The Space Between Need, Conceive, & Invention (a special Black History note) February 14, 2023

Posted by ajoyfulpractice in "Impossible" People, Books, Changing Perspectives, Dharma, First Nations, Healing Stories, Health, Hope, Life, Music, Pain, Science, Suffering, Wisdom, Writing, Yoga.
Tags: Adam Kirsch, Allan Bloom, Benjamin Jowett, Black History Month, Brown v Board, Davis v Board, Dorothy Vaughn, Ellington West, HBCUs, Hidden Figures, Hilary Kates Varghese, HistoryMakers, James West, Keith Jarrett, Kevin Murnane, Matilda Omega Miller West, Mike Szczys, Miles Davis, NAACP, NASA, Plato, Pullman, Samuel Edward West, Season of Non-violence, Season of Nonviolence, Technology, Wookiefoot
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Peace and ease to all during this “Season of Non-violence” and all other seasons!

This is a special post for February 10^th. The word for this date is groundedness. Click here if you are interested in other events and people I’ve covered on this date.

“‘Come , now,’ I said, ‘let’s make a city in speech from the beginning. Our need, as it seems, will make it.’”

– quoted from the exchange between Socrates and Adeimantus in 2.XI of The Republic of Plato, translated and with an interpretative essay by Allan Bloom, 1968 (with a new introduction by Adam Kirsch)

(1894 translation by Benjamin Jowett: “Then, I said, let us begin and create in idea a State; and yet the true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention.”)

If we consider the very beginning of something (or someone) as Socrates and the others do in Plato’s Republic, we find that everything (and everyone) begins as a flicker of something out in the ether. We can call that flicker an idea, for lack of a better word, or we can call it a need – the word Plato uses. Either way, that flicker of something (or someone) is out in the either and then it gets grounded and rooted into something (or someone) – or it sets off a spark – and then from that conception there is creation and then being/existing in reality as we know it. And, even though we can follow that train of thought, there are a lot of things we use on a regular basis that we don’t think about in this way.

We don’t often think about the initial idea/need – unless our need is sudden and acute. Neither do we think very often about the space between that initial idea/need and all the steps that brought it into reality – which means, we don’t think about the people we have to thank for things we use everyday. But, let’s say we were going to think about the inventor of something – like, let’s say, we wanted to thank the person or people responsible for the microphones (and speakerphones) in our phones and other electronic devices. Let’s say, we wanted to thank the person or people responsible for the technology inside hearing aids, audio recording devices, video recorders, baby monitors, computers, and cell phones.

Be honest. If you were to imagine such a person (or people), what’s the first idea of a person that comes to mind?

Be honest.

Would you be surprised that one of their parents worked for National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) at Langley Research Center? Probably not. Would you guess that they were still in college when they started inventing things that would change the world? Probably not. But, if you weren’t think of this person in the context of this special post, would you imagine someone whose grandparents were enslaved and who was born in a house because the local hospitals wouldn’t admit their mother (that NASA employee)? Possibly not. And yet…

“James’ approach to learning sounds very familiar: ‘If I had a screwdriver and a pair of pliers, anything that could be opened was in danger. I had this need to know what was inside.’”

– quoted from “James West Began 40 Years at Bell Labs with World-Changing Microphone Tech” by Mike Szczys (posted at hackaday.com on February 17, 2021)

Let’s start with Matilda Omega Miller West. She worked at Langley Air Force Base as a teacher and also as one of the NASA (human) computers that we now recognize as “Hidden Figures.” In fact, she was distantly related to Dorothy Vaughn, who became the first African American woman to receive a promotion and supervise a group of staff at the center when she was named acting supervisor of the West Area Computers in 1949. Mrs. West was also an active and prominent member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as well as at least one other organization that the government viewed with suspicion. When she lost her job at NASA because of her political activism, she started teaching at a Native American reservation in Pennsylvania. She was married to Samuel Edward West, who held a variety of jobs, including owning a funeral home owner, working as an insurance salesman, and as a Pullman porter on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. The Wests had two children (James and Nathaniel); however, as they had to travel in order to work, their two sons were left in the care of Matilda West’s mother – who had formerly been enslaved.

The oldest of the West children, James Edward Maceo West, was born February 10, 1931, in Farmville, Prince Edward County, Virginia. He was a super curious kid, who wanted to understand how things worked. At an early age, he was taking things a part and poking around in things. He once took apart his grandfather’s pocket watch and discovered it had 107 parts, but then couldn’t put it back together again. Another time, he found a broken radio in the trash and set out to fix it. When he thought he was successful, he needed to plug it in; so, he climbed up on a bed, held onto the brass headboard, and plugged into a light socket. Needless to say, he shocked himself and probably would have died if his brother Nathaniel hadn’t knocked him off the bed. The family would have probably loved it, on some level, if either of those incidents had discouraged young James West from tinkering. Since, however, he was not deterred, they had to find other ways to channel his energy and inquisitive nature and he ended up working with a cousin who wired electricity for houses in rural Virginia.

“Describing the experience later, he said that when things happen that he doesn’t understand ‘… I have to figure them out. I have to learn. And that’s essentially what led to some of the discoveries that I made, you know, the curiosity. Well, why does nature behave in that way? You know, what are the compelling parameters around the way nature behaves? And how can I better understand the physical principles that I’m dealing with? You know, it’s still a big part of my life.’”

– quoted from the Biz & IT section of Ars Technica, in an article entitled “Listen up: James West forever changed the way we hear the world – Now in his 80s, the legendary inventor still pursues research and fights for education.” by Kevin Murnane (dated 5/8/2016)

Growing up in Farmville, in the twentieth century, was challenging for African Americans. It was a time when education and job opportunities were subpar in areas like Virginia. There was an all-white school across the street from where he grew up. There was a an all-Black school (Robert Russa Moton High School) on the other side of town; but, that school lacked some very important resources, including: a gym, a cafeteria, indoor bathrooms, and blackboards. There were no science labs and a lack of classrooms, in general, meant that some classes were held inside of a school bus. On top of all that, R. R. Moton High School received the discarded books from the all-white school; so, they were dog-eared and out-of-date.

James West was scheduled to start high school long before 16-year old Barbara Rose Johns Powell led a student strike in April 1951, and long before Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (Docket number: Civ. A. No. 1333; Case citation: 103 F. Supp. 337 (1952)) was rolled into Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). Since the Wests valued education, and had the means to do so, they decided to send their son to Phenix High School in Hampton, Virginia. Phenix HS, established the same year James West was born, was an all-Black feeder school for Hampton Institute (now known as Hampton University), one of the private Historically Black Universities and Colleges (HBCUs), and it trained students to be teachers, even requiring them to be student teachers. The Wests expected their son to to follow a plan that included pre-med at Hampton, medical school, and a job with an uncle who had built a clinic and started a practice – and he did follow the plan, for a while, but he was still compelled to tinker.

“In life, racism was my biggest obstacle. I always felt like if I was white, would I have had a better life? I don’t know because I really do have fun. But I had to pay attention to things that more directly affected me than others. For example, I got an email from a colleague a few days ago that said basically I wish I hadn’t accused you of conspiracy theory as much as I did. We used to have lunch together and talk about the disparities between the races, and now he finally understood why I was so upset by getting continuously stopped by police on my way to work through an all-white community.

Now more people understand why the fear is there.”

– quoted from the Acoustics Today interview conducted by Hilary Kates Varghese, entitled “Being a Black Scholar, James West as told to Hilary Kates Varghese” (Winter 2020, Volume 16, Issue 4)

In high school, James West and a friend built their own telephone system. When he graduated from high school, he followed the plan, but he couldn’t get into it; so, he made plans to transfer to Wilberforce University (another HBCU) in Wilberforce, Ohio. His parents tried to dissuade him – even introducing him to two Black PhDs who couldn’t find jobs because of their race. James West, however, had that will and determination – that compulsion – that can only be considered a calling. He would not be moved off the course he had set for himself. But then, he was drafted by the United States Army during the Korean War.

After being wounded in combat, and receiving two Purple Hearts, James West went back to school. This time he decided to study Physics at Temple University, an integrated school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. There were, however, some race-related challenges. Temple was founded around the idea of study groups, but the study groups in his department kept rejecting him because of his race. Taking a page from women in his family (like his mother and Dorothy Vaughn), James West decided to show the white students what he could do – what his mind could do. Being able to solve complex equations earned him invitations to the very groups that had rejected him. Suspecting that he might face similar issues on the job front, he applied to pretty much every internship he could find. In 1957, he started his first summer internship at Bell Telephone Laboratories (now Nokia Bell Labs) and felt like it could be his professional home.

“I found Bell Labs to be among the few places that I felt as a Black male, that I would have a comfortable and prosperous career. I measured and monitored this is terms of the number of underrepresented minorities and women that I saw in roles that I might eventually want to be a part of.”

– quoted from the Acoustics Today interview conducted by Hilary Kates Varghese, entitled “Being a Black Scholar, James West as told to Hilary Kates Varghese” (Winter 2020, Volume 16, Issue 4)

As part of his internship, James West started working in the Acoustic Research department where he studying interaural time delay (ITD), which is the time lapse between when each ear detects a sound and is a major part of how humans locate the source of a sound. The lab was re-purposing microphone technology, but the results were limiting their research – the system produced frequencies so low that very few people could hear the full spectrum of frequencies. The future Dr. West, still in college, dug up a German research paper (on solid dielectric elements) and completely revamped the test equipment. His new system produced more sound; thereby, creating better testing conditions. The professional scientists were impressed and James West was energized when he went back to school. Two or three months later, there was a problem: the intern’s system had stopped working. Since none of the professionals had done the research to understand the system, they sent the young Temple student a ticket back to Murray Hill, New Jersey.

James West could fix the problem, but he couldn’t guarantee it wouldn’t happen again. In order to make that guarantee, he had to understand the technology better. That was his need; that is what compelled him to make an even better sound system. As he researched electrets (basically, electricity magnets), he started working with Gerhard Sessler, a scientist originally from Germany. Dr. Sessler was exactly five days younger than James West, but he his education had not been interrupted by war. He studied physics at the Universities of Freiburg and Munich (where he earned his diploma in 1957); earned his PhD (from the University of Göttingen in 1959; and then moved to the United States to work at Bell Labs. In 1962, James West and Gerhard Sessler invented the electroacoustic transducer, the technology for the foil electret microphone.

US Patent No. 3118022 would be the first of over 100 (US and international) patents for Gerhard Sessler and over 450 (US and international) patents for James West. It would revolutionize the way people hear sound via electronic equipment and it would change James West’s life. To this day, 90% of all devices that relay sound do so using this technology. As for it’s American co-inventor, he would never go back to Temple (as a student). James West would continue working at Bell Labs, moving over to Lucent Technology, Inc. after it was created through a 1996 divestiture of the former AT&T Technologies business unit of AT&T Corporation (which included Western Electric and Bell Labs). Throughout his career, his work has been published in journals and books.

After over 40 years of service, James West retired and was recognized as a Bell Laboratories Fellow. That same year, in 2001, he started teaching at Whiting School of Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, where he is currently a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. His research at Johns Hopkins has included studying the acoustics of hospitals in order to find noise-cancelling solutions and developing technology for a smart stethoscope that cancels out background noise and can detect things like pneumonia and lung cancer. One of his daughters*, Ellington West, is CEO of the company that would take that digital stethoscope to market.

“I turned down the lower level management opportunities because I did not see a clear ladder of progress in management as a Black male. I remained in the lab and retired in 2001 at the highest rank of non-management, a Bell Labs Fellow. ”

– quoted from the Acoustics Today interview conducted by Hilary Kates Varghese, entitled “Being a Black Scholar, James West as told to Hilary Kates Varghese” (Winter 2020, Volume 16, Issue 4)

As I already mentioned, James West has always been curious and he was fortunate to have parents and extended family that fostered his ingenuity – even when they thought he was applying it in the wrong way (and they withdrew financial support). But, he proved himself to his parents, just as he proved himself to the Temple study groups and to the world. He was named New Jersey’s Inventor of the Year in 1995; elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1998; inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1999; received an honorary doctorate from New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) in 2007; and received the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering (along with Gerhard Sessler) in 2010.

Throughout his career, Dr. James West has supported opportunities for others to follow in his footsteps and to stand on his shoulders: to fill needs and discover opportunities regardless of race, ethnicity, sex, gender, and/or perceived ability. He is the co-founder of Bell’s Association of Black Laboratory Employees (ABLE); helped create and develop the Corporate Research Fellowship Program (CRFP) for graduate students pursuing terminal degrees in the sciences and the Summer Research Program (SRP); and has served on the board of directors of the Ingenuity Project, “a comprehensive, advanced math and science instructional [non-profit] program for Baltimore City students in grades 6-12.”

“‘My father is my hero, role model, my greatest inspiration,’ [Ellington] West, 34, once told an interviewer.”

– quoted from the Citybiz+ article entitled “Sonavi Lab’s CEO Ellington West: Black Entrepreneur On A Mission To Fight Bias And Save Lives” (dated August 10, 2022)

Practice Notes: As I write this post, I am listening to jazz (beginning with Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert) – music I always associate with being fearless, engaging in fearless play, and improvising. A practice dedicated to James West would be a practice where we delve into how things work and how things don’t work (or don’t work well). Then, we would be fearless and play – remembering the rules of improv: not breaking the flow, saying “yes and,” knowing the rules in order to break the rules, and (from the musical side) playing what’s not there. This would be a vinyāsa krama practice, with “things placed in a special way” “for a step-by-step progression” towards a peak pose (possibly Naṭarājāsana, “Dancer Pose.” The primary goals here would be to have fund and to listen to your mind-body.

*NOTE: James West and his wife Marlene have four adult children: Melanie, Laurie, James and Ellington. I would normally include more information, but could not find accurate information about when/how they met and what the other West children do for a living. He does talk about his family and his life choices in the interview conducted by The HistoryMakers, but I do not have access to those interviews. Many of the above quotes (except where indicated) are originally from The HistoryMakers® Video Oral History Interview with James West, February 13, 2013. The HistoryMakers® African American Video Oral History Collection, 1900 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois.

### “And up on a hill in Rishikesh I came across a holy man / With shining eyes and a toothless smile / He grinned and this is what he said / ‘There’s nothing so tall we can’t climb over / There’s nothing so wide we can not cross / The time has come to raise your voices / The light burns brightest when all hope seems lost / Be Fearless and Play’” ~ Wookiefoot ###

A Tree of Many Seasons (a special Black History note) February 13, 2023

Posted by ajoyfulpractice in "Impossible" People, Buddhism, Changing Perspectives, Dharma, Faith, Gratitude, Healing Stories, Hope, One Hoop, Pain, Philosophy, Suffering, Texas, Volunteer, Wisdom, Women, Yoga.
Tags: Black History Month, Black Women Oral History, Civil Rights Movement, Dallas Texas, Dorothy R. Robinson, Juanita Jewel Craft, Lisa Young, NAACP, Suffragists, Tuscaloosa, Yoga Sutra 3.53
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Peace and ease to all during this “Season of Non-violence” and all other seasons!

This is a special post for February 9^th. The word for this date is contemplate and the following post is full of things for you to contemplate with a focus on non-violence.Click here if you are interested in other events I’ve covered on this date.

“[The president of the Tuscaloosa Branch of the NAACP, Lisa Young,] she was ‘angry and part of me feels like we failed our students. We want to see what we can do to assist them, and make their school a safe place.’”

– quoted from the Tuscaloosa News article entitled “Hillcrest High students say they were told to limit Black History Month program” by The Associated Press (pub. Feb. 9, 2023)

This past Wednesday (2/8), about 200 students from Hillcrest High School, part of Tuscaloosa County Schools System in Alabama, staged a walkout. According to some of the students, they were told to focus their special Black History Month program on “recent history.” School officials have denied the allegations. No one, however, is denying that a lot of students were protesting… something.

It’s hard to know if the allegations are true – except for the fact that it passes the sniff test. There are a lot of people, even in education, who might not see the idea as problematic. To me, it’s problematic, because the idea of focusing on “recent” Black history reminds me a little to much of the recent use of the phrase “make America great again.” The inevitable (and unavoidable) question is: When was America great? No shade, and this isn’t even about my opinions on the matter. It’s more about defining a statement that is very vague and open to interpretation. Everyone has a different idea of when the country was great and/or if it’s ever been great (whatever that word means to you at this moment). It’s a very subjective idea – as is the concept of “recent history.”

In the Tuscaloosa County situation, students were allegedly given very specific parameters: focus on Black history after 1970; so, nothing related to slavery, the Civil War and the end of legal slavery in the United States; and/or anything related to the Civil Rights Movement.

That’s weird, right? I mean, Black History – just like the history of every other group in America – is part of American History. How weird would it be if you attended a celebration of American History and there was no mention of the Declaration of Independence, the American Revolutionary War, and/or the moon landing?

Oh, “Wait,” you say? Summer of 1969 is close enough to 1970 to talk about the moon landing? (Well, it’s OK, unless you don’t believe it happened.) But, how do you explain that Project Apollo was conceived during President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration (in the 1950s) and that President John F. Kennedy mentioned it in a speech to the joint sessions of the United States Congress in 1961? After all, history does not exist in a vacuum.

“Mexican-Americans, Mexican youth who were born in this country, whose heritage is this country, are not accepted. At the City Council of which I am a member at this time, we have not a single Mexican down there in a policy-making position. I am concerned because I think that they should have representation. If taxation without representation was important in the founding of this country, it is important now.

I had a woman say to me one day that, ‘I think these Mexicans should go back to Mexico where they came from.’ Immediately I said to her, ‘This is Mexico – this part of Mexico has been sold to us. These people have a right here, just like every other ethnic group.’ It‘s amazing to me that this country is a melting pot, made up of people from all over the world – of lands all over the world – and yet they would want to deny those of color, they‘re rights and privileges.”

– Mrs. Juanita Jewel Craft, quoted from The Black Women Oral History Project, Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University (interview conducted by Mrs. Dorothy R. Robinson (01/20/1977)

History, as we experience it, is a linear, one-dimension continuum – even though, we are able to learn about it in a multi-dimensional way. We are simultaneously able to learn about things that happened at the same time, but in different parts of the country or world – just as we are able to comprehend how one event layers over another event… and then another, to bring us to the present moment. In fact, in Yoga Sūtra 3.53, Patanjali wrote that the highest form of discernment comes from applying concentrated awareness on “the moment and its sequence/succession.”

Again, it’s important to remember that nothing happening now is happening in a vacuum. For instance, when we talk about women who influence politics today, we have to acknowledge, on some level, that women in this country have always been influencing politics – even when they couldn’t vote and/or run for office. Women like Stacy Abrams are directly connected to women like Mrs. Phoebe E. Burn, a.k.a.“Miss Feeb” or “Feeb” (not to mention Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton). They are connected through their activism and by way of a lot of unnamed women throughout history. Of course, that comparison may rankle if you know the history of Black women and the suffragist movement so, maybe we don’t go back that far. Maybe we stick to “recent history” and just say that the women of today (regardless of their race and/or ethnicity), are directly connected to Mrs. Juanita Craft of east Texas.

