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| Our site features information about ancestral souls like [Nancy Lee Bannister, born abt 1825, 61st Generation] in picture above right who was born free, nurtured and re-educated to be employed as a indentured servant/enslaved to the family of Robert E. Lee. She had the vantage point of seeing and hearing degenerating ante-bellum years of pains, passions and pretensions that cannot be generalized as a color matter, certainly not purple coloring made famous by fiction writer Alice Walker. Her ancestral stories heard likely excluded goodly men as topics. So, she could not "go and tell manifestations of the good news up from slavery," contradicting "Birth of a Nation" and "Gone With the Wind." She is one of our site references about gifted and talented writers and actors: who do not imagine stories that functionally matter to vulnerable youth. We suspect that all demographic groups get their share of gifted births from God; but what good of gifts used to denigrate others as less than others?
Alice was educated to admire great writers like fellow alumni Margaret Mitchell but lacked her story telling inheritances about life and times that matter to millions of people in war and peace such as 19th century military veterans returning to their families and homes. Most, if not all published and praised African-American writers avoid mentioning men or women in wartimes as though such does not matter in a nation that is at war at least every 10-15 years. We think the problem is an absence of knowledge, substituted by trash-talk and perhaps entertainment.
Indeed, if the gifted and talented of any ethnic group are proponents or silent about excluding goodness minded men of color from historical America, there should be little wonder about a society that has found ways and means to incarcerate more young Black men than existed at beginning of the Civil War in 1861. Mind you remember a lot deserve to be isolated and incarcerated but far more are what slave owner records classified as "infirmed" (mentally ill/crazy/crippled) and thus not taxable as usable property because unable to work. Indeed, many hapless Africans sold and hauled into slavery abroad most likely suffered hereditary mental deficiencies; and often deliberately mated in slave owner breeding schemes including "legitimate rape" resulting in pregnancy such as depicted in Alice Walker's rape scene denigration she likely heard by hearsay about the olden days of privileged "big bad buck studs" for pay and play even 40 years up from bondage. Neither Alice, Whoopi or Steven Spielberg understood rape never generated pursuit of goodness, certainly not missionaries to Liberia. Our issue herein for new writers is that there are stories to be written and told beyond Hollywood.
The problem in Virginia was so bad in the immediate after-math of the Civil War in 1865 (with officially described colored lunatics) that functional African-American and White Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian pastors joined together in prompting the racially integrated new state legislature to establish Central State Hospital in 1870 (image on right) even before same functional believers established Virginia State College in 1882. We think their plight as men with power was to get it right: race-based affirmative action. They had limited resources and consensus to help gather and protect mentally challenged youth; versus race-based reasoning to build a college for training talented youth to teach potential mothers and fathers how to read, write, raise children and earn a living. These challenges still very much remain with too many self-described "best and brightest" functionally disengaged from tedious matters in generating new and better generations of believers in the functional faith that honest labor matters. How do such values emerge? In the wombs, homes, churches, schools, or neighborhoods of "matriarchal nothingness."
Herein is a related silent topic about historical labor opportunities and wrongs against day workers including women who for various reasons do not have or want a full-time job. Labor laws and lack of business enterprises (made impossible by neighborhood resident bad youth) discourage and stop men seeking a day's earnings for a day's work for many reasons, including alcohol and drugs. A traditional day worker was choked to death in the name of New York law for selling loose cigarettes to buyers who could not afford to buy a full pack sold and taxed in normal non-existent neighborhood stores in fear of crime. Our criticism of the Black Lives Matter advocates is that they seemingly do not comprehend magnitude of a societal determination for the past 50 years to exclude rather than include men that ought to matter. It is not all the fault of labor unions that force contractors and other business entities to avoid hiring day workers: a day's work for a day's pay.
