more than a passing notice

Jeff Roberts -- The Birmingham News Groundbreaking ceremonies for the new Tuggle Elementary School are held Sunday, Nov. 14, 2010 in Birmingham, Ala. On Sept. 3, 1903 Carrie A. Tuggle, who worked with delinquent boys and as a welfare officer, opened a school and home for homeless black boys. In 1926 Tuggle Institute became affiliated with the Birmingham City Public Schools, and in 1934 the City Board of Education purchased the Institute and named it Enon Ridge School. In 1936 the name was changed to Tuggle Elementary School by the Board of Education. Tuggle was consolidated with Hill Elementary School this year so the old school could be demolished to make way for the new building. When complete the new school will have approximately 70,000 square feet of floor space and will accommodate 500 students. Mrs. Tuggle, who died in 1924, is buried on the site. Carrie Tuggle's grave is in front of the old school site. Construction work is seen at rear. (Birmingham News Photo / Jeff Roberts Tuggle Elementary School Groundbreaking gallery (7 photos)

Dozens of former students gathered today amid some of the rubble of what was once Carrie A. Tuggle Elementary School to remember the historic school and mark the beginning of the new $11.5 million school that will soon take its place.

"It's exciting," said 90-year-old Mattie Scott, who is believed to be the oldest living former student and faculty member from the old school.

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A groundbreaking ceremony, which included Birmingham school administrators and elected officials, was held at Old Sardis Baptist Church. After the ceremony, Scott and many former students and teachers walked across the road to the site where the old school is being demolished to symbolically turn some dirt for the beginning of the construction project.

Students at Tuggle began attending Brunetta C. Hill Elementary School this year. Once the new school is completed in 2012, all the students will transfer over to the new Tuggle Elementary. The project is part of a program to close and consolidate schools in Birmingham.

"It means a commitment that all facilities are high quality for teaching and learning in the 21st Century and carry on the legacy of Carrie Tuggle at the same time," Birmingham City Schools Superintendent Craig Witherspoon said.

Tuggle school has its beginning from a welfare worker, Carrie A. Tuggle, who opened the Tuggle Institute, an orphanage for young black people in the Enon Ridge community of Birmingham. When she died in 1924 she was buried on the campus.

Tuggle's grave will continue to remain within a small fenced area at the new school.

Tuggle Elementary School Groundbreaking

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American Studies

2010-10-07T17:07:00.001-05:00

Cool link about American Popular Culture...click here

Interesting NYT Story About SUNY System

2010-07-24T18:36:00.004-05:00

I'm sending good thoughts to SUNY.

NANCY L. ZIMPHER, the new chancellor of the State University of New York, is a woman with a plan. From 1998 to 2003, when she was chancellor of the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, it was “The Milwaukee Plan.” From 2003 to May 2009, when she was president of the University of Cincinnati, it was “UC/21.”

And for much of this year, Dr. Zimpher has been crisscrossing New York State, PowerPoint engaged, promoting “The Power of SUNY,” with its pragmatic and somewhat buzzy bullet points — “SUNY and the Entrepreneurial Century,” “SUNY and the Seamless Education Pipeline,” “SUNY and the World” — about the university as economic and community-building engine for tough times. Dr. Zimpher is somewhat famous in higher education as a tireless and creative marketer.

“I have to say that if you planted me on Mars, this is what I would try to do,” she said a few weeks back, after spending the morning touting “The Power of SUNY” to the staff of the Research Foundation, which administers more than $1 billion in university research funds. She then swore in a new student representative to SUNY’s board of trustees, positively beaming when, without prodding, the student put her hand on the “Power of SUNY” brochure, in lieu of a Bible, in reciting her oath.

“My belief is that to move an organization forward you have to have a common, comprehensive and ambitious agenda,” Dr. Zimpher said. “It has to be aspirational. It has to move you. I think the full manifestation of SUNY is underexposed and underexploited. If people really knew and understood the difference these campuses make in their communities they would be amazed.”

But a funny — and absurdly unlikely —thing happened on Dr. Zimpher’s way to revamping and rebranding SUNY, the unloved colossus that is the biggest comprehensive system of public higher education in the country. The empowerment legislation that was the companion piece for the plan — giving campuses greater autonomy, including the ability to set their own tuitions — became the pivotal, ferociously contested boulder in the road in New York’s seemingly endless budget impasse (which at press time remained unresolved).

