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Black People Vote Too

20/02/12 at 5.25pm   /   by Michael   /   0 Comment
From Upsplash

Black people vote too, yes they sure do vote.

Thank God Joe Biden. Blacks do vote in large numbers in the states where they reside. Mostly in the south, the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, well, you get the picture.

Even though Black people vote in prodigious numbers, the fake news media have written Joe Biden out of the race. These fakers want a fresh face to talk about in 2020. Biden does not fit the bill as he has been around much longer than this writer, who has been around far longer than he cares to admit on most days.

Biden, who superbly had President Obama’s back for eight years, has put his presidential hopes in the hands of the Black electorate. The former Vice President is banking Black people will not forget his loyalty to Obama in the days when White Americans criticized Obama’s every move and motive.

Thus far, about one percent of Blacks have cast a primary or caucus vote in 2020. Biden’s strength in the Black community gets tested in South Carolina in two weeks.

A strong vote from the Black community in South Carolina will cause Biden to owe a considerable debt to African Americans. A Biden win in South Carolina will remove all doubt about the importance of the Black vote in Democratic politics.

Should Biden win in the Palmetto State, then the nomination on the way to the White House, and not deliver a substantial Black uplift program, the Democratic Party can kiss the Black vote goodbye for some time to come.

There is more riding on South Carolina than a win for Biden, a whole class of people are counting on his leadership to improve conditions that other President have merely paid lip service.

While Biden is putting his quest for the presidency into the hands of Black South Carolinians, Blacks are putting, to paraphrase the gospel choir that sung at a recent Biden rally, “all of their burdens, problems, and oppressions” in Biden’s hands.

Harold Michael Harvey is the author of Freaknik Lawyer: A Memoir on the Craft of Resistance. He is a Past President of the Gate City Bar Association. He is the recipient of Gate City’s R. E. Thomas Civil Rights Award, which he received for his pro bono representation of Black college students arrested during Freaknik celebrations in the mid to late 1990s. An avid public speaker, contact him at hmharvey@haroldmichaelharvey.com.

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Biden Toppled As Front Runner and Blacks Haven’t Voted Yet

20/02/11 at 7.24am   /   by Michael   /   0 Comment
Alex Nemo Hanse on Upsplash

In a recent national poll, former Vice President Joe Biden drops from atop the polls as the likely Democratic nominee, a front-runner no more.

Biden’s moderate approach to defeating impeached President Donald J. Trump displaced for the democratic socialist ideas of Senator Bernie Sanders and former New York Republican Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg is waiting on the flank for Sanders and Bloomberg to falter.

In other words, this is how the 2020 presidential race is shaping up to white America. From white people’s perspective, the polls reflect Biden’s dismal showing in Iowa and his self-proclaim prospect that he will not win New Hampshire later this evening.

But wait a minute. The Iowa and New Hampshire electorate combine comprise less than three per-cent of Black, Latino, Asian, and Native voters.

Why is this an important fact?

People of color comprise a large segment of the country. Their collective voices, silent, thus far this election cycle.

One can say, the proverbial “Fat Lady” has not sung, old Joe Biden’s demise due to ideas from yesteryear, overly premature.

If valid, as I posit, that this new poll results from the prism of lily-white states, then the race comes down to a fight between a Democratic centrist and a Republican moderate to knock off the capitalist upheaval portend in a Sanders’ administration. While Biden, the liberal Democrat in this race, is retired to the history books as the side-kick to the first American President of African descent.

Analogous to a game of poker, Buttigieg is holding an outside straight. If Bloomberg can’t buy a win over Sanders, then Buttigieg gets the card he needs to complete his outside straight. He then becomes the heir apparent to carry the Democratic banner into the General Election.

Yet the colored choir has not sung.

Benjamin P. Dixon is an unapologetic African living in America. According to his Twitter profile, Dixon has the “dopest political podcast in the game.”