“Mrs. Craft, on behalf of the project, I want to thank you for lending yourself to this interview. Personally, I think it is a tremendous project and that it fills an urgent need in our nation. It isn‘t that Black women have not made history; it is that the history they made has not been extensively recorded and carefully preserved.”

– Mrs. Dorothy R. Robinson, quoted from The Black Women Oral History Project, Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University (Juanita Jewel Craft interview conducted by Mrs. Dorothy R. Robinson (01/20/1977)

Born in Round Rock, Texas on February 9, 1902, Juanita Jewel Craft (née Shanks) was on only child for most of her life. Her grandparents were enslaved people transported directly from Virginia and by way of Tennessee. Her father, David Shanks, was a high school principal. Her mother, Eliza Shanks (née Balfour), was a teacher and seamstress who taught her daughter the skills that she valued. Given that background, it makes sense that, after graduating from high school in Austin, the future Mrs. Craft went to Prairie View State Normal and Industrial College (now Prairie View A&M University), where she earned a certificate in dressmaking and millinery (in 1921) and then went back to Austin in order to earn a teaching certificate from Samuel Huston College (now Huston-Tillotson College). She taught kindergarten in Columbus (about halfway between Austin and Houston) and then she moved to Galveston, where she got married. Unfortunately, here first marriage ended and moved to Dallas, where she worked as a maid at the Adolphus Hotel, as well as as a dressmaker.

By her own account, she didn’t make a lot of money, but she figured out a way to manage. She wanted, however, to do more than just manage. So, in 1935, she joined the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She married Johnny Edward Craft (on October 2, 1937), but that didn’t stop her activism. in fact, her marriage just allowed her to focus on the activism without having to work and she was appointed the Dallas NAACP membership chairman in 1942. Two years later, when the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled in Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649 (1944) that Texas laws allowing things like “white primaries” were unconstitutional, Juanita Craft became the first African American* woman in Dallas County to vote in a Democratic Party primary.

Several things happened, in 1946, that started advancing Juanita Craft’s prominence in the state and in the country. In addition to being named the Texas NAACP field organizer, she was also named as Youth Council advisor of the Dallas NAACP, and became the first African American woman deputized by the State of Texas to collect the poll tax. During this same time period, she and Lulu Belle White (of the Houston chapter of the NAACP) began organizing new Texas chapters of the NAACP. Over an eleven year period, they would organize 182 Texas branches.

“In 1961, we started working on the theatres and the lunch counters. At which time, we picketed. We stood-in at the theatres. And you know, it got to be quite interesting. The way we performed. A youth would walk up to the window at the theatre and ask for an admission ticket. And when that youth was denied – without any further conversation – he would walk back to the end of the line, and go right through it again.

There was a complete circle. Students from SMU and other areas around Dallas joined us in our protest.

The thing that would worry me was that a lot of older people could not see our need, or did not join us. I‘ve had friends to say, ‘I came down to see the line.’ I would immediately ask them, ‘Did you bring a bottle of Coke? Or did you bring a sandwich to one of those kids?’

And I have seen those kids so dedicated to breaking the chain that was binding them. But they were, would [pause] – They would walk until their shoes became unbearable and they would continue to walk until they‘d worn out the feet of their hose.”

– Mrs. Juanita Jewel Craft, quoted from The Black Women Oral History Project, Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University (interview conducted by Mrs. Dorothy R. Robinson (01/20/1977)

The impact of Juanita Craft’s organizing is most obvious when you look at her work with the Youth Council, work that made the Dallas group a model for other chapters. She fought to get African American students enrolled at North Texas State College (now North Texas State University). Then, as more educational opportunities opened up for African American students, she fought to ensure that the students were physically safe and given what they had been promised. When fraudulent trade schools were promising luxury dorms, meals, and jobs – but providing none of what was promised – she fought for better housing and found jobs for the students. She also fed them. Sometimes you took meals to the students who were facing discrimination at the universities. Other times, the students came to her home for meals. All the while, she was feeding information to officials.

She organized protests at the State Fair of Texas – which, at the time, only admitting Blacks on “Negro Achievement Day” – and organized anti-segregation protests at lunch counters, restaurants, theaters, and public transportation to protest segregation. There were sit-ins, stand-ins, and freedom walks. In one instance, members of the Youth Council would buy something inside of a store and then take their purchase to the store’s lunch counter (where they could not be served), each student would politely ask why they could buy something like poster board in the store, but not be served. After asking the server, they would ask for a manager. Then, after speaking to the manager, they would leave and the next student would enter, also with a purchase of some kind.

The systems the Youth Council used were effective and adopted by adults who continued the fight, but everything the council did was not overt activism. Above and beyond anything else, Juanita Craft mentored the youth of Dallas. She raised money in order to take members of the council, as well as integrated student groups, on field trips to learn about running a business, to visit NAACP chapters in other states, and to visit members of Congress in order to better understand how the state and country were governed. She also took the kids sightseeing to see places like the Grand Canyon, Carlsbad Caverns, the Pacific Ocean, and the Eastern seaboard. On every trip, she ensured that the students visited colleges and universities in the area. She also ran “Stay in School” and “Anti-Riot” campaigns that featured bumper stickers and placards with catchy slogans in English and Spanish, including: “Learn and Earn; Stay in School.”, “I’m Going Back to School. What About You?”, “Keep It Cool. Don’t Be Fool.”, “Think Before You Act.” and “Don’t.”

“The only thing that I could say, in defense of my being on the [City] Council, is an old stupid woman who wasn‘t satisfied with those persons that were running to fill the unexpired term left on the Council in this district. I think that that‘s a slogan that I‘ve carried with me – If I don’t like what the other fellow‘s doing, I get up and do it myself.”

– Mrs. Juanita Jewel Craft, quoted from The Black Women Oral History Project, Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University (interview conducted by Mrs. Dorothy R. Robinson (01/20/1977)

Her civic engagement continued even after her husband died in 1950. Juanita Craft served as Democratic precinct chairman (1952 – 1975) and served two terms on the Dallas City Council for District 6 (1975 – 1979). While on the City Council, she focused on a major drug and alcohol reduction program, subsidized housing, historic preservation, strengthening code enforcement and environmental ordinances, and animal control. Additional , she was an active member of the Munger Avenue Baptist Church, the Democratic Women’s Club, the YWCA, the League of Women Voters, and the National Council of Negro Women, as well as local, state, and national boards of the Urban League of Greater Dallas, Goals for Dallas, Dallas United Nations, and the Governor’s Human Relations Committee. Her took her from Dallas to San Francisco to St. Paul, Minnesota, to Washington, D. C. to Arlington, Virginia, and then back down to the South. Through it all, she continued to work with the NAACP.

Much of Juanita Craft’s activism led to litigation that led to new legislation on the local, state, and federal level – like aforementioned investigation into fraudulent trade-schools in Dallas – and that kind of legal activism meant students were not the only people congregating around her dining room table. People like future SCOTUS Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall (then-lead council for the NAACP’s national office) and Martin Luther King Jr. were frequent visitors. They were not, however, the only political luminaries that graced her presence. By the end of her life, she would meet Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Jimmy Carter, and she would be invited to the White House on multiple occasions.

Mrs. Juanita Jewel Craft received a lot praise and accolades in her day. However, when she was asked to name one of the awards that was most significant, she couldn’t do it; saying instead that “all of them are precious to me because all of them have had… a little something that was indeed outstanding. It would be hard for me to say which one was most important or which activity had been most important.” Then, she related a story about a horrible incident in Dallas that led to activism that resulted in people being able to vote. She didn’t care about the awards; she cared about the rewards of people having the Constitutional rights.

“I was really disturbed when they told me there that there wasn‘t a law in the State of Texas that would protect them. Well, I said, ‘If we don‘t have a law, we‘re going to get some laws, because this is ridiculous.”

– Mrs. Juanita Jewel Craft, quoted from The Black Women Oral History Project, Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University (interview conducted by Mrs. Dorothy R. Robinson (01/20/1977)

Practice Notes: My maternal grandmother was passionate about a lot of things, including registering people to vote. I never thought to ask her if she knew Juanita Craft, because the fact that they ran in the same Texas circles was not on my radar. That said, if I led a class dedicated to Mrs. Craft, I might think about what kind of practice my grandmother would have appreciated and what kind of practice might be appropriate for those students standing in the picket lines. So, it would be something “restorative” in nature, maybe with supported backbends, “Humble Warriors,” something for the hips, and something for the feet (like a little ball rolling). I would encourage props – especially for some prone heart-releasing – and there would definitely be “Legs-Up-the-Wall/Chair” (variations of Viparita Karani).

Remember, activism takes it’s toll and you can not be of use to anyone if you burn out.

“My life does not belong to me. I have no particular family, some cousins, but I have nobody that I‘m particularly responsible to. Therefore, I have adopted everybody. and I feel that if I can make any contribution to the lives of any person I want to be about that.”

– Mrs. Juanita Jewel Craft, quoted from The Black Women Oral History Project, Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University (interview conducted by Mrs. Dorothy R. Robinson (01/20/1977)

*NOTE: Regarding nomenclature, I have spoken before about the different names legally applied to people of color in the United States, as well as how those legal terms are adopted and/or rejected by the people to whom they are applied. The names, just like the idea of race, are social constructed and have changed over time. Most biographies about Juanita Craft use the word “Black,” but she was very clear that she did not appreciate the term and, therefore, I have not used it here in the way I have in other notes.

### “I wish I could share all the love that’s in my heart / Remove all the bars that keep us apart / I wish you could know what it means to be me / Then you’d see and agree /
That every man should be free” ~ Nina Simone ###

From the Earth (a special Black History 2.5-for-1 note) February 11, 2023

Posted by ajoyfulpractice in "Impossible" People, Books, Changing Perspectives, Dharma, Faith, Healing Stories, Health, Hope, Life, One Hoop, Pain, Science, Suffering, Tragedy, Wisdom, Women, Writing, Yin Yoga, Yoga.
Tags: Bhagavad Gita, Black History Month, Dr. David Axelrod, Dr. David Jones Peck, Dr. James Derham, Dr. James Durham, Dr. James McCune Smith, Dr. Rebbeca J. Cole, Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler, Dr. Robert Tanner Freeman, Eckardt C. Beck, environment, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Jesse Jackson, Julian Cribb, Lisa Depaulo, Lisa Perez Jackson, Martin Buber, Oprah Winfrey, Yoga Sutra 2.36
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Peace and ease to all during this “Season of Non-violence” and all other seasons!

“You get a car! You get a car! You get a car! You get a car! You get a car! You get a car! You get a car! You get a car! Everybody gets a car! Everybody gets a car! Everybody gets a car! Everybody gets a car!…. You get a car! You get a car! You get a car!”

– Oprah Winfrey on The Oprah Winfrey Show, original airdate: September 13, 2004

This is the “missing” Black History note for Wednesday, February 8^th. It’s later than usual, because I got misled, bamboozled, tricked – tricked, I say – into believing something that doesn’t appear to be true. The thing is, it would have been really cool if it had been true and here’s why: When The Oprah Winfrey Show premiered on September 8, 1986, Oprah Winfrey became the first African American to host a nationally syndicated daytime talk show. She was following in the footsteps of Della Reese, Pearl Bailey, and Barbara McNair – whose talk shows were not aired nationally and did not last nearly as long as Oprah’s 25 seasons – and her show was one of the most popular, most watched, and most awarded daytime talk show in television history. Whether you are (or were) a fan or not, there’s no denying that Oprah and The Oprah Winfrey Show changed the way people interact and interrelate. It would also be hard to dispute the fact that the show (and it’s spin-offs) created more opportunities for people to have real encounters and true meetings, like the ones Martin Buber described, rather than purely transactional interactions. Since one of the most popular segments on the show was “Oprah’s Favorite Things,” I thought it would be cool to explain that one of my favorite things is having Ich-und-Du moments and then I could do my best Oprah impersonation.

At this point, you might be wondering why in the world I would even make such a random connection. Well, you see, as I mentioned before, I got misled, bamboozled, tricked – tricked, I say – into believing the show premiered on a certain day in February (which, clearly, it did not) and I got excited about the tie-in before I did my due diligence and fact checked the fact checker. That’s what I do, and what I encourage others to day: check, double check, and cross check – which is why I use 5 to 8 translations when I’m doing my sūtra studies. Normally, I do my cross-checks before I put pen to paper or fingers to keys. But, I was running late as I got ready for Wednesday practices, and left my fact checking to the last minute.

Double checking the facts (as you know them) doesn’t mean you won’t make mistakes, it just means that you are practicing that dedication to the truth – and the truth was very important to two women born on February 8^th in two different eras.

Yoga Sūtra 2.36: satyapratişţhāyām kriyāphalāśrayatvam

– “When a yogi is established in truthfulness, actions begin to bear fruit. [Truth is the foundation for fruitful action.]”

I’ve said it before and I will say it again: When and where (and under what circumstances) a person is born matters. Those factors play a part in what opportunities a person has, how hard or easy it is to take advantage of those opportunities, how a person envisions their goals and desires, and who supports them – or gets in their way – as they make their dreams come true. Many people born in the last few decades have had the advantage of the times, what with the internet and other technology giving people access to information and experiences they may not have been able to imagine in an earlier era. If those same people were born in certain countries and grew up in certain socioeconomic circumstances, they also may have had the advantages of location. On the flip side, someone born in the next few years – especially in certain parts of the world, including the United States – may find their access to knowledge is limited and therefore their opportunities are limited. That’s a theoretical scenario, based on current events. What is not theoretical, however, is that that exact scenario has played out several times throughout the history of the United States. It was definitely at play when Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler (née Davis) was born on February 8, 1831.

So, how on Earth did she become the first African American woman to earn a medical degree in the United States back in 1864?

Dr. Crumpler, herself, said that a lot of it came down to timing and location.

“It may be well to state here that, having been reared by a kind aunt in Pennsylvania, whose usefulness with the sick was continually sought, I early conceived a liking for, and sought every opportunity to relieve the sufferings of others. Later in life I devoted my time, when best I could, to nursing as a business, serving under different doctors for a period of eight years (from 1852 to 1860); most of the time at my adopted home in Charlestown, Middlesex County, Massachusetts.”

– quoted from the Introduction to A Book of Medical Discourses, In Two Parts by Rebecca Crumpler, M. D.

As far as I can tell, Rebecca Davis was born a freewoman in Christiana, Delaware. I am unclear about the status of her parents, Matilda Webber and Absolum Davis, but I do know that Delaware was still a slave state when the future doctor was born and that, for some reason, her parents sent her to live with an aunt in Pennsylvania. Again, I don’t know why she was sent to Pennsylvania at a very young age, but it could have had something to do with the fact that Pennsylvania had abolished slavery in 1780 and the family had the means to send their daughter away. (There is another, slightly scandalous, possibility for why she was sent away, but I haven’t been able to cross check certain court records.) The aunt’s primary occupation was caring for the sick and young Rebecca grew up learning the trade of being a caregiver.

When she was twenty, she married a formerly enslaved man from Virginia named Wyatt Lee and they moved to Charleston, Massachusetts where she started working as a nurse. Mr. Lee’s young son, from a previous marriage, died within a year of their move. This could have sharpened Rebecca Lee’s interest in medicine, especially as it related to children, and it is an event that could have contributed to her interest in medical school. Keep in mind that this was long before anyone could earn a nursing degree in the United States. This was also at a time when white medical schools typically turned Black students away and long before there were any Black medical schools. Don’t get me wrong, there had been Black physicians practicing Western medicine – like Dr. James Durham (or Derham), who was enslaved in Louisiana and learned the medical arts from his slave owners; however, the first African American M. D. and pharmacy owner in the United States, Dr. James McCune Smith, actually earned his medical degree at the University of Glasgow (Scotland, 1837). Exactly ten years later, Dr. David Jones Peck became the first African American to earn an M. D. in the US.

In the 1850’s, the different doctors with which Rebecca Lee worked might have had different expectations about the roles and responsibilities of their nurses. Yet, she distinguished herself and several doctors recommended that she go to medical school. Now, it is possible that this was just something they said and they wrote recommendation letters without actually believing she would be accepted. Remember, at the time, 1860, most medical schools were white-only and less than 1% of M.D.s in the United States were women… white women. It is also highly probable that the suggestion was for her to go to medical school to become an even more phenomenal nurse. It is also possible that the physician(s) who recommended her had some pull with the medical school board. Whatever the case, she was accepted by the New England Female Medical College and received a tuition award from the Wade Scholarship Fund. She was the only African American student in the school.

Her husband died of tuberculosis in the Spring of 1863. Almost a year later, on February 24, 1864, having completed her coursework, written her thesis, and paid her graduation fees, she and two of her classmates faced the medical school faculty for their final, oral exams. Although, the board expressed some concern about her preparedness (to be a doctor), Rebecca Davis Lee and her two classmates were recommended to the board of trustees. On March 1, 1864, she was declared a “Doctress of Medicine.” She would be the New England Female Medical College’s first and only Black graduate. Dr. Rebecca J. Cole become the second African American woman to earn a medical degree in the U. S. when she graduated from Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1867. That same year, Robert Tanner Freeman graduated from Harvard University, becoming the first African American to receive a degree in dentistry from an American university. Howard University (established in 1867), where my father earned his Ph.D., opened it’s medical school in 1868.

“Her later writings give no indication that she was aware of her status as the first black woman MD in the United States; indeed, until the later twentieth century, scholars had assigned that distinction to Rebecca Cole….”

– quoted from the profile entitled “Crumpler, Rebecca Davis Lee” in African American Lives, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham

In May of 1865, Dr. Rebecca Lee married Arthur Crumpler, another Virginia-born man who had escaped slavery and was determined to buy the freedom of his family members, and became Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler. Records show that they had a daughter (born in 1870), but it appears she died before reaching adolescence. While Arthur Crumpler worked as a blacksmith for the Union Army, Dr. Crumpler stayed in Boston, where she continued her training and cared for (often poor) women and children. When the Civil War ended, she re-joined Mr. Crumpler in Virginia, where she not only tended to veterans, but also treated formerly enslaved people and trained them on how to care for others. A lot of what she called her “real missionary work” encouraged other African Americans to seek formal training as healthcare practitioners – even though she knew, first hand, that Black physicians and nurses were not always welcomed by others in the field. The Crumplers eventually returned to Boston, where Dr. Crumpler established her practice at 67 Joy Street. Throughout her career, she focused on preventative measures and what might be considered “alternative medicine.” She strongly believed that people would be healthier if they had a better understanding of their bodies.

Around 1880, the Crumplers moved to Hyde Park, Massachusetts and it appears that Dr. Crumpler stopped actively practicing medicine. Three years later, however, she published A Book of Medical Discourses, In Two Parts. Dedicated to mothers and nurses, the book featured notes from her years of practice and offered guidance in the care and tending of women and children. The first part of the book focused on “treating of the cause, prevention, and cure of infantile bowel complaints, from birth to the close of the teething period, or until after the fifth year.” The second part “[contained] miscellaneous information concerning the life and growth of beings; the beginning of womanhood; also, the cause, prevention, and cure of many of the most distressing complaints of women, and youth, of both sexes.” She covered everything from “How to Marry” (the first chapter) to “Artificial Nursing” (chapter nine) to “Teething made easy” (chapter seventeen) and it is one of the first medical publications authored by an African American.

