Lumpkin's Slave Jail

From a Los Angeles Times story: "The place called Lumpkin's Jail was indeed a jail, but it was much more than that. It was a holding pen for human chattel.
"In Richmond's Shockoe Bottom river district, the notorious slave trader Robert Lumpkin ran the city's largest slave-holding facility in the 1840s and 1850s. Tens of thousands of blacks were held in the cramped brick building while they waited to be sold."
Earlier this month the Lumpkin Jail was excavated in Richmond, Virginia, and this week "black and white Richmond residents walked together across the rain-slicked cobblestones . . . that mark the outlines of the old slave jail." Upon his death Lumpkin left the jail to his widow, Mary Lumpkin, a black woman and former slave. She in turn "gave the property to a minister who established a school for freed slaves. Over the years, the school evolved into what is now Virginia Union University, a historically black college."

"Adolf Hitler Campbell"

Heath and Deborah Campbell named their now three-year-old son Adolf Hitler Campbell. A ShopRite store refused the Campbells' order for a birthday cake with the child's name spelled out. Heath Campbell, invoking the name of President-elect Obama: "There's a new president and he says it's time for a change; well, then it's time for a change. They need to accept a name. A name's a name. The kid isn't going to grow up and do what (Hitler) did." A spokeswoman for ShopRite defended the store's refusal to provide the requested birthday cake, noting that past requests by the Campbells (including a request for a swasitika) had been denied.

The Campbells did find a store willing to provide the Hitler birthday cake: Wal-Mart.

Channel Flipping

Television broadcast of HEB Holiday Parade. Commentator/host says (I'm paraphrasing) "There's Santa with two Rockettes. I wonder what Mrs. Santa thinks about that?" Ah, the grown folks' spirit of Christmas.

Follow Up To December 3's "Sad Story" Posting

As noted in a December 3 posting, the workers' compensation insurer for the Dollar Tree discount chain had taken the position that the murder of 26-year-old Taneka Talley (an African American) by a killer allegedly motivated by Talley's race was not work related. Facing public anger over the insurer's stance, Dollar Tree has now announced that it has made an offer to pay the full benefit amount permitted by California law.

From "Stuff White People Like"

Read this "if you want to befriend a large number of white people at the same time . . ."

Words You Don't (I Didn't) Want To Hear

Saxby Chambliss of Georgia was reelected and will be returning to the United States Senate.

Judicial Appointments In Massachusetts

According to the December 5, 2008 edition of the Boston Globe, Massacushetts Goveronor Deval Patrick, who happens to be black, "picked two minority judges to fill 29 judicial vacancies since assuming office nearly two years ago, accumulating the worst record among recent Massachusetts governors."

Harris-Lacewell On The Election Of Obama

Princeton Professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell, writing in The Nation:

In his prophetic turn-of-the-century treatise The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois reflected on the experience of being black in America as a constant awareness that others view one as a problem--to be observed, analyzed and solved. For black Americans our very self is the object of the slavery question, the miscegenation threat, the Jim Crow solution, the Negro problem, the black family crisis, the welfare dilemma, the crime concern or the nation's racial scar. It is difficult to live as the object of this amused contempt and pity.

When Barack Obama was elected as the first black president of the United States, African-Americans became the solution instead of the problem. For many black folks, Obama's victory has momentarily healed the double consciousness that is an ordinary part of our lives. To be a citizen in a democracy is to be not only ruled but also the ruler, to not only submit to law but to craft it, to not only die for your country but to live fully in it. In this moment, we are citizens.

We the people, who tilled the soil and cleared the forests and harvested the crops for no compensation. We the people, who endured the abortion of Reconstruction and carried the weight of Jim Crow. We the people, who swung from Southern trees and stood on the front lines of foreign wars. We the people, who taught our children to read even when the schools had no books. We the people, who worshiped a God of liberation even as we suffered oppression. We the people, who gave America back its highest ideals with our nonviolent struggle against injustice.

On Racial Disparities In The Criminal Justice System

From a Rick Casey Houston Chronicle article: In 2006 police raided an apartment and arrested an 18-year-old black man for selling cocaine, and "a white couple in their 30s who leased the apartment and made it available to the teenager in exchange for free crack for the wife." The husband had prior misdemeanor drug and weapons charges; the wife had previously been charged with theft, forgery, and prostitution. The judge presiding over the case gave the couple probation. The same judge sentenced the black teenager (whose record included unauthorized use of a vehicle and misdemeanor marijuana charges) to ten years in prison. According to prosecutors, the charges against the teenager were enhanced because an assault rifle and revolver were found in the apartment. (Those weapons belonged to the white man who leased the apartment.)