“I hope nobody thinks I’m getting out of bed on November 4 to vote for Pete Buttigieg,” Dixon, who is followed by 55, 000 on Twitter, twitted after Iowa.

In Nevada, on February 22, the colored choir, mostly immigrant citizens originally from our southern border, are stirring, clearing its throat for what we in the Black Church call “A singing.”

The next week the sopranos and the altos in South Carolina are poised to make Joe Biden the first “Comeback Kid” since William Jefferson Clinton.

By Super Tuesday, the bass and baritones in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia join the syncopate, rendering the strong showing of Sanders and Buttigieg weak and elevating the early fragile appearance of Biden, strong.

What the Democratic race has had are too many candidates. And not a clear direction on how the party plans to tackle Trump. After the curtain closes on the colored choir’s performance on Super Tuesday, the field of candidates will shorten. A pathway for a return trip to the White House grows clearer. It will be Sanders or Biden, but most surely, not Buttigieg.

While people of color do not begrudge Buttigieg’s lifestyle, and would never step negatively to him about it as white evangelicals do, the boomers at least, do not buy into the Buttigiegs as an American norm. Whether reported or not reported, talked about, or not talked about, this will be the undertone of colored boomer’s votes as the campaign spread across the country.

As Yogi Berra profoundly said, “It ain’t over, till it’s over.”

Harold Michael Harvey is the author of Freaknik Lawyer: A Memoir on the Craft of Resistance. He is a Past President of the Gate City Bar Association. He is the recipient of Gate City’s R. E. Thomas Civil Rights Award, which he received for his pro bono representation of Black college students arrested during Freaknik celebrations in the mid to late 1990s. An avid public speaker, contact him at hmharvey@haroldmichaelharvey.com.

Denied Library Acess 55 Years Ago Harvey Is Author Series Speaker

20/02/09 at 9.51am   /   by Michael   /   0 Comment

In 1962, Harold Michael Harvey was a 12-year-old with an insatiable appetite for reading books. He liked baseball and rocks. He loved reading books about baseball and rocks.

When he had read all the books in his mother’s library at home, and in the library at Eugenia Hamilton Elementary School, he asked his mom if she would take him to the library on Washington Avenue. He wanted to check out a book on Willie Mays, one of his favorite baseball players.

Harvey’s mother, Elaine, was an avid reader too. She was happy that the second of her two sons had a passion for reading books that she could not satisfy.

There was a minor problem with Harvey’s request. A library card was required to check out a book at Washington Memorial Library. Since Harvey’s mom, like Harvey, was a Negro, she did not have a library card issued by Washington Memorial Library. She was ineligible to receive one because of the de jure segregated policy of the library.

This library opened in 1923, five years, and 20 days before Elaine Harvey was born. She grew up to become a school teacher, but not wanting to violate the law, she never attempted to enter the Washington Memorial Library.

She informed Harvey that the only place he could check out a book was at the Amelia Hutchings Memorial Library.

Hutchings Memorial or some off-shoot of it had been servicing the Black Macon community since January 8, 1928, eleven months before Elaine Harvey was born. The same year that the Southern Library Association passed a resolution during its convention in Biloxi, Mississippi, that “library service to Negroes should be a part of every library system” ( Middle Georgia and the Approach of Modernity).

In 1930, a survey conducted by Louis Shores, Librarian at Fisk University, one of the leading historically black colleges and universities educating Negroes, concluded, “Like other segregated libraries, the black library at Macon bore the harsh social and economic consequences of Jim Crow segregation” (Ibid).

Shores’ study further stated Macon had “one of the largest black populations in the group of cities offering public library services to Negroes. The segregated library at Macon reported one of the smallest collections (700 volumes) and annual city appropriations ($500) of any segregated library in the group.”

In January 1952, Three months after Harvey was born, a group of Macon’s leading Black citizens led by Dentist D. T. Walton, requested the city either allow Negroes to use the Washington Memorial Library or that a new library be built for Macon’s Black community.