While there are lots of little historical breadcrumbs related to Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler’s life, there’s very little known about what kinds of obstacles she faced. In addition to the concerns expressed by the medical school faculty after her final exam – which may been purely a concern about her abilities or could have been related to race – there are records of male doctors snubbing her, pharmacists refusing to fill her prescriptions, and some people saying that, in her case, M. D. stood for “Mule Driver.” She did not, however, let any of that stop her from healing or from helping other people heal themselves.

“Let us strive to know more about ourselves, –it is human, it is Christian-like to do so. Then there will be minds from which to select students for the college, that may come forth to the community graduates in Pharmacy, Surgery, Dentistry, and Medicine. It is well known that many noble-minded women have graced the chambers of the sick with good service, in different conditions of need, too; but at the present women appear to shrink from any responsibilities demanding patience and sacrifice, or rather seem not to rely on the union of their strength with that of our great Creator, in time of need.

What we need o-day in every community, is, not a shrinking or flagging of womanly usefulness in this field of labor, but renewed and courageous readiness to do when and whatever duty calls.”

– quoted from “Chapter XIX. General Remarks.” in A Book of Medical Discourses, In Two Parts by Rebecca Crumpler, M. D.

According to the Bhagavad Gitā (2.31), everyone has a sva-dharma (personal duty) that “should be viewed as one’s responsibility to his or her highest Self, the Atma.” To answer the call would mean being the kind of person Dr. Crumpler said the world needed – “[someone not] shrinking or flagging of womanly usefulness in this field of labor, but renewed and courageous readiness to do when and whatever duty calls.” – a person like Lisa Perez Jackson, who was born February 8, 1962. Rather than a healthcare practitioner, however, she is a chemical engineer who served as Commissioner of Environmental Protection of New Jersey (2/2006 – 11/2008) and Chief of Staff to the Governor of New Jersey (12/2008). In January of 2009, President Barack Obama named her as the 12^th Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), making her the agency’s first African American director, a position she held until she resigned in February 2013. She currently works as the environmental director of Apple. Interestingly, some aspects of her background are similar to Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler’s background.

Like Dr. Crumpler, Ms. Jackson (née Perez) was adopted; developed her scholarly interest because of a crisis she saw around her; and accomplished much while married and raising a family. In Ms. Jackson’s case, she was born in Philadelphia and then adopted at 2 weeks old (by Benjamin and Marie Perez). She was raised in Pontchartrain Park, a predominantly African American neighborhood in the 9^thward of New Orleans, Louisiana and graduated valedictorian from St. Mary’s Dominican High School, an all-girls private Catholic high school. She was a National Merit Scholar and received scholarships from National Consortium for Graduate Degrees for Minorities in Engineering & Science and Shell Oil Company in order to attend Tulane University, where she graduated summa cum laude (1983) before earning her Master of Science from Princeton University in 1986.

Knowing that she drove her mother out her flooding hometown in 2005, one might think that her interest in the environment started because of Hurricane Katrina. However, her interest actually started in the late 1970s when she, and so many others around the world, followed the coverage of the disaster that unfolded in Love Canal, a neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York that was built on top of a landfill that leaked toxic waste. On August 7, 1978, President Jimmy Carter declared that the site posed a federal health emergency and, for the first time in U. S. history, requested emergency federal funds to clean up damage from something other than a natural disaster. Congress passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), also known as the Superfund Act, which would be administered by the EPA. But the damage was already done: a disproportionate number of residents were dead, dying, and/or living with birth defects.

“After a startling increase in [cancer,] skin rashes, miscarriages and birth defects, President Carter declared a State of Emergency over the site. [Eckardt C. Beck, an EPA scientist] warned that the ironically named Love Canal was far from an isolated case and there were probably hundreds of similar ‘“ticking time bombs”’ all over the USA. State health commissioner David Axelrod^[*] presciently described the event as a ‘“national symbol of a failure to exercise a sense of concern for future generations.”’”

– quoted from “Out of Sight, Out of Mind” in “2 – Poisoning A Planet” of Earth Detox: How and Why We Must Clean Up Our Planet by Julian Cribb

*NOTE: Dr. David Axelrod, who is quoted here, is not to be confused with the political strategist and advisor who worked in the Obama administration.

In addition to working for Shell Oil during the summers when she was at Tulane, Lisa Perez Jackson worked for a non-profit organization that advocated for the timely cleanup of contaminated areas while she was at Princeton. So, she got to see the environmental issues from two different professional perspectives. Not long after joining the EPA’s Washington, D. C, office as an engineer in 1987, she moved to the New York office and worked on the team administering the Superfund. She met her second husband, Kenneth Jackson, towards the beginning of her 16-year tenure at the New York office of the EPA and they had two children within the first four years of their marriage.

Lisa P. Jackson had enough experience to know that when she became the first African American to head up the EPA she was going to be in sticky, icky, controversial situations. She had to know that one side of the aisle would almost always say the agency was overreaching and moving too fast, while the other side would simultaneously say that the agency was moving too slow and not reaching/doing enough. However, she had no way of knowing that an oil rig (Deepwater Horizon) would explode in the Gulf of Mexico, mere meters from her childhood hometown, a little over a year after her appointment. She had no way of knowing the disaster would lead directly to the House of Representatives passing a bill to cut the EPA’s funding or that she would be called to testify in Congressional hearings at least seven times in one month. Nor did she have any way of knowing that, before she stepped down (in 2013), she would be accused of mishandling private emails. All she knew, back in 2009, was that she was determined to make a difference – and make a difference she did.

Under her leadership, the EPA developed stricter fuel efficiency standards; recognized carbon dioxide and and five other gases as greenhouse emissions that create public health threats; and proposed limits on the amount of mercury, arsenic, nickel, and other toxic by-products power plants could routinely release into the environment. To this day, she especially works to make a difference in the lives of those disproportionately affected by environmental issues – those who, it turns out, are often found in the same groups that Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler was serving back in the 1800s: poor people, minorities, veterans, women, and children.

“The first girls to attend [the Coretta Scott King Young Women’s Leadership Academy] were previously at the city’s lowest-ranked middle school. This year the school’s eighth graders earned one of the highest scores of all public schools in Atlanta on a state exam.

They’re Jackson’s sweet spot, these kids. African-American girls, who, like her, may have faced obstacles but are full of promise. ‘Listen,’ she says, ‘if these young women don’t grow up strong and talented and committed to our environment, then our country’s gonna suffer, not just them.’

Her speech hits home: ‘You have a right to clean air and clean water,’ she tells the girls, touching on one of her core initiatives, environmental justice—that is, to give a voice to the people, usually poor minorities, who are most severely affected by environmental hazards and calamities. ‘You have a right to have a healthy school to learn in.’ But such heady rights come with responsibility. The girls must be willing to do their part, she tells them—to blow past the wheezing stereotypes that only young men wearing pocket protectors are good at math and science, and that black women don’t set policy or lead. ‘You will bring clean air to your community,’ she tells them. ‘Which you can’t do if you don’t have the education.’”

– quoted from the O, The Oprah Magazine (June 2011) article “Clean Power: Lisa Jackson Fights for Our Right to Healthy Air, Water and Land: Somebody has to do it. We’re lucky it’s her.” by Lisa Depaulo

PRACTICE NOTES: Similar to a practice I would lead on Earth Day, this sequence would be grounded… but also have some groove to it. I’d probably lean towards a “detox flow” with a good number of seated poses and twists (if I was going to stick with a straight-forward vinyāsa practice) or a Yin/Yang fusion with something for the meridians associated with digestion. Of course, I would throw in Vṛkṣāsana (“Tree Pose”) and emphasize prāṇāyāma (extension and awareness of the breath).

“Jackson’s to-do list is ambitious, particularly given how much time she could be spending defending herself. But that’s not her style. She’d rather stay focused on the things that matter. ‘Our challenges are serious,’ she says. ‘The longer we wait to deal with our deteriorating atmosphere, the harder and more expensive it may get to address it. I am also a woman of faith, so I believe that we have a moral obligation to care for creation and future generations.

‘The conundrum is that the richer and more prosperous we become, the more we think that the environment is all taken care of,’ Jackson says. It’s simply not the case. ‘I have seen land completely ravaged by pollution. Environmental protection is not a spectator sport.’”

– quoted from the O, The Oprah Magazine (June 2011) article “Clean Power: Lisa Jackson Fights for Our Right to Healthy Air, Water and Land: Somebody has to do it. We’re lucky it’s her.” by Lisa Depaulo

### “If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it.” ~ Jesse Jackson ###

Space and the Power of Hearing(s) (a special Black History note, w/a Tuesday link) February 8, 2023

Posted by ajoyfulpractice in "Impossible" People, Art, Books, Buddhism, Changing Perspectives, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Faith, Gandhi, Gratitude, Healing Stories, Hope, Life, Men, Minnesota, Music, One Hoop, Pain, Peace, Poetry, Suffering, Tragedy, Wisdom, Women, Writing, Yoga.
Tags: Alabama Supreme Court, Andy Wright, Beth Birmingham, Bhamwiki.com, birthdays on February 7, Black History Month, Charlie Weems, Christopher Isherwood, Civil Rights Movement, Clarence Norris, Countee Cullen, Creed Conyers, dreaming, Dred Scot, Eeva Sallinen, Ella Virginia Eaton Adams, Emily Sarmiento, Eugene Williams, Frank “Doc” Adams, Garth Brooks, Hallie Rubenhold, Haywood Patterson, HBCUs, James Baker, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Mann Act, Myal Greene, niyamas, Olin Montgomery, Oscar William Adams Jr., Oscar William Adams Sr., Ralph D. Cook, Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, Roy Wright, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, santosha, santoşā, Scottsboro Boys, SCOTUS, Season of Non-violence, Season of Nonviolence, Sinclair Lewis, Supreme Court, Swami Prabhavananda, Tom Gordon, U. W. Clemon, Willie Roberson, yamas
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Peace and ease to all during this “Season of Non-violence” and all other seasons!

This is a special post for Tuesday, February 7^th. Please note that only the Tuesday evening practice references this profile. You can request a recording of the Tuesday practice via a comment below or (for a slightly faster reply) you can email me at myra (at) ajoyfulpractice.com.

WARNING: The following includes a recounting of the Scottsboro Boys trials.

Post revised March 2024.

“It’s a bad habit we have: We tell the tale of the murder and not the murdered.”

“I’ll also explain why my research has enraged so many people who claim to be experts in the Ripper case.”

“If you want to know how we got the Ripper story so wrong, what those mistakes tell us about ourselves, and why putting the record straight makes some people so very angry, join me, Hallie Rubenhold for Bad Women: The Ripper Retold.”

— quoted from the podcast trailer for Season 1of Bad Women: The Ripper Retold, hosted by Hallie Rubenhold

How we tell a story, especially a story about real life and real events, says a lot about how we feel about our circumstances. Same goes for what we read (if we are in the habit of reading for pleasure) and/or what other kinds of media we consume. On a certain level, it is all about escape. But, are we “escaping” because we need to decompress and give our brains a rest? Or are we “escaping” because we’re not satisfied with our lot in life? If it’s the latter, what would it take to be content, satisfied — happy even — with our lot?

These are the kinds of questions I pose during classes on February 7^th. They’re questions that serve as entryways into the practice of santoşā (“contentment”), which is the second niyama (“internal observation”) in the Yoga Philosophy. (Of course, for today, you can think of it as Number 7 in the philosophy’s list of ethics.) Answering the question requires turning inward and doing a little svādhyāya (“self study”), which is the fourth niyama. One way to turn inward and take a look at yourself is to reflect on what you would do and how you would feel in certain situations. Classically, it might be understood that such reflection would be done in the context of sacred text; however, it is also possible to simply put yourself in someone else’s shoes.

For example, would you be content, satisfied — happy even, if you were a girl born in “a little house on the prairie” — or, would you dream of something more? Would you stay on the prairie, unsatisfied, like “a hard luck woman” waiting for your man? Or, would you be like Laura Ingalls Wilder (b. 02/07/1867, in Pepin Country, Wisconsin) and make your dreams come true by writing about your experiences (and all the people you knew)? Even then, how many of your dreams would need to come true for you to be grateful and, therefore, satisfied?

Or, perhaps, like Sinclair Lewis (b. 02/07/1885, in Sauk Centre, Minnesota) you were born in a northern town with “one light blinking off and on.” Would you be content, satisfied — happy even — or, would you dream of something more? Would you be the one in the song who never does the things they thought they would and never knew they could leave? Or, would you be the one, like Mr. Lewis, who left for the big city, wrote about your experiences (and all the people you knew), and became what everyone’s talking about down on Main Street? Even then, would you be grateful (and, therefore, satisfied) or would you be like Carol Milford and want to change everything?

The thing is, there is nothing wrong with dreaming, hoping, and praying for change. There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to improve your situation and/or the situations of others. Nor is there anything wrong with wanting to change injustice laws and breakdown systems of inequity. You could be a common man, a simple man, a sweet man born in Tornado Alley — like Troyal Garth Brooks (b. 02/07/1962, in Tulsa, Oklahoma) — and dream of sharing your storytelling gifts with the world. But would you be satisfied? Would you be “happy in this modern world? Or do you need more?” And when would the “more” be enough for you to be grateful and, therefore, satisfied?

Take a moment to consider being yourself in one of those other people’s circumstances. Then, let’s go a little deeper.

Click here to read my 2021 post about practicing santoşā on the 7^th.

On Monday, I referenced the daily contemplation elements offered by the Mahatma Gandhi Canadian Foundation for World Peace during this Season for Nonviolence. Remember, these are elements found in the teachings of both Mahatma Gandhi and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The element for February 7^th is dreaming and it brings to mind the fact that MLK (as well as Gandhi) dreamed of better worlds, more just worlds, more equitable worlds. They were committed to practicing non-violence and passive resistance, but they were not satisfied. They were not content (with the social status quo). Nor should they have been. Some things, after all, are unacceptable.

To practice santoşā, however, we must accept what is (i.e., what exists as it exists in the moment — or as we understand it to exist). Acceptance, in this case, does not mean that we just casually throw our hands up and accept violence, injustice, and inequity as basic staples of life. Neither does it mean that we ignore what is happening around us. Instead, the practice requires us to be truthful about the situation, our roles in the situation, and what we can do to change the situation. The practice also requires us to proceed with clear-minded awareness of how we are connected to everything and everybody and to be dedicated and disciplined in our practice of non-violence and non-harming. Finally, the practice requires that we practice non-attachment; meaning that we do all we can do and then let go with a kind of trustful surrender. This is basically a summary of 9 of the 10 elements that make up the ethics of the Yoga Philosophy.

The elements that make up the corner stone of the Yoga Philosophy overlap commandments found in the Abrahamic religions, precepts found in Buddhism, and values found in philosophies and indigenous religions around the world. These are shared values that stretch back into eons and yet we still have problems… big problems — which means we still need leaders, thinkers, and speakers who can hear what is needed in the world and respond wisely, safely, and justly. Such a man was born in Alabama, during the period of violence that directly preceded the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. His life and his legacy are yet another illustration of a dreamer who was not satisfied, yet made choices for which we can all be grateful.

“Editorials expressed hope that through participation in war, black citizens would gain opportunities at home. Among the outrages that the Reporter chronicled were frequent lynchings across the South, a topic that led [Oscar William Adams, Sr.] to write, ‘It is a shame before the living God and man that we should continue to preach democracy and permit such autocracy and savagery within our own borders.’”

— quoted from Bhamwiki.com (citing Gordon, Tom (May 2, 2018) “Civil decency. Human honesty.” B-Metro

Born in Birmingham, Alabama on February 7, 1925, Oscar William Adams, Jr. was the oldest of two sons born to Oscar William Adams, Sr. and Ella Virginia Adams (née Eaton). His brother, Frank “Doc” Adams became a great jazz clarinetist, saxophonist and bandleader, who was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame. Meanwhile, Oscar, Jr. became the first African American member of Birmingham Bar Association (in 1966) and co-founded Birmingham’s first integrated law firm and its first African American law firm. He also litigated a variety of civil rights cases before becoming the first African American to serve on an Alabama appellate court and a well respected member of the Alabama Supreme Court.

Just like with the other dreamers born on this date, to understand the story of Judge Adams, we have to look back at the causes and conditions of his circumstances — which means going a little deeper into history. And, if we are going a little deeper into Alabama history that informed the dreams of the Adams brothers, we can start with their father, Oscar William Adams, Sr., a journalist and publisher who founded The Birmingham Reporter in 1906.

Unlike Black newspapers published in the North at the time, southern media outlets like The Birmingham Reporter had to tread carefully and be circumspect in it’s coverage of race-related news. To be too critical in opinion pieces or — in many cases — too honest about the facts of certain news stories, might mean that the newspaper, the journalists, and their families could be physically attacked. By all accounts, Oscar William Adams, Sr. had a real knack for creating layouts and crafting articles that told the whole story without explicitly telling the whole story. He couldn’t always tell his readers what happened, but he could show them. He could juxtapose articles about 9 Black kids being tried for rape with articles about almost twice as many white teenagers being exonerated before a trial. His readers had to perfect the skill of reading between the lines. It was like his readers understood the practice of focusing, concentrating, and meditating on the space between the ears and the process of hearing.

“In this state of withdrawal, ‘Great Disincarnation’ the mental coverings composed of rajas and tamas dwindle away and the light of sattwa is revealed.”

— quoted from How to Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali (3:42), translated and with commentary by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood

That aforementioned example is not random; it is one of the ways Oscar William Adams, Sr. covered the Scottsboro Boys, a group of nine African Americans teenagers (age 12 – 19 years old) who were accused of raping two white women on a train full of “hoboes.” Nowadays, people might think of hoboes, tramps, and bums as one and the same. During the Great Depression, however, people very clearly understood that a hobo was someone who was traveling in order to work (but didn’t have the means to pay for their travel). On March 25, 1931, a fight broke out (in Tennessee) on a Southbound train full of Black and white hobos, because a group of white teenagers declared the train “whites only.” Even though there were reportedly the same number of hoboes of each race on the train, the white teenagers ended up leaving the train. Defeated and angry, they told the local sheriff that they had been attacked by the Black teenagers. The sheriff — plus some local residents that he deputized — intercepted the train in Paint Rock, Alabama, and arrested the Black teenagers.

They also arrested two young white women (age 17 and 21 years old).

