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Watch Night and Fantasy Five Up for Prestigious Indie Book Awards
This week, I received confirmation that two of my recent books, Watch Night and Fantasy Five, are up for the prestigious Indie Book Awards. I’m honored and humbled beyond belief.
Watch Night is being considered for the 2025 Illumination Book Awards and Fantasy Five for the 2025 IPPY Awards in the historical and southeast regional non-fiction categories.
The Middle Georgia African American History Committee to Host Author
On November 20, 2024, the Middle Georgia Regional African American History Committee will host a book discussion with award-winning author Harold Michael Harvey. The talk will occur at the Middle Georgia Regional Library, 1180 Washington Avenue, Macon-Bibb County, Georgia, at 4:00 pm. in the Genealogy and Historical Room.
Will the Empire Strike Back?
In my new book, Fantasy Five (Cascade Publishing House, Atlanta, 2024), about the 1975 election of the first five Black members of the Macon, Georgia city council, I also recount the historic campaign of Rev. Julius C. Hope, a Black Baptist preacher, who made a landmark run for the Macon mayor’s office during the summer of 1975. He did not win but shared an axiom with his audience at every campaign rally. He offered up the adage, “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.”
Dr. King Led SCLC, Not the NAACP
Recently, Senator Ted Cruz (Republican), Texas, decided to chime in on the travel advisory issued by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He did so in a tweet that read in part:
“This is bizarre. And utterly dishonest. In the 1950s & 1960s, the NAACP did extraordinarily well in helping lead the civil rights movement. Today, Dr. King would be ashamed of how profoundly they’ve lost their way.”
Kasim Reed, the son of a courageous civil rights worker, has a strong chin and a personality to match. People either love his matter of fact-ness, or they loath it. With Kasim, you know on which side of the issue he stands. He is for an idea, or he is against it. One thing is sure, his steadfastness, once locked in, is unmovable.
Bridging the Gap From Civil Rights to Black Lives Matter
In 1967, Rev. Hosea Williams, a trusted aide of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., introduced his 21-year-old protégé, Tyrone Brooks, to Dr. King, hoping to get King’s approval to hire the young man whom Williams was grooming for civil rights work. King told Williams that he did not do the hiring and firing at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The organization’s Vice President, Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, discharged those duties.
Eighteen days before qualifying starts in the 2021 race for Mayor of Atlanta, Georgia, Buckhead activist Rebecca King woke up the heretofore dull mayoral contest. King, the Chief Executive Officer of Cover Your Assets, an insurance documentation business, announced she is entering the campaign to become the next mayor of Atlanta.
The novelist and social critic Norman Mailer once wrote, “You can be the best in the world and still lose.” Mailer uttered these profound words to lament his defeat in a race for the office of Mayor of New York City. His prodigious ego led him to believe he was the best candidate in the race. Perhaps history will give him the benefit of the doubt and adjudge Mailer the best novelist turned politician in that contest.
Let’s face it. There are no two ways about it. Republicanism is terrible for American Democracy. Suppose the response of Republicans since January 6, 2021, indicates how current Republicans in the main feel about democracy in America. There is nothing in the historical record that suggests otherwise. In that case, it is safe to bet the farm on the demise of the much-heralded American democracy, for, without a doubt, democracy in America is on its last leg.
Amendment II of the US Constitution, generally referred to as the “Right to bear arms” amendment, is a concise one-sentence paragraph containing, one would presume under the circumstances, twenty-six carefully chosen words:
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”