The Macon City Council rejected the notion of Blacks using the Washington Memorial Library. After all, it sits on Washington Place, the home of former Macon Mayor James H. R. Washington, where according to the Washington Memorial Library website, “grand social occasions” were held. The following year (1953), the Amelia Hutchings Memorial Library opened at 151 Madison Street.

Nine years after Blacks received their public-funded library, Harvey’s mom took him to the Amelia Hutchings Memorial Library, where he obtained his first library card and checked out a book about Willie Mays.

In its heyday before the American Civil War, Washington Place entertained British author William Makepeace Thackeray known for his satirical portrayal of British life in the novel Vanity Fair. Thackeray was in Macon to deliver a reading from his prodigious volume of work.

This year during Black History Month, the little boy who could not check-out a book on Willie Mays at Washington Memorial Library in 1962, is invited to the library as part of the library’s Author Series to read from his latest book, Freaknik Lawyer: A Memoir on the Craft of Resistance.

FROM THE DESK OF CYNTHIA HARVEY

Harold Michael Harvey is the author of Freaknik Lawyer: A Memoir on the Craft of Resistance. He is a Past President of the Gate City Bar Association. He is the recipient of Gate City’s R. E. Thomas Civil Rights Award, which he received for his pro bono representation of Black college students arrested during Freaknik celebrations in the mid to late 1990s. An avid public speaker contact him at hmharvey@haroldmichaelharvey.com.

Joe Biden Didn’t Suck As Bad As the Pundits Contend

20/02/08 at 8.47am   /   by Michael   /   0 Comment

Photo by Miguel Henriques on Unsplash

I watched the debate from New Hampshire. Contrary to the television political pundits, I thought that Joe Biden had a great discussion about his views on the future of the country.

The future, after all, can not begin until Donald J. Trump is defeated. Biden made it clear that the goal of the 2020 campaign season is to defeat Trump.

Clearly, Biden understands that the number one enemy of the future is Trump. An immediate repeal of the Trump corporate tax cut, immigration detention centers, and nasty political discourse will lead towards a bright future.

It is evident Biden believes in the future. His website proclaims: “America’s best days still lie ahead.”

I don’t know if Biden has the right stuff to win in November, but I do believe he acquitted himself well during this debate, much better than is reported by our thought leaders.

Yet the media is in search of a fresh face. Like what is wrong with old familiar faces? Old faces once ran the media conglomerates, but today’s media is much younger and less likely to be relatable to older people. Hence Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren’s performances are viewed from the prism of more inexperienced eyes. Hello, age discrimination brought to you live and in living color during the presidential campaign.

What the public is left with is the ranking of candidates my age. The older candidates are perceived to have old ideas and lack the physical endurance to compete on the debate stage with an old guy from their generation, thus what is needed is a younger man or woman who can debate the old dinosaur representing the Republicans.

Youth, as a litmus test, makes about as much sense as what happened in 2016. Four years ago, the liberal media promoted the idea that Secretary Hillary Clinton was the heir apparent of the public anointing of Brack Obama as the first Black person to serve as President.

It did not matter that Senator Bernie Sanders put forth ideas to expand on the Obama Presidency, while Clinton campaigned on the pledge to reform Obama’s healthcare plan.

The 2020 Presidential election is not about selecting a candidate that can handle Trump in a debate. Clinton proved in 2016 that Trump was not a master debater. She beat him in every discussion, including the night Trump pranced behind her on the debate stage.

This year, to paraphrase Clinton’s husband, Bill Clinton, in his victorious 1992 presidential campaign, it’s not the debate skills, it’s the best interest of the country, stupid.

The media, and especially CNN, contributed to the climate that enabled the political neophyte Trump to survive and thrive through the 2016 election cycle. More specifically, the juvenile questions asked by Wolf Blitzer.

This election season brings us the mundane commentary of Chris Cillizza. Biden, Cillizza posits, came away a loser on the night. Cillizza points to Biden’s explanation that the polices of the Obama-Biden team made the future the present reality as a defense “of the politics of the past.”