Now, if you know anything about “bad women,” you know that two unaccompanied white women traveling in the presence of men — especially Black men — didn’t have a lot of choices. They could be labeled as prostitutes — which, in this case (because they crossed state lines) would mean they had violated The White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910, also called the Mann Act, and could face lengthy prison terms. The other option was to say they were raped. Unlike most of the men, the two women knew each other and were actually traveling together. They decided (or, possibly the older one convinced the younger one) that it was in their best interest to say they were raped. A doctor was called in to examine them, but could find no signs of rape or trauma. It would later turn out that no one could truthfully confirm if the women and the teenagers were ever even in the same car. But, none of that mattered: it was 1931; the teenagers would go to court in Scottsboro, Alabama.

At the end of three speedy trials, all eight of the nine teenagers — including one who was almost blind and another who was so disabled that he could barely walk — were convicted and sentenced to death by all-white juries. The youngest of the nine was convicted, but his trial ended in a hung jury, because they couldn’t agree on the penalty: some wanted him to receive the death penalty, despite his age. All of the cases were appealed to the Alabama Supreme Court and then the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), which overturned the convictions and sent the cases back down to Alabama. A change of venue was granted and all nine headed to court in rural Decatur, Alabama in the Spring of 1933.

Despite the decision for the cases to be re-tried, all nine were under heavy guard and the eight previously sentenced to death were in prison garb. Despite arguments from the defense attorneys (Samuel Leibowitz and Joseph Brodsky, who had also served as second chair on the earlier trials), the trials again had all-white juries. Despite the fact that the youngest of the alleged victims recanted, the defendants were again convicted. The first of the nine was convicted despite the fact that many of the jurors knew he was innocent. But, Decatur was Klan country and the Ku Klux Klan made it very clear what they thought the outcome of the trials should be and what would happen to any juror who didn’t convict and recommend the death penalty. Judge James Edwin Horton set the verdict aside and indefinitely postponed the other trials. He did this, knowing it would end his political career. He also considered a change of venue, but, in the end, the first of the Scottsboro Boys faced his third trial in Decatur.

With a new judge, but no National Guard protection, the second set of retrials took place in Winter 1933. They resulted in two more convictions. Appeals to SCOTUS, in 1935, resulted in the convictions being overturned and the Scottsboro 9 were back in court. This time, however, there was one African American juror: Creed Conyers, the first Black person to serve on an Alabama grand jury since 1877. The newly elected Attorney General served as the prosecuting attorney and the trials lasted from January of 1936 until the summer of 1937. After spending over six years in prison (as adults on death row), the legal fate of the Scottsboro Boys was as follows:

After 4 trials, Haywood Patterson (18 when arrested) was convicted and sentenced to 75 years in prison. This was the first time a Black man in Alabama had been convicted of raping a white woman and had not received the death penalty. He escaped in 1949; end up in Michigan; but then went back to prison on a different case in 1951.
After 3 trials, Clarence Norris (19 when arrested) was convicted and given the death penalty. His sentence was commuted in 1938; he was paroled (and jumped parole) in 1946. He was pardoned in 1976.
After 2 trials, Charlie Weems (19 when arrested) was convicted and sentenced to 105 years. He was paroled in 1943.
After 2 trials, Andrew “Andy” Wright (19 when arrested) was convicted and sentenced to 99 years. He was paroled; violated his parole; and then was placed on parole again (in New York) in 1950.
During his 2nd trial, Ozie Powell (16 when arrested) was shot by a sheriff and suffered brain damage. Somehow, he pleaded guilty to assaulting an officer and received 20 years. The initial rape charges were dropped as part of his plea agreement. He was paroled in 1946.
After 2 trials, the final prosecutor declared Olin Montgomery (17 when arrested) “not guilty” and dropped all charges.
After 2 trials, the final prosecutor declared Willie Roberson (16 when arrested) “not guilty” and dropped all charges.
After 2 trials, Roy Wright (12 when arrested) was deemed “too young” to be convicted and all charges were dropped.
After 2 trials, Eugene Williams (13 when arrested) was deemed “too young” to be convicted and all charges were dropped.

NOTE: The number of trials (noted above) does not count appeals or the fact that the defendants were often in the courtroom when others were being tried. Nor does it reflect the fact that sometimes jurors were swapped (like school kids moving between classrooms). Several of the aforementioned had additional legal issues, but I have not listed them all.

In 1938, the Governor of Alabama (Bibb Graves) made plans to pardon those who were imprisoned, but changed his mind because he didn’t like their attitude and the fact that they continued to declare themselves innocent. In 2013, 82 years after they were arrested, the state of Alabama issued posthumous pardons for Haywood Patterson, Charlie Weems, and Andy Wright.

“Remembering their sharp and pretty
Tunes for Sacco and Vanzetti,
I said:
Here too’s a cause divinely spun
For those whose eyes are on the sun,
Here in epitome
Is all disgrace
And epic wrong.
Like wine to brace
The minstrel heart, and blare it into song.

Surely, I said,
Now will the poets sing.
But they have raised no cry.
I wonder why.”

— quoted from the poem “Scottsboro, Too, Is, Worth Its Song” by Countee Cullen

The trials and tribulations of the Scottsboro Boys inspired a plethora of writers, including Langston Hughes (Scottsboro Limited), Harper Lee (To Kill A Mockingbird), Ellen Feldman (Scottsboro: A Novel), Richard Wright (Native Son), Allen Ginsberg (America), Countee Cullen (“Scottsboro, Too, Is, Worth Its Song”), Jean-Paul Sartre (The Respectful Prostitute [La Putain respectueuse]), Utpal Dutta (মানুষের অধিকারে [The Rights of Man]); as well as creators of the musicals The Scottsboro Boys and Direct from Death Row The Scottsboro Boys; musicians like Lead Belly (“The Scottsboro Boys”) and Rage Against the Machine (“Scottsboro, Too, Is, Worth Its Song”); and filmmakers and political cartoonists.

The events also, inevitably, shaped the thoughts and desires of Oscar William Adams, Jr. — who would have turned 6 years old shortly before the teenagers were arrested and his father started covering the story. He was 12 (the same age the youngest had been when arrested) when the final trials concluded and around 18 (the same age the first to be convicted was when arrested) when the first man was paroled. Can you imagine what it would have been like to grow up in the Birmingham at that time? Regardless of if you visualize yourself as you are, in that situation or if you see yourself as the junior Mr. Adams, can you imagine how this situation might have informed your opinions — of yourself, of people who look like you, as well as of people who don’t look like you? Can you imagine how this situation would have informed your dreams and your decisions about the world?

And, this is all without considering “The Talk.”

I can’t imagine any Black child being satisfied with these circumstances. I can’t imagine any Black kid being content with these circumstances. I can’t imagine any Black teenager not dreaming about a better world; a more just, equitable, and peaceful world.

“The black man does not wish to be the pet of the law. The more blacks become enmeshed in meaningful positions in our society, then the more that society will be come non-discriminatory. His goals and ideals will become identical with goals and ideals of the rest of society. To insist on special treatment, and demand and get integration in other aspects of society is to pursue inconsistent approaches. If a black man is allowed to go as far as his talents will carry him, he will not need special protection from the courts. If he is not, the courts will once again be asked for special protection.”

— quoted from the special concurrence opinion for Beck v. State, 396 So. 2d 645 (1980) by Alabama Supreme Court Justice Oscar W. Adams

We can never know what dreams he would have had and decisions he would have made if Oscar William Adams, Jr. had been someone else’s son and/or had experienced Birmingham in the mid-20th century through someone else’s circumstances. What we do know is that after he graduated from high school, Mr. Adams, Jr. attended two historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs): Talladega College, Alabama’s oldest private HBCU, where he earned a degree in philosophy (1944) and Howard University, where he earned a law degree (1947). We also know that he came back to Alabama to practice.

Soon after he graduated, Mr. Adams, Jr. was admitted to the Alabama State Bar and opened up his own private practice, where he specialized in civil rights cases. He worked very closely with the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, founder of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) and co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which was instrumental in organizing the Selma-to-Montgomery marches in 1965. He became the first African American member of Birmingham Bar Association (1966) and, in 1967, he and Harvey Burg co-founded the first integrated law firm in Alabama. Two years later, in 1969, he co-founded Birmingham’s first African American law firm with James Baker, an Ivy League lawyer from Philadelphia. The firm became known as Adams, Baker & Clemon, when the original partners were joined by U.W. Clemon, who would become a lot of notable firsts (including Alabama’s first African American federal judge).

Throughout his career as an attorney in private practice, Oscar William Adams, Jr. litigated various kinds of cases on behalf of Martin Luther King Jr. and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), as well as cases focused on school desegregation (e.g., Armstrong v. Board of Education of City of Birmingham, Ala., 220 F. Supp. 217 (N.D. Ala. 1963)); discrimination cases (e.g., Terry v. Elmwood Cemetery, 307 F. Supp. 369 (N.D. Ala. 1969) and Pettway v. AMERICAN CAST IRON PIPE COMPANY, 332 F. Supp. 811 (N.D. Ala. 1970)); and voting rights cases.

He became the first African American to serve on an Alabama appellate court on October 10, 1980, when an Alabama Supreme Court justice retired due to health issues. Eleven days before he was sworn in, the court heard arguments for Beck v. State, 396 So. 2d 645 (1980), a case about the death penalty and how it was applied. The court’s decision would include a history of the death penalty in Alabama and highlight a period of injustices. However, the court’s statement that “during part of Alabama’s history, [what offenses authorized the imposition of death] reflected the interaction and relative position of the races, especially during the period prior to the Civil War, when slaves and free Negroes were admittedly singled out for special treatment insofar as capital punishment was concerned. Nevertheless, with that one exception…” made it sound as if the death penalty was rarely applied to innocent people purely based on their race — completely negating the fact that (in their lifetimes) it had been thusly applied multiple times. Mr. Adams, Jr. was sworn in on December 17^th, listened to a recording of the argument and, two days later, wrote a special concurrence. It was his first official statement from the bench.

“In the early seventies, blacks argued for bifurcated jury trials, and this Court today has mandated such for the State of Alabama. In the seventies, blacks asked that sentences for rape and other offenses be not discriminatorily and freakishly imposed.”

— quoted from the special concurrence opinion for Beck v. State, 396 So. 2d 645 (1980) by Alabama Supreme Court Justice Oscar W. Adams

After completing the remaining two years of the unexpired term he had assumed, he decided to run for the office. The largest bar associations endorsed him, rather than his white counterparts, and in 1982, he became the first African American to be elected (by popular vote) to a statewide constitutional office in Alabama. He served on the Alabama Supreme Court until October 31, 1994, when retired from the bench. After his retirement from being behind the bench, he returned to the front: working with the Birmingham law firm of White, Dunn & Booker (now White, Arnold & Dowd). He also served as co-chairman of the Second Citizens’ Conference on Judicial Elections and Campaigns.

Oscar William Adams Jr. was replaced with the state’s second African American Supreme Court Justice, Ralph D. Cook. It would make for a great story if, in the intervening years — between 1980 and 1994 and between 1994 and today — more African American lawyers had become judges who became justices in the state of Alabama. That would be super satisfying.

Unfortunately, I can’t truthfully tell that story.

Associate Justice Cook retired from the bench in 2001. John H. England Jr served as a justice on the Alabama Supreme Court justice from 1999 until 2001. (His son, John H. England, III is one of a handful of African American judges serving in Alabama’s federal courts.) According to the Brennan Center for Justice’s 2022 update, Alabama is currently one of 28 states with no Black justices. Furthermore, it is one of six states where Black residents make up at least 10% of the population. Specifically, 35% of Alabama’s population is classified as people of color and 27% of the total population identifies as Black. Yet, all nine of the Supreme Court justices, all five members of the Court of Criminal Appeals, and all five of the Court of Civil Appeals are white.

Quite often, when statistics like these are presented, some people will say representation doesn’t matter as much as education and experience. Well, I am just grateful that more and more people are getting the education and the experience that puts them in the pipeline. That appreciation for the way things are changing is part of the practice of santoşā. If you ask me if I am actually satisfied and content to wait, I can honestly say that I have no choice; because I can’t (directly) do anything about it. And that acceptance (and awareness of what is and is not in my control) is the non-attachment part of the practice.

Of course, the next logical question is: Well, when will you be satisfied? When will you be content? When posed with a similar question, SCOTUS associate justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg had a pretty succinct answer. I’m not sure if it would be my answer; but it is worth considering what the country would be like — what the world would be like — if the tables turned.

“Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg famously said, ‘I’m sometimes asked, “When will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court]?” And I say when there are nine. People are shocked. But there’d been nine men, and nobody’s ever raised a question about that.’

Asking, ‘How diverse is diverse enough?’ still represents a tick–the–box mentality rather than embracing the types of cultural, innovation, and bottom–line changes we have described here. When organizations start to embrace the breakthrough diversity can represent, we can move beyond thinking about quotas and targets. The real change we are talking about takes us far past ‘the one/the few’ to as many hires as it takes to create a culture of belonging and move our sector into the future.”

— quoted from “What Is Diverse Enough” in “Chapter 4. A Clear Case” of Creating Cultures of Belonging: Cultivating Organization where Women and Men Thrive by Beth Birmingham and Eeva Sallinen Simard (forward by Myal Greene and Emily Sarmiento)

PRACTICE NOTES: I don’t necessarily have a standard sequence for a February 7^th practice, but it is a practice that leans towards having a fair amount of balance. Sometimes, after completing a portion of the practice, I pose the questions, “Would you be satisfied if this was the end of the practice? Would you grateful (if you got what you needed), or would you still be wishing, hoping, praying for what you wanted? What would cause you to be more grateful and, therefore, more joyful?”

Every once in a while, I’ll even throw in a tolāsana (scale pose).

### 7 of 9 (1857) ###

Salt of the Earth (a special Black History note for Monday) February 7, 2023

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Tags: Ahiṃsā, Ahimsa, Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, Arun Gandhi, birthdays on February 6, Black History Month, commandments, Constance Allen Pitter Thomas, Edward A. Pitter, Female Genital Mutilation, FGM, Great Depression, HBCUs, Howard University, Inez Maxine Pitter Haynes, International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, Juana Racquel Royster Horn, King Abdullah II of Jordan, Lincoln School of Nursing, Marjorie Allen Pitter, Marjorie Allen Pitter King, Mary T. Henry, nursing, precepts, salt, Salt Satyagraha, Season of Non-violence, Season of Nonviolence, Seattle Washington, The Gospel According to Matthew, United Nations, United Nations General Assembly, University of California LA, University of Washington, World Interfaith Harmony Week, yamas, Yoga Sutra 2.35
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Peace and ease to all during this “Season of Non-violence” and all other seasons!

This is a special post for Monday, February 6^th. You can request a recording of the Monday practice via a comment below or (for a slightly faster reply) you can email me at myra (at) ajoyfulpractice.com.

WARNING: A portion of this post refers to Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), but there is an opportunity to skip that section.

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“Next to air and water, salt is perhaps the greatest necessity of life. It is the only condiment of the poor. Cattle cannot live without salt. Salt is a necessary article in many manufactures. it is also a rich manure.

There is no article like salt, outside water, by taxing which the State can reach even the starving millions, the sick, the maimed and the utterly helpless. The salt tax constitutes the most inhuman poll tax that the ingenuity of man can devise.”

– quoted from a letter by M. K. Gandhi, printed in Young India, Vol. XII, Ahmedabad: February 27, 1930

Some people laughed when Mohandas Karamchanda Gandhi decided salt would be the focus of a direct action, non-violent mass protest. People who are world leaders today scoffed, because they didn’t get it and they didn’t have his insight and vision. However, Gandhi wasn’t the first radical leader to emphasize the importance of salt. Jesus did it, in the Gospel According to Matthew (5:13 – 14), when he referred to his disciples as “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world.” In both cases, the teacher whose name would become synonymous with a worldwide religious movement indicated that there was a purpose, a usefulness, to the disciples and their roles (as salt and as light). I think it’s important to remember that Jesus was speaking to fishermen, farmers, and shepherds – people who were intimately familiar with the importance of salt (and light). They knew that (different kinds of) salt can be used for flavoring, preservation, fertilization, cleansing, and destroying, and that it could be offered as a sacrifice. They knew, as Gandhi would later point out, that people in hot, tropical climates needed salt for almost everything – including healing.

Gandhi’s “audience” was different. He was living in a time of industrialization and the beginnings of these modern times in which we find ourselves. He knew that people laughed and scoffed, because they didn’t completely understand the usefulness and vitalness of salt. He understood that some people took salt for granted and, even within the pages,, he debated with experts about the benefits and risks of salt consumption. He also knew that some people – inside and outside of British-ruled India – just didn’t get the inhumanity of charging people a tax for something that they could obtain (literally) outside their front door; something that was part of the very fiber of their being.

Remember, the human body is 60 – 75% water… and most of that water is saturated with salt.

“Such a universal force [Satyagraha] necessarily makes no distinction between kinsmen and strangers, young and old, man and woman, friend and foe. The force to be so applied can never be physical. There is in it no room for violence. The only force of universal application can, therefore, be that of ahimsa or love. In other words it is soul force.

Love does not burn others, it burns itself.”

– quoted from “Some Rules of Satyagraha” by M. K. Gandhi, printed in Young India, Vol. XII, Ahmedabad: February 27, 1930

(NOTE: The general explanation and rules were followed by a section of rules of conduct for various situations, including for “an Individual” and for “a Prisoner.”)

As I mentioned last week, Gandhi’s grandson (Arun Gandhi) established the “Season for Nonviolence” (January 30^th through April 4^th) in 1998. The Mahatma Gandhi Canadian Foundation for World Peace offers daily practices based on principles of nonviolence advocated by Mahatma Gandhi (who was assassinated on January 30, 1948) and Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (who was assassinated on April 4, 1968). We could think of these principles as little bits of salt, sprinkled throughout the days, but the thing to remember is that these principles are not unique to one culture, one philosophy, or one religion. Neither did these two great leaders/teachers invent these ideas. Ahiṃsā (non-violence or “non-harming”) is the very first yama (external “restraint” or universal commandment) in the Yoga Philosophy and one of the Ten Commandments according the Abrahamic religions. It is also one of the Buddhist precepts. Courage, smiling, appreciation, caring, believing, simplicity, education – the principles of the first week of the “Season for Nonviolence” – all predate Gandhi and MLK; they also predate Jesus. So, too, does today’s principle: Healing.

Healing is also the focus of people who are wrapping up World Interfaith Harmony Week (WIHW), which was first proposed by King Abdullah II of Jordan in 2010. The United Nations (UN) General Assembly adopted Resolution 65/5 on October 10, 2010, and designated the first week of February as a time to promote a culture of peace and nonviolence “between all religions, faiths, and beliefs.” This year’s theme is “Harmony in a World in Crisis: Working together to achieve peace, gender equality, mental health and wellbeing, and environmental preservation” and it stresses the fact that we are all better equipped to deal with future pandemics and natural catastrophes when we come together and work together.

Of course, future pandemics and natural catastrophes are not the only things that plague the world. We also have human-made disasters and catastrophic events. We’re still dealing with some of the same things Gandhi and MLK – even Jesus – fought: people who who would take away another person’s ability to be a healthy, thriving, human being. Again, we could look back at salt… or basic civil rights… or we could look at what it (sometimes) means to be like August Wilson’s Risa, “a woman in the world.”

