Previous mention was made in this space about the political pole-shift between the Democratic and Republican Parties. Abraham Lincoln was the first to be elected president under the aegis of the Grand Old (Republican) Party. The rebellious Southern Confederates, in essence, were former Democrats. It was only natural for those who previously were human chattel to glom onto the liberating Republicans. This grateful dedication would prove to be to their detriment. The Black Laws and the Ku Klux Klan all but eliminated African American participation in the Southern voting process. The great northward emigration of African Americans from the Southern States took along with it the imprimatur of Lincoln’s Republican Party of salvation.

Enter the Great Depression. Republican President Herbert Hoover is defeated by Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR). With his New Deal and plethora of alphabet agencies, FDR became the savior for the downtrodden of all races. He captured hearts and votes from both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line. Thus,the Solid South was fortified by the cement of any amount of Black participation that happened to squeeze in between the cracks. That is how it remained for the whole of the unprecedented, Rooseveltian four terms.

FDR expired just before the end of World War II. His Democratic successor Harry S. Truman found himself at the helm of the newly launched USS Pax Americana, which would be welcomed in many needy ports around the devastated, post-war world. With the U.S. now evangelizing for democratic republics to replace Old World colonization, African Americans in the South began to clamor for inclusion in the election process. (This writer was with a group of friends, participating in the atmosphere outside Philadelphia’s Convention Hall as Truman was being nominated to run against Thomas Dewey.) As African Americans slowly made progress in the South, it still remained faithfully Democratic for all involved.

The prestige and politically middle-of-the road attitude of Dwight D. Eisenhower was much-too-much for elite Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson. There was a pitiful, non-parade for Stevenson down sparsely populated Broadway in downtown Los Angeles. Stevenson drove by, waving to passersby who seemed to wonder who he was. (This writer was a witness to that spectacle, and later, asa member of the choir directed by the prestigious Hall Johnson, we were invited to sing at the Eisenhower nomination convention in that same city.) John F. Kennedy still commanded a full-court press of Democrats of all stripes. Lyndon Baines Johnson was an overwhelming Democratic victor over the hapless Barry Goldwater who, despite his invention of the GOP’s race-baiting dog-whistle won only deep-South states and his native Arizona.

Richard Nixon came bouncing back on the national stage, re-working Goldwater’s Southern Strategy into his own image. He extended and improved upon the noxious dog-whistle in Republican politics. The strategy included the undisguised innuendo of painting African Americans as lazy, dependent, criminal and with other negative terms redolent of ghetto-laced rhetoric with which disaffected Whites would be lured into the Republican Party. It worked; Nixon cleaned the boards. After the Watergate mess, Jimmy Carter was able to bring the Democrats back for a short stint. Ronald Reagan, borrowing from Nixon’s Southern Strategy, continued the dog-whistle war against welfare queens and the continued progress of African Americans in the political system. The dissolution of the Solid South continued. The racially liberal attitude of George W. Bush hushed the dog-whistle in presidential politics, but by then the practice was well established in local political parlance. Whistlin’ Dixie was heard throughout the land.

With the election of Barack Obama, the dog-whistle became a symphony, with each instrument of the orchestra contributing to the central theme of, Get your black ass our of our White House! Such a violation of natural order could not be controlled simply by whistling Dixie; a new Dixie had to be created. While the throngs were cheering the new president in the icy capital, Republican governors met in secret conspiracy in order to devise methods on how, through state legislatures – not on how to increase voting for the Republican Party – rather, on how to decrease voting for the Democratic Party. They have passed voting laws that negatively target African Amercans and other minorities, young people and college students. The results are now self-evident around the country.

With these last mid-year elections, the Southern Strategy was complete. The former, Solid Blue South turned completely red, with every state singing in unison:

…We’re glad we’re red in Dixie,

Hooray, hooray.

We’ll live and die in Dixie…

*****     *****     *****

There was this guy over sixty,

Sneakin’ around like a pixie.

He said, “By my gun…” –

When asked what he’d done—

“…Nuthin’ – just here, whistlin’ Dixie.”

Since this writer’s late brother, Dr. Richard A. Long, was a formidable, intellectual force within African American academia and beyond, and this being the season of concentration upon the Black Experience, IFZ has requested a sketch of Richard’s early life that is obtainable from no other source.)

Born two years apart, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Richard and I were the last of six siblings. The eldest, Inez, then Herbert, T.B. and Wilson had all reached maturity when we arrived. The death of our mother Leila Washington Long came in the midst of the depression, when I was four. That created a unit called RichieAndCurtie that was to last until the year of Pearl Harbor.