Well, duh! How did the country arrive in the future without “the politics of the past?

The candidate Cillizza credits for winning the debate is a direct beneficiary of Biden’s push for gay marriage, Pete Buttigieg. Pete and his husband Chasten could not have entered into a lawful marriage on June 16, 2018, had Biden not tugged at Obama to come out in favor of same-sex marriage.

It didn’t take Buttigieg long to reject Biden’s “politic of the past” that enabled him to embrace the man he loves publicly.

“These are new times, and they demand new solutions,” Buttigieg debated five years after Biden altered history for his benefit.

There was a time when the shelf life of useful service lasted a lifetime. Biden, like Obama, is finding out that good deeds do not continue beyond one Presidential cycle.

Harold Michael Harvey is the author of Freaknik Lawyer: A Memoir on the Craft of Resistance. He is a Past President of the Gate City Bar Association. He is the recipient of Gate City’s R. E. Thomas Civil Rights Award, which he received for his pro bono representation of Black college students arrested during Freaknik celebrations in the mid to late 1990s. An avid public speaker contacts him at hmharvey@haroldmichaelharvey.com.

Morehouse Baseball Star Looks Forward to Career at Google Not MLB

20/02/04 at 1.39pm   /   by Michael   /   0 Comment
Morehouse College standout Grant Bennett is smiling after banging out three home runs in a doubleheader against Tuskegee University. Also, Bennett hurled a dominating game on the mound, picking up the win in the second game. Photo (c) 2020 Harold Michael Harvey

I’ve been writing about baseball for a long time. I’ve interviewed hundreds of college baseball players, most of the players at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU). I’ve only met two young men playing baseball at the HBCU level, who told me that their dream was not to play professional baseball. There is a large percentage of Black college baseball student-athletes who want to pursue professional baseball as a career; despite the fact, Major League Baseball seldom send scouts to watch HBCU baseball games.

One of those young men is Grant Bennett, a senior power hitter and pitcher for the Morehouse College Maroon Tigers.

What makes Bennett’s revelation so remarkable is that it came moments after he had a day on the diamond most players at any level dream about, but seldom achieve.

“I’ll look at the stats later… My main mission today was to play hard, to play for God,” Bennett said when a reporter pressed him to talk about his achievements on the opening day of the 2020 baseball season.

For the record, in a doubleheader against Tuskegee University, Bennett hit three home runs. He drove in nine RBIs. Then he capped off his dream game with a dominating pitching performance.

Morehouse College Grant Bennett is greeted at home plate after the second of his three home runs in a doubleheader split with Tuskegee University on February 1, 2020. Photo (c) 2020 Harold Michael Harvey

Morehouse Head Baseball Coach Tony Grissom is fond of saying when asked where he finds these good baseball players, “Coaching at Morehouse, I have to take what I find walking on campus.”

Bennett at 200 pounds on six feet and the one-inch frame is the kind of package professional baseball players bring to the table. He sauntered onto the Morehouse campus four years ago from Pine Forest High School in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

His goal was to play baseball and have a little fun while in college. His immediate plans after college was not a contract with a major league team, it was to enroll into journalism school and obtain a masters in journalism. His chief ambition was to use his J-school degree to become a broadcaster for ESPN or a sports psychologist for a professional athletic organization.

Bennett had solid seasons his freshman and sophomore years, catching the eye of this reporter for his work with the bat and on the mound. During his sophomore year, his grandfather transitioned. Bennett was thrown for a loop. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his life. His grandfather had been one of his main baseball coaches from the very first day Bennett had played little league ball.

Morehouse slugger Grant Bennett trots home after hitting his second of three home runs on the day against Tuskegee University. Photo (c) 2020 Harold Michael Harvey

When fall practice started during his junior year, Bennett decided to hang up the cleats. He hit the books and campus life.

