I remember back when Arthur Herman Bremer shot former Alabama Governor and presidential candidate George Wallace in 1972. Wallace ended up in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. He had been an avowed segregationist for most of his life.
He became a humanitarian after he was shot and paralyzed from the waist down. To his credit, he did assist Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm with passing legislation that aided workers and farmers. Their alliance, brought on by his tragedy, was unique in the annals of American political history.
Wallace assumed he was invincible. Yet, no matter how much power you have or think you have, you cannot hold that power forever.
No matter how many times you kiss the ring of those in power, and swallow your pride and principles for the approval of those in power, you too will eventually be sacrificed with neither your dignity nor principles to hold your legacy together.
The Muskrat and Felon 47 will die, just like all of us will. History will record them as monsters because that is exactly what they are. The politicians who shy away from questioning the rationale of their policies will be recorded as the cowards they are.
Shutterstock photo of depressed man/New Africa
As activist Audre Lorde said, “Your silence will not protect you.” In the end when the folks upon whose altar you have sacrificed all of your principles are done with you, you will be no more than the rest of us. All you will ever be is mortal.
Power does not transfer to the grave. Your progeny will live long enough after your death to be vilified and hated while struggling to figure out what it is that they have done. History will answer them the same way it has answered all others in perpetuity, “Your crime is your having been born unto monsters.”
I’m delighted that folks have decided not to shop on February 28th as an act of solidarity to demonstrate to businesses what our buying power means. It’s a great beginning, but to have real impact boycotts need to last for months or years.
Let me share the following. The image on the left is the now boarded up storefront of what was Buzz Coffee and Winehouse in my hometown Atlanta. The image on the right is from a few years ago. It’s myself and my brother-from-another-mother, actor, writer, poet, cultural curator, and James Baldwin expert Charles Reese. We took this photo sitting at Buzz’s tables on the sidewalk drinking hot coffee out of big mugs.
Buzz was a neighborhood hangout where you might get to view a photo or art exhibit. You might stop by for a breakfast sandwich or piece of pastry. You ran into people you knew and you met people you didn’t know but soon found out the trip was worth it in order to meet them.
Buzz closed a few years ago because the money-grubbing c*nt that owned this little strip of property where Buzz was located raised the rent until the owner of Buzz could no longer afford to stay open. The owner has vowed to reopen somewhere, but so far I haven’t seen any signs of a new location.
Now, there’s a Starbucks about a mile down the street further southwest. I have nothing against Starbucks or people who enjoy Starbucks coffee. Yet, I won’t be going there to get a cup of coffee, just like I won’t be buying Folgers that supports Project 2025.
I only suggest this. When you’re keeping your money in your pocket, take a good hard look at the small businesses in your neighborhood and ask yourself how you can help them? Ask yourself what products can you do without permanently? Then just do it.
We historians often find data in some file in an obscure archive, in letters written by someone’s grandmother, in photos, newspaper clippings, legal records. Our discipline demands that we dig, analyze, rethink and revise, constantly. I liken our work to studying the function of each piece in a Chess game. We get different perspectives about the same set of circumstances depending on which Chess piece we examine.
I was a mediocre Chess player. I had a few friends who played like champions. So, I often just watched them play. I remain, however, fascinated by the game’s objectives and, specifically, the roles of Pawns and Queens.
Pawns are the most numerous pieces in Chess; they are the foot soldiers. Each player has eight Pawns. A Pawn can move one or two squares forward if that move is its first move. After the first move, a Pawn can only move one square forward unless the square is blocked by some other piece. A Pawn can capture or attack another piece, however, by moving diagonally to the left or right.
The Pawn is the only piece in a Chess game that can change ranks. Depending on the skill of a Chess player, a Pawn can become a Bishop, a Rook or a Queen. In spite of a Pawn’s ability to advance to a higher rank, it is still considered the lowest ranking piece in the game. It is only worth one point.
The objective of the game is to capture your opponent’s King where that King has no way out, which means Checkmate. While the King is considered the most important piece in the game, it is the Queen that is considered the most powerful piece.