We believe that writers like Margaret Mitchell and [Alex Haley, generation 65] demonstrated that tales from parents grand-parents are the best means and method of researching telling stories about the past using some historically documented content, .... rather than degenerate make believe (like gangsta rap and free-style quarter court basketball without nets, referees, or scorecards.) Prior generation values about victories matter in what new writers see and hear. We do worry there are many "Jason Blair's" gifted and talented, but degenerating "the least of us" by their behavior. Nancy Lee's observations were unlike those make-believe years described by famed writer Margaret Mitchell for her "Gone With The Wind" heroine Scarlett O'Hara and Hattie McDaniel's portrayal of slave era "Mammies." And the very regal actress laughed all the way to the bank, more or less affirming that Americans with some, mostly or all African heritage have never been monolithic in their attitudes and behaviors. Certainly not beliefs, faith, enlightenment, enterprising endeavors or education.
The site is about functions and stories that too many actors, artists, professors, pundits and preachers have little or no interest in knowing or telling new generations what past generations of "me and we" saw and heard before urban fiction imaginations such as the Post World War I so-called "Harlem Renaissance" .... that at most spanned the years 1920-1930 (about one-third the genetic propagation span) of believer generations such as Langston Hughes (image on left). His life and works are made more understandable in the functional faith by researching the Madison Hemings' Story. We believe Langston Hughes likely believed he had a moral inheritance in the Hemings, McCoy and Hughes lineage ... up from slavery. The fallacy of the consequent, in due course, is the absence of knowledge and understanding that progress in the pursuit of goodness is about family generations of individual achievements like our beloved Robinson Generations that can be identified and traced by many common characteristics such as: functional faith, hope for others and loving their moral heritage. Family relationships and caring traditions are also documented by common first names used by more than a single generation and location (not de-generations often confused with census count households).
Sadly, far too many talented writers like August Wilson enriched themselves by portraying degeneration as normal states of nature among millions of slave descendents not deserving to live and prosper up from slavery. Booker Talifero Washington (image on right) along with many other enlightened writers like Langston Hughes devoted much of their lives in efforts to combat degenerations in the faith and functions of living well - with inner souls. Yet, the arts matter most, second only to parents and grand-parents among other elder family members in what youth see and hear. Artistic comedy, portrayals and degenerate musical sounds offer not only exhibitions of skills and talent but also money to be had by their product in the advocacy of "nothingness" among "the least of us." Richard Pryor mastered the words and gestures of generation genocide no longer humorous. Artistic portrayals matter and can hurt or help such as artistic presentations during the Second World War when Hollywood generated three to five movies a week during 1942-1946 inspiring men, women and children to support the war effort; but not a single one depicting any of the one-million plus Black men in uniform as patriots or hero's. There are still a lot of folks who remember that deliberate denigration by Hollywood that added insult to injury by a post-war (year 1946) production entitled "Home of the Brave" featuring a cowardly Black sailor in a make-believe Navy construction unit. And it still mattered during a time-period that African-Americans were struggling to integrate the rigidly segregated Navy.
Denzel Washington award winning characterizations of African-American (degenerates) in military and police services as misfits and undeserving of admiration among significant others including boys Black, Brown or White. We admire football great and actor Jim Brown for refusing to accept such roles projecting ghetto characteristics as functional norms of Black men in positions of power. It is a betrayal of the faith for any artist to use their God given gifts and talents to ever denigrate in the name of art and claim to show both sides in their craft? When and wherein is the other side (in war or peace) shown about "the least of us" that is acceptable to Hollywood? "To Kill a Mocking Bird" by Harper Lee? Thus, the pursuit of goodness is "held harmless" as a functional doctrine for new generations to gain spiritual nourishment and strength to help generate goodness in their offspring versus harms way ie. ignorance (including artists propagating violence), poverty and disease (includes mental illness spanning lifetimes). Two consecutive degenerations of ghetto concentrated births by under educated unemployable fathers and mothers. And, "why doth the heathen rage?" And, imagine foolish things such as seen and heard in their rap lyrics about bitches, whores and cops? Where is King Solomon?