In the process of finding a bite of himself that he lost with the passing of his granddad, Bennet changed his major to finance.

This significant change put him in contact with Google. They liked what they saw and offered Bennett a job as a Human Resource Associate in their Oakland office. He begins work in August.

With a good job in the bag, Bennett felt the tug of his granddad, so he picked up his glove and strapped on his cleats. It was time to honor his granddad on the diamond one more time before heading into the world of corporate work.

“I had my angels with me today,” Bennett said, explaining his explosive day at Paterson Field in Montgomery, Alabama.

It will be left up to his younger brother who is on the roster at the University of North Carolina to chase their grandfather’s dream of a Bennett in the major leagues.

Harold Michael Harvey is the author of Freaknik Lawyer: A Memoir on the Craft of Resistance. He is a Past President of the Gate City Bar Association. He is the recipient of Gate City’s R. E. Thomas Civil Rights Award, which he received for his pro bono representation of Black college students arrested during Freaknik celebrations in the mid to late 1990s. An avid public speaker contact him at hmharvey@haroldmichaelharvey.com.

https://cvws.icloud-content.com/B/ASZu6pKxs8UwYpmGFoNd7t4wuprnAQSvfWc70XgTf1m4ZzORe4ZRasYv/IMG_1597.MOV?o=AvvyCtr6dpt-6j5d9YyxPTGzP3Mpi6leJJiZgrslGwUS&v=1&x=3&a=CAogee3kt6OvEHx4s_NmZ2F-xV_cGr_fPyIqBn3BP4HqB3USJxCmwayIgS4YptGn3IouIgEAKggByAD_c4Xa_FIEMLqa51oEUWrGLw&e=1583425906&k=PU59ky1lL5EeUYvShzkZTg&fl=&r=D3F42B57-0D8B-47D4-996A-CACE78D3389A-1&ckc=com.apple.largeattachment&ckz=76F33ED1-3DA7-489C-BDD0-27353F542B06&p=36&s=Xo5LHnFsFrjsf-xKmMhCVhjF-C8&teh=1
Click to download the video of Grant Bennett.

Tuskegee-Morehouse Split Historic Season Opener

20/02/02 at 9.53am   /   by Michael   /   0 Comment
Tuskegee University baseball players Walter George (3B), Ronald McGee (C), and Savante Williams (P) pose before the American and Alabama flags during the playing of the national anthem at their season opener against Morehouse College. February 1, 2020, Photo (c) Harold Michael Harvey

MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA ( Cascade Publishing House) It was a cold and blustery day. Intermittent rain fell from the sky, some of the droplets appeared like snowflakes as they swirled and floated to the turf in the ballpark once home for the Montgomery Rebels in the old Southern League. The combatants lined up along their respective baselines, the national anthem played over the public address system, and the umpires went over the ground rules. There would be no banging on trash cans, and signs, if stolen, had to employ the old fashion technique perfected during twentieth-century baseball.

A meeting at the plate between the umpire crew and Morehouse College Head Baseball Coach Tony Grissom and Tuskegee University Head Baseball Coach Reginald Hollin February 1, 2020 at Paterson Field. Photo (c) Harold Michael Harvey

About 100 students, alumni, and parents of the players shivered in the stands as they gathered to watch an old baseball rivalry that dates back to the 1890s. Several hundred thousand fans laid silent in the Oakview Cemetery, looking upon the action from beyond the leftfield foul line. Oakview had interned Union soldiers captured at Shilo in 1862, who died, imprisoned in Montgomery before Lee surrendered Confederate troops in 1865.

It was opening day for the 2020 baseball season. The teams brought plenty of fireworks in their aluminum bats to warm the crowd.

