to perform mighty deeds by Elisha, as befits an ancient warrior and hero, but rather to perform the rather simple task of washing in the shallow, muddy Jordan River.

Ancient readers living in their ancient warrior culture would pick up on this contrast immediately, but modern readers often totally miss it. Which makes this one of my favorite stories, since one of the themes of this channel is that, when interpreting the Old Testament stories, you must always remember that most ancient peoples lived in a warrior culture much like that of the Iliad, where life was uncertain, when armies could appear over the horizon, slaughter all the men of military age, and enslave the women and children. […]

AntiSemitism

Our Reflections on Morality, Philosophy, and History: Ancient and Modern Classics

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To a Stoic Philosopher, the question of Theodicy, or why God permits bad things to happen to good people, why God permits suffering, is simply absurd. The fact is, we do suffer, we will face injustices, we will suffer illnesses and death, and the rain falls on both the good man and the bad man. God will not shield us from suffering and injustice, but God will provide us with the strength to endure the challenges of this life. […]

Civil Rights

Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, After Slavery as an Abolitionist

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Frederick Douglass remembers, “In the South I was a slave, thought of and spoken of as property,” as chattel, like talking livestock. “In the Northern states, a fugitive slave was hunted like a felon, to be hurled into the terrible jaws of slavery, doomed by an inveterate prejudice against color,” “shut out from cabins on steamboats, refused admission to respectable hotels, caricatured, scorned, scoffed, mocked and maltreated by anyone with a white skin.” […]

Greek and Roman History

Draco, Solon, and Cleisthenes, Democracy and Justice in Ancient Greece

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Homer’s Odyssey depict the deep Greek past where might makes right, where brave soldiers fight for justice, where grievances and murders are settled by blood feuds. As Greek emerged from its Dark Ages in the seventh century, the Greeks in Athens sought to establish a more systematic system of justice with laws governing the state. Draco was appointed by the ruling aristocracy to be a lawmaker to codify new laws to replace justice by feuds, now the Senate of the Areopagus would hear cases of homicide. […]

Civil Rights

Critical Race Theory: Reviewing the 1619 Project and Beloved

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Both concerned parents and activists who have no children have been flooding school board meetings across the country yelling and threatening each other over critical race theory and whether we should be teaching our children American History starting with our Founding Fathers and the American Revolution when we won our liberty from the British in 1776, or should we teach our children that our country was originally built on the unpaid labor and bones of slaves since the first was shipped over in 1619 with the first colonists? What role did slavery play in the founding of our nation, and when did slavery end? Finally, when discussing what books should be included in young students’ lessons, one book has stirred considerable controversy, Beloved, by Tomi Morrison. […]

christianity

This Old Deep South White Christian Reflects on How To Teach Both Sides of Critical Race Theory

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Many white protestors at School Board meetings have only a vague notion of what Critical Race Theory means, other than somehow it is a communist plot by blacks, or that it intends to make white children feel guilty about themselves or their country, in essence they want teachers to teach their white children some variation of the Lost Cause myth, that the Civil War was not caused by slavery, that the Civil War was fought for states’ rights, and that the North should not have invaded the South by arms. […]