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Quit it! Stop it right now. I can’t bare to read or hear this hashtag one more time. It is denigrating to the southern spirit within me.
I’ve had about all I can take from people who do not live in Georgia using the hashtag “Come on Georgia” about the January 5, 2021 run-off election to fill two open seats in the US Senate. It’s as if the people of Georgia are too dumb to know what’s at stake in next week’s election.
I tried all month to write an end of 2020 piece. The words did not flow from my brain to my fingertips with ease as in past writing sessions. I never actually got to my keyboard to put words on the computer screen until now, about 24 hours before the year expires. I am not sure if I will get through this piece this time; the words are hard to find, which expresses my emotions about the last 12 months; at least, I have begun putting words into the computer.
This week, Major League Baseball integrated the record books from the segregated era of American history. The commissioner declared the exploits of Josh Gibson, Leroy Satchel Paige, Double Duty Radcliff, and others on even par with George Herman “Babe” Ruth, Walter Johnson, and Cy Young. Cliques abound: It’s about time, a long time coming, and what kept you so long, MLB?
At the end of 2019, I set upon an ambitious course, and boldly announced I would win a book award for my memoir “Freaknik Lawyer: A Memoir on the Craft of Resistance.” I had a full schedule of speaking engagements and book signings that would take me into early summer.
On February 20, 2020, I was invited to speak on an author’s program hosted by the Washington Memorial Library in my hometown, the same library that had refused to issue a library card to me at age ten when I went in to check out a book on Willie Mays. It was a wet, blustery evening, but a sizable crowd turned out to see their native son.
About the only way I can say it: The Supreme Court slammed the door in Trump’s face last week when it decided 9–0 to dismiss a complaint filed by the Attorney General of Texas against the election procedures of four other American states.
The Court shut the door so hard it ended all legal avenues for Trump’s campaign to overturn the people’s will and take the election victory away from Joe Biden and hand-deliver it to Trump.
There is nothing quite like a bowl of juicy peaches in the morning. Georgia’s voters are like a bowl of fresh peaches to the fate of national politics. Both political parties want them, but neither can have the whole bowl.
Let’s face it, when the 2020 campaign season began, few prognosticators gave Democrats a chance to flip Georgia for former Vice-President Joe Biden. Even fewer gave Jon Ossoff and Dr. Raphael Warnock a chance to compete with Senators Kelly Loffler and David Perdue. Few that is, except Joe, Jon, and Raphael.
Our author in residence, at Cascade Publishing House, Harold Michael Harvey, in the two weeks following the transition of Rev. Dr. C. T. Vivian, penned a 131-page book reflecting 27 years of conversations with the 2013 Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient (My C. T. Vivian Story: A Powerful Flame That Burned Brightly, Cascade Publishing House, Atlanta, 2020).
Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from the book My C. T. Vivian Story: A Powerful Flame That Burned Brightly by Living Now Bronze Medal-winning author Harold Michael Harvey
I first became aware of C. T. Vivian, February 19, 1965, on the CBS Evening News. Dallas County, Alabama Sheriff Jim Clark sucker-punched him after Vivian told Sheriff Clark that he thought he was as big a racist as Hitler. In the next breath, Vivian told Clark that he was not as big a racist as Hitler. I was 14 years old, perplexed by Jim Crow, and worried that Blacks, including myself, would never be free in America. A never-dying Jim Crowism was the daunting thought of my youth.
“Son, you write with a wicked pen. I just wish I could get you on my side.” K. B. Young, Dean of Students at Tuskegee Institute, once said to future Award-winning author, Harold Michael Harvey.
The year was 1973. Harvey, a political science major, wrote a weekly column in the Campus Digest, the student newspaper, and defended students before the Institute’s Judicial Board.
There is a myth that Black youngsters are not playing baseball these days. If you look at Major League Baseball (MLB) rosters and most Historical Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU), it is easy to come away with that impression. Around eight percent of professional baseball players are Black Americans. This number is down from approximately 30 percent in the late 1970s, thirty years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier that kept Black baseball players off major league rosters.