About 100 people, not counting the thousands who call Oakwood Cemetery home on the hill behind the Tuskegee bullpen, braved the cold and rain to watch the Tuskegee-Morehouse baseball game at Paterson Field in Montgomery, Alabama February 1, 2020. Photo (c) Harold Michael Harvey

The home team, Tuskegee University, started playing baseball in 1893. They scheduled the game at Paterson Field because Washington Field on campus had not had an overhaul since James Washington and William C. Matthews landscaped it in the nineteenth century. The home of the Golden Tigers is currently undergoing a long-overdue renovation.

Morehouse College, the visitors, drove over from Atlanta, Georgia, where they have played baseball since the mid-1880s. Tuskegee and Morehouse started competing on the baseball diamond a few years before Plessy v. Ferguson (1895) was made law, over a hundred years before America elected its first Black person President.

Morehouse College goes down in the first with a fly out to the left fielder. Tuskegee fielders display the teamwork that characterized their heady play in the seasoning opener on February 1, 2020. Photo (c) Harold Michael Harvey

After Savante Williams struck out two and retired the third Morehouse batter on a fly ball to left in the top half of the first inning, Ronald McGee, Tuskegee’s senior catcher put the Golden Tigers on the board with a mammoth solo home run to left-center field.

Tuskegee catcher Ron McGee attacks the baseball driving it over the left-center field fence for his first and the team’s first home run of the 2020 season, February 1, 2020. (c) Harold Michael Harvey

By the fourth inning, Tuskegee was cruising along with a 5-0 lead before Morehouse could get on the board. Morehouse then made it a 5-3 ball game. Tuskegee answered, going up 7-3.

At the bottom of the fifth, McGee came up with runners on first and second with no outs. Tuskegee Head Baseball Coach Reginald Hollins asked his power hitter to sacrifice himself and move both runners into scoring position. McGee laid down a perfect bunt, and both runners moved up a base, and eventually scored, expanding Tuskegee’s lead to 9-3.

At the top of the seventh and final inning – The game was shortened by tradition because the teams played a doubleheader – Morehouse loaded the bases with two outs. Grant Bennett came to the plate and hit a grand slam bringing the score to 9-7. Williams struck out the next batter, his ninth of the contest, to end the game.

Morehouse College power hitter, Grant Bennett is touching them all after powering a home run with the bases loaded in the season opener against Tuskegee February 1, 2020. Photo (c) Harold Michael Harvey

In the night-cap, Morehouse exploded for three home runs. Grant Bennett, who started the second game on the mound for the Maroon Tigers, kept the Tuskegee bats quiet. While on the offensive side, Bennett hit two homers. The first one with the bases loaded and later a solo shot. Bennett drove in a total of nine runs in the two contests, with three home runs.

Daniel Munford rounded out the Morehouse scoring with a three-run homer. The duo led Morehouse to an 8-3 victory. Morehouse scored all of its runs via the home run.

After the first game, Coach Hollins said, “It feels great” to get the first victory of the season.

“Like I told the guys, I love a win. We pretty much dominated the first portion of the game. Our defense played solid. They made the routine plays, Hollin said.

He added, “I thought Williams did a good job on the mound, all of his pitches were working, and he had a low pitch count, which is good for him.”

Hollin praised the offensive display from McGee, “He went two for two and had two sacs” [sacrifice bunts].

McGee’s work behind the plate caught the attention of Morehouse Coach Tony Grissom. In between innings, Grissom said to Hollin: “I told my guys not to mess with that catcher.”

Indeed, despite several speedy runners, Morehouse did not attempt to steal any bases.

Following the second game, Grissom smiled broadly. He picked up his first win of the season. Before the match, Grissom bemoaned the fact rainy weather kept his team indoors all but three days in January.

“I’m just happy for the guys. I thought they bounced back well after the first game. They are growing in poise and I was glad to see that,” Grissom said.

Harold Michael Harvey is the author of Freaknik Lawyer: A Memoir on the Craft of Resistance. He is a Past President of the Gate City Bar Association. He is the recipient of Gate City’s R. E. Thomas Civil Rights Award, which he received for his pro bono representation of Black college students arrested during Freaknik celebrations in the mid to late 1990s. An avid public speaker contact him at hmharvey@haroldmichaelharvey.com.