Reality is that functional prejudices against profiled youth in the society of 300 million people matters a lot more than young lives of many colors including Black, Ebony, Brown, White characterizations of goodness versus heathenism. Social media organizing by gifted and talented youth who can read and write should not ignore dominant prejudiced societal beliefs past, present and future girls to literate motherhoods of lasting loves that can theoretically generate "The New Negro." The book was fervently pursued in first half of 20th century, and appealing to writers like Zora Thurston and others who perceived themselves as giving birth to a renaissance in arts and literature. Dr. Alain LeRoy Locke (picture on right), born in the 19th century, reasoned his new Negro philosophy to achieve racial equality based on individualism of the gifted and talented such as himself, not motherhoods. By the time he died in the 1950s, his philosophical thinking was dead also; and never embraced by Dr.DuBois nor Dr.King. We think because his Harlem Renaissance snob appeal ignored uplifting "the least of us" who are always "mothers and children." So far as we have learned, African heritage Americans survived a truly genocidal past in Africa and America by internalizing new doctrine embraced and shared with other believers that motherhood is new birth. Individual beliefs matter (in both knowledge and understanding) but collective beliefs (doctrine) is the glue that brings and holds generations of mothers, fathers and others together. So, what comes first? Beliefs or prejudices? Can children be empowered via teachings of Jesus (HIMSELF): love God the father, honoring ancestral mothers and fathers plus treating others as they want to be treated? Who are the primary indoctrinators? Mother and fathers or teachers, social case workers, police, prisons, preachers? Should youth be indoctrinated with the thoughts and raptures of Richard Pryor? Or, should they be armed with prejudices of many millennium predating Edmund Burke (picture on left) "father of modern conservatism?" In his view legitimate rebellion was about inherent property rights of Englishmen as occurred in America, not a privilege for serfs in France who rose up and murdered the aristocracy. Slaves were property, nothing more unless property owners granted such privileges to them. He extolled prejudice as a virtue in defense of private liberty and progress of aristocracy ? Edmund Burke (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Burke was a British politician and statesman of the Irish Church, indoctrinated by tales of his ancestral generations of prejudices, and like Margaret Mitchell reasoned that superior people like the fabled O'Hara and Wilkes families characterized by Hollywood, were patrons of goodness. Bottom-line for writers who wonder about philosophy matters is "which one joins reasoning to what faith?" Nancy Lee and her ancestral mothers and fathers did not likely reason or see and hear ante-bellum aristocrats as patrons or practitioners of goodness. They rejoiced in Civil War demise of the slave owner aristocrats and apologists that cited and loved the reasoning of Edmund Burke.
Nancy Lee Banister Watkins (1825-1912) lived long enough to see and help her namesake grand-daughter in picture on right Nancy Harriet Lee, born August 1904 hear many stories about what she had seen and heard. Our Grandma Nancy was by all accounts we have found: a functional believer in the "Living Christ" that apparently a lot of people in her generation also believed before, during and after the Civil War. Her grandfather William Lee, born abt 1756, his wife Margaret Thomas Lee and many other revolutionary war Christian believer patriots and veterans back in 1783 had hoped for the First American Jubilee in Annapolis, but it never occurred. The new Congress at war's end in 1783 had been inspired in Philadelphia by a generation of men like Benjamin Franklin (City of Brotherly Love wherein freedom bells had rang in 1776 and many men of color lived free). But, in 1786 it relocated a committee of younger generation prime planners like James Madison to the slave port of Annapolis (through which came men like Kunta Kinte the ancestor of author Alex Haley). Politically, it was a movement to far right fringes of the Jeffersonian Declaration issued in 1776 declaring that all men were born equal in the eyes of God. The plan of government (constitution) reasoned into existence by men like Alexander Hamilton and James Madison did not join with the faith first expressed in 1776 Declaration of Independence. It was a "sermon on the mount" moment in human history that inspired rebel believers; but not for all scribes and lawyers empowered after the Revolutionary war. Within four years, the newly empowered Congressmen