CHIEF JUSTICE ‘PRESIDES’ OVER IMPEACHMENT

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, the Constitution’s named ‘presiding’ official, at the upcoming impeachment trial of President Donald Trump , is mysteriously quiet about the whole affair, even as Democrats and Republicans haggle, posture, wrangle, about prospective witnesses, procedures, and delivery of the two impeachment articles to the Senate!



We Are Gods

“People tend to play down our power,” said the late maestro Barry White, in an interview with Arsenio Hall. “We are gods. Every man and woman on this planet are gods. I changed my own life at age 16.”

Some people may scoff at this as being heresy. But as Barry said people tend to downplay our power.

Psalms 82:6 reinforces Barry White when it says “Ye are gods.” I have long been of a similar view to that of Barry White. I said “Sho you right!” when I heard it, agreeing with his hip “In My Garden” motto!

Here is the Big’un! Live preaching the truth about our power as gods!

“Race parity is better than race parody.”

I wrote these words while reading Dr. Rayford W. Logan’s chapter entitled “The Negro as Portrayed in the Leading Literary Magazines” in his THE BETRAYAL OF THE NEGRO (1954, 1997).

In page after page Dr. Logan persists in quoting or paraphrasing comments attributed to Negroes by Northern authors. They deigned to quote and to mock the language of uneducated or undereducated blacks, (which they attributed to all people of African descent ) in order to aggrandize themselves in their magazines in the period 1877-1901, he says. Them I get. They were racist. But I have a problem with the unwarranted regurgitation of such obloquy in his book.

He had done the same thing in a previous chapter entitled, “‘The Color Line’ at the New North.” In the earlier chapter Dr. Logan’s focus was Northern newspapers’ coverage of uncouth Negro misdeeds , crimes, anomalies , especially as pertaining to white people, outside of the South, where, if anything , coverage was worse !

I am growing weary of Dr. Rayford W. Logan and his repacking parody of blacks—‘colored or Negro’ to him—but, because in places, he has furnished good information, I have not abandoned him altogether. So , I leap ahead to fresh verdure in the hopes of escaping racists’ manure.

Where do I land but in his chapter titled “The Atlanta Compromise” . Logan detested Tuskegee Institute’s founder, Dr. Booker T. Washington, for his popularity and his industrial education successes across the South, with aid of Northern philanthropists and industrialists . I love Washington. So this may not end well, nor any better than certain foregoing chapters!


Exhalations

In 1985, I published the final issue of my black historical newsletter, THE NILE REVIEW, titled “Exhalations from My Soul.” It was my only color issue of the 20 preceding it; its illustrative cover was designed by my brother, Alvin Kennedy Coleman.

The issue treated of those matters common to mankind in the overlap of religion, philosophy, teleology, history, epistemology, all cultures, under the sun, moon, stars, and those inside of earth and mankind .

I did not know what it was then or now. I do know that it has abided publication for several decades. I have seen it being carried about Kansas City, Missouri, by various people. One prominent minister even sought to palm it off as his creation while I sat beside him at a breakfast table. He had copied it and eliminated my name, although he did not replace mine with his. He left the space blank and pretended. I called the fact of my authorship to his attention. He did, said, nothing.

Also in 1985, I shared the piece with a former Howard University friend of mine from Chicago , who had later attended Claremont College in California, receiving a Ph. D. there in philosophy, theology or kindred.

When visiting me at my home in KC in 1985, my bachelor years, we discussed “Exhalations from My Soul .” We arrived at a point in our recondite conversation when he deemed it meet to counsel with a friend of his on this inquiry: “Is God quantifiable?” His friend replied, “Yes! Infinity.” I concurred quickly.

Thereafter, this unknown man on the telephone had also stated that although I had written “Exhalations from My Soul,” in obedience to the Holy Spirit, that I did not yet know what I had really written. This too was true, I admitted wondrously. In fact, even in 2019, I still don’t know!

Perhaps, Dear Readers, you know.

The spiritual piece has numbered paragraphs that contain Biblical scriptures, Quranic verses, Lao-Tsu quotations, names of many Gods worshipped by mankind from the remotest past until the present. It begins cryptically, and categorically with: “God is.” I do not know why I have shared this obtuse memory. But I was again guided by the Holy Spirit, as before in 1985 with the final issue of THE NILE REVIEW. Amen.


Brer Rabbit had a trick, a gimmick, a stratagem for every situation, except for when it came to Brer Turtle and their footrace .

There, Brer Turtle had him beat!

How could Brer Turtle ever beat Brer Rabbit in a 5-mile foot race through the woods to win their $50 bet? How? There was only one Brer Rabbit. But, Brer Turtle had his whole Turtle family, to work with, in carrying out his substitutions in the foot race trick. Brer Turtle’s winning stratagem was using Turtle family members to impersonate himself on the ole master trickster, Brer Rabbit, finally who had met his master.

Brer Rabbit’s family helped him to win their legendary foot race. Brer Turtle contrived a plan placing his wife & their 5 children at each mile marker of the race, while Brer Turtle hid at the end . They had all looked exactly like him to beat Brer Rabbit.



LINCOLN PER DOUGLASS

Abraham Lincoln, Esq., the 16th President of the United States of America , was a very complicated, very conflicted man.

I did not fully know how extremely complicated/conflicted he was, before reading Frederick Douglass’ profound “Oration Delivered on the Occasion of the unveiling of the Freedmen’s Monument, in Memory of Abraham Lincoln , in Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C., April 14, 1876.”

Douglass knew Lincoln intimately. They were spiritual, philosophical, historical peers in American history.

Both men emerged from humble beginnings. Douglass was a black, Maryland, runaway, slave. Lincoln was a poor, white, frontiersman. Both men were self-educated and lovers of books; both men were stentorian orators , whose words yet emblazon turbines of thought.

I thought that I already knew Frederick Douglass. I had read his thrilling 1845 NARRATIVE while but a teenager, and presumed that there was nothing else much to know. Blessedly, the arrogance of youth has blossomed into a humble openness to greater understanding in my 68th year. For I was revivified, sanctified by reading DOUGLASS AUTOBIOGRAPHIES: NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE; MY BONDAGE AND MY FREEDOM; and LIFE AND TIMES (1994). In the appendix of this heady work is found an “Appendix” containing the April 14, 1876, oratory mentioned above that I had started not to read, surmising that I had read all that there was to know!

When one humbles oneself, one is usually blessed with understanding. I certainly was blessed for forcing myself to read Frederick Douglass’s oration dedication to the unveiling of the statue of Abraham Lincoln that was paid for exclusively by the ‘colored people’ in 1876, before the rest of the nation drew abreast, by erecting Lincoln Memorial in 1922.

I have attached here Douglass’ divine dedicatory address, sermon, lecture, history lesson, prophesy, below, beloved reader, for your own edification. It is one of the greatest of American orations! Coming now after the impeachment of Donald Trump, it takes on a more sublime character ; for it contrasts what was, with what seemed; with what remained unrealized; with what was reclaimed; with what is almost lost!

https://rbscp.lib.rochester.edu/4402



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