Monday, September 18, 2017

Confederate War Horse Memorials Dishonored

In the dead of an August night this past summer, Baltimore officials unceremoniously removed from Wyman Park, near Johns Hopkins University, a magnificent equestrian statue of Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson, and Robert E. Lee. The monument was a gift from a local citizen and its 1948 installation had been delayed for twenty years due to the Great Depression and World War II. Maryland was a border state during the Civil War; Maryland was a slave state that did not secede from the Union. 


However ... there is an untold story here. That story is when the statue was ripped from its mountings, two magnificent war horses, Traveller and Little Sorrel, were also dumped as dishonored rubbish. Equestrian statues standing in American parks were meant to honor all war horses that served faithfully--and suffered mightily--during the American Civil War. Indeed, civilized people should remember these noble animals, especially as ignorant voices of today clamor to destroy them because they carry a warrior rider of the losing side. Once destroyed, these war horse monuments will be forever banished from our view, as never again will Americans ever erect equestrian statues.


Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Status of MLK's Dream, 2017?

Senator Kamala Harris celebrated for being the First Woman, First Non-White Woman, First Hindu American, First Jamaican American, First Asian American, First Indian American, First African American, First Biracial Woman!
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." - Martin Luther King, Jr., 28 August 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C.
Fast forward from 1963, to over half a century later, when we read the Wikipedia biography of a multi-ethnic, multi-racial, female United States Senator from California, Kamala Harris:
"Harris was elected California's Attorney General in 2010 and re-elected in 2014. Harris was the first woman, the first Jamaican American, the first Asian American, the first Indian American, and the first African American attorney general in California.

On November 8, 2016, she defeated Loretta Sanchez in the 2016 U.S. Senate election ... becoming the first Indian American, and one of the first biracial women (alongside Tammy Duckworth and Catherine Cortez Masto) elected to serve in the United States Senate."
A multitude of "biracial" persons have been born on American soil since the 1615 birth of Thomas Rolfe, son of American Indian Princess Pocahontas and her English husband John Rolfe. The "biracial" Thomas Rolfe became an officer of the Colony of Virginia in the early 1600s, causing one to ponder, over 400 years later, why being born "biracial" is heralded and celebrated amongst elected candidates to public office in a Democratic Republic in the year 2017. We still await the Dream of Martin Luther King Jr. to come to fruition in America where someday, sometime, people will be judged by the "content of their character" rather than the color of their skin.