and lobbyists had together reasoned into existence a 1787 constitution that all men were not equal. The Africa to America slave trade vastly expanded, and continued even after 1807 when declared illegal by President Jefferson but not enforced until 1861 by President Lincoln. The constitution gave birth to the ante-bellum era that vastly expanded slavery (multiplying African slave residents and importation not to be confused as immigration). They unintentionally had litigated and legislated into existence the birth of men and women who would rebel in the pursuit of personal liberty, generating a spiritual movement that generated the ageless wonders of Douglass and Lincoln against the denial of personal liberties. We dare not speculate there was no divine intervention given so many documented histories that so many souls in songs and stories, such as Sojourner Truth, claiming to beg and pray for it. Whatever the truth was between the 1787 constitution ratification and April 1865, there was a new living testament for new generations to believe in equally important to old testament jubilation about the fall of Babylon Empire below left):
....... Richmond, capital of the slave states empire, had fallen and there was jubilation in the streets captivated by a visit of President Abraham Lincoln. There is no record of hatred existing among celebrants and a few weeks later even Robert E. Lee was able to move about freely among freed slaves and occupying U.S. Colored Troops in the deposed bastion of chattel slavery. Even so, most Judeo-Christian apologists in the spirit of Margaret Mitchell have never believed the spirit of Christ could have dwelled among "the least of us" in Richmond or elsewhere. Daniel in the lion's den maybe, but not their fabled Richmond, Atlanta and Charleston of rich & kind souls that suffered by acts of hatred and rage via unleashed "degenerates" to be "held harmless" by gentlemen like their beloved Ashley Wilkes. Lincoln walked through Richmond as real functional Christian love.
Nancy Lee, on April 6, 1865 was not a Hollywood imagined dance, praise and sing colored entertainer. And she certainly was not a "illiterate born again 40 years later in Los Angeles as Pentecostalism imitating Texas based Evangelism." She had witnessed her own "Second Coming of Christ" for many millions of souls in the multitudes of the literate faithful ... (including U.S. Colored Troops) in First African-American Jubilee smiling humbly and quietly assembled in Richmond's First African Church. Many believed they were never alone in their own functional faith that unshackled bodies and minds from "the bloods, Episcopalians" seen and heard by functional story tellers like Madison Hemings Jefferson who were inclined to be African Methodists (illegal in the ante-bellum states) because most were able or encouraged to read, write and be revolutionary minded abolitionists like his daughter; (functionals) in places like Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Columbus. Faith was never monolithic in America. Not all or most adults of any category or classification supported abolition, a federal crime pursuant the constitution and run away slave acts of 1791 and 1850. It was classified as insurrection and treason in many states and conversions to Christian faith was no excuse for not being a slave. Even so, it was a well-worn path used.
But, all political figures like George Washington were expected to openly demonstrate they were Christian believers. Religion was a hotly discussed topic in ante-bellum Virginia with "the bloods" affording "religious liberty" approved processes for organized religion gatherings and sermons. Slavery was held harmless by a very strictly enforced religious grounded historical doctrine of "group punishment." The worst aspects were that relatives often denied and betrayed one another to avoid being punished such as happened to the courageous Thomas Kyle, born abt 1820. Families and friends of runaway or other troublesome slaves were frequently sold down-river into the harsh Mississippi River Delta plantations. Religion mattered to not only slave owners but equally so among Black and White freemen and slaves; and thus even the emancipated ex-slaves after the Civil War ended. Successful runaways, such as Ellis Kile/Kyle, born abt 1845 were seldom if ever remembered as heroic, and more often than not recalled with dismay, and soon forgotten by preachers as experiences unhealthy for congregations to hear and remember. Yet, the facts remain that old testament "hold harmless doctrine" was overcome by a new doctrine in the name of Jesus Christ. The Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, the 13th Amendment in 1865 and the 14th Amendment in 1868 that legally ended my great-grandmother's indentured servitude.