Harvey's Black History Month Calendar Released

20/01/29 at 1.46am   /   by Michael   /   0 Comment
Harold Michael Harvey responding to a comment during the Town Hall discussion on Justice and Race in America at Sweet Auburn Seafood. Photo Credit Bob Glicksmith

Cascade Publishing House (CPH) is pleased to release the speaking appearances of its founder and publisher, Harold Michael Harvey, during the 2020 Black History Month observance. The theme of this year’s celebration is 2020 African Americans and the Vote.

On February 1, 2020, Harvey will be honored by the Tuskegee University Baseball team as the team pays tribute to 29 former Tuskegee University baseball players during the team’s Black History Month observance.

Harvey played all three outfield positions on the 1972 and 1973 teams. Both teams participated in post-season NCAA play with the 1973 team winning the SIAC Championship. Also, the 1973 team won the only All-Star game hosted by the SIAC. They defeated the conference All-Stars 2-1. Harvey scored the winning run and made the last defensive put out to seal the Tuskegee victory.

On February 5 and 6, Harvey will deliver a series of three lectures at Clark-Atlanta University. He will serve as guest lecturer before journalism students.

According to Maynard Eaton, Harvey will lecture Eaton’s journalism students on his “writing career with special emphasis on the importance of good writing and storytelling in crafting a career in journalism.”

On February 16, Harvey will take to the pulpit at Jones Tabernacle Christian Methodist Church in Macon, Georgia, during the eleven o’clock hour and address the theme: 2020 African Americans and the vote.

On February 20, Harvey is the featured author at the Washington Memorial Library in his hometown of Macon, Georgia. He will read from his book Freaknik Lawyer: A Memoir on the Craft of Resistance and will talk about the forces in Macon, Georgia, that shaped his career as a trial lawyer and writer.

On February 22, Harvey will participate in the rededication of James Washington Baseball Field at Tuskegee University. The school has not played baseball on campus in ten years, but under the leadership of Head Baseball Coach Reginald Hollins, a renovation effort was undertaken to restore the field and bring baseball back to the campus.

Also, during February, Harvey is featured in a video about the historical importance of Washington Field and the importance of playing baseball before the campus community.

FROM THE DESK OF CYNTHIA HARVEY

Harold Michael Harvey is the author of Freaknik Lawyer: A Memoir on the Craft of Resistance. He is a Past President of the Gate City Bar Association. He is the recipient of Gate City’s R. E. Thomas Civil Rights Award, which he received for his pro bono representation of Black college students arrested during Freaknik celebrations in the mid to late 1990s. An avid public speaker contact him at hmharvey@haroldmichaelharvey.com.

Cotton Pickin' Days Photoshoot at Sights & Sounds

20/01/23 at 6.20am   /   by Michael   /   1 Comment
From left to right, James Horton, Phyllis Smith, and Harold Michael Harvey. Photo Credit (c) 2020 Sharon Dowdell

Thanks to James Horton, curator at Sights and Sounds Black Cultural Museum and Expo for permitting us to use the museum as a backdrop for the photoshoot of Phyllis Smith’s forthcoming book, Cotton Pickin’ Days.

Smith is a poet. She started writing as a pre-teen about her life growing up in Fayetteville, Georgia, during the 1950s. Smith never stopped writing. She seldom shared her poems with the public, except for poetic tributes to people in the community who had transitioned. Soon Smith started getting requests to write poetic eulogies for members of the city. She read them during their homegoing services.

One day Smith walked into the offices at Cascade Publishing House with several notebooks filled with hand-written poems from her childhood. She was not certain of her talent or just what she had written in those notebooks many years ago.

“We readily saw her talent as a storyteller and put together a plan to get her published,” said Harold Michael Harvey, Publisher at Cascade Publishing House.

“Our goal is to help people like Smith add author after their name,” Harvey, the author of three books, added.