Of the two most powerful men in Albany, one, Gov. David A. Paterson, who proposed the legislation, insisted that it be part of a deal tied to the state’s 2010-11 budget. The other, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, was adamant that it never would be.

On one level, this has been a classic case of the warring duchies of Albany, of how an educational issue morphs into a political power struggle. But its issues are both distinctly national and parochial. On the one hand, it provides a condensed glimpse of many of the issues roiling public higher education nationally: access versus status, state control versus campus control, universities as centers of disinterested scholarship versus universities as economic engines, rising demand versus falling revenues. On the other, it is the latest and most conspicuous chapter in a battle over turf, money and, oh yes, education that began 62 years ago, when New York State reluctantly approved a system that has gone on to become the accidental giant of American higher education.

TWO things define the State University of New York. It’s huge. And compared to its public peers, it’s weird.

The numbers suggest a system that’s borderline unmanageable — 64 campuses, 7,660 degree programs, 88,000 faculty members, 465,000 students, a $10.7 billion budget, a campus within 20 miles of 97 percent of the state’s population. Many of its campuses are anchors of farflung small communities that only locals could find on a map — Fredonia, Delhi, Cobleskill, Potsdam. People know some campuses by reputation but not that they’re part of SUNY — Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan, Maritime College in the Bronx, and the colleges of agriculture and life sciences, human ecology, veterinary medicine, and industrial and labor relations at Cornell. Four are ambitious university centers with a national reputation: Stony Brook, Buffalo, Binghamton and Albany. Thirty are community colleges.

In a brand-name culture, SUNY is an awfully hard brand to define, especially when it’s still often thought of as an upstate phenomenon in a state whose center of gravity is south in New York City and its suburbs.

But another reason that SUNY has struggled to forge an identity is because that was the idea from the start. New York was the last of the populous states to form a university system. SUNY was not founded until 1948 and over the strenuous objections of the state’s powerful private colleges and universities. And it began with the stipulation that it would only “supplement” the private institutions and not compete with them. State legislators established an unfriendly board of regents and imposed the nation’s strictest regulations on what the university could do. An informal prohibition on raising private funds meant that New York’s state universities for decades grew without the endowments that supported campuses elsewhere. No wonder that a study in 1960 called SUNY a “limping and apologetic enterprise.”

Virtually alone in the country, there was (and still is) no flagship institution, no Madison, Berkeley or Austin to provide a network of loyal supporters for years to come, no beloved Buckeyes, Huskies or Gators to create a common wellspring of good will. (SUNY’s most conspicuous attempt to play in that league — Binghamton’s one trip to the N.C.A.A. Division I basketball tournament in 2009 — ended in scandal, with arrests of several players, accusations of preferential treatment for athletes and the implosion of the program.) Add in that the City University of New York was there to suck up all the energy and attention for public education in the most populous and influential part of the state, and SUNY has been climbing uphill since its inception.

It prospered in flush times under Nelson Rockefeller but has been under siege of late. State and SUNY leaders repeatedly debate its mission, including the question of whether it could be seen as a great university system without its own Berkeley or the University of Virginia.

Still, not many of the moments has been more challenging than this one.

Black History Movies

2010-07-15T15:31:00.000-05:00

Link One
Link Two

A.H.Parker

2010-06-25T18:21:00.001-05:00

His Story

Searching for Funding

2010-06-22T19:17:00.001-05:00

Where's the money?

Searching for Funding

2010-06-22T19:17:00.000-05:00

Where's the money?

Processing Collections

2010-06-22T19:01:00.000-05:00

Help!

IRB Certifiction

2010-06-19T09:21:00.000-05:00

It's tough, but you have to do it.

Beloved

2010-05-28T00:50:00.001-05:00

Reading Group for Beloved

the Black Middle Class

2010-05-24T14:27:00.002-05:00

The Black Middle Class

This is an interesting interview....

Do You Like Black Films?

2010-05-17T21:05:00.000-05:00

Check out this website...I'm a fan.

http://theblackboxoffice.com/

History Grants and Fellowships

2010-05-03T19:17:00.001-05:00

AHA is great!

Dr. Dorothy Irene Height Obituary from New York Times

2010-04-22T13:35:00.002-05:00

Dorothy Height, Largely Unsung Giant of the Civil Rights Era, Dies at 98

By MARGALIT FOX

Published: April 20, 2010

Dorothy Height, a leader of the African-American and women’s rights movements who was considered both the grande dame of the civil rights era and its unsung heroine, died on Tuesday in Washington. She was 98.

