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5 July 1852
Editor's Note
Please read
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Meeting sponsored by the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society, Rochester
Hall, Rochester, N.Y. To illustrate the full
shame of slavery, Douglass delivered a speech that took aim at the pieties
of the nation -- the cherished memories of its revolution, its principles
of liberty, and its moral and religious foundation. The Fourth
of July, a day celebrating freedom, was used by Douglass to remind his audience
of liberty's unfinished business.
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| At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument,
is needed. O! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's
ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting
reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is
needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm,
the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened;
the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation
must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes
against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.
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What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy - a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour. Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.
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“R-E-S-P-E-C-T!”
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ANOTHER CALLFOR EQUAL JUSTICE
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Editor's Note:
Frederick Douglass is truly a "hero proved in liberating strife" and a patriot whose dream has seen "beyond the years."
Perhaps Michael Jackson said it best after all:
WAKE UP AMERICA!WAKE UP PLANET EARTH!!!Don't worry about the "Eyes of Texas" -
The Eyes of GOD are upon YOU!!!
Copyright ©
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Universal Declaration of Human Rights
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President Abraham Lincoln's
And whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God...and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.
- National Day of Prayer Proclamation, March 30, 1863
National Day of Prayer Proclamation
PROCLAMATION APPOINTING A NATIONAL FAST DAY
Whereas, the Senate of the United States, devoutly recognizing the Supreme Authority and just Government of Almighty God, in all the affairs of men and of nations, has, by a resolution, requested the President to designate and set apart a day for National prayer and humiliation:
And whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord:
And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment, inflicted upon us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!
It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.
Now, therefore, in compliance with the request, and fully concurring in the views of the Senate, I do, by this proclamation, designate and set apart Thursday, the 30th. day of April, 1863, as a day of national humiliation, fasting and prayer. And I do hereby request all the People to abstain, on that day, from their ordinary secular pursuits, and to unite, at their several places of public worship and their respective homes, in keeping the day holy to the Lord, and devoted to the humble discharge of the religious duties proper to that solemn occasion.
All this being done, in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorized by the Divine teachings, that the united cry of the Nation will be heard on high, and answered with blessings, no less than the pardon of our national sins, and the restoration of our now divided and suffering Country, to its former happy condition of unity and peace.
In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the City of Washington, this thirtieth day of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and, of the Independence of the United States the eighty seventh.
Abraham Lincoln
By the President: William H. Seward, Secretary of State
MARCH 30 , 1863
http://www.everythinglincoln.com/articles/fastingprayerproclamation.html http://www.everythinglincoln.com/articles/fastingprayerproclamation.html
Related items:
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RACE IN AMERICA -
By Condoleezza Rice, Ph.D. Question: Madame Secretary… Secretary Rice: America doesn’t have an easy time dealing with race. I sit in my office and the portrait immediately over my shoulder is Thomas Jefferson, because he was my first predecessor. He was the first secretary of state. And sometimes I think to myself, what would he think — (laughter) — a Black woman secretary of state as his…successor, 65 times removed? What would he think that the last two successors have been Black Americans? And so, obviously, when this country was founded, the words that were enshrined in all of our great documents and that have been such an inspiration to people around the world, for the likes of Vaclav Havel, associate themselves with those documents. They didn’t have meaning for an overwhelming element of our founding population. And Black Americans were a founding population. Africans and Europeans came here and founded this country together — Europeans by choice and Africans in chains. And that’s not a very pretty reality of our founding, and I think that particular birth defect makes it hard for us to confront it, hard for us to talk about it, and hard for us to realize that it has continuing relevance for who we are today. But that relevance comes in two strains. On the one hand, there’s the relevance that descendents of slaves, therefore, did not get much of a head start. And I think you continue to see some of the effects of that. On the other hand, the tremendous efforts of many, many, many people, some of whom, whose names we will never know and some individuals’ names who we do know, to be impatient with this country for not fulfilling its own principles, has led us down a path that has put African-Americans in positions and places that, I think, nobody would have even thought at the time that Dr. King was assassinated. And so we deal daily with this contradiction, this paradox about America, that on the one hand, the birth defect continues to have effects on our country, and indeed, on the discourse and effects on perhaps the deepest thoughts that people hold; and on the other hand, the enormous progress that has been made by the efforts of Blacks and whites together, to finally fulfill those principles…
The above remarks are excerpted from an interview by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice with The Washington Times editorial board, March 27, 2008.
You may read
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Only GOD can heal
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Pass It Along:Entrepreneurship and Philanthropy
Having amassed a sizable fortune, Roger Babson was not content to join the idle rich. Instead he shared his business knowledge to protect investors, and invested his own wealth in industries and endeavors that would benefit humanity. After witnessing a dramatic stock market crash and financial panic in 1907, Roger Babson expanded his investment practice to include counseling on what to buy and sell as well as when it was wise to purchase or unload stocks. Working with M.I.T. Professor of Engineering George F. Swain, Roger Babson applied Isaac Newton's theory of "actions and reactions" to economics, originating the Babsonchart of economic indicators, which assessed current and predicted future business conditions. Although the Babsonchart has since proved to be an imperfect tool, through it Roger Babson earned the distinction of being the first financial forecaster to predict the stock-market crash of October, 1929, and the Great Depression that followed.