Over time, it was revealed to me that from an early age, Richard did naught but read. He began visiting the library alone at five or six. Our cousin Irene, just a few years older, remembers a zeppelin, possibly the Hindenburg, passing over Philadelphia. She said, “Look at the fat airplane!” Richard said, “It’s not an airplane. When I come back from the library tomorrow, I’ll tell you what it is.”

The times and circumstances found us living with our father and a quickly acquired wife. Our married sister, with two children, following our mother’s instructions, determined that, with our father and new wife both employed, Richard and I were not being properly cared for. She sued for custody and won. I remember Richard and I standing before a municipal court judge, being asked with whom we preferred to live.

That began a strained, back and forth relationship between our sister and our father. Usually after church on Sunday, Richard and I would visit our father, in whichever of the various ginmills he might be found. Ergo, our mother’s admonishment and our sister’s court intervention.

In the summer of 1938, along with her two sons Jim and Clem, Inez took Richard and me to visit relatives in Columbia, South Carolina, whence the family originated. During that visit, it was decided that Richard and I would remain in Columbia with our aunt Julia Humphries. Auntie was a widow, with a large house. She was a talented seamstress who took in roomers. Her one son Odell was away at college, in Orangeburg.

Before and after coming to Columbia, or wherever we happened to be, Richard always explained what was going on in our surroundings. We seemed to be able to gain entry anywhere, at any time. I still remember our visit to the Statehouse in Columbia. We walked right in, took the first self-operating elevator I had ever seen, and began to look around at will, undisturbed. Richard explained the pockmarks on the outside of the building, each one memorialized with an iron star. They were General Sherman’s calling cards, for the state that had fired on Fort Sumter, beginning the Civil War.

The fact that Richard never played as other kids did, never occurred to me at the time. It was just understood that, whenever Richard was around other kids, it was in an instructive mode. He was either reading, lecturing or preaching. We were Episcopalians, and for a while Richard had thought of becoming a priest.

The next year, for summer break, we went back to Philadelphia. It was 1939; I was unaware of the world being changed in Europe. It is certain Richard knew. My zeit-mark then was Ella Fitzgerald singing, ‘A Tisket A Tasket.”

The next summer, 1940, we spent at a remote farm outside Union, SC. Union is the original home of the Long family. Richard was suffering with a skin condition, so I was pretty much on my own. I remember going to slop the pigs, milking the cows, picking persimmons and playing with the bolls of cotton.

The next summer, 1941, I returned to Philadelphia for the last time. Richard convinced Inez that, because of the lack of supervision of schoolwork and deportment, it would be best for me to remain in Philadelphia. He returned to graduate from the Booker T. Washington High School in the 11th grade.

When Richard returned to Philly the next year, the war was in full swing. He entered a special Army program at Howard University that eventually found him in San Francisco. He sent home playbills from all of the cultural venues of opera, ballet, etc. Eventually, the old skin condition arose, and he was back again in Philadelphia, at Temple University. From thereon, his career can be picked up in the archives.

Richard brought culture into the home, in the form of students and others who would sit about, reading and reciting poetry, and discussing things that magnify the soul, such as music, dance and literature, and the theater. All of that was available in Philadelphia. At one time or the other, we all took piano lessons. Richard learned the piano through correspondence courses. It was amazing to hear him extract Berceuse from a series of mail deliveries.

With my own love of languages, I always was impressed with Richard’s experience at the University of Poitier, France. He was teaching there while working on his doctorate.

I wrote a poem about him in French, for one of the many tributes given him in Atlanta:

Mon frèreRichard

Mon frère Richard

N’est pas bavarde,

Selon de lui ont dit.

C’est vrai, je suppose,

Parce que sa prose

Toujours parle de lui.

Je suis ici, avec les autres

Qui à Atlanta sont venus.

La cause est claire,

D’avoir tous l’air

D’avoir à sa santé bus.

MY BROTHER RICHARD

My brother Richard

Is not a braggart,

Or so some people say.

It’s true, I suppose,

Because his prose

Does tend to light the way.

So, here am I, with all the rest,

Who have to Atlanta come.

With purpose clear,

We must appear

To have to his good health drunk.

As I was walking my grandson home from school he mentioned something about WWI and I asked him how he knew about WWI, his reply: “Because I am a history nerd. I study it whenever I can. I also know about WWII and The Korean War and The Viet Nam War.” He is 10. The apple does not fall far from the tree, his mother has a BA in History and I have a BA in Liberal Arts and read history text books for fun. I am passionate about history, I LOVE history. Some people can reel off sports statistics, or car changes and designs by year. I can run through the Plantagenet family tree, which is a complex tree with many broken branches and much inter-breeding. I think my passion for history and for politics are conjoined twins. One seems correlated to the other. Instead of spending my time at the gym on weight machines or Zumba classes I climb aboard the treadmill with my tablet and watch documentaries about history- the time flies by.