Enlarge This Image

Paul Hosefros/The New York Times

Dorothy Height in 2003.

Enlarge This Image

United Press International

Ms. Height presented the Mary McLeod Bethune Human Rights Award to Eleanor Roosevelt in New York in 1960.

Associated Press

Ms. Height stood near the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as he gave his “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963 in Washington.

The death, at Howard University Hospital, was announced jointly by the hospital and the National Council of Negro Women, which Ms. Height had led for four decades. A longtime Washington resident, Ms. Height was the council’s president emerita at her death.

One of the last living links to the social activism of the New Deal era, Ms. Height had a career in civil rights that spanned nearly 80 years, from anti-lynching protests in the early 1930s to the inauguration of President Obama in 2009. That the American social landscape looks as it does today owes in no small part to her work.

Originally trained as a social worker, Ms. Height was president of the National Council of Negro Women from 1957 to 1997, overseeing a range of programs on issues like voting rights, poverty and in later years AIDS. A longtime executive of the Y.W.C.A., she presided over the integration of its facilities nationwide in the 1940s.

With Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm, Betty Friedan and others, she helped found the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1971. Over the decades, she advised a string of American presidents on civil rights.

If Ms. Height was less well known than her contemporaries in either the civil rights or women’s movement, it was perhaps because she was doubly marginalized, pushed offstage by women’s groups because of her race and by black groups because of her sex. Throughout her career, she responded quietly but firmly, working with a characteristic mix of limitless energy and steely gentility to ally the two movements in the fight for social justice.

As a result, Ms. Height is widely credited as the first person in the modern civil rights era to treat the problems of equality for women and equality for African-Americans as a seamless whole, merging concerns that had been largely historically separate.

The recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and other prestigious awards, Ms. Height was accorded a place of honor on the dais on Jan. 20, 2009, when Mr. Obama took the oath of office as the nation’s 44th president. In a statement on Tuesday, he called Ms. Height “the godmother of the civil rights movement and a hero to so many Americans.”

Over the years, historians have made much of the so-called “Big Six” who led the civil rights movement: the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., James Farmer, John Lewis, A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins and Whitney M. Young Jr. Ms. Height, the only woman to work regularly alongside them on projects of national significance, was very much the unheralded seventh, the leader who was cropped out, figuratively and often literally, of images of the era.

In 1963, for instance, Ms. Height sat on the platform an arm’s length from Dr. King as he delivered his epochal “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington. She was one of the march’s chief organizers and a prize-winning orator herself. Yet she was not asked to speak, although many other black leaders — all men — addressed the crowd that day.

Ms. Height recounted the incident in her memoir, “Open Wide the Freedom Gates” (PublicAffairs, 2003; with a foreword by Maya Angelou). Reviewing the memoir, The New York Times Book Review called it “a poignant short course in a century of African-American history.”

Dorothy Irene Height was born on March 24, 1912, in Richmond, Va. Her father, James, was a building contractor; her mother, the former Fannie Burroughs, was a nurse. A severe asthmatic as a child, Dorothy was not expected to live, she later wrote, past the age of 16.

When Dorothy was small, the family moved north to Rankin, Pa., near Pittsburgh, where she attended integrated public schools. She began her civil rights work as a teenager, volunteering on voting rights and anti-lynching campaigns.

In high school, Ms. Height entered an oratory contest, sponsored by the Elks, on the subject of the United States Constitution. An eloquent speaker even in her youth, she soon advanced to the national finals, where she was the only black contestant. She delivered a talk on the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments — the Reconstruction Amendments —intended to extend constitutional protections to former slaves and their descendants. The jury, all white, awarded her first prize: a four-year college scholarship.

As Ms. Height told The Detroit Free Press in 2008, “I’m still working today to make the promise of the 14th Amendment of equal justice under law a reality.”

A star student, the young Ms. Height applied to Barnard College and was accepted. Then, in the summer of 1929, shortly before classes began, she was summoned to New York by a Barnard dean.

There was a problem, the dean said. That Ms. Height had been admitted to Barnard was certain. But she could not enroll — not then, anyway. Barnard had already met its quota for Negro students that year.

Too distraught to call home, as she later wrote, Ms. Height did the only thing possible. Clutching her Barnard acceptance letter, she took the subway downtown to New York University. She was admitted at once, earning a bachelor’s degree in education there in 1933 and a master’s in psychology two years later.