Throughout his long life and his many enterprises, Roger Babson was able to successfully foresee and foster change while holding fast to fundamental spiritual and ethical values. As a devoted educator, he saw it as his mission to pass along the basic truths that he learned from experience: "It is not knowledge which young people need for success, so much as those basic qualities of integrity, industry, imagination, common sense, self-control and a willingness to struggle and sacrifice. Most individuals already have far more knowledge than they use. They need inheritance and development of a character which will cause them properly to apply this knowledge. . .Real business success comes through the qualities above mentioned, not through money, degrees, or social standing."
Written by Andrew Martinez Updated by R.C.(Rip) Rybnikar January 20, 2009
http://www3.babson.edu/Archives/research_publications/rbabsonbio.cfm
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Was Roger Babson Right?Examine the Boiler Room
In November, 1919, I was a member of the Chicago Association of Commerce. At a regular weekly membership luncheon, the noted Boston statistician and economist, Roger Babson, was guest speaker. He astonished major bank officials and industrial leaders saying that in one year we would experience the most drastic depression our generation had known. Economic executives ridiculed. We were then in an upward trend of prosperity.
A year later Roger Babson again was our guest speaker. He said, "The year has passed, and I am back and depression is here with me." There was no ridicule or laughter, and Babson told us why he knew, and why business and financial executives did not.
“It is now mid-winter. If I want to know what the temperature is, now, in this room, I go to the wall and look at the thermometer. If I want to know what it has been, up to now, and the existing trend as of the moment, I look at a recording thermometer. But if I want to know what the temperature in this room is going to be, an hour from now, I go to the source which determines future temperatures—I go down to the boiler room and see what is happening down there.
“You gentlemen looked at bank clearings, indexes of business activity, stock car loadings, stock market quotations—you looked at the thermometers on the wall; I looked at the way people as a whole were dealing with one another. I looked to the source which determines future conditions. I have found that that source may be defined in terms of 'righteousness.'
“When 51 percent or more of the whole people are reasonably 'righteous' in their dealings with one another, we are heading into increasing prosperity. When 51 percent of the people become 'unrighteous' in their business dealings with their fellows, then we are headed for bad times economically!”
Was Roger Babson right? Examine the Boiler Room!
By Herbert W. Armstrong January 20, 1983
Source:
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Was Roger Babson Right?“The 21st Century
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Another Contemporary Message:“Stop Coddling the Super-Rich”
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Noose Displays Are Wrong! "As a civil society, we must understand that noose displays and lynching jokes are deeply offensive. President Bush Celebrates African American History Month
It is important for all our citizens to know the history of the African
American struggle for equality. We must remember that the slave trade
brought many Africans to America in chains, not by choice. We must
remember how slaves claimed their God-given right to freedom. And we must
remember how freed slaves and their descendants helped rededicate America
to the ideals of its founding.
Our nation has come a long way toward building a more perfect union. Yet
as past injustices have become distant memories, there's a risk that our
society may lose sight of the real suffering that took place. One symbol
of that suffering is the noose. Recently, there have been a number of
media reports about nooses being displayed. These disturbing reports have
resulted in heightened racial tensions in many communities. They have
revealed that some Americans do not understand why the sight of a noose
causes such a visceral reaction among so many people.
For decades, the noose played a central part in a campaign of violence and
fear against African Americans. Fathers were dragged from their homes in
the dark of the night before the eyes of their terrified children. Summary
executions were held by torchlight in front of hateful crowds. In many
cases, law enforcement officers responsible for protecting the victims were
complicit in their deeds [sic] and their deaths. For generations of
African Americans, the noose was more than a tool of murder; it was a tool
of intimidation that conveyed a sense of powerlessness to millions.
The era of rampant lynching is a shameful chapter in American history. The
noose is not a symbol of prairie justice, but of gross injustice.
Displaying one is not a harmless prank. And lynching is not a word to be
mentioned in jest. As a civil society, we must understand that noose
displays and lynching jokes are deeply offensive. They are wrong. And
they have no place in America today.
Read the entire account on the White House Web site.
(Source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/02/print/20080212-3.html)
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Rev. Al Sharpton: Dr. John Carlos marches,
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This is not a question of censorship.
It is simply a matter
of
"Responsibility in Free Speech!"
Bill Cosby May 17, 2004 Speech Best of the Web Todayby JAMES TARANTOThursday, May 20, 2004 3:48 p.m. EDT The Cosby Show, Uncensored
Now look at the way Washington Post gossip columnist Richard Leiby covered the same speech (second item):
Aren't the comments the AP left out both more interesting and more newsworthy than the ones the wire service reported?
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