While I do not go into explicit details, you may skip to the next big banner quote if needed.

In addition to being the penultimate day of World Interfaith Harmony Week (WIHW), February 6th is also International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation. Designated by the UN in 2012, this annual day of events aims to amplify and direct the efforts on the elimination of the practice of FGM, which is defined by the UN as “all procedures that involve altering or injuring the female genitalia for non-medical reasons and is recognized internationally as a violation of the human rights, the health and the integrity of girls and women.” People who endure FGM face short-term complications such as severe pain, shock, excessive bleeding, infections, and difficulty in passing urine, as well as long-term consequences for their sexual and reproductive health and mental health. According to the UN, 4.32 million girls around the world who are at risk of undergoing FGM and approximately 1 in 4, or 52 million worldwide, experience FGM at the hands of a medical professional.

This is not a new practice. In fact, when I was in college (about 30 years ago) I had an argument with a male student who insisted there was no such thing as FGM. He was white, from America, and (to my knowledge) had not experienced much outside of his lived experience. He only knew what it was like to be him. If I could go back, and have that discussion again, I might dig a little deeper into why he was in such denial about something that (to date) has been experienced by at least 200 million living people. NOTE: That statistic only refers to survivors.

While the UN acknowledges that cultures are different and that all are in “constant flux,” the General Assembly also recognizes that, in order for cultures to survive, the people within a society must be able to thrive, enjoy basic human rights, and have the physical and mental wellness to reach their potential. Any one of us can think of this as someone else’s problem, but the truth is that (on some level) this is everyone’s problem to solve. In fact, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called, “on men and boys everywhere to join me in speaking out and stepping forward to end female genital mutilation, for the benefit of all.”

The good news is that FGM has declined, globally, over the last 25 years and a girl is one-third less likely to experience FGM than 30 years ago. All the good news category: more awareness means that healthcare professionals are in a better position to help FGM survivors heal from the physical, mental, and/or emotional trauma.

Yoga Sūtra 2.35: ahimsāpratişţhāyām tatsannidhau vairatyāgah

– “In the company of a yogi established in non-violence, animosity disappears.”

Healing begins with people. I’ve seen this up close and personal all of my life, because I grew up around healers. My father taught in medical schools and ran research labs. My mother was a hospital administrator. Her mother went to nursing school with at least one of her sister-in-laws and a couple of her future neighbors. For the most part, they all went to HBCUs (Historically Black Universities and Colleges) in the South, because the times – and the laws at the time – didn’t give them a whole lot of other options. In some ways, my grandmother and her peers would have had very similar experiences as Black nursing students before and after them. In some ways, however, their experiences would have been very different – again, because of the opportunities that were available (or not available to them) based on the color of their skin. For instance, the nurses in my family definitely had to overcome obstacles, but (maybe) not the same walls that Inez Maxine Pitter Haynes had scale in order to become a nurse.

Born February 6, 1919, in Seattle, Washington, Inez Maxine Pitter Haynes was the second of three girls born to Edward A. Pitter and Marjorie Allen Pitter. Mr. Pitter was born in Jamaica (like Bob Marley, who was born 2/6/1945) and came to the United States in as a captain’s steward during the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. After leaving his position on the passenger ship, he became a King County Clerk and then a book editor and publisher. He also worked with the Democratic Party (the Colored Democratic Association of Washington). Mrs. Pitter was a direct descendent of Richard Allen, founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, and she knew how to protect her family against the hostilities they encountered. Their daughters (Constance, Maxine, and Marjorie) grew up in the tightknit household that emphasized elegance and education.

“Marjorie Pitter King remembered, ‘Politics opened doors for us and was very helpful. During the Christmas vacations, we were able to work at the post office and earn money to help with our schooling. It also helped my father obtain his job because he had been working on WPA (Works Progress Administration) projects. Then he went from there to deputy sheriff.’ (Horn)”

– quoted from “King, Marjorie Edwina Pitter (1921-1996)” by Mary T. Henry, posted on historylink.org (Juana Racquel Royster Horn cited)

All three of the Pitter girls graduated from high school and made their way to the University of Washington. Like a lot of students, especially during the Great Depression, the sisters had financial struggles. To alleviate their economic problems, the youngest of the three (Marjorie) proposed that they go into business together doing things they had learned how to do at home: typing, printing, and writing speeches. They called their business “Tres Hermanas” or “Three Sisters” – and it would have been nice if all of their troubles could have been resolved through hard work. Unfortunately, -isms and -phobias don’t work that way.

All three of the sisters had to deal with racism that manifested as name-calling and teachers ignoring them. Then, they each had their individual crosses to bear. Constance Allen Pitter Thomas, the oldest of the sisters, graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in theatre and became a student teacher in the Seattle School District, but was not offered a permanent position for many years. When she was finally offered a regular position by the school district, it was as a speech therapist. She worked with students with special needs for 18 years.

Marjorie Edwina Pitter King, the youngest of the three sisters, struggled academically and then struggled because there weren’t very many women in accounting – let alone Black women. She ended up transferring to Howard University in 1942, for her senior year; but then dropped out of school and went to work for the Pentagon (during World War II). Eventually, she got married, started a family and moved back to Seattle, where she started a successful tax company. M and M Tax and Consultant Services worked with clients all along the continental coast and Mrs. Pitter King’s support extended to language translation and letter writing. She also became the first African American to be appointed to the Washington State Legislature (in 1965); served as Chair of the 37th District Democratic Party; Vice President of the King County Democratic Party; and Treasurer of the Washington State Federation of Democratic Women, Inc. While attending the 1972 Democratic National Convention, she helped draft the National Democratic Party Platform.

Then there was Maxine… the darkest-skinned of the three sisters… who wanted to be a nurse.

“It was 1939 in Seattle, and although the city had none of the formal ‘Jim Crow’ segregation laws common in the South, the result was often the same.

Being black and finding a job often meant menial work and a lower standard of living. For some black people, discrimination crushed any hope of working at all.”

– quoted from the article in The Seattle Times entitled “Seattle In The Old Days: No ‘Jim Crow’ Laws, But Blacks Were Held Back Just The Same” by Daryl Strickland (dated Jun 27, 1994)

Like her sisters, Inez Maxine Pitter Haynes enrolled at the University of Washington. She enrolled as a pre-nursing student, but then she was rejected by the the Nursing School, because the degree required nursing students to be housed in Harborview Hall – and the Dean of Nursing would not allow an African American student to live with the white students. The future Mrs. Pitter Haynes had no choice, but to change her major during her junior year. She ended up graduating from the University of Washington, in 1941, with a degree in sociology. Then, she moved to New York City and enrolled at Lincoln School of Nursing where she earned the first of two degrees in nursing. She earned her second degree, a masters in nursing, at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and worked in the city of angels before moving back to Seattle.

Maxine Pitter Haynes become the first African American nurse at Providence Hospital (now Swedish Medical Center/Providence Campus). She also served as education director for the Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic and taught at Seattle Pacific University, from 1976, until she retired in 1981 as professor emeritus.

But, in the middle of all of that, in 1971, she went back to the University of Washington… as an assistant professor at the same nursing school that had turned her away because of her skin color.

We can look at that as progress and/or we can flip the coin and look at that as healing.

“Wounding and healing are not opposites. They’re part of the same thing. It is our wounds that enable us to be compassionate with the wounds of others. It is our limitations that make us kind to the limitations of other people. It is our loneliness that helps us to find other people or to even know they’re alone with an illness. I think I have served people perfectly with parts of myself I used to be ashamed of. ”

– Rachel Naomi Remen (b. 2/8/1938) as quoted in At Your Service: Living the Lessons of Servant Leadership by Charles E. Wheaton

PRACTICE NOTES: I decided to focus this practice on the ways the body naturally heals: with a little yin and a little yang; a little action/resistance and passive/resting. There was some dynamic motion (to engage the sympathetic nervous system) and also moments of resting and relaxing (to engage the parasympathetic nervous system). In a practice like this, I also highlighted ahimsa (as I did above) and different techniques for relaxing and getting “unhooked,” including the practice of cultivating the opposites.

I have several playlists related to Gandhi, MLK, and ahiṃsā. However, if I were going to put together a playlist specifically for today, I would throw in a little Bob Marley (see reference above) plus some Schumann played by Claudio Arrau (b. 2/6/1903), something by Natalie Cole (b. 2/6/1950), and – if I had the time – I’d look for something appropriate from the soundtracks of one of Robert Townsend’s movies (b. 2/6/1957). Also, cause I’m silly (and I could make it work), I might throw in the Guns N’ Roses cover of “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” (cause, Axl Rose, b. 2/6/1962); however, I might toss it into the before/after music along with this little ditty on YouTube, by an artist born 2/6/1966.

### “Unforgettable / That’s what you are” ~ Nat King Cole & Natalie Cole ###

Having the Mettle/Metal to Mix it Up (a special Black History 2-for-1 note) February 6, 2023

Posted by ajoyfulpractice in "Impossible" People, Baseball, Changing Perspectives, Faith, Food, Gratitude, Healing Stories, Hope, Life, Music, New Year, One Hoop, Pain, Religion, Suffering, Wisdom, Yoga.
Tags: Barbara Lucas, Billye Suber Williams, Black History Month, Bread, David Chang, dumplings, Fannie Farmer, Hank Aaron., Henry Lewis Hank Aaron, Jackie Robinson, Lantern Festival, Lonnie Wheeler, Lunar New Year, Nina Simone, pinyin, Spring Festival, tangyuan, Tommie Lee Aaron, Willis Johnson, Yuan Xiao
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Happy Lantern Festival! Happy Carnival! Peace and ease to all during this “Season of Non-violence” and all other seasons!

This is a special post for Sunday, February 5^th. Click here if you are interested in details about the Lantern Festival, which takes place on the final day of the Spring Festival, and other elements related to Sunday’s practice.

“[Food] sort of intersects so many different parts of culture throughout the world. So, in so many ways, you know, creating the show with Morgan Neville and Eddie Schmidt, we decided that food could be sort of a Trojan horse to talk about many of the great things in culture and many of the bad things in culture.”

– David Chang talking about his Netflix series “Ugly Delicious” on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah (May 2018)

One of the things for which I will be eternally is that I grew up exposed to so many different kinds of food from so many different cultures. Sometimes the food came from restaurants; sometimes the food came from friends and families who were from other parts of the country and/or other parts of the world. A lot of meals came with stories or lessons – like, for instance, why I could eat certain foods when we went out, but not at home. Having those kinds of experiences, as a kid, makes it hard for me to imagine going to a restaurant and only ever ordering pork chops like Henry Lewis “Hank” Aaron and Tommie Lee Aaron did when they were playing Major League Baseball.

If you are a baseball fan, you might already know that Henry Lewis “Hank” Aaron was born February 5, 1934, in Mobile, Alabama (the city with the third largest number of players in the Baseball Hall of Fame). You might have heard stories about how he had seven siblings and that his family was so poor he made his own baseball bats. You might already know that “Hammerin’ Hank,” also known simply as “Hammer” (or Henry to his friends), started playing for the semi-pro Mobile Black Bears (a.k.a. the Mobile Black Shippers) when he was still in high school – but only at Sunday home games. You probably know that he also played professionally in the Negro Leagues when he was in high school and that his team, the Indianapolis Clowns, won the Negro American League (NAL) championship in 1952 – just a few months after he joined the team. You might even know that while he idolized Jackie Robinson and tried out for the Brooklyn Dodgers when he was 15, he didn’t make the cut in 1949. After winning the 1952 NAL championship, however, he was offered Major League Baseball (MLB) contracts from two different teams.

Even if you’re not a baseball fan, you’ve probably heard the name Hank Aaron and know that he was one of the greatest players in baseball history. So, I could just focus on Mr. Aaron’s phenomenal stats. After all, by the time he retired, he had spent 23 seasons in MLB; held records for the most career runs batted in (RBIs) (2,297), extra base hits (1,477), and total bases (6,856) – a record that meant he travelled12 miles farther (on the base paths) than any other player in MLB history; and he had broken Babe Ruth’s claim to most home runs – a record Hank Aaron held for 33 years.

“And when it was over, my real job was only starting. Once the record was mind, I had to use it like a Louisville Slugger. I believed, and still do, that there was a reason why I was chosen to break the record. I feel it’s my task to carry on where Jackie Robinson left off, and I only know of one way to go about it. It’s the only way I’ve ever had of dealing with things like fastballs and bigotry – keep swinging at them. As a ballplayer, I always figured that I had a bat and all the pitcher had was a little ball, and as long as I kept swinging that bat I’d be all right.”

– quoted from Chapter 3 of I Had A Hammer: The Hank Aaron Story by Hank Aaron with Lonnie Wheeler

The thing is: I really wanted to mix things up today.

Of course, if you’re a Hank Aaron fan, then you’re thinking, “That’s perfect, because the Hammer started off a cross-handed hitter and then switched it up.” Which I believe is true. The power hitter started his career as a right-handed hitter who swung the bat with his left hand above his right and he racked up some pretty impressive stats like that until he started in the minors. Even after he switched to the standard grip (with his dominant hand on top), he out hit and out ran pretty much every one on the diamond. During the bulk of his career in the majors, he hit at least 24 home runs every year and is one of only two players to hit 30 or more home runs in a season at least fifteen times. He is also ranked third of all-time for career hits (3,771); fifth in runs scored (2,174); and is one of only four players to have at least 17 seasons with 150 or more hits.

In his first season in the minors, Henry “Hank” Aaron was named as a Northern League All-Star and Rookie of the Year. A year later, in 1953, he was named Most Valuable Player in the South Atlantic League. The following year, in 1954, he was off the farm and playing for in the majors for Milwaukee (in between their time as the Brewers). He continued playing for the team when they moved to Atlanta and then spent his final year playing for the new Milwaukee Brewers (née Seattle Pilots). By the time he retired, he had made the National League (NL) All-Star roster 20 times and the American league (AL) All-Star roster once; played in 24 All-Start games (with 25 total selections); earned two NL batting titles; won three Golden Glove awards (as the best defender in a league); and won the 1957 NL Most Valuable Player award. That 1957 MVP award came after he clinched the pennant for Milwaukee by hitting a two-run walk-off home run against the St. Louis Cardinals. (I think that’s still the only time someone has won a pennant during a regular season game by hitting a game-ending homerun in the final inning). Milwaukee would go on to beat the New York Yankees and win the 1957 World Series.

“The day after Baltimore, we were rained out of a big Sunday doubleheader at Griffith Stadium in Washington. We had breakfast while we were waiting for the rain to stop, and I can still envision sitting with the Clowns in a restaurant behind Griffith Stadium and hearing them break all the plates in the kitchen after we were finished eating. What a horrible sound. Even as a kid, the irony of it hit me: Here we were in the capital in the land of freedom and equality, and they had to destroy the plates that had touched the forks that had been in the mouths of black men. If dogs had eaten off those plates, they’d have washed them.”

– quoted from Chapter 3 of I Had A Hammer: The Hank Aaron Story by Hank Aaron with Lonnie Wheeler

Of course, life wasn’t all sunshine and homeruns for Henry. Remember, there were fast balls and bigotry. And sometimes life itself was the fast ball. For instance, he met and married his first wife, Barbara Lucas, just as he was hitting his stride in MLB; but, the couple lost one of their newborn twins not long after Milwaukee won the 1957 World Series. Just as he dealt with racism when he was playing with the Negro Leagues, he had to deal with it when he was one of the only African American players in the majors. Opposing teams gave him pejorative nicknames. People sent him so much hate mail that the U. S. Postal Service gave him a plaque. Unfortunately, so much of that mail was full of death threats that journalists had (secretly) written his obituary. There was even a Peanuts cartoon about his situation!

Then there was the segregation, especially in the South, that people had come to expect – e.g., at hotels, restaurants, and public facilities. One sportswriter even noted, “Henry Aaron led the league in everything except hotel accommodations.” However, Mr. Aaron found he also had to deal with segregation with regard to his faith. As a Catholic (covert), it was recommended that he attend mass, even during Spring Training. But, the training camp was in Bradenton, Florida and there were no services available to him as a Black Catholic.

While he was active in the Civil Rights Movement, Mr. Aaron wasn’t known to stand out – except in the way he played. So, even if you are a fan, you may not know that he supported the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) or that he and his second wife, Billye Suber Williams (a history-maker in her own right) co-founded the Hank Aaron Chasing the Dream Foundation, which provides scholarships for underprivileged youth. In January 2021, he and several other notable African Americans publicly received the COVID-19 vaccine in order to demonstrate its safety.

These are just a few highlights that illustrate why Henry Lewis “Hank” Aaron is part of Black history and part of American history. But, like I said before, I really wanted to mix things up today… and part of the reason I wanted to mix things up was because of the dumplings.

“[The] object of my invention is to provide a machine wherewith eggs, batter, and other similar ingredients used by bakers, confectioners, Src.; can be beaten or mixed in the most intimate and expeditious manner. The machine consists, essentially, of a main frame within which is journaled a driving-wheel and a pinion or pulley, the horizontal shaft of the sockets, with which are engaged square or other [non-circular] arbors at the inner extremities of a pair of beater-shafts

…cylinders that occupy detachable trays or racks applied to the opposite sides of the main frame, hooks and staples or other convenient devices being employed for retaining said racks in their proper places. As a result of this construction, either one or both of the cylinders can be readily applied to the racks, and the latter be coupled to the machine, so as to insure a very rapid revolution of the beater shafts, as soon as power is applied to the driving-wheel, as hereinafter more fully described.”

– quoted from part of Letters Patent No. 292,821, dated February 5, 1884, issued to Willis Johnson, Cincinnati, Ohio

The first full moon of the Lunar New Year marks the end of the Spring Festival, a 15-day celebration that culminates with the Lantern Festival. Of course, lanterns are a big part of the celebrations – as are fireworks and the color red. However, sweet-rice dumplings are another key element in some celebrations. They are called tangyuan ( 湯圓 or 汤圆, pinyin: tāngyuán) in southern China and yuanxiao ( 元宵, pinyin: yuánxiāo ) in northern China. As I mentioned in the regular Sunday post, these round dumplings, that are enjoyed at a variety of events and festivals throughout the year, are associated with the story of Yuan Xiao and are a staple during the Lantern Festival, which is actually 元宵節 or 元宵节 (pinyin: Yuánxiāo jié) – Yuan Xiao’s Festival.

The dumplings come in different sizes and flavors and can have different texture and fillings, depending on the region. They are typically served in a soup or broth in some provinces. In fact, the southern name literally means “round balls (or dumplings) in soup.” Sweet fillings include a sweetened black sesame mixture, a sweetened mixture of crushed peanuts, Jujube paste, chocolate paste, red bean paste (Azuki bean), lotus seed paste, Matcha paste, or custard. Savory fillings include (regular) crushed peanuts, minced meat, mushrooms, or cabbage.