Ms. Height was a caseworker with the New York City Welfare Department before becoming the assistant executive director of the Harlem Y.W.C.A. in the late 1930s. One of her first public acts at the Y was to call attention to the exploitation of black women working as domestic day laborers. The women, who congregated on street corners in Brooklyn and the Bronx known locally as “slave markets,” were picked up and hired, for about 15 cents an hour, by white suburban housewives who cruised the corners in their cars.

Ms. Height’s testimony before the New York City Council about the “slave markets” attracted the attention of the national and international news media. For a time, the publicity was enough to drive the markets underground, though they later re-emerged.

In 1946, as a member of the Y’s national leadership, Ms. Height oversaw the desegregation of its facilities nationwide. In 1965, she founded the Y’s Center for Racial Justice, which she led until 1977.

While working for the Y in the late ’30s, Ms. Height was chosen to escort the first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, to a meeting of the National Council of Negro Women. There, Ms. Height caught the eye of Mary McLeod Bethune, the council’s founder, who became her mentor.

As the council’s president during the most urgent years of the civil rights movement, Ms. Height instituted a variety of social programs in the Deep South, including the pig bank, in which poor black families were given a pig, a prize commodity. In the mid-’60s, she helped institute “Wednesdays in Mississippi,” a program that flew interracial teams of Northern women to the state to meet with black and white women there.

Ms. Height, who long maintained that strong communities were at the heart of social welfare, inaugurated a series of “Black Family Reunions” in the mid-1980s. Sponsored by the National Council of Negro Women and held in cities across the United States, the reunions were large, celebratory gatherings devoted to the history, culture and traditions of African-Americans. Hundreds of thousands of people attended the first one, in Washington in 1986.

From 1947 to 1956, Ms. Height was also the president of Delta Sigma Theta, an international sorority of black women.

Besides the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded by President Bill Clinton in 1994, Ms. Height’s many honors include the Congressional Gold Medal, awarded by President George W. Bush in 2004. The two medals are the country’s highest civilian awards.

Ms. Height, who never married, is survived by a sister, Anthanette Aldridge, of New York City.

If despite her laurels Ms. Height remained in the shadow of her male contemporaries, she rarely objected. After all, as she often said in interviews, the task at hand was far less about personal limelight than it was about collective struggle.

“I was there, and I felt at home in the group,” she told The Sacramento Bee in 2003 “But I didn’t feel I should elbow myself to the front when the press focused on the male leaders."

Ms. Height received three dozen honorary doctorates, from institutions including Tuskegee, Harvard and Princeton Universities. But there was one academic honor — the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree — that resonated more strongly than all the rest: In 2004, 75 years after turning her away, Barnard College designated Ms. Height an honorary graduate.

Poetry By Margaret Walker

2010-04-14T01:53:00.005-05:00

Southern Song
I want my body bathed again by southern suns, my soul
reclaimed again from southern land. I want to rest
again in southern fields, in grass and hay and clover
bloom; to lay my hand again upon the clay baked by a
southern sun, to touch the rain-soaked earth and smell
the smell of soil.

I want my rest unbroken in the fields of southern earth;
freedom to watch the corn wave silver in the sun and
mark the splashing of a brook, a pond with ducks and
frogs and count the clouds.

I want no mobs to wrench me from my southern rest; no
forms to take me in the night and burn my shack and
make for me a nightmare full of oil and flame.

I want my careless song to strike no minor key; no fiend to
stand between my body's soutnern song--the fusion of
the South, my body's song and me.

Childhood

by Margaret Walker

Margaret Walker

When I was a child I knew red miners

dressed raggedly and wearing carbide lamps.

I saw them come down red hills to their camps

dyed with red dust from old Ishkooda mines.

Night after night I met them on the roads,

or on the streets in town I caught their glance;

the swing of dinner buckets in their hands,

and grumbling undermining all their words.

I also lived in low cotton country

where moonlight hovered over ripe haystacks,

or stumps of trees, and croppers’ rotting shacks

with famine, terror, flood, and plague near by;

where sentiment and hatred still held sway

and only bitter land was washed away.

Writing

2010-04-13T10:45:00.002-05:00

Here's a really amazing CRIB Sheet for Chicago Manual of Style.

Zora Neale Hurston's Hometown

2010-03-22T12:46:00.000-05:00

Very cool video.

A Moving Interview

2010-03-20T22:45:00.002-05:00

I really like Toni Morrison....yep, I'm a fan.