The similarities are striking and while my particular preference is for the Middle Ages of Britain I am also familiar with Plato and Socrates’ discussion of the four regimes that exist in reality and tend to degrade successively into each other: timocracy, oligarchy (also called plutocracy), democracy and tyranny (also called despotism).  This is a repeating pattern of civilizations. However, as my Western Civilizations professor warned us, “History doesn’t actually repeat, it is more of a variation on themes.” In other words, there will never be another Henry II versus Thomas a Beckett but the betrayal of a trusted friend is an oft repeated story. This is why I enjoy studying history, to learn about the trials and tribulations of people who have come before, their failures and successes, ‘if only...’, how do the results of the past affect the actions of the present. Do we learn from history, yes, sometimes I think we do. With the plethora of sources of information available to us today we can glean wisdom. This is why there is currently a debate in the US about what should be taught in schools, some would like our children to only see our past as a Grimm’s fairy tale of moral lessons where everything turns out ok. I hope we can see how that may not be a healthy way of learning about our country. We need to know ALL of our history, the good and the ugly so that we can understand each other.

The Plantagenet’s were the ‘reality TV’ of the British Middle Ages. To get a wonderful view of life as a member of the family I suggest, “The Lion in Winter” with Katherine Hepburn and Peter O’Toole, this family could have used the services of a family counselor as they define ‘dysfunctional family’.  Henry II was the patriarch of the Plantagenet family, his sons are part of one of the most familiar fairy tales and several movies- Robin Hood. While good King Richard is off fighting the Crusades, little brother Prince John is terrorizing the kingdom. As a result of John’s bad behavior two things happened- there has never been a King John in the British family since his death and Britain has the Magna Carta which is the precursor to our Constitution. Not directly, of course, but the Magna Carta is the tiny seed planted in the minds of people as an idea that there can be rule of law and that leaders are not determined by a god but should be elected by people. It is a long, bloody and convoluted path from there to our Constitution. If you enjoy watching the shenanigans of the Kardashians or the Housewives of various counties I think you would also enjoy the mischiefs of the War of the Roses. These people took their roles as leaders as very serious business and oaths were not made lightly. A friendly business relationship with Henry IV did not entitle one to a similar successful affiliation with his brother, Richard III, in fact, you very well could lose your head. Perhaps that is the attraction of reality TV, we can watch and think, “At least my family isn’t that bad.”

When we read the letters and writings of the past we see that the human experience is much the same, we are born into families, have relationships, have children, have jobs and make a contribution to our culture. It is those the contributions that transcend time and are still popular stories of today, like the influence John Locke had on our Founding Fathers.  They studied history and passionately discussed and struggled to create a document that could withstand the test of time. They were well-read on the events of history and dared to dream of society that could be fair to all citizens, unlike what they had experienced. True, they did not include women and Blacks, that is a job they handed to us. They knew that as perfect as they attempted to make the Constitution, changes would need to be made over time and gave us the tool of “Amendments”. Viewing the amendments we see how omission on their part created a need for changes on our part, some changes were good, like Emancipation and some were bad, like Prohibition. We learned from past mistakes. Amendment is a noun that means: 1. the act of amending or the state of being amended. 2. an alteration of or addition to a motion, bill, constitution, etc. 3. a change made by correction, addition, or deletion. Change is not a bad thing- it means recognizing a problem and correcting. The Founding Fathers expected us to do this. “Let us provide in our constitution for its revision at stated periods. What these periods should be nature herself indicates.” Thomas Jefferson.

When my daughter was in college I confess that I would read some of her text books because they interested me, for example: “Slavery By Another Name” by Douglas Blackmon. Did you know that slavery did not end with the Civil War? I did not until 10 years ago. I thought it ended and the slaves were free and they got land and a donkey and everyone lived happily ever after, well, that’s what my high school text book told me. That isn’t what happened. Slavery remained in a different guise, as Jim Crow Laws, until the Second World War when we needed more live bodies to fight. That is when we started to give Black men the ‘opportunity’ to serve their country. Because we don’t learn the beauty and the ugly of our history many White people like me were surprised when we learned that our first Black president was not going to be given the same respect as our other White presidents. Now we have people wondering why Black people are angry- because they weren’t taught honest history, that’s why.

“History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.” Napoleon Bonaparte. Those writers have primarily been men; white, Christian men. As women have continued to fight for equal rights, and I do mean continue because we are not equal yet, (although we have come a long way) more literature, art, books and writing by women has come into the public arena. No longer does a woman have to write under a man’s name, George Sands, and we are now free to read works written by women. We can attribute discoveries by women to them and not a male acquaintance, like the discovery of the first complete ichthyosaur & plesiosaur by Mary Anning. Because of dedicated female scholars we continue to unearth works about women, for example, the Gospel of Mary, which has been excluded from the bible. 