Queens are the only pieces that can move across the board in any manner as long as they are not successfully blocked by other pieces. If you lose, it is highly likely that you lost because your opponent’s Queen checkmated your King. Chess players feel much more confident when they have successfully captured or blocked her.
You can still win the game without capturing the Queen, but you have to be extremely strategic and precise to do so. You can also win without making good moves with your Pawns, but it is highly unlikely.
Chess is now over 1,500 years old. While there is some skepticism about its precise origins, many Chess historians believe that the Indian board game called “Chaturanga” was the earliest predecessor of Chess. There were many other versions that followed, but are too numerous to mention here.
In early versions of Chess, there was a piece called “Vizier” or “Advisor” for centuries. In the 1500s, in the era of great and powerful Queens in Europe, like Spain’s Isabella and England’s Elizabeth, “Viziers” or “Advisors” were redesigned and renamed “Queens.” You can learn an awful lot of world history just by examining Chess.
So here’s the deal: There is no such thing as a Chess game where Queens/Women Heads of State/Women in general are not powerful and flexible while the Kings/Men Heads of State/Men in general are highly important but who have or exercise fewer tactical moves.
There is also no such thing as a Chess game where Pawns/Foot Soldiers/Laborers are not essential to success, even while they are considered less important.
Apply any and all of the above to what you see happening in the United States and the world right now. I refuse to tell you how to analyze and interpret this history because there are so many interpretations and analogies that can be extrapolated from this board game.
All I will say is that nothing is going to change or be corrected without the skill of devoted Pawns, and the power and daring of Queens.
Over 30 years ago I worked for the FDIC in the Division of Liquidation. It was a depressing job as my department sold off the assets of failed banks while we fielded questions from many depositors who were often financially left in in the lurch.
I ended up “Agent for the Class” in a class action lawsuit brought on by the fact that the Atlanta office had hundreds of Black employees, but only three whose federal pay grade was higher than Job Grade-4. I remember that day one of my co-workers came by my cubicle to give me some new information.
She told me that there were two women in our office that had been late for work every day for months. Both women had been caught lying about being sick when they took off sick days. One woman was white; the other one was Black. The white woman was placed on probation. The Black woman was fired.
My co-worker said, “This isn’t fair. Both of them should have been put on probation.”
“Wrong,” I said, “Both of them should have been fired.”
When my co-worker suggested that we add the circumstances of the terminated Black woman to our list of grievances in our lawsuit, I refused to do so.
Now, before all my activist friends jump on my ass for seeming to ignore the inherent inequality in this scenario, let me stress this.
I see the inequality. The punishment of these two terrible employees should have been identical. Yet, back then and now in 2025, we have no energy to waste on folks who keep doing the wrong thing nor the energy to waste on folks that may not be salvageable.
I say this because I have watched Black rappers jump on Felon 47’s bandwagon. Years ago it was Ice Cube, Lil Wayne, Kanye West, Chief Keef, Sexy Redd, Kodak Black, among others. Now, Snoop Dogg, Nelly and Rick Ross, among others are all on board.
I am not at all surprised. All of them are Niggahs of the highest order. Yes, I wrote “Niggah/s.” I have been called a Niggah enough, so I will say it, and write it any damn time I feel like it—particularly when that slur fits the occasion. Snoop Dogg, with an estimated net worth of $160 million dollars, is the high priest of all Niggahdom. Just last year he was screaming about Felon 47 being a racist.
All of these rappers are the same money-grubbing misogynists and sexists and gangsters (with a few females in collusion) that Felon 47 is, was, and always will be. They all hold their noses so that they do not smell the stench of Felon 47’s racism in order to earn their few pieces of silver just like the biblical Judas.
Judas was paid to squeal on and identify the radical Yeshu’a so that Yeshu’a (Jesus’ actual name) would be delivered to Roman authorities who charged him with sedition right after church authorities charged him with heresy. Judas could not handle the guilt and shame of being a traitor who ultimately cost an innocent man his life, so he hung himself not long after he betrayed Yeshu’a.
Unlike Judas, these rappers have neither the decency nor moral fiber to be ashamed of what they have done. Their God/Goddess is money. Like Felon 47, they would sell a loaded gun to a person with a history of suicide attempts if the price is right.