I know I'm late but....

2010-01-08T21:28:00.002-06:00

I <3 Firefox!

I Want to Write, by Margaret Walker

2009-12-02T20:50:00.003-06:00

I want to write.

I want to write the song of my people.

I want to hear them singing melodies in the dark.

I want to catch the last floating strains from their sob-torn throats.

I want to frame their dreams into words; their souls into notes.

I want to catch their sunshine laughter in a bowl;

fling dark hands to a darker sky

and fill them full of stars

then crush and mix such lights till they become

a mirrored pool of brillance in the dawn.

Writing a Research Paper: A Realistic Timeline

2009-10-31T13:18:00.016-05:00

So...It's that time of the year. My thoughts and plans were sooooo unrealisitc. I love researching and love writing, but it takes a lot of time to make them work together. I do not want this entire semester to be a wash so here are some interesting things that I have discovered that will hopefully work out in my future writing projects. I hope that you find this information helpful.

Develop your topic over the winter or summer break and start to build your bibliography

Write down your KWL before the Semester Starts (What do you know? What do you want to know? What can you learn from the sources that you are thinking of using?)

Identify at least one major primary source to use and ask ILL for the material as early as possible

Write your Lit Review within the first month of the semester (It will change some, but it is better to have SOMETHING written down)

Write your Prospectus Review within the second month (It too will change, but it is better to have SOMETHING written down)

Select a research day (or couple hours per day) to search for material and look through the material you have found

ALWAYS slow down after collecting documents to write notes about why you gathered them, what does/might it add to your topic, what additional questions do you have after looking at the material? Try to write these documents into a part of your paper within the next week. (It’s ok if it does not all fit, the process of writing gives you shape)

By the end of the third month have your sources selected and summaries written.

Take the fourth month to pull together your notes into a full draft. Revise, Revise, Revise....

Use the writing center, your peers in class, family, AND friends from other departments to help you along the way.

Revise in small chunks. Do not tackle the entire paper at one time. It’s dizzying and unproductive.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, if you work diligently on a schedule like this…you’ll have time to STOP AND ENJOY THE FLOWERS. A good paper cannot be written from within the confines of solitude. Be with people.

The Black Middle

2009-10-23T15:06:00.003-05:00

Really interesting read........

Theory Site

2009-10-21T23:13:00.001-05:00

Theory Library Online.......

Post-comps reading list...

2009-10-16T18:54:00.003-05:00

Bound by Recognition, by Patchen Markell

My Trip to the Inauguration

2009-01-22T13:43:00.009-06:00

I am so full with joy and have so many stories that I want to share with you all about the inauguration! Perhaps the best way to summarize the trip is post in segments. Over the course of the next week, I'll add various memories in this order:

I. On the Way

II. Visit to Monticello

III. Inauguration Day

IV. Returning Home

Time for a Reenactment!

2009-01-17T11:25:00.009-06:00

I love...love...love...this movie! Tomorrow I begin my own Get On The Bus experience. My trip to the inaugual will start in the parking lot of the African American Museum of Iowa in Cedar Rapids. I want to document this entire experience.

Let's keep our fingers crossed that my camera's battery lasts.

Lest We Forget

2009-01-16T15:03:00.009-06:00

I love this new cover...

1. Barack Obama
2. Michelle Obama
3. Martin Luther King Jr.
4. Thurgood Marshall
5. Rosa Parks
6. Barbara Jordan
7. Cynthia Wesley
8. Carole Robertson
9. Denise McNair
10. Addie Mae Collins
11. Emmett Till
12. Susan B. Anthony
13. C.T. Vivian
14. James Meredith
15. Homer Plessy
16. Harvey Milk
17. Ida B. Wells
18. Malcolm X
19. Bayard Rustin
20. John Lewis
21. Mahatma Gandhi
22. Abraham Lincoln
23. Frederick Douglass
24. Cesar Chavez
25. Sojourner Truth
26. Nelson Mandela
27. Stephen Biko
28. Oliver Brown (Brown v. Board of Education)
29. Chief Joseph
30. Lyndon Johnson
31. Medgar Evers
32. Rev. James Reeb
33. Fred Shuttleworth
34. W.E.B. Du Bois
35. Ralph Abernathy
36. Viola Gregg Liuzzo
37. Marcus Garvey
38. Andrew Goodman
39. James Chaney
40. Michael Schwerner
41. John Brown
42. Jackie Robinson
43. Dolores Huerta
44. Mary White Ovington
45. William Lloyd Garrison
46. Wang Dan
47. Stephen Samuel Wise
48. Harriet Tubman
49. Dred Scott
50. Booker T. Washington
51. David Richmond (and)52. Joseph McNeil (Greensboro Four)
53. Martin Delany
54. The Little Rock Nine
55. William Still
56. Thomas Garrett
57. Elizabeth Cady Stanton
58. Samuel Burris
59. Thomas Paine
60. Abigail Kelley Foster
61. Jesse Jackson
62. Eugene V. Debs
63. Lucretia Mott
64. Paul Robeson
65. Henry David Thoreau
66. Shirley Chisholm