Sights and Sounds Black Cultural Museum and Expo is a fantastic collection of the cultural history of Blacks in America from before the Mayflower through the Obama Presidency. The artifacts, curated by James Horton, located inside the North Dekalb Mall in Decatur, Georgia.

“Sights and Sounds was the perfect place for this photoshoot. I knew we would find items relatable to the period Ms. Smith writes about in her poem,” Harvey said.

Cotton Pickin Days release date is March 1, 2020.

FROM THE DESK OF CYN HARVEY

Harold Michael Harvey is the author of Freaknik Lawyer: A Memoir on the Craft of Resistance. He is a Past President of the Gate City Bar Association. He is the recipient of Gate City’s R. E. Thomas Civil Rights Award, which he received for his pro bono representation of Black college students arrested during Freaknik celebrations in the mid to late 1990s. An avid public speaker contact him at hmharvey@haroldmichaelharvey.com.

Cascade Publishing House Release 2020 Book List

20/01/11 at 8.11am   /   by Michael   /   0 Comment
Cynthia Harvey
Cynthia Harvey comes to the publishing business after a career in broadcast journalism and public relations. She earned degrees from Spelman College and The Columbia School of Broadcast.

“We are pleased to release our 2020 book list,” Cyn Harvey, President of Cascade Publishing House recently announced.

Cascade Publishing House is a small independent book publisher that was organized ten years ago for authors who could benefit by being in a small publishing house.

According to Harvey, the list is as follows:

Cotton Pickin’ Days: Poems of the Old South by Phyllis Colclough Smith, Paper Puzzle: The Tenth Anniversary Edition by Harold Michael Harvey, Bethel C. M. E. Church: From Watch Night to Zion by Harold Michael Harvey with a Foreword by Elaine Harvey.

“It is an ambitious undertaking for a publisher our size to release three books in a single year, but we believe we can get it done,” Ms. Harvey said.

February 2020 is the release date for Cotton Pickin’ Days. Although Smith started writing poems as a pre-teen growing up in Fayetteville, Georgia in the 1950s, Cotton Pickin’ Days, is her first published work.

Smith manages to captures the love and family fun that Black families were able to enjoy despite the hardship of living under segregation and Jim Crow laws.

Bethel C. M. E. Church is the story of a group of Africans enslaved in Macon, Georgia in 1862, who convened a worship service on December 31, 1862. This service took place on the eve of the enactment of President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. History records this gathering as “Watch Night.”

One Hundred and Fifty-Seven years later, this fellowship continues to meet and to administer to the needs of the community. The author joined the society in 1960, its 97th year.

“We will release this church history in conjunction with the 150 Anniversary of the establishment of The Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, which was organized in 1970 at Jackson, Tennessee,” Harvey explained.

Paper Puzzle Tenth Anniversary Edition is scheduled for a Christmas 2020 released. It will include a new cover and a Foreword from the author about the creative writing process for the original novel.

“Hopefully, I can push Michael to complete work on the sequel of Paper Puzzle for release at the end of the year. He has been writing and brooding over it for several years now,” Harvey added.

FROM THE DESK OF CYN HARVEY, President

Harold Michael Harvey is the author of Freaknik Lawyer: A Memoir on the Craft of Resistance. He is a Past President of the Gate City Bar Association. He is the recipient of Gate City’s R. E. Thomas Civil Rights Award, which he received for his pro bono representation of Black college students arrested during Freaknik celebrations in the mid to late 1990s. An avid public speaker, contact him at hmharvey@haroldmichaelharvey.com.

Buy Freaknik Lawyer and Get Justice in the Round Free!

20/01/04 at 2.32pm   /   by Michael   /   1 Comment
Elizabeth Hampton with her copy of Freaknik Lawyer

The first person to buy a copy of Freaknik Lawyer in 2020 will receive a free copy of Justice in the Round. Copies can be purchased on this website and at harold-michael-harvey.square.site

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