Full disclosure: I’ve never made these dumplings. Although, I have eaten them and I know that the different shapes come from the different ways in which the balls are formed. Also, the I know that the dough (and the filling) has to be well mixed. In many cases, you could easily mix the dough with a spoon or chopsticks before you knead and shape it – in fact, that’s what most recipes online recommend. Some fillings, however, require a little extra effort. I mean, you can still use a spoon or chopsticks – which is what people probably used in the old days – but it would be much easier (and faster) to use a mixer.

Patent No. 292,821, dated February 5, 1884, was issued to an African American inventor named Willis Johnson. The patent was for “new and useful improvements in Egg-beaters” and the design featured a handle which could be attached to blades, beaters, or stirrers. The machine was multi-purpose since it also had detachable trays or racks, on opposite sides, so that a cook or baker could beat eggs on one side and batter on the other side. Similarly, you could rotate the containers out – cleaning as you go without having to stop everything because you ran out of clean bowls. This improvement on existing “egg-beaters” was the direct predecessor of modern day electric mixers.

Although I couldn’t find a ton of personal information about Willis Johnson. His residence on the patent is listed as Cincinnati, Ohio and it appears that he was born 1857. According to some sources, he was enslaved for some portion of his life. Given the time frame, it would be interesting to find out how Mr. Johnson learned to read and navigate the patent process.

“[With] this double-acting machine one kind of batter can be mixed in the cylinder H H while another kind of stuff is being beaten up in the other receptacle, I I. It is also apparent that with this double-acting machine one of the cylinders [may] be kept in operation while the other receptacle is either being cleaned or charged. Finally, it is apparent that the wheel B, pulley C, and band D may be omitted and the desired speed of shaft c be obtained by a system of gear-wheels jonrnaled [sic] in the frame A.”

– quoted from part of Letters Patent No. 292,821, dated February 5, 1884, issued to Willis Johnson, Cincinnati, Ohio

Practice Notes: See the Friday note for details on how I lead baseball-inspired practices. For a practice related to Willis Johnson (that didn’t happen on a full moon or new moon), I would probably “mix things up” with different Sun Salutations and maybe some poses that we don’t do very often. There would also be a a little something extra for the shoulders and core (and, maybe also for the feet). As far as music goes, I think this calls for “Fannie’s Recipe Ingredients” or “Bread & Chocolate.”

### “I want a little sugar in my bowl / I want a little sweetness down in my soul” ~ NS ###

Rooted Deep in a Moment (a special [revised] Black History note) February 4, 2023

Posted by ajoyfulpractice in "Impossible" People, Changing Perspectives, Dharma, Healing Stories, Hope, Karma, Life, Mysticism, One Hoop, Pain, Philosophy, Religion, Suffering, Wisdom, Women, Yoga.
Tags: Black History Month, Charlie Times, Civil Right, Clifford Durr, Eleanor Roosevelt, Emmett Till, George W. Lee, Hugo Black, James F. Blake, Lamar "Ditney" Smith, Lucille Times, Lunar New Year, Malcolm Gladwell, Montgomery Bus Boycott, Nine Days, Raymond Parks, Rosa Parks, Samyama, Septima Clark, Spring Festival, Virginia Durr, Year of the Cat, Year of the Rabbit, Yoga Sutra 3.35, Yoga Sutra 3.53, Yoga Sutras 3.19-3.20
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Happy Spring Festival! Happy Carnival! Peace and ease to all during this “Season of Non-violence” and all other seasons!

This is a special post for Saturday, February 4^th, which is also the 14^th day of the Lunar New Year and the penultimate day of the Spring Festival. Most of the information below was posted in some way, shape, or form in 2022. This slight revision puts things in a special light. NOTE: There was no ZOOM practice today; however, you can still request a related recording via a comment below or (for a slightly faster reply) you can email me at myra (at) ajoyfulpractice.com.

“I want to shake people up for a little bit. I want people to be surprised. I want to go back and play with the past, but I want to do it in a way that, hopefully, enlightens us. Ready?”

“Every week, I’m going to take you back into the past, to examine something that I think has been overlooked… or misunderstood.”

“You have to want me to tell you a story”

– quoted from Malcolm Gladwell’s 2016 Slate introduction to the “Revisionist History” podcast

A good story, a good practice, and a good celebration have several things in common – including a beginning, a middle, and an end. In all three, the beginning gets us ready for the middle, and the middle gets us ready for the end. Good writers (and their editors) “place things in a special way” – just as we do in a vinyasa practice – and Anton Chekov’s advice (that an element introduced in the first act must be used by the third) can also be very useful in any physical practice. Again, all of this is also true of a good celebration: you want everything ready before (or just after) the guests arrive; you want things placed in a way allow an easy flow to mixing and mingling; you don’t want to run out of sustenance or entertainment – nor do you want “too many” leftovers; and you definitely want people to leave with a desire to come back for more.

Oh, yes, and if you promise people a sweet or savory treat, Chekov says that you must keep your promises.

For most people who celebrate the 15-day Spring Festival, the 14^th day of the Lunar New Year is the penultimate day of the festival and a day of preparation for the Lantern Festival. People put the finishing touches on their lanterns and some present them for competitions. Feasts are being prepared, riddles are being written, and oranges are being signed – all with the hope that the rest of the year will be full of good fortune, good health, and good love: all the things that make for a good life.

“Each person must live their life as a model for others.”

– Rosa Parks

A person’s life (as we know it here on Earth) also has a beginning, middle, and end. You could say people have lots of them – which is very true since the story of each person’s life is actually a lot of little stories. We can think of those “little stories” as short stories or chapters or we can think of them as defining moments; and we all have defining moments in our lives.

These may be moments that we use to describe the trajectory of our lives or maybe moments that we use to describe ourselves. Either way, when a single moment plays a big part in who we are and what’s important to us, we sometimes forget that that single moment – as important as it may be – is just a single part of our story. It’s part of a sequence of moments. It is the culmination of what’s happened before and the beginning of what happens next. It’s just preparation. Even when – or especially when – that moment is the story (that we tell), we have to be careful about how we frame it. It doesn’t matter if we are telling our story or someone else’s story; how we tell the story matters.

How we tell the story is one of the treats, one of the promises of the story – and, how we tell the story shines a light on why the story is important.

“I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.”

– Rosa Parks

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was born February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. Her parents, Leona (née Edwards) and James McCauley, were a teacher and a carpenter, respectively. When they separated, Rosa and her younger brother moved with their mother to a farm in Pine Level (or Pine Tucky), an unincorporated rural community about 25 miles outside of Montgomery, Alabama. The farm they moved to belonged to Mrs. McCauley’s parents and it was there that Rosa Parks learned to sew and quilt. Even though she went to school for a bit, even started her secondary education, she ended up dropping out of school to take care of her mother and grandmother.

So it was that she grew up to be a housekeeper and a seamstress. She married Raymond Parks, a Montgomery barber, when she was 19 years old (in 1932) and he encouraged her to get her high school diploma. It wasn’t something that very many African-Americans had at the time, but Mr. Parks was very active in the advancement of the people. In fact, he was an active member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and, by 1943, she was too. Rosa Parks not only served as the NAACP secretary, she also worked with her husband on anti-rape campaigns and was a member of the League of Women Voters. She was determined to register to vote – which she finally did, on her third attempt. Although she attended Communist Party meetings with her husband, she was never a member. She did, however, practice haṭha yoga, the physical practice of yoga (as early as the 1960s).

A job at Maxwell Air Force Base exposed her to the possibilities of integration and then she started working for a liberal white couple, Clifford and Virginia Durr. The Durr’s were not only liberal leaning, they were also fairly well connected. Both the Durrs were Alabama born and bred, but ended up furthering their education outside of Alabama. Mr. Durr attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar and then became a lawyer, whose income insulated the Durrs from some of the hardships others around them experienced during the Great Depression. Meanwhile, Mrs. Durr was essentially raised by Black women (as many children in well-to-do Southern homes were at the time). She then attended Wellesley College, where she regularly ate her meals with women of different races. Eventually, she befriend First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and become the sister-in-law of Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black. Given their backgrounds, it is not surprising that the Durr’s encouraged (and even financially supported), Rosa Parks’s activism.

During the summer of 1955, just before the murder of Emmett Till, Mrs. Parks attended trainings at the Highlander Folk School (now known as the Highlander Research and Education Center). The training, led by Septima Clark (the “Queen mother” or “Grandmother of the Civil Rights Movement), focused on civil disobedience, workers’ rights, and racial equity. The combination of the training, her previous life experience and activism, and the hot toddy of emotion bubbling up from the 1955 murders of Emmett Till and two Civil Rights activists (George W. Lee and Lamar “Ditney” Smith) proved to be a powerful force – a force, perhaps, that explains her hardened resolve on December 1, 1955.

It was a force – she became a force – that would not be moved; a force that led to progress.

“I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free…so other people would also be free.”

– Rosa Parks

Samayama, comes from the root words meaning “holding together, tying up, binding.” It can also be translated as “integration.” In some traditions (e.g., religious law), it is defined as “self-restraint” or “self-control.” Patanjali used the term to describe the combined force of focus, concentration, and meditation – and he basically devoted a whole chapter of the Yoga Sūtras to the benefits of utilizing samyama. Interestingly, the chapter he devoted to the powers/abilities that come from applying samyama is called “Vibhūti Pada,” which is often translated into English as “Foundation (or Chapter) on Progressing.”

As I have previously mentioned, there are at least twenty different meanings of vibhūti, none of which appear to literally mean “progressing” in English. Instead, the Sanskrit word is most commonly associated with a name of a sage, sacred ashes, and/or great power that comes from great God-given (or God-related) powers. The word can also be translated into English as glory, majesty, and splendor – in the same way that Hod (Hebrew for “humility”) can also be observed as majesty, splendor, and glory in Kabbalism (Jewish mysticism). In this case, the “progressing” to which English translators refer is the process by which one accepts the invitation to a “high[er] location” or plane of existence.

According to yoga sūtra 3.53, applying samyama to a moment and it’s sequence (meaning the preceding and succeeding moments) leads to higher knowledge. This higher knowledge gives one a higher level of discernment; knowledge and discernment that transcends categories and fields of reference. It’s easy to look at what happened after Rosa Parks refused to move, but; to truly understand the power of that single moment, we have to also consider the moments that preceded it.

“You must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right.”

– Rosa Parks

In addition to some of what I’ve already referenced, it’s important to remember that December 1, 1955 wasn’t the first time that a Black person, let alone a Black woman, had defied the unjust laws and social conventions of the time. It wasn’t the first time it had happened that year. Remember, Claudette Colvin’s refusal to move and subsequent arrest happened in the spring of 1955. Furthermore, it wasn’t even the first time that Rosa Parks had been in that situation… with that particular bus driver. In fact, Mrs. Parks and that particular driver (James F. Blake) had had multiple conflicts over the years.

One incident that stands out (because it is often highlighted) was in 1943, when he told her that, after she paid her fair at the front, she had to re-enter at the back of the bus. This was a city ordinance, but some drivers didn’t enforce it. For whatever the reason, there was conflict and when she exited the bus, he drove away before she could re-enter. (Note: This would have been right around the time she started actively working with the NAACP.) While Rosa Parks reportedly decided not to ride with that driver again, the driver was (allegedly) in the habit of driving past her when she was at a stop. Bottom line, there was a lot of water under the bridge between 1943 and 1955. Some of that proverbial water included Mr. Blake’s ongoing conflict with at least one other Black woman, Mrs. Lucille Times.

Mrs. Times, who died in 2021, and her husband Charlie were active members of the NAACP, registered voters, and activists. According to various reports, Lucille Times and James F. Blake were involved in a road rage incident that led to a physical altercation. That physical altercation led to Lucille Times’s decision – during the summer of 1955 – to “disrupt” Mr. Blake’s route by offering African-Americans rides. She continued that practice all the way through the official end of the Montgomery bus boycotts in December of 1956.

Finally, there’s the issue of the seat. Rosa Parks sat down in the “Colored” section of the bus. Somewhere along the route, the bus driver decided to make room for more white passengers by telling Black passengers to move. Then, after some grumbling and resistance, he moved the sign so that anyone who didn’t move (i.e., Rosa Parks) would officially be breaking the law.

“The only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”

– Rosa Parks

So, there was Rosa Parks: Tired after working all day and then shopping for Christmas presents. Tired of people in her community not being guaranteed the rights promised to them. Tired of people in her community being murdered when they worked to legally secure their rights. Tired.

And there was the bus driver, who called the police and filed a complaint.

I will resist assigning any emotional underpinnings to his decisions. I haven’t found any quotes from him that would humanize him and make him more than a stereotype. But, then again, I don’t need to do that. Just as we can put ourselves in the shoes of 15-year old Claudette Colvin or Lucille Times or Rosa Parks, we could put ourselves in his shoes. We can, if it is in our practice, apply samyama to his thoughts (as reflected by his words, deeds, and physical expressions) to know his state of mind, as described in yoga sūtra 3.19. Similarly, we could apply samyama to his heart to deepen that understanding (see yoga sūtras 3.20 and 3.35). Remember, however, that this is not where the practice begins. Additionally, we would only apply samyama in this way to gain a deeper understanding of our own hearts and minds.

“I believe we are here on the planet Earth to live grow up and do what we can to make this world a better place for all people to enjoy freedom.”

– Rosa Parks

PRACTICE NOTES: There is a bit of balance, in the form of symbolic marching, in most of the practices I lead that are related to the Civil Rights Movement. A practice dedicated to Rosa Parks, however, requires us to sit and focus on our roots.

To do what she did, Rosa Parks had to be rooted, grounded, and centered in her practice. She was also prepared and understood the significance of what she was doing – which is why I would typically highlight the literal meaning of vinyāsa (“to place in a special way”); how vinyāsa krama (“to place things in a special way” for a “step-by-step progression”) shows up in all good practices, regardless of the style or tradition; and why certain key/defining moments are in the practice. Finally, I might (as indicated above) place a little extra focus on the power of samyama.

A little something extra…

### “In this undiscovered moment / Lift your head up above the crowd / We could shake this world / If you would only show us how / Your life is now” JM ###

The Black Cyclone (a special Black History note) February 4, 2023

Posted by ajoyfulpractice in "Impossible" People, Abhyasa, Baseball, Changing Perspectives, Dharma, Fitness, Healing Stories, Health, Hope, Life, Loss, Men, Minnesota, Music, One Hoop, Pain, Philosophy, Suffering, Tragedy, Vairagya, Wisdom, Yoga.
Tags: 42, Albert Von Tilzer, Beau of the Fifth Column, Black History Month, Black Sports, Branch Rickey, Buddy Holly, Charles Follis, Charles Follis Foundation, David Vergun, Dr. Mike Miller, God of War, Gus Greenlee, J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson, Jack Norworth, Jackie Robinson, John M. Smith, Lunar New Year, Milt Roberts, Professional Football Researchers Association, Ritchie Valens, Roger Peterson, Val Willingham, Year of the Cat, Year of the Rabbit
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Happy Spring Festival! Happy Carnival! Peace and ease to all during this “Season of Non-violence” and all other seasons!

This is a special post for Friday, February 3^nd, which is also known as “The Day the Music Died. In 2023, it was also the 13^th day of the Spring Festival, which is one of the days when people eat “clean” (more on that in the Friday post). In addition to all of that (and more) it is the anniversary of the birth of a man who (partially) inspired a big, barrier breaking, change in history – a change many people celebrate without ever knowing this particular man’s name.

“Rule 303: If you have the means at hand, you have the responsibility to act.”

“Do what you can, when you can, as much as you can, for as long as you can.”

– the t-shirt and (a paraphrased version of) common refrains on the YouTube channel “Beau of the Fifth Column”

Normally, on Day 13 of the Lunar New Year, I focus on what it means to be clean and practice some kind of “detox” sequence that highlights how the body naturally eliminates waste and how it is just as important for us to let go of things we don’t need physically as it is for us to let go of things that no longer serve us mentally, emotionally, energetically, and/or spiritually. This is also a day when some people celebrate the birthday of the “God of War” – who is associated with empathy and “brotherhood” – and so it can be a good day to reflect on how letting something go can actually bring us closer together.

Sometimes, however, we are not ready to let go. Sometimes, circumstances force us to figure out how to deal with the loss of a friend, a family member, a “brother” or “sister” – even someone we have never (physically) met and will never meet. Just as their is an inhale, a literal “inspiration,” there is an exhale – a literal “expiration” – and part of being alive is dealing with death. The big difference is that when we consciously bring our awareness to our breath, we can consciously and peaceful engage the concept of beginnings and endings.

Unfortunately, everyone isn’t promised peaceful beginnings and endings. Unfortunately, everyone doesn’t get to live long lives and pass peacefully in their sleep, surrounded by people who love them and who treated them well. Like so many recent years, this is one of those years when Lunar New Year celebrations here in the United States have been marred by horrible tragedies and losses that are beyond comprehension. Yet, people continue to come together to figure out how to move forward as a community. People keep connecting in order to honor rituals and traditions despite (or sometimes because of) the fear, anger, frustration, anxiety, grief, and dismay that arises.

People continue to live… and laugh and love… and play music – even though, as I mentioned before, today is the day the music died.

“For years, [Dr. Mike Miller], a research cardiologist, has been studying the effects of happiness — or things that make people happy — on our hearts. He began his research with laughter, and found watching funny movies and laughing at them could actually open up blood vessels, allowing blood to circulate more freely.

Miller thought, if laughter can do that, why not music? So, he tested the effects of music on the cardiovascular system. ‘Turns out music may be one of the best de-stressors — either by playing or even listening to music,’ said Miller.”

– quoted from a 2009 CNN Health segment entitled, “The power of music: It’s a real heart opener” by Val Willingham, CNN Medical Producer

Normally, on this date on the Gregorian calendar, I tell the story of the disastrous “Winter Dance Party” tour and how a plane carrying Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson crashed just outside of Clear Lake, Iowa, today in 1959. The tragic loss of the the three stars and the pilot, Roger Peterson, as they were traveling to Moorhead, MN, is compounded by the fact that they were all so young, that they were all really started to live their lives as husbands and fathers, and that the three musicians were right on the precipice of making sure their names would never be forgotten simply because of their music. Over the years, as I have recounted this story, I have encountered people who were directly connected to the events of 1959, people who remembered when it happened, people who only know the story because of the music the events inspired, and people who realized they only knew the music of the three legends because a popular musician had covered one of their hit singles.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, it is not uncommon for people to hear one of these stories and realize they knew the big picture, but not all of the details. What happens, however, when you realize that for all the details that you know, there’s a missing piece of history that no one ever mentioned?

“‘Follis was a natural hitter and he had an ease about him and a confident smile that always seemed to worry opposing pitchers,’ one report said. ‘As a football player and as a baseball player he gained the respect of his associates and opponents as well by his clean tactics and his gameness,’ said another.”