Credit: The Nation

My "Minimalist" Apartment

2009-01-15T16:20:00.015-06:00

Here's my attempt at making the coffee table from magazines...first leg!

I like this...

2009-01-15T00:23:00.006-06:00

Credit: Apartment Therapy

These little stands are made of magazines. I will try to make a coffee table.

Ideal Design

2009-01-14T16:23:00.007-06:00

So many of you may have noticed that "more than a passing notice" has been dead for several months. I lost my drive during the first semester of grad school. My head of swimming with all this "what if" stuff. Well, most of the "what ifs" happened and now it's time for me to get my head of out the clouds and back in touch with reality.

With that said, as the new semester begins I find myself in the same place that I usually am at the beginning of things--Thoroughly excited about organizing and preparing for new challenges.

----------

(Image Credit: http://environmentdebate.wordpress.com/2007/09/)

I love watching HGTV and designing spaces (in my head). My university apartment does not have the beloved channel so this is my compromise.

My new project is to use this blog to work on my space...room by room. Considering my apartment's current style is pretty...hmmmm minimalist, this yields numerous opportunities for new posts ;-D.

I'm going to post interesting design and style elements as I come across them. My apt, my way.

The Last Lecture

2008-07-28T19:29:00.006-05:00

"On September 18, 2007, computer science professor Randy Pausch stepped in front of an audience of 400 people at Carnegie Mellon University to deliver a last lecture called “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.” With slides of his CT scans beaming out to the audience, Randy told his audience about the cancer that is devouring his pancreas and that will claim his life in a matter of months. On the stage that day, Randy was youthful, energetic, handsome, often cheerfully, darkly funny. He seemed invincible. But this was a brief moment, as he himself acknowledged.
Randy’s lecture has become a phenomenon, as has the book he wrote based on the same principles, celebrating the dreams we all strive to make realities. Sadly, Randy lost his battle to pancreatic cancer on July 25th, 2008, but his legacy will continue to inspire us all, for generations to come."

http://www.thelastlecture.com/

Randy Pausch (October 23, 1960-July 25, 2008)

Toni Morrison

2008-06-18T20:34:00.004-05:00

I am a huge fan of Toni Morrison. The Bluest Eye was the first assigned reading that I actually read from cover to cover. I devoured it...and remember being so glad to have a reading assignment that actually was about me...about something I could relate to easily.

Not only am I a fan of Morrison's writing but also of her oratory. Periodically I scan the web for interviews or lectures she's given. The below footage is my most recent find.

In reference to the question of whether today's young women, particularly African American women, are able to connect with The Bluest Eye (in the same way that Morrison and women of the 1970s did) she states:
"[Young African American Women] seem to be excessively confident in themselves...They don't even know what I'm talking about....."

I am surprised by Toni Morrison's statement. My blogging on this is not meant to be viewed as me pointing the finger at her only, but I guess as more of a launching pad for discussion on collective responsiblility. I've heard it before...when asking elders about a young person's ability to do or think about virtually anything...I've seen that facial expression before. In my view it's a community issue. When elders write off young people's ability to feel or relate then they also (I'm sure unconsciously) shut off major points of dialogue.

------------------------------------------------------

Something surreal happened to me at work today. I was doing an activity to help introduce Birmingham's role in the modern Civil Rights Movement. My group consisted of children from the ages 4-16 and they were all attending a summer camp at their church. At the end of the activity...we had a discussion about "the movement" and the people who were involved. The students then followed by asking several questions but one stayed with me:

A young Black girl about 10 years old told me, "It's hard to talk about this stuff...I feel funny going through the museum. What is that funny feeling and will I always have it?"

