Sat May 25 2013

Book Review: A Slave in the White House: Paul Jennings and the Madisons
by Dr. Marilyn Howard
A Slave in the White House: Paul Jennings and the Madisons
Written by Elizabeth Dowling Taylor
There have been few times in American history when such a glittering array of men stood on the public stage. George Washington, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison are part of that august group known as the Founding Fathers. So impressed was Jefferson with his colleagues that in a letter he wrote to Adams in August of 1787, he described them as “an assembly of demigods.”
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Book Review: Marshalling Justice: The Early Civil Rights Letters of Thurgood Marshall
by Dr. Marilyn Howard
Marshalling Justice: The Early Civil Rights Letters of Thurgood Marshall - By Michael G. Long
When Thurgood Marshal, the first black justice of the United States Supreme Court, resigned from the Court for reasons of ill health in 1991, he had served for twenty-four years. It took his death two years later for people to remember what a legacy he left this country: general counsel to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 1938 through 1961; first black judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit; first black solicitor general of the United States. While with the NAACP he argued thirty-two cases before the Supreme Court, winning twenty-nine of them. During his four-year tenure on the Court of Appeals, he issued one hundred twelve rulings, none of which were reversed on certiorari by the Supreme Court. His record as solicitor general was equally impressive; he won fourteen of the nineteen cases he argued on behalf of the United States.
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Book Review: Guest of Honor: Booker T. Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, and the White House Dinner That Shocked a Nation Deborah Davis
by Dr. Marilyn Howard
Guest of Honor: Booker T. Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, and the White House Dinner That Shocked a Nation
Deborah Davis
Atria Books
No doubt the vast majority of Americans did not realize that October 16 was the one hundred and eleventh anniversary of the day that Booker T. Washington, a former slave, dined at the White House at the invitation of President Theodore Roosevelt. When I relayed this information to my students, they did not get the significance of the invitation or the dinner. After all, I had taught them that black people built the White House, and it is currently occupied by a black family. What was the big deal about a dinner?
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Book Review: Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock
by David Margolis
Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock
By David Margolis
Yale University Press
It is one of the most searing pictures of the modern civil rights movement, and one with which I have always been fascinated: a lone black teenaged girl with her notebook hugged tightly to her chest, her face devoid of expression and her eyes obscured by sunglasses, is walking down the street. Behind her is a crowd of angry whites, one of whom’s face is contorted with rage as she yelled “Go home nigger!”
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Review: Mrs. Kennedy and Me
by Dr. Marilyn Howard
Mrs. Kennedy and Me
Clint Hill with Lisa McCubbin
Gallery Books
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Will the 2012 presidential election be stolen?
by David Swanson
Why would I even ask that question? I've been trying (with virtually no success) to get everyone to drop the election obsession and focus on activism designed around policy changes, not personality changes. I want those policy changes to include stripping presidents of imperial powers. I don't see as much difference between the two available choices as most people; I see each as a different shade of disaster. I don't get distressed by the thought of people "spoiling" an election by voting for a legitimately good candidate like Jill Stein. Besides, won't Romney lose by a landslide if he doesn't tape his mouth shut during the coming weeks? And yet . . .
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Book Review: Tested: How Twelve Wrongly Imprisoned Men Held Onto Hope
by Dr. Marilyn Howard
Tested: How Twelve Wrongly Imprisoned Men Held Onto Hope
Budd and Dorothy Budd
Brown Books Publishing Group
The plight of the wrongfully convicted is finally on the national radar screen, helped along by the miracle of DNA testing, groups that work on their behalf, and the willingness of state governmental officials to admit that there are serious flaws in the criminal justice system. While a number of articles and books have brought much needed attention to the problem, Tested is the first book to examine how the wrongfully convicted survived the hell of prison knowing that they are innocent.
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A transcendent CSN
by Harvey Wasserman
The power of music is one of the great unknowns in the human saga. For reasons we don't quite understand (yet) its vibrations can lift us to great heights, drop us down into deep depression, liberate us, make us joyous, help us grieve, and so much more.
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Book Review: Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America
by Dr. Marilyn Howard
Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America
by Eugene Robinson
As a professor of African American history, I often remind my students that the black community is not monolithic, nor is there any one black experience. There is no one voice speaking for all of black America–this idea is the creation of white America–just as there is no longer such a thing as an all encompassing state of black America, the Urban League’s annual report notwithstanding. Indeed, African Americans are as diverse as any other race. According to the Pulitzer Prize winning Robinson, “Black America, as we knew it, is history,” done in by integration, suburbanization, Reaganomics and the global economy. Instead, Robinson reports that there are now four distinct black communities.
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When the biomass hits the wind turbine: How we got ourselves into this mess, and how we are going to get out of it
by Harvey Wasserman
When the biomass hits the wind turbine: How we got ourselves into this mess, and how we are going to get out of it
By Jay Warmke
Published by BRS Media (Philo, Ohio: 2012)
Renewable “green” energy will be the biggest industry in the history of humankind. When the Biomass Hits the Wind Turbine is a great way to learn all about it.
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