What d'ya know, a blog from Pastor Tom to which I can wholeheartedly say, "Amen, brother!" That warms the cockles of my ecumenical heart.
I'm also saddened with Tom that more folks don't know the history the Little Rock 9, but I also wonder how many of us today are moved by and see the parallels in the story of the Jena 6 in the headlines (finally) today?
Blog you later,
Pastor Ian
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
WHAT D'YA KNOW?
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3 comments:
It is a joy that divergent opinions can find common ground periodically. :)
I don't know enough about the Jena 6 case to comment, but I remember well the Little Rock 9 case. I was a child when it occurred, but it made a lasting impression. In my lifetime, I have witnessed major changes in civil rights for minorities and for women. It is interesting that history making headlines somehow move to the back of our heads and eventually out completely. It was just "always" the way it is.
This anniversary is well worth commemorating. There are some other anniversaries we might also observe--for instance, the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps and slaughter houses. The events of the holocaust are occasionally denied or revised by people who act like they know what they are talking about. Let's be ever vigilant that people who listen to them not be deceived.
Amens all the way around! Can we say "blue moon?" ;-} No, Tom does well to raise this issue and Ian does well to tie it to the Jena 6.
Amen! As another tie in, I am watching Ken Burns 'The War' on PBS. I have a great fascination with WWII and it's effects on our nation. I knew our government interned over 100,000 Japanese Americans, and I knew the Tuskegee Airmen were a segregated combat air wing, but I never knew the depth of the racism in the war industry. Many African American workers who were integrated into the shipyards in Alabama were beaten to death leaving the job in terrible race riots. A black worker was shot to death on a bus by the white bus driver when he refused to sit in the back of the bus, years before Rosa Parks, the bus driver served 3 days in jail, but was never charged or brought to trial yet how many know this? Or that on the field of battle black and Japanese American service men in every branch of the military served with courage, honor, and distinction, so much so that their commanding officers wrote reports of great praise concerning their conduct, yet these facts are ignored by Hollywood, and not taught in our schools. The same is recorded about Native American servicemen of the time, especially Navajo soldiers, who's complex language was used as code in military communications in the Pacific theater, and was never broken by the Japanese, even though many captured Navajo servicemen were tortured to death in the attempt to learn it's translation, as far as I know 'Windtalkers' is the only movie account of this contribution, I had never heard of this before.
Racism is an ugly, vicious animal no matter who's holding the leash, and as we see in the case of the Jena 6, is still alive and doing fine much to the shame of our nation and it's citizens.
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