Her question and the comments of other young people in the room clearly serve as evidence that young people have an ability to connect with their identity in ways which even Toni Morrison (in the above post) and other elders would find hard to imagine.

In response to the young girl's question I basically told her that she was probably feeling her history and that was a good thing. Instead of being afraid she should continue to remember and use her feelings as motivation.

One time Charile Rose was interviewing Toni Morrison and he asked her (paraphrasing here): "Don't you ever get tired and feel weighed down by always writing about heavy race topics like slavery?" Morrsion commented (paraphrasing again), "No. All I have to do is write about the past. They (Slaves) had to live it. The least that I can do is make sure that they are remembered."

-----

Somewhere in this process is the next step, a bridge, a link to the past. My personal goal is find it and help be a conduit for not just dialgue, but also reasonable action.

A Historic and Surreal Night

2008-06-03T22:11:00.011-05:00

This evening I attended a book signing and discussion on the life and political career of the former governor John Patterson. A "former" segregationist, in 1956 Patterson was Alabama's Atty. General and while in office he outlawed all chapters of the NAACP in the state. Later in 1961 the Freedom Riders came through Alabama and Patterson did not provide them with security (thereby granting white supremacists a free pass to assault them in Anniston, Birmingham, and Montgomery).

The program with Patterson tonight was held in the Dr. Richard Arrington, Jr. (named for Birmingham's 1st Black Mayor) Auditorium of the Birmingham Public Library's Central Branch. I went to the program with all these factors in mind and was somewhat disappointed by the passive and somewhat altered process of truth-telling about his time in office.

The program opened with two quotes about Patterson:

"This former governor's life is dramatic history, begging to be told" (Author)

"He has lived a life that only we can dream of having" (Gregg Bass)

A brief summary of Patterson's life followed these statements. A summary which almost completely omitted discussion of his segregationist past. In lieu of discussing the civil rights era, the author stated, "The whole civil rights era has created its own literature which is quite substantial..."

Patterson discussed various aspects of his political life but mostly retold stories about Alabama football, old campaign culture, and he identified a few VIPs who were in the audience. One guy's name escapes me, but he is one of the last living survivors of the US contingent of the Bay of Pigs. Apparently Patterson was good friends with John F. Kennedy, Jr and he sent Alabama troops and military equipment down during the Bay of Pigs. Patterson talked about visiting Kennedy's home in Georgetown whenever he was in D.C. and also eating dinner there with Jack and Jackie. I found it interesting that these two men fraternized considering one was a vocal segregationist and the other is credited for starting the process which lead to the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Former governor Albert Brewer was also in the audience.

During the question and answer time I had some difficulty being recognized by Patterson. There were three points at which my hand was up first and we engaged in eye contact. He ignored me each time, until it was too obvious and too ridiculous to continue without acknowledging me. My question was about his opinion of the current presidential campaign. I really wanted to hear feedback from him on America electing (1) oldest, (2) 1st female, (3) or 1st African American. He's pretty elderly now and his perspective on the US having it's oldest president in the history of of our nation was something that I wanted to hear him talk about. Additionally, Patterson lost his election in 1963 to Lurleen Wallace, Alabama's first female governor. With that experience in mind...I wanted to hear his thoughts of Hillary Clinton's campaign.

Lastly, considering his segregationist "past", it would be interesting to consider his feelings about the potential for Barack Obama to reach the presidency.

What I received from John Patterson was in away an advertisement for Barack Obama.........................Patterson is a 'good' politician:

"There was a time for change in the 1960s and Kennedy was about change. Today there is a need for change. Obama is for change."

Later this evening Obama announced that he is the presumptive nominee for the Democratic Party's candidacy to the presidency of the United States of America. It's a historic and surreal night.

Congratulations Danny Wayne Hudson, Jr....

2008-05-24T13:20:00.008-05:00

We drove down to Marion, AL today to see my youngest cousin graduate from high school. He attended Marion Military Institute. I am so proud of him. Below are photos and video footage from the ceremony. The first film is my cousin Danny. He had the distinction of being the first student on program.
Danny walking across the stage...
The last video is a former graduate singing "You Raised Me Up." I thought about our family and in particular Danny's father who is serving in Iraq right now. Its an honor to upload this film so that he can see his son's ceremony.

Huckabee jokes about Obama "being shot"

2008-05-17T21:42:00.003-05:00

The West Virginia Vote....