– quoted from “Charles Follis” by Milt Roberts (originally in Black Sports, Nov. 1975), reproduced in THE COFFIN CORNER: Vol. 2, No. 1 (1980)

Charles W. Follis was born February 3, 1879, in Cloverdale, Virginia. One of nine children born to Catherine Matilda Anderson Follis and James Henry Follis, who worked on a farm, Charles had fours sisters and four brothers (one of whom died from an football-related injury when he was about 19 years old). In 1885, the family moved to Wooster, Ohio, and the eldest Follis son started attending Wooster High School, where he helped establish a football team (on which his brothers would also eventually play). With Charles Follis as it’s captain and lead player, the mostly-white Wooster High School football team was unbeatable and, for the first year of it’s existence, no one could even score against them.

When he graduated from high school, in 1901, Charles Follis enrolled at the University of Wooster (now known as the College of Wooster), a private liberal arts college founded by the Presbyterian Church. While he ended up playing baseball for his university team, he decided to play football with the Wooster Athletic Association. It was while playing football that Charles Follis earned the nickname “The Black Cyclone.” He also earned a reputation an amazingly formidable competitor. He was so good, in fact, that after he played against the all-white Shelby Blues (part of the “Ohio League” that competed for the Ohio Independent Championship (OIC) and would evolve into the National Football League (NFL)), the manager of the Shelby Blues convinced Charles Follis to sign a contract – making Charles “The Black Cyclone” Follis the first African American to play professional football on an integrated team. Frank C. Schiffer, the manager of the Shelby Blues, also got Mr. Follis a job at a hardware store that would accommodate his practice and playing schedule.

About a year after the Shelby Blues signed Charles Follis as a halfback, a young student from Ohio Wesleyan University started playing for pay. That student has a name that will forever be enshrined in sports history and even in the minds of lay sports historians: Branch Rickey.

“Rickey later said: ‘I may not be able to do something about racism in every field, but I can sure do something about it in baseball.’”

– quoted from the “Sports Heroes Who Served: WWI Soldier Helped Desegregate Baseball” by David Vergun, DOD News (dated July 7, 2020, U. S. Department of Defense website)

Charles Follis and Branch Rickey not only played football together as Shelby Blues, they also play against each other when Mr. Rickey coached the Ohio Wesleyan University football team. So, Branch Rickey had a front row seat to witness the athletic ability of Charles Follis as well as the way “The Black Cyclone” handled the adversity of dealing with racism on and off the field. That racism not only caused Mr. Follis to be isolated and separated from team functions – even in his hometown of Wooster – it also lead to insults and (actually, physical) injuries during the games. One of those injuries, or the culmination of those injuries, ended Charles Follis’s football career.

However, Charles Follis wasn’t finished with sports and football wasn’t the only place where ran into Branch Rickey. The two athletes also found themselves in direct competition when they started playing as catchers for Ohio college baseball teams. Even though they were rivals, they seemed to share mutual respect and friendship with each other. Charles Follis became the first African American catcher to move from the college leagues to the Negro League. Meanwhile, Branch Rickey coached college baseball at Ohio Wesleyan – where he coached another African American catcher, Charles Thomas – and then signed a contract with the Terre Haute Hottentots of the Class B Central League, making his professional Major League Baseball (MLB) debut on June 20, 1903.

“In a 1975 Akron Beacon Journal story, the late John M. Smith of Shelby was interviewed a year before his death. As a teenager, Smith watched Follis star for the Shelby Blues.

‘Could he run?’ Smith asked incredulously, ‘Lord almighty! The man was the best I’ve ever seen. Could he run!’”

– quoted from the Akron Beacon Journal clip posted on the Charles Follis Foundation website

In 1905, Charles Follis was fast becoming the superstar of the Cuban Giants, the first fully salaried African American professional baseball team. He was an all-around all star who stole bases, made double and triple plays, and was known as a power hitter as well as one of the most popular and well-liked players on the team. He made headlines during every game and forced other teams to pull out all the stops in an effort to best him. A rival team from Elyria, Ohio, thought they could beat biggest “giant” by bringing in a ringer: Herbert “Buttons” Briggs, a former Chicago Cubs pitcher. On May 16, 1906, the MLB pitcher faced the “cyclone”… and lost, big time. As the first batter, in the first inning, against the first pitch, Charles Follis hit a home run. He literally hit it out of the park and would end the game four-for-six against the pitcher who had previously won 20 games in one MLB season.

Within a few years of that 1906 season opener, three of the biggest names on the field that day had all passed away at young ages: John Bright, the Cuban Giants pitcher died in 1909 or 1908; Herbert Theodore “Buttons” Briggs caught pneumonia in 1910 and died of tuberculosis in 1911; Charles Follis caught pneumonia during a game in 1910 and died April 5, 1910.

“The [old-timers] in Wooster, Shelby, and Cleveland still talk about him today… but historians forget him… young sports fans probably never heard of him before. In Wooster [Cemetery], a thin, weathered headstone, slightly tilted by the winds and snow of more than 65 years, marks his final resting place. Today it is viewed as a local historical site.”

– quoted from “Charles Follis” by Milt Roberts (originally in Black Sports, Nov. 1975), reproduced in THE COFFIN CORNER: Vol. 2, No. 1 (1980)

Around the same time Charles Follis was besting MLB players, his college teammate and rival was moving up to the majors. The only problem was that Branch Rickey’s stats were lacking. Two years into his contract, the St. Louis Browns (formerly the Wisconsin Brewers) became the New York Highlanders (later the New York Yankees). On June 28, 1907, Mr. Rickey, the backup catcher, was forced to play a game while injured. It was a disaster. He couldn’t throw, he struck out three times, and the opposing team (the Washington Senators) stole a whopping 13 bases. Not surprisingly, that was his one and only season with the Highlanders.

Branch Rickey would go back to coaching college football, make another go as a baseball player (1914) and as a baseball manager with the reconstructed St. Louis Browns (1913–1915, 1919). Then, after serving in the United States Army during World War I and spending that final year in the front office of the St. Louis Browns, he became General Manager of the St. Louis Cardinals (which had been the St. Louis Browns née St. Louis Brown Stockings, before the Brewers used the name). The MLB catcher some described as lackluster, excelled as a manager. He was an innovator, especially when dealing with conflict and controversy. He became General Manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1943 and immediately started laying groundwork for some groundbreaking.

In 1945, Branch Rickey and Gus Greenlee, founder and president of the second National Negro League, created the United States League. Mr. Rickey interviewed Jackie Robinson and then signed him to a minor league contract. A good number of people in the United States – even if they don’t know much about baseball – know that Jackie Robinson, #42, broke the color line in major league baseball on April 15, 1947. What people may not know is why Branch Rickey was so determined to make that change. Why he so determined to do what he could – in theory, for people who were perceived as being so different from him.

Even though he would later talk about his experiences as a coach of a Black player and as a member of the military (before the U. S. military integrated), what many people may not know is that, before that, he had a rival, a teammate, a peer, a friend – someone he admired: a man named Charles W. Follis, a man who just happened to be Black.

“On October 17, 1903, Rickey felt the ‘Black Cyclone’s’ full power when he ran their ends dizzy for 20, 25, 35 and 70 yard gains, the last being a touchdown. After that game Rickey praised Follis, calling him ‘a wonder.’ It was the power of his example, his character, and his grace that convinced Rickey, that color could not belie his greatness. The rest is history….”

– quoted from the “Background” section of the Charles Follis Foundation website

PRACTICE NOTES: I actually have several baseball-related sequences and themes in my notebooks. They range from (sort of) silly to (very) serious, from meditative Restorative and Yin Yoga to “slow flow” and vigorous vinyasas. Philosophically, what the all have in common is a focus on teamwork, on doing one’s best and then letting go, and on an awareness of what happens when we become part of something bigger than our individual selves. Physically, what they all have in common is asymmetrically, unilateral poses with special awareness of the feet, hips, core/midsection, and shoulder girdle.

Of course, we can’t have a practice about baseball without a seventh-inning stretch and the wave.

### “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” ~ Jack Norworth and Albert Von Tilzer ###

Bird on Fire (a special Black History note) February 3, 2023

Posted by ajoyfulpractice in "Impossible" People, Art, Changing Perspectives, Healing Stories, Music, New Year, Philosophy, Women, Yoga.
Tags: Alicia Keys, ballet, Black History Month, Carlos Acosta, Dr. Josselli Audain Deans, Igor Stravinsky, Jarrett Hill, Lauren Anderson, Margaret Fuhrer, Misty Copeland, MOBBallet, Raven Wilkinson, Sandra Organ Solis, Sergei Denham, Sylvester Campbell, Tre'vell Anderson, Yakov Polonsky
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Happy Spring Festival! Happy Carnival! Peace and ease to all during this “Season of Non-violence” and all other seasons!

This is a special post for Thursday, February 2nd. Yes, it was Groundhog Day. Yes, it was Groundhog Day (and you can click here to read last year’s related post). It was also the 12th day of the Spring Festival, which is another day when people eat “clean” (more on that in the Friday post).

“Black History is Happening Every Day.”

– a segment on the podcast FANTI, hosted by Jarrett Hill and Tre’vell Anderson

If you spend some time in my classes and/or peruse my blog, it doesn’t take long to notice that I use dates, historical figures, and special events, as jumping off points. They are a way to get everyone on the same page, to give people a frame of reference – especially if I’m going to delve into some aspect of Eastern philosophy that may be unfamiliar to most people in my classes. Sharing people’s stories, cultures, and histories is also a way to cultivate empathy and curiosity. Plus, I’m a fan of knowledge and, well… the more you know….

As much as I endeavor to diversify my “curriculum” and playlists (and have been known to “randomly” throw in extra Irish musicians and historical figures at the beginning of March), I don’t typically spend a whole month talking about non-religious cultural observations. Oh, sure, I’ve devoted several Aprils-worth of classes to poetry and if you show up at a class during the eleventh month of the Gregorian calendar, there’s about a 20% chance I’ll be sporting a moustache (if you mou’, you mou’), but I don’t really focus on one group of people during a single month (or week). When I mention that it’s Black History Month – or Native American Heritage Month or Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month – that reference is just a footnote at the beginning of the month (or week), because I agree with two of my favorite podcasters: Black History is Happening Every Day! Actually, I think that’s true of every demographic in America: everyone is making history every day.

Sometimes, unfortunately, human history is really tragic and horrific. In fact, someone once gave my a calendar full of really horrible things that had been done to African Americans on any given day throughout the year. I appreciated the gift – and have learned a lot from it – but it’s never my go-to reference source. It’s not that I steer away from hard and tragic stuff; but that’s not all of life. Life is full of ups and downs and lots of things in between. So, I highlight people, events, and things that I can see as a reflection of life. When I remember or discover something and/or someone that resonates with me, I consider how it can be a gateway into the philosophical practice. This is very much in keeping with the way ancient philosophy (and religious) teachers taught. It’s just that rather than making up stories (parables), I’m using true stories and tales. And, more often than not, someone shares with me that they had never heard the story I told or had forgotten it and appreciated the reminder.

Recently, however, I have noticed how much the subjects on which I choose to focus – the kinds of subjects I have chosen for over a decade – are being “outlawed” by certain policymakers around the country. Recently, I have started thinking about how much of the history that was not being told up until recently is getting banned. Recently, I have thought more and more about the ramifications of losing things we may never get back; of losing the truth we may never get back. So, for Black History Month 2023, I am going to highlight some people and events that don’t get a lot of “air time.” They may not all be the focus of the next few weeks of practice, but they will be here… for anyone who is curious.

“She’s living in a world and it’s on fireFilled with catastrophe, but she knows she can fly away

Oh, oh oh oh ohShe got both feet on the groundAnd she’s burning it down

Oh, oh oh oh oh, oh oh oh ohShe got her head in the cloudsAnd she’s not backing down

This girl is on fireThis girl is on fireShe’s walking on fireThis girl is on fire

Looks like a girl, but she’s a flameSo bright, she can burn your eyes”

– quoted from the song “Girl on Fire” by Alicia Keys

Earlier in my life, I had the great pleasure of working with some of the most amazing classical ballet dancers on the planet – including several whose presence on the stage was groundbreaking and newsworthy. Sandra Organ, Lauren Anderson, and Carlos Acosta became, respectively, the first African American ballet dancer at Houston Ballet, one of the first African American principal dancers at a major classical ballet company, and the first (Black) Cuban male principal dancer at a major classical ballet company (outside of Cuba). Each of them made it possible for more dancers of color to make a name for themselves. Each of them continues to contribute to the world of dance. What doesn’t always make the news, however, is that each of them dance (and now direct) in the footsteps of Raven Wilkinson.

Born February 2, 1935, in New York City, Anne Raven Wilkinson loved dance at a very early age. Her mother, Anne James Wilkinson, studied ballet in Chicago before getting married and starting a family with Dr. Frost Birnie Wilkinson, a dentist who had attended Dartmouth University and graduated from Harvard Medical School. After watching Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo performing Coppélia (when she was about five), her mother tried to register her for classes at the School of American Ballet. Historically, students could start training at New York City Ballet’s feeder school if they were 8 years old or would turn 8 during the year they started at the school. The Wilkinsons, however, were told that Raven had to be 9. Not to be thwarted, Raven was signed up for lessons in the Dalcroze method, a style of music education. When she turned 9, her uncle (a surgeon who graduated from Darmouth and Harvard) gifted her lessons at the Swoboda School, later known as the Ballet Russe School, where she trained with dancers from the Bolshoi Theatre.

In 1951, Sergei Denham, director of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, bought the Swoboda School, making it a feeder school for the very company that had inspired Raven Wilkinson to dance. She studied under the new leadership for three years before she auditioned. Even though at least one of her peers told her she would not get hired because she was Black, she learned the aesthetics and dance vocabulary she would need to technically blend in. Then, in 1954, she auditioned for Sergei Denham for the first time. In all, she would audition three times (and get rejected twice) before she was hired on a temporary basis. It was temporary, she was told, because the director was considering hiring another dancer (in Chicago) partway through the tour.

“During that same meeting, I also told Mr. Denham that I didn’t want to put the company in danger, but I also never wanted to deny what I was. If someone questioned me directly, I couldn’t say, ‘No, I’m not black.’ Some of the other dancers suggested that I say I was Spanish. But that’s like telling the world there’s something wrong with what you are.”

– Raven Wilkinson quoted from the Pointe Magazine interview ” Raven Wilkinson’s Extraordinary Life: An Exclusive Interview” by Margaret Fuhrer (dated June 1, 2014)

Raven Wilkinson started dancing for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in 1955 – 14 years before a company devoted to African American ballet dancers, Dance Theatre of Harlem, opened across the street from where her father’s office. By her second season she was dancing as a soloist.* She toured the United States while dancing roles in Les Sylphide, Le Beau Danube, Giselle, Graduation Ball, Harlequinade, and Swan Lake. Of course, touring the United States in the 1950s meant dealing with segregation and racism in the South. On the one hand, Ms. Wilkinson was light-skinned and could “pass” – and classical ballet was/is so closely associated with whiteness that almost no one considered the possibility that there was a Black dancer in the company, even though there were dancers from South America. On the other hand, she had no intention of lying. The company had encounters with the Ku Klux Klan – in and out of their robes – and in 1957, a “whites only” hotel owner in Atlanta, Georgia questioned her race and she answered as she had always intended to answer: truthfully.

After the incident in Atlanta, Sergei Denham and the company took extra-ordinary measures to ensure the safety of Raven Wilkinson and the other dancers. Sometimes, segregation forced her to travel ahead of the company. Sometimes, segregation and racism forced her out of roles. A member of the artistic staff told her that she had hit the proverbial “glass ceiling” and that she would be better off retiring and starting an “African dance” company. When she pointed out that she wasn’t trained in African dance, Sergei Denham backed her up, even offered her a featured role in Raymonda. She would appreciate his support later in life, but at the time, she was increasingly frustrated. She retired from the the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in 1961; but she did so with the intention of finding another, more progressive, company. After being rejected by the other major companies in New York City, she gave up, started working a “regular gig,” and even considered becoming a nun. Two years after leaving the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, Raven Wilkinson put her pointe shoes back on and went back to dance. Then she got a call from a Black dancer in the Netherlands.

“‘I regret that he was not seen in the United States as a dancer because there was living proof of a danseur noble no matter what color, and he was amazing.’”

– quoted from MOBBallet.org (cited, Dr. Josselli Audain Deans PhD, Dance Magazine, November 1997, pages 87-88)

Sylvester Campbell, was an African American ballet danseur from Oklahoma, who trained at the (historically black) Jones-Haywood School of Ballet (founded Washington D. C., in 1941) and at the School of American Ballet (the school that, years earlier, rejected Raven Wilkinson for being too young). In 1960, Mr. Campbell started dancing principal roles at Het Nationale Ballet (the Dutch National Ballet), After dancing there for several years, he convinced Raven Wilkinson to relocate to Holland where she become a second soloist and expanded her repertoire, adding roles in Serenade, Giselle, Symphony in C, La Valse, The Snow Maiden, and The Firebird (which was originally created for the original Ballet Russes).

Both Americans would eventually leave the Netherlands because they were homesick. Sylvester Campbell went on to be a principal dancer at Royal Winnipeg Ballet and then director of the dance Department of the Baltimore School for the Arts. Raven Wilkinson danced with the New York City Opera (until 1985) and then appeared as a character dancer and actor until 2011, when the company was no longer in residence at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. She also taught ballet at the Harlem School of the Arts.

All the way up until her death in 2018, Raven Wilkinson was heralded as a role model and mentor for dancers like Misty Copeland, the first African American principal dancer at American Ballet Theatre.

“I loved Holland, but I missed my own country. I missed the very thing we complain about when we’re here—America’s diversity of philosophy, of feeling, of custom. It makes for a difficult society sometimes, and yet you feel its absence in a place like Holland, where everyone has the same history. So I came home.”

– Raven Wilkinson quoted from the Pointe Magazine interview ” Raven Wilkinson’s Extraordinary Life: An Exclusive Interview” by Margaret Fuhrer (dated June 1, 2014)

PRACTICE NOTES: If I were to lead a practice dedicated to Raven Wilkinson, I’d focus on how the situations that make it hard to practice satya (“truth”), are also the situations when it is most important to practice that second yama (external “restraint” or universal “commandment”). There would probably be an emphasis on poses with external hip rotation, counterbalanced with poses that internally rotate the hips and thighs – plus something to open up the heart and the throat chakras (as they are related to “the gifts we extend out to the world,” determination, and expression). There would also be some awareness of “long lines,” articulating the feet, and dancing the arms. Of course, we would work our way into Naṭarājāsana (“Dancer’s Pose”) – all while listening to the highs and lows of Igor Stravinsky’s “L’Oiseau de feu” (“The Firebird”).

*NOTE: By some accounts, Raven Wilkinson was promoted to soloist, but other accounts indicate that she was given soloist roles without the title (or the paycheck that might have come with it).

Errata: Raven Wilkinson taught at the Harlem School of the Arts not at Dance Theatre of Harlem as implied by my earlier type-o.