On July 9, 1868, Section IV of the Fourteenth Constitutional Amendment dismissed all of the claims that slave owners had been injured by the freeing of the slaves and release of women like Nancy Lee from indentured service contracts to men like Robert E. Lee and his wife Mary Custiss. With the fall of Richmond, "hold harmless" religious gatherings by "the least of us" changed albeit State laws did not until the 1870s; and therein came into existence functionally alienated Southern Baptists (mostly evangelical Whites) up from at least two generations of ante-bellum beliefs versus National Baptists (mostly born-again Blacks) up from generations of slavery. We dare to emphasize that "functional faith" among our ancestors including Thomas Jefferson and William Lee was far more important than organized religion; and they differed about "goodness". The issues of race and color were reinforced by the norm of prejudice existing and differing in all human beings. Pre-judging was a way of life despite teachings by Jesus. These prejudices prompted Richard Allen in Philadelphia and others born in their generation to help generate birth of a new generation of believers such as Frederick Douglass who became a lay minister in the personal liberty movement of the African-Methodist Episcopal Church. The ante-bellum south, like much of the country, was bonded together by deep-set prejudices even in religious settings proclaiming Christ. And it was those prejudices that gave substance to a Second American Revolution that spanned the Abolitionist Movement, the Niagara Movement and certainly the Southern Christian Leadership Movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King ... and the African Liberation Movements led by men like Kwame N'Krumah and Nnande Azikiwe (both of whom were believers in Jesus Christ, alongside fellow students Thurgood Marshall at Lincoln University, not far from Philadelphia where freedom first rang for the world to hear.) Our concern is that gifted and talented believers should not be so gullible as to believe that movements in pursuit of goodness were somehow disconnected such as: freemen and slaves in 1860s Virginia personal liberty movements and the 1960s Free South Africa Movement. Note: Bill O'Reilly, who consistently says he is not a racist, noted on his nationwide broadcast exampling prejudicial judgments after the death of Nelson Mandela "the guy was a communist." Who told him so? The same writers that concluded N'Krumah was a Marxist and King a communist pawn? Categorizations and classifications by alien cultures and causes are most often prejudicial in conclusions and deletions about the past, and their documented sources such as below about supposed religious liberty; but not personal liberty to come and go or worship without permission. "The First African Baptist Church was founded in 1841 by a group of black members of Richmond's First Baptist Church. The First Baptist Church housed a multiracial congregation from its beginning in 1802 until the white members of the congregation built a new church in 1841. In the years leading up to the split, whites were a minority at the church–a fact which made some of them uncomfortable. Many black members had also called for a split because they were often denied entrance after the building became crowded.[4] After they built a new church building for the white members of the First Baptist Church, the church leadership sold the building that they had been meeting in to the black members. It was then renamed by adding "African" to the title.[5] Most of its early slave members were initially from the Tidewater region of Virginia before they were hired to businesses in Richmond. Many freedmen traveled from other cities to attend its services, as well." They were not all freemen, slaves or the same colors and religious faiths and most could not read; but had assembled to give thanks for HIS/CHRIST'S deliverance from what they had seen and heard. All believers in attendance were immediately impacted, but they did not sing and dance about the rebel surrender at Appomattox Court House the previous day. Matters that began with King James in 1619 still mattered, but their adopted King was the Living Christ spanning generations of believers. Most folks gathered on that day in Richmond had grandparents, mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, sisters, brothers, children, and cousins by the dozens spread all over unknown locations in Dixieland. Perhaps, some hoped the spirit of Christ was with them also and would make known their generations in personal liberty and pursuit of goodness. Most amazingly, on that day, time and place in Richmond there were no demonstrations of hatred against Robert E. Lee who several days after surrender quietly returned to Richmond perhaps seeking Nancy Lee. After reciting the Lord's Prayer to God in the name Jesus Christ, the assembly heard a sermon by a young White Presbyterian minister named Reverend R. C. Barrow, one of the functional believers who may have been a distant "cousin" to Joe Louis Barrow (image on left). Joe was born in Alabama maybe via slave ancestors sold and shipped there from Virginia during it's golden ante-bellum years. What if, about him, his father and father's father before and after the rebels surrendered? We wonder if he ever wondered about his heritage. How does Hollywood tell his story up from past generations of big strong young men often hitched to plowing ante-bellum cotton fields. Mental health mattered, including depression before, during and after Joe's life. We care about him because up from slavery included so many minds that inherited much of what most "professed experts" do not dare wonder why. |
Email: Editors, More Mary Matters bradyenterpriseassociation@gmail.comwith questions or comments about this web site. |
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[Wikipedia]