2008-05-16T09:52:00.007-05:00

The Real News did a special report on the West Virginia election before the votes were cast. This video made me think a great deal of my previous post on white rural(male) working class voters. Something I like about this footage is that it includes discussions on race and somewhat alludes to topics of gender.

Click here to see the report.

My Trip to Cuba

2008-05-14T19:59:00.017-05:00

I went to Cuba today and had a wonderful time. The drive down from from Birmingham was really pleasant. Yes...I said Birmingham. My job sent me on a trip down to Cuba, Alabama and the whole experience was too great. Here are some photos from the trip.

I attended a program at the Sumter County Welcome Center in Cuba, AL and one of the local high school choir's performed.

Interesting attire for a small town high school choir member....

The insects on the left are called lovebugs by locals. They say that these bugs die after detaching from their 'lovers.' It didn't strike me at the time, but I am now curious about when they produce eggs. If they die after detaching then how do they produce more lovebugs?

Why is this place called Cuba, AL? I met Linda Munoz, an amazing glass and mosaics artist from York, AL, and she agreed to share the history. I apologize all for my horrible editing at the end...the ending is a bit awkward.

Arkindelas?

2008-05-13T21:22:00.013-05:00

It's amazing what you can find on the internet. My father is the guy in the center (behind the sweetheart). Akindelas was a service organization. It's mission statement is below:

MISSION STATEMENT

The primary mission of the AKINDELAS Fraternity is to pursue solutions and resolutions to health, economic and community development issues that effect the Afro-American community. Our objectives include finding revenue streams, providing education and other resources to combat the
effects of disease and practices that inflect suffering in our neighborhoods.

We shall further pursue areas that enhance our communities by recognizing academic achievement and support of local charities.

On Their Trail: The Hunt for White Rural (Male) Working Class Voters

2008-05-06T19:07:00.033-05:00

I am becoming more and more bothered by the language of pundits during this campaign. Whether trailing "Obama's black vote," or tallying "Clinton's female vote," the tedious and annoying process of viewing these candidates' as monolithic beings is doing a horrible disservice to the democratic process. Equally as annoying is the call that CNN, MSNBC, and other news agencies have put out to white rural (male) working class voters. I guess it makes sense...If you're not female OR black, then..... how do you decide who to vote for?!

For me the most frustrating thing about pundits leading the discussion about Democrat's seeking the white (male) rural working class vote is that they completely discount the history of this population's voting trends. This group left the party in three large waves:

(1) When Truman added a civil rights plank to his campaign the Dixiecrat party was established in protest .

(2) Kennedy made a call to Mrs. Coretta Scott King for support during his 1960 election and many Dixiecrats/States Rights Party members moved even farther to the right.

(3) Many (but not all) of the 'loyal' white rural (male) working class voters that remained with the Democratic Party did so in hopes of seeing it return to it's old 'Bourbon Rule Democrat' roots. By the 1980s some of them became Republicans, but again many of the ones that remained with the Democratic Party stayed in name only. They quickly became known as Reagan Democrats.

So, I guess my question to the political pundits is how and why would Obama or Clinton pursue these votes, especially considering the fact that this group has not historically been supportive of civil rights. And to qualify my use of the term civil rights...I'm not talking about the racialized 1954-1968 usage of the word. I mean "civil rights," the rights of citizens. Rooted in the 14th amendment and helping to push for the rights of people regardless of color, gender, and ability. It's not popular to say, but deep down I feel that most white rural (male) working class voters do not support the Democratic Party because of their history of bigotry and greed. Why is this so hard for those in the mainstream media to see and when will the election conversation turn back to real issues?

The show will begin shortly...

2008-05-04T15:32:00.005-05:00

So...I am excited about setting up this blog because a lot runs through my head and I think it will be fun and interesting to share some things online. I definitely welcome feedback and hope to post topics which deserve more than a passing notice.

With that said, to give a blog a title like More Than a Passing Notice has left me a little shy about my first post. So....let's talk about procrastination. This topic is a great idea handed down by a friend. The number one thing to limit people from reaching their goals (big or small) is fear. What cures fear? Action.

.....I'm ready and will return shortly.

more than a passing notice

excellent book!

Hair Salons

Great Research Sites

Great Teaching Websites

more than a passing notice: Tuggle School :)

Tuggle School :)

New beginning for Birmingham's Tuggle Elementary marked with groundbreaking (with slideshow and video)

Published: Sunday, November 14, 2010, 7:22 PM Updated: Sunday, November 14, 2010, 8:33 PM

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