Dallas District Attorney Craig Watkins' office, concerned about this racial disparity in sentencing, recently "withdrew the weapons charge, clearing the way for the judge to give" the teen "10 years' probation."

Gallup On Black Democrats' Views On Homosexual Relationships

According to Gallup, homosexual relationships are morally acceptable to 31% of black Democrats (compared to 61% of nonblack Democrats). Thirty percent of Republicans say such relationships are morally acceptable.

Sad Story

Consider this:"Taneka Talley was stabbed to death in March 2006 while she was working as a clerk at a Dollar Tree store in Fairfield [, California]. Her killer's only motive, prosecutors say, is that she was African American.
"That's also the reason the store workers' compensation insurer is denying $250,000 in death benefits to Talley's 11-year-old son.
"The boy's grandmother, the child's legal guardian, said Specialty Risk Services is taking the position that a racially motivated killing is personal, not work-related-even though the man charged with killing Talley had never met her before. The insurance company, Dollar Tree and their lawyers aren't talking publicly about the case but are defending their position before a state appeals board that hears workers' compensation disputes."

Crack News

A 20-year-old student in southern China jumped into the pen of a panda, Yangyang, seeking to cuddle. Yangyang, not interested in cuddling, attacked the young man. Zookeepers rescued Mr. This-Is-An-Incredibly-Bad-Idea-And Now-I'm-In-The-Hospital.

Proposition 8 And Black Female Voters

Charles Blow offers his theories explaining why "nearly twice as many black women said they voted for" California Proposition 8's prohibition of same-sex marriage "than black men."

On "Drank" And "Purple Stuff"

From the front page of the Houston Chronicle: "Sippin' syrup," a drink with Houston origins (also known as "Drank," "purple stuff," and "lean") is a mixture of codeine syrup and soft drinks or alcohol. Producer DJ Screw "extolled the use of the recreational drug in his songs before his death in 2000 of a codeine overdose." In 2007 rapper Big Moe, "who also sipped syrup and whose biggest hit was Purple Stuff, died of a heart attack"; thereafter, Port Arthur rapper Pimp C died from an overdose of cough syrup and sleep apnea.

Now available for purchase in black communities: Drank, a nonalcoholic and non-codeine "slow your roll" carbonated beverage containing melatonin, rose hips and valerian root. (Check out the Drank web site.) Ronald Peters, a professor at the University of Texas-Houston School of Public Health, "worries that the new canned beverages could be a gateway for youth who want to experience the slowed-down effect of cough syrup abuse. He called the products a step in the wrong direction and criticized them as 'one of the most asinine things I have ever seen.'"

The Increasing Suicide Rate Of Young Black Men

The suicide rate of black men between the ages of 15 and 24 rose more than 83 percent in the last 20 years and is the third leading cause of death for younger African-American males, according to this story.

African Americans' Improved Access To Liver Transplants

An article of interest: "Blacks waiting for a liver transplant used to be more likely to die compared to whites. Now they have the same chance of getting a life-saving organ under a nationwide system that puts the sickest patients first, a new study found."

Words You Don't Want To Hear

"O.J.'s really mad at you."

The Supreme Court's Announcement Of Parents Involved v. Seattle School District No. 1

Click here for the audio of the Court's announcement of its 2007 decision in the Seattle and Louisville voluntary racial integration cases, and Justice Breyer's oral dissent.

Crack News

For Dr. Phil with hair, click here.

On Army Sgt. Cornelius Charlton

Army Sergeant Cornelius Charlton died in June 1951 at the age of 21 after he led his platoon's effort to take a hill from the enemy in a battle near Chipo-Ri, South Korea. Charlton was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor and was supposed to be buried at the Arlington National Cemetery. As Charlton's relatives approached Arlington with Charlton's coffin carried by a horse-drawn buggy they were stopped by people in pickup trucks carrying shotguns and could not bury their loved one and this war hero in Arlington, burying him instead in Pocahontas, Virginia. Thereafter, in 1989, Chartlton's remains were buried at the American Legion cemetery in Beckley, West Virginia.

Fifty seven years later, in early November 2008, Sergeant Charlton was laid to rest in Arlington. He "is the only black Medal of Honor recipient from the Korean War buried at Arlington; there are 15 other black Medal of Honor recipients buried there. Medal of Honor winners automatically qualify for burial at Arlington."