Sidebar: Swallow all that pseudo-intellectual bullshit where you try to excuse their behavior and decisions based on their poor upbringing or their childhood poverty. When you make these excuses, you villainize the poor when you know that most poor folks are not thieves nor people without any sense of right and wrong.
By the time these clowns realize they have been used and conned—if they ever realize it—they will come up with every excuse in the book to rationalize why it was necessary to betray their own people.
These rappers will continue to perform their modern-day minstrel shows while they gleefully wear the imprint of Felon 47’s ass on their faces. So, do yourself and all of us a favor. If you see any of them on a sinking ship without lifeboats, let that boat sink.
“…the plant of freedom has grown only a bud and not yet a flower.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.
“God is your first and your last teacher. God is your harshest teacher: subtle, demanding. Learn or die.” — Octavia Butler, (from “The Parable of the Sower, 1993)
I woke up before dawn annoyed that January 20, 2025 is inauguration day for Felon 47 and it is also the federal holiday celebrating the birth and life of Martin Luther King, Jr. I also could not help thinking about how our abuse of the earth has contributed to the fires in California.
A week ago, I re-read Octavia Spencer’s prescient novel “Parable of the Sower.” Butler’s protagonist Lauren, the daughter of a preacher, lives in a safe and comfortable, walled-up cul-de-sac. Outside those walls are desperately poor people, racial and economic inequality, and drug addicts that use a drug called “pyro” that makes its users want to set fires.
Lauren tries to convince others to accept that the world has changed and will continue to change. The others prefer to pretend nothing has happened to the earth and its inhabitants.
Butler predicted ecological disaster by fire coming over 30 years ago, and named her novel after a biblical parable. Right after I finished reading the book again, I thought about how M. L. got his name.
Many people do not know that M. L. (what we called him here in Atlanta) was born Michael King, Jr. I knew many elderly Black Atlanta citizens who called him “Mike” their entire lives.
His father, best known as “Daddy King,” attended a World Baptist Conference in Germany in 1934. Reborn and rejuvenated after he learned more about the philosophies of Protestant reformer Martin Luther, Daddy King soon renamed himself and his son “Martin Luther King, Sr. and Jr.”
In 1957, “Michael King, Jr.” was officially changed to “Martin Luther King, Jr.” on his birth certificate. There are other stories about why and when Daddy King changed their names, but I like this story the best.
I bring this up because another story goes that when the German Protestant leader Martin Luther was asked what he would do if he knew the world was going to end tomorrow, he allegedly answered, “I would plant an apple tree today.”
While I am a believer in Goddess/God, I am not particularly religious. I know too well how organized religion has failed us in so many ways. I am, however, a historian who finds truth and sustenance in some parts of the Christian Bible that the incoming administration and so many preachers and billionaires have totally corrupted.
In the Bible’s Parable of the Sower, Yeshu’a ben Yosef (bka Jesus) tells a story about a farmer who sows seeds in four different types of soil. It is not until the farmer’s seeds are sowed in good soil that he yields a good crop. In this parable, which has many lessons, Yeshu’a emphasized that we must pay attention to where we plant our seeds if we expect anything to grow. We yield a good harvest when we take responsibility for how and where we do our planting.
To place seeds in the ground is an act of faith. When you plant, you do so with the faith that you will yield something. You do it with the belief that you, or your loved ones, will live long enough to reap the reward, be it vegetables or fruits or flowers or justice or equality.
On this Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, may we go forward intentionally, reminded that we are obligated to be good stewards of the earth that we do not own. California’s fires are the result of our excess and failure to clean up the earth which is the only home we have.
May we plant in the best soil, in the best social and educational policies, in the best radicalism, in the truth. May we sow our seeds in our gardens and farms and tend them with a faith that tells us we will reap a good harvest and that we will have enough to sustain us in order to stave off the worst excesses of the incoming administration. May we humble ourselves, unlike Felon 47 and his underlings, and remember that we live on this earth that we did not create and will die whether we are paupers or billionaires. May we learn the life lessons of one of the best sowers, namely Martin Luther King, Jr.
Leslye Joy Allen 