Currently we are trying to convince young women to seek education in STEM; Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. If we wish female students to pursue this they need to understand from history that our grandmothers and great mothers were not allowed to pursue these subjects, many were not even encouraged to seek education. I have one daughter with a BA in History and another daughter with a BS in Bio-Med because they both pursued their passions and were not told that they could not, they learned from those around them (aunts who are engineers) and from accurate and honest history that females are qualified to study in any subject.

I applaud groups that are guiding women to STEM careers, and I am glad that the leaders in Silicon Valley decided to convince schools in California that every student should undertake advanced math- we need people trained in these fields for our technological future. We also need students to understand history so that they better guide their designs, inventions and studies to include all people. We should not be pursuing engineering studies to the exclusion of the arts and humanities we should be educated in all branches of study. We need engineers who understand the past as much as we need teachers who understand science. History is a compliment to education, it enhances our life by teaching us that while humans have failed we have also succeeded. The saga of the suffragettes is the saga of many groups who are discriminated. Learning the reasons behind the French Revolution enhance our ability to understand the importance of participating in our government. The lessons learned from WWII teach us the danger of discrimination. Reading about the Fall of Roman and the Decline of the British Empire are cautionary tales about over reach of one country over others. We need to learn these things so that we can arrive at the polling booth with an understanding of the potential for bad decisions by unqualified candidates. I hope I have inspired you to read about history, that is not just about remembering dates, but about what we can learn about our past to create a better future.

The bloodletting suffered by France this year is horrendous and inhumane. The perpetrators should meet full judgment for their heinous acts.

France, just as other great European colonial powers and the United States, is finding that it cannot escape its history:

· The U.S. is learning that the rug under which it has swept the embarrassing remnants of its history has become worn and tattered, exposing those discarded shreds.

· Great Britain is finding out that an empire upon which the sun never used to set can become quite tiresome once the sun finally goes down.

· It took Spain almost half a year to reach its remote colony, "Las Islas Filipinas," named for Felipe II. The kingdom that once ruled most of the American Continent, today is one of the poor PIGS of the European Union, struggling to beat off starving denizens from its former African holdings.

France recently had lost Haiti. Napoleon practically made a gift to Thomas Jefferson of what would become the huge center of the U.S. map. Those were the fertile lands France had intended to be the breadbasket for its rich sugar island.

By 1815, Napoleon was finished. In 1830, France was revolution-weary and in decline. It decided to get a new start by transferring French life and agriculture to an area of North Africa known as, "Algeria." First, it had to bend that Arabic/Islamic populace to its colonial will. The battle was bloody, but eventually the Algerians buckled under a superior military force.

When, "Pepe LeMoko: says, "Meet me at the Casbah," he is referring to an impenetrable part of Algiers, the capital of Algeria. After one hundred years, Algeria had become francophone and steeped in French culture. It was ready grist for the nascent Hollywood film mill. As it was the wont of the movies in the area of White Supremacy, the public received only part of the story. The society the French created in Algeria placed themselves on the top and the dark Algerians on the bottom. These latter began to reside in the motherland, where they remained on the bottom – where they still find themselves today!

After World War II, a strain of independence movements ran rampant among the former European colonies. It took Algeria from 1954 to 1962 to wrench its independence from France. The battle was bitter, bloody and brutal, on both sides. The bitter aftertaste runs in today's headlines. France has the largest Muslim population in Europe.

A few years back, Paris literally was burning with a multitude of cars set ablaze by Muslim youths from a ghetto in Paris, where the police dare not enter without prior notice. This weeks-long phenomenon should have been a warning. This ghetto exists because Arabs – Muslim or not – are not welcome to live elsewhere. These are French citizens, born, reared and educated in France. They are unable to gain decent employment, regardless of qualification. They have no hope of being accepted or advancing in France's institutions.

Along comes the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL). Who best to tap this long-simmering, still-in-your-face injustice? Who better to supply the weapons desired to seek vengeance for countless decades of hurt. They are French in culture and language, but are also Arab in language and culture, and Muslim as well. They are pissed-off ready to utilize the, "new religion," that new sense of worth, to turn upon those who consider them as worthless. The ghettos of France and next-door Belgium are ready recruiting fields for ISIS, as can be noted in the news.

Thus it is, France. You cannot change the past, but you certainly could make a stab at saving your ass by changing the present!

***** ***** *****

A Frenchman, one day, met a man

Who said, "I can do what you can."

"Why not, said the Frog;

"You are not a dog."

"Then, why disdain my non-sun tan?"