Black Lives Matter

Martin Luther King, Birmingham, Nonviolent Protests v Bombs and Brutality
Civil Rights

Martin Luther King, Birmingham, Nonviolent Protests v Bombs and Brutality, Biography Chapter 7

Bruce Strom 2

In September 1963, a black church in Birmingham was dynamited, killing four young girls and injuring several dozen others. Addressing the nation on television, President Kennedy proclaimed, “This nation is committed to a course of domestic justice and tranquility.” “If these cruel and tragic events can awaken that city and state, if they can awaken this entire nation,” “then it is not too late for all concerned to unite in steps toward peaceful progress before more lives are lost.” But no whites attended the funeral services of these four young black girls. […]

Martin Luther King, Lunch Counters, Freedom Riders, and Albany, Lewis’ Biography
Civil Rights

Martin Luther King, Lunch Counters, Freedom Riders, and Albany, Lewis’ Biography Chapters 4-6

Bruce Strom 1

Martin Luther King was vigorously campaigning for voting rights. In his first national address, he proclaimed, “Give us the ballot. Give us the ballot and we will no longer have to worry the federal government about our basic rights.” “Give us the ballot and we will fill the legislature with men of goodwill. Give us the ballot and we will get the people judges who love mercy. Give us the ballot and we will quietly, lawfully, and nonviolently, without rancor or bitterness, implement” the US Supreme Court Brown decision. Ensuring that blacks have the right to vote was the key civil rights objective in the Reconstruction Era after the Civil War. […]

Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, Montgomery Bus Boycott
Civil Rights

Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, Montgomery Bus Boycott, Lewis’ Biography, Chapter 3

Bruce Strom 1

The biographer David Levering Lewis writes, “By here dignified bearing during her arrest and arraignment, and because of her impeccable reputation in the black community, Mrs Parks’ defiance compelled the city to charge her explicitly with the violation of the municipal ordinance governing racial accommodation on publicly owned vehicles, and not, as was usually the case, with the elastic offense of disorderly conduct.” […]

Martin Luther King, Youth and Schooling, Lewis’ Biography
Civil Rights

Martin Luther King, Youth and Schooling, Lewis’ Biography Chapters, 1 and 2

Bruce Strom 9

The biographer David Levering Lewis observes that “the King family belonged to what is known as the school hard preaching, of which cult of personality, and occasional pinch of exploitation, and sulfurous evangelism are indispensable ingredients.” Martin’s maternal grandfather founded the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, and his father, Martin Luther King Sr, grew it into one of the largest and most prestigious black Baptist Churches in Atlanta.

His family was known for their involvement with civil rights. After the disastrous 1906 Atlanta race riots, his maternal grandfather was one of the charter members of the local NAACP chapter. He helped defeat a local bond issue that did not fund any new black schools and was instrumental in advocating the building of Booker T Washington High School, the first school in Atlanta for secondary education. […]

Loving God in Deuteronomy, and a Gentile’s Defense of Judaism, Part 2
Judaism

Loving God in Deuteronomy, and a Gentile’s Defense of Judaism, Part 2

Bruce Strom 1

When studying the rabbinical commentaries on Deuteronomy, I was struck by the number of times the commandment to Love God was repeated in various forms, including the commandment to Fear God, which is roughly equivalent, so I decided to count them, there are about twenty repetitions. This was surprising to me as a Christian, for as St Paul exhorts, “the letter” of the law “kills, but the Spirit gives life.” […]

Jimmy Carterm Inspirational Devotions SMALL
Bible Stories and Parables

Jimmy Carter Inspirational Daily Devotions: Bible Stories, Reflections on Historical Events

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One of Bonhoeffer’s most famous books carried the title, The Cost of Discipleship. In it he condemns what he calls cheap grace. He insists one cannot follow Christ without full commitment, wherever that commitment might lead. In his case it led to a Nazi gallows.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth were leaders in the Confessing Church that resisted the Nazi infiltration and cooption of German Christianity, opposing the Nazi notion that Jesus wasn’t Jewish and that Christianity should condone the persecution of the Jews. […]

Benefits and Detriments of Slavery in the Deep South
Civil Rights

Benefits and Detriments of Slavery in the Deep South

Bruce Strom 0

There was one very real benefit of slavery to the enslaved in the Deep South. Before the Civil War, slaves were far less likely to be lynched or killed than were freed slaves after the war. The reason for this was simple: it is illegal to damage someone’s property, and slaves were extremely valuable. Slaves were the most valuable asset class in America before the Civil War. Before the Civil War, a slave was worth as much as an economy car is worth today. […]

Should Blacks Receive Reparations? Happy Juneteenth from Atlantic Magazine, Civil Rights Articles
Civil Rights

Should Blacks Receive Reparations? Happy Juneteenth from Atlantic Magazine, Civil Rights Articles

Bruce Strom 0

The most compelling story in the Atlantic Juneteenth collection is “The Case for Reparations” by Ta-Nehisi Coates. He is one of the Black Lives Matter banned authors, banned for making sensitive white children ashamed of their past history, ashamed that slavery was indeed the cause of the Civil War, ashamed of the brutal history of Jim Crow and KKK violence during Reconstruction and Redemption targeted at blacks. Ta-Nehisi Coates’ works were deleted from the AP Black History Studies course in a futile attempt to make it acceptable to Red State schools. If they wanted to change the emphasis to the AP Lost Cause White History Studies course, they would have better luck. […]

14th Amendment National Debt Insurrection SMALL
Civil War and Reconstruction

Unenforced Sections of the 14th Reconstruction Amendment: Public Debt and Insurrection

Bruce Strom 0

Is this Republican blackmail constitutional? Most scholars and the Justice Department do not think so, although there are some conservative scholars who disagree. And there is no Supreme Court precedent for this question. President Biden has publicly stated that the Fourteenth Amendment question is on the table. […]