### “Firebirds sing by night” ~ Yakov Polonsky ###

FTWMI: Speaking of Rivers… (in the new year) February 1, 2023

Posted by ajoyfulpractice in "Impossible" People, Art, Books, Changing Perspectives, Healing Stories, Hope, Langston Hughes, Life, Music, New Year, One Hoop, Pain, Poetry, Suffering, Wisdom, Writing, Yoga.
Tags: Black History Month, Carter G. Woodson, Year of the Cat, Year of the Rabbit
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Happy New Year! Happy Carnival! Peace and ease to all during this “Season of Non-violence” and all other seasons!

For Those Who Missed It: A versions of the following information was posted in 2021 and 2022. Class details and links have been updated. Please note that the eleventh day of the Lunar New Year is mostly a “break day,” although some people will honor their son-in-laws.

“I’ve known rivers:

I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.”

– from the poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” by Langston Hughes

Since 1976, February 1^st has marked the beginning of Black History Month in the United States of America. I always found it curious: Why February, the shortest month of the year (even during leap years)? I sometimes wondered if the reason had anything to do with Langston Hughes, who was born today in 1901.*

Born James Mercer Langston Hughes, the poet was a prominent member of the Harlem Renaissance and the first Black American to earn a living solely from writing and public lectures. In addition to poetry (including jazz poetry, which he started writing in high school), he wrote novels, plays, essays, and letters…so many letters. He wrote so many letters, in fact, that at one point he was writing 30 – 40 letters a day and, by the end of his life, he could have filled 20 volumes of books with his letters.

He traveled the world, wrote about his experiences in Paris, Mexico, West Africa, the Azores and Canary Islands, Holland, France, Italy, the Soviet Union, and the Caribbean – but he always came home to Harlem. After all, his patrons were in Harlem. They were also, in many ways, his inspiration, the very people about whom he said that he wrote: “workers, roustabouts, and singers, and job hunters on Lenox Avenue in New York, or Seventh Street in Washington or South State in Chicago—people up today and down tomorrow, working this week and fired the next, beaten and baffled, but determined not to be wholly beaten, buying furniture on the installment plan, filling the house with roomers to help pay the rent, hoping to get a new suit for Easter—and pawning that suit before the Fourth of July.” He made a name for himself specifically writing about the Black experience, but (in doing so) he wrote about the American experience.

“Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.

I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.

I like a pipe for a Christmas present,

or records—Bessie, bop, or Bach.

I guess being colored doesn’t make me not like

the same things other folks like who are other races.

So will my page be colored that I write?

Being me, it will not be white.

But it will be

a part of you, instructor.

You are white—

yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.

That’s American.”

– quoted from the poem ”Theme for English B” by Langston Hughes

Being an African-American born at the beginning of the 20^th Century meant that Mr. Hughes could easily trace his heritage back to slavery. Both of his paternal great-grandmothers were enslaved and both of his paternal great-grandfathers owned enslaved people. However, he could also trace his heritage to freedom and to a time when there was no question about freedom – as well as the time when people appreciated their freedom in new ways.

His maternal grandmother, Mary Patterson, was African-American, French, English, and Indigenous American. She was also the first woman to attend Oberlin College. She married a man, Lewis Sheridan Leary, also of mixed heritage, who died in 1859 while participating in John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry and eventually married her second husband, Charles Henry Langston. The senior Langston, along with his brother John Mercer Langston, was an abolitionist and leader of the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, who would eventually become a teacher and voting rights activist. The Langstons’ daughter, Caroline (Carrie), would become a school teacher and the mother of the great poet.

“So boy, don’t you turn back.

Don’t you set down on the steps

’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.

Don’t you fall now—

For I’se still goin’, honey,

I’se still climbin’,

And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.”

– quoted from the poem “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes

Raised primarily by his mother and maternal grandmother, Langston Hughes showed a definite talent and interest in writing at an early age. He was also devoted to books. Despite being academically inclined, he struggled with the racism in school – even when it seemed to benefit him – because he couldn’t escape the misconceptions, marginalization, and oppression that came with the stereotypes.

Still, he persisted. He attended Lincoln University, a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) in Chester County, Pennsylvania, where he was the classmate of the then-future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. And, when he had the opportunity to share his poetry with a popular white poet, whose poetry “sang” (and was meant to be sung), he took advantage of the moment – even though he was working as a busboy at a New York hotel where the poet (Vachel Lindsay) was having dinner.

“I dream a world where all
Will know sweet freedom’s way,
Where greed no longer saps the soul
Nor avarice blights our day.
A world I dream where black or white,
Whatever race you be,
Will share the bounties of the earth
And every man is free,”

– quoted from “I Dream A World” by Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes and his words left an indelible mark on the world. As Black History Month is all about recognizing African-Americans who were influential to our society – but not always recognized by society; it’s not surprising that I often wondered if Langston Hughes’s birthday being on the 1^st was the reason Black History Month is in February. Well, as it turns out, it’s just one more example of serendipity.

Created in 1926 by Carter G. Woodson, an African-American historian who was the son of formerly enslaved people, the annual celebration initially started as “Negro History Week” – and it was the second week in February for fifty years. Mr. Woodson started the week so that it coincided with the birthday of President Abraham Lincoln (2/12/1809) and the observed/assumed birthday of Frederick Douglass (2/14/1818), the abolitionist, who escaped slavery at the age of 20. The existence of this heritage month has inspired so many heritage and cultural observation throughout the year that the calendar, in some ways, reflects the United States: diverse and (academically) segregated. It has also changed the way some aspects of American history are taught.

“I look at my own body

With eyes no longer blind—

And I see that my own hands can make

The world that’s in my mind.

Then let us hurry, comrades,

The road to find.

– quoted from the poem “I look at the world” by Langston Hughes

Please join me today (Wednesday, February 1^st) at 4:30 PM or 7:15 PM for a yoga practice on Zoom. Use the link from the “Class Schedules” calendar if you run into any problems checking into the class. You will need to register for the 7:15 PM class if you have not already done so. You can request an audio recording of this practice via a comment below or by emailing myra (at) ajoyfulpractice.com.

Wednesday’s playlist is available on YouTube and Spotify. [Look for “Langston’s Theme for Jimmy 2022”]

*2022 NOTE: According to most printed biographies (that I checked), Langston Hughes was born in 1902. However, many digital sources indicate that he was born in 1901 – and this earlier date is based on research and fact checking reported for the New York Times by Jennifer Schuessler (in 2018). Curiously, the 1940 census listed his birth as “abt 1905;” however, this information would have been given to a census taker by one of the poet’s roommates. (Additionally, we know from one his poems that Langston Hughes didn’t think very highly of the “census man” and the accuracy of census information.)

In the spirit of generosity (“dana”), the Zoom classes, playlists, and blog posts are freely given and freely received. If you are able to support these teachings, please do so as your heart moves you. (NOTE: You can donate even if you are “attending” a practice that is not designated as a “Common Ground Meditation Center” practice, or you can purchase class(es). Donations to Common Ground are tax deductible; class purchases are not necessarily deductible.)

Revised 2/2023.

### KEEP ON A-CLIMBIN’ ON ###

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A Joyful Practice

The Space Between Need, Conceive, & Invention (a special Black History note) February 14, 2023

“‘Come , now,’ I said, ‘let’s make a city in speech from the beginning. Our need, as it seems, will make it.’”

– quoted from the exchange between Socrates and Adeimantus in 2.XI of The Republic of Plato, translated and with an interpretative essay by Allan Bloom, 1968 (with a new introduction by Adam Kirsch)

(1894 translation by Benjamin Jowett: “Then, I said, let us begin and create in idea a State; and yet the true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention.”)

“James’ approach to learning sounds very familiar: ‘If I had a screwdriver and a pair of pliers, anything that could be opened was in danger. I had this need to know what was inside.’”

– quoted from “James West Began 40 Years at Bell Labs with World-Changing Microphone Tech” by Mike Szczys (posted at hackaday.com on February 17, 2021)

– quoted from the Biz & IT section of Ars Technica, in an article entitled “Listen up: James West forever changed the way we hear the world – Now in his 80s, the legendary inventor still pursues research and fights for education.” by Kevin Murnane (dated 5/8/2016)

Now more people understand why the fear is there.”

– quoted from the Acoustics Today interview conducted by Hilary Kates Varghese, entitled “Being a Black Scholar, James West as told to Hilary Kates Varghese” (Winter 2020, Volume 16, Issue 4)

“I found Bell Labs to be among the few places that I felt as a Black male, that I would have a comfortable and prosperous career. I measured and monitored this is terms of the number of underrepresented minorities and women that I saw in roles that I might eventually want to be a part of.”

– quoted from the Acoustics Today interview conducted by Hilary Kates Varghese, entitled “Being a Black Scholar, James West as told to Hilary Kates Varghese” (Winter 2020, Volume 16, Issue 4)

“I turned down the lower level management opportunities because I did not see a clear ladder of progress in management as a Black male. I remained in the lab and retired in 2001 at the highest rank of non-management, a Bell Labs Fellow. ”

– quoted from the Acoustics Today interview conducted by Hilary Kates Varghese, entitled “Being a Black Scholar, James West as told to Hilary Kates Varghese” (Winter 2020, Volume 16, Issue 4)

“‘My father is my hero, role model, my greatest inspiration,’ [Ellington] West, 34, once told an interviewer.”

– quoted from the Citybiz+ article entitled “Sonavi Lab’s CEO Ellington West: Black Entrepreneur On A Mission To Fight Bias And Save Lives” (dated August 10, 2022)

A Tree of Many Seasons (a special Black History note) February 13, 2023

“[The president of the Tuscaloosa Branch of the NAACP, Lisa Young,] she was ‘angry and part of me feels like we failed our students. We want to see what we can do to assist them, and make their school a safe place.’”

– quoted from the Tuscaloosa News article entitled “Hillcrest High students say they were told to limit Black History Month program” by The Associated Press (pub. Feb. 9, 2023)

– Mrs. Juanita Jewel Craft, quoted from The Black Women Oral History Project, Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University (interview conducted by Mrs. Dorothy R. Robinson (01/20/1977)

– Mrs. Dorothy R. Robinson, quoted from The Black Women Oral History Project, Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University (Juanita Jewel Craft interview conducted by Mrs. Dorothy R. Robinson (01/20/1977)

There was a complete circle. Students from SMU and other areas around Dallas joined us in our protest.

The thing that would worry me was that a lot of older people could not see our need, or did not join us. I‘ve had friends to say, ‘I came down to see the line.’ I would immediately ask them, ‘Did you bring a bottle of Coke? Or did you bring a sandwich to one of those kids?’

And I have seen those kids so dedicated to breaking the chain that was binding them. But they were, would [pause] – They would walk until their shoes became unbearable and they would continue to walk until they‘d worn out the feet of their hose.”

– Mrs. Juanita Jewel Craft, quoted from The Black Women Oral History Project, Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University (interview conducted by Mrs. Dorothy R. Robinson (01/20/1977)

– Mrs. Juanita Jewel Craft, quoted from The Black Women Oral History Project, Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University (interview conducted by Mrs. Dorothy R. Robinson (01/20/1977)

“I was really disturbed when they told me there that there wasn‘t a law in the State of Texas that would protect them. Well, I said, ‘If we don‘t have a law, we‘re going to get some laws, because this is ridiculous.”

– Mrs. Juanita Jewel Craft, quoted from The Black Women Oral History Project, Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University (interview conducted by Mrs. Dorothy R. Robinson (01/20/1977)

“My life does not belong to me. I have no particular family, some cousins, but I have nobody that I‘m particularly responsible to. Therefore, I have adopted everybody. and I feel that if I can make any contribution to the lives of any person I want to be about that.”

– Mrs. Juanita Jewel Craft, quoted from The Black Women Oral History Project, Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University (interview conducted by Mrs. Dorothy R. Robinson (01/20/1977)

### “I wish I could share all the love that’s in my heart / Remove all the bars that keep us apart / I wish you could know what it means to be me / Then you’d see and agree / That every man should be free” ~ Nina Simone ###

From the Earth (a special Black History 2.5-for-1 note) February 11, 2023

“You get a car! You get a car! You get a car! You get a car! You get a car! You get a car! You get a car! You get a car! Everybody gets a car! Everybody gets a car! Everybody gets a car! Everybody gets a car!…. You get a car! You get a car! You get a car!”

– Oprah Winfrey on The Oprah Winfrey Show, original airdate: September 13, 2004

Yoga Sūtra 2.36: satyapratişţhāyām kriyāphalāśrayatvam

– “When a yogi is established in truthfulness, actions begin to bear fruit. [Truth is the foundation for fruitful action.]”

– quoted from the Introduction to A Book of Medical Discourses, In Two Parts by Rebecca Crumpler, M. D.

“Her later writings give no indication that she was aware of her status as the first black woman MD in the United States; indeed, until the later twentieth century, scholars had assigned that distinction to Rebecca Cole….”

– quoted from the profile entitled “Crumpler, Rebecca Davis Lee” in African American Lives, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham

What we need o-day in every community, is, not a shrinking or flagging of womanly usefulness in this field of labor, but renewed and courageous readiness to do when and whatever duty calls.”

– quoted from “Chapter XIX. General Remarks.” in A Book of Medical Discourses, In Two Parts by Rebecca Crumpler, M. D.

– quoted from “Out of Sight, Out of Mind” in “2 – Poisoning A Planet” of Earth Detox: How and Why We Must Clean Up Our Planet by Julian Cribb

“The first girls to attend [the Coretta Scott King Young Women’s Leadership Academy] were previously at the city’s lowest-ranked middle school. This year the school’s eighth graders earned one of the highest scores of all public schools in Atlanta on a state exam.

– quoted from the O, The Oprah Magazine (June 2011) article “Clean Power: Lisa Jackson Fights for Our Right to Healthy Air, Water and Land: Somebody has to do it. We’re lucky it’s her.” by Lisa Depaulo

‘The conundrum is that the richer and more prosperous we become, the more we think that the environment is all taken care of,’ Jackson says. It’s simply not the case. ‘I have seen land completely ravaged by pollution. Environmental protection is not a spectator sport.’”

– quoted from the O, The Oprah Magazine (June 2011) article “Clean Power: Lisa Jackson Fights for Our Right to Healthy Air, Water and Land: Somebody has to do it. We’re lucky it’s her.” by Lisa Depaulo

### “If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it.” ~ Jesse Jackson ###

Space and the Power of Hearing(s) (a special Black History note, w/a Tuesday link) February 8, 2023

“It’s a bad habit we have: We tell the tale of the murder and not the murdered.”

“I’ll also explain why my research has enraged so many people who claim to be experts in the Ripper case.”

“If you want to know how we got the Ripper story so wrong, what those mistakes tell us about ourselves, and why putting the record straight makes some people so very angry, join me, Hallie Rubenhold for Bad Women: The Ripper Retold.”

— quoted from the podcast trailer for Season 1of Bad Women: The Ripper Retold, hosted by Hallie Rubenhold

Click here to read my 2021 post about practicing santoşā on the 7th.

— quoted from Bhamwiki.com (citing Gordon, Tom (May 2, 2018) “Civil decency. Human honesty.” B-Metro

“In this state of withdrawal, ‘Great Disincarnation’ the mental coverings composed of rajas and tamas dwindle away and the light of sattwa is revealed.”

— quoted from How to Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali (3:42), translated and with commentary by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood

“Remembering their sharp and pretty Tunes for Sacco and Vanzetti, I said: Here too’s a cause divinely spun For those whose eyes are on the sun, Here in epitome Is all disgrace And epic wrong. Like wine to brace The minstrel heart, and blare it into song.

Surely, I said, Now will the poets sing. But they have raised no cry. I wonder why.”

— quoted from the poem “Scottsboro, Too, Is, Worth Its Song” by Countee Cullen

— quoted from the special concurrence opinion for Beck v. State, 396 So. 2d 645 (1980) by Alabama Supreme Court Justice Oscar W. Adams

“In the early seventies, blacks argued for bifurcated jury trials, and this Court today has mandated such for the State of Alabama. In the seventies, blacks asked that sentences for rape and other offenses be not discriminatorily and freakishly imposed.”

— quoted from the special concurrence opinion for Beck v. State, 396 So. 2d 645 (1980) by Alabama Supreme Court Justice Oscar W. Adams

“Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg famously said, ‘I’m sometimes asked, “When will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court]?” And I say when there are nine. People are shocked. But there’d been nine men, and nobody’s ever raised a question about that.’

— quoted from “What Is Diverse Enough” in “Chapter 4. A Clear Case” of Creating Cultures of Belonging: Cultivating Organization where Women and Men Thrive by Beth Birmingham and Eeva Sallinen Simard (forward by Myal Greene and Emily Sarmiento)

### 7 of 9 (1857) ###

Salt of the Earth (a special Black History note for Monday) February 7, 2023

“Next to air and water, salt is perhaps the greatest necessity of life. It is the only condiment of the poor. Cattle cannot live without salt. Salt is a necessary article in many manufactures. it is also a rich manure.

There is no article like salt, outside water, by taxing which the State can reach even the starving millions, the sick, the maimed and the utterly helpless. The salt tax constitutes the most inhuman poll tax that the ingenuity of man can devise.”

– quoted from a letter by M. K. Gandhi, printed in Young India, Vol. XII, Ahmedabad: February 27, 1930

Love does not burn others, it burns itself.”

– quoted from “Some Rules of Satyagraha” by M. K. Gandhi, printed in Young India, Vol. XII, Ahmedabad: February 27, 1930

While I do not go into explicit details, you may skip to the next big banner quote if needed.

Yoga Sūtra 2.35: ahimsāpratişţhāyām tatsannidhau vairatyāgah

– “In the company of a yogi established in non-violence, animosity disappears.”

– quoted from “King, Marjorie Edwina Pitter (1921-1996)” by Mary T. Henry, posted on historylink.org (Juana Racquel Royster Horn cited)

“It was 1939 in Seattle, and although the city had none of the formal ‘Jim Crow’ segregation laws common in the South, the result was often the same.

Being black and finding a job often meant menial work and a lower standard of living. For some black people, discrimination crushed any hope of working at all.”

– quoted from the article in The Seattle Times entitled “Seattle In The Old Days: No ‘Jim Crow’ Laws, But Blacks Were Held Back Just The Same” by Daryl Strickland (dated Jun 27, 1994)

– Rachel Naomi Remen (b. 2/8/1938) as quoted in At Your Service: Living the Lessons of Servant Leadership by Charles E. Wheaton

Having the Mettle/Metal to Mix it Up (a special Black History 2-for-1 note) February 6, 2023

### “I wish I could share all the love that’s in my heart / Remove all the bars that keep us apart / I wish you could know what it means to be me / Then you’d see and agree /
That every man should be free” ~ Nina Simone ###

Click here to read my 2021 post about practicing santoşā on the 7^th.

“Remembering their sharp and pretty
Tunes for Sacco and Vanzetti,
I said:
Here too’s a cause divinely spun
For those whose eyes are on the sun,
Here in epitome
Is all disgrace
And epic wrong.
Like wine to brace
The minstrel heart, and blare it into song.

Surely, I said,
Now will the poets sing.
But they have raised no cry.
I wonder why.”