holidays

From: Mike Cole (mcole@weber.ucsd.edu)
Date: Mon Feb 18 2002 - 08:06:44 PST


So, more or less, we get to work on what we want to work on or take some time
to play. Its a holiday in the U.S. The "Presidents Birthday" holiday.

It is also Black history month.

In a contrarian mood, I am externalizing some thoughts about two issues
we routinely fail to address adequately, race and gender.

How does gender enter the picture?

No American female presidents, right?

Like this. (Others might choose other starting points, like Rosa Parks
taking a bus ride or Lyndon Johnson pulling his dogs' ears to the hue and
cry of people sending their kids to Vietnam).

About a week ago, the history channel told the story of the Tuskeegee
flyers, who were denied for a long time the right to fly planes in the
the U.S. airforce. After a long and bitter battle, they won that right,
and a key player in changing the attitudes of White Americans was a woman
named Eleanor Roosevelt, who travelled to Georgia, and asked to be taken
on a training flight by an African American airman.

Yesterday morning on NPR we were reminded (or, I suppose, for many) minded
of the event in the late '30'sor early '40's (sorry, I tuned in late and
was kind of young at the time of the events) when Marion Anderson was
supposed to sing in Washington DC, but was denied the use of Constitution
Hall which was owned by the daughters of the american revolution. Harold
Ickes, later much reviled by Senator McCarthy and others, arranged as
secy of the interior, for her to sing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
He felt compelled to say what today goes without saying or sounds gauch-- the
notion that genius knows know color (unless, of course, one is talking about
IQ!).

Ms. Anderson did not participate in the controversy. Ms. Roosevelt did. She
resigned from the daughters of the American revolution and helped craft
the alternative venue.

But Ms. Anderson, in a voice that has to be heard to be believed, before
a mall that was to see such numbers again in 1963 when Martin Luther King
appeared in the same venue, chose her songs carefully. The beginning is
enough to recount, for its hope, for its irony, and the many sadnesses
the preceeded and follow it.

"My country tis of thee
Sweet Land of Liberty.
Let Freedom ring.

Amen. And not just in my country.
mike



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