Today, The Grandma has been reading about I've Been to the Mountaintop,the last speech delivered by MartinLuther King Jr. on a day like today in 1968.
I've Been to the Mountaintop is the popular name of the last speech delivered by Martin Luther King Jr.
King spoke on April 3, 1968, at theMasonTemple (Church of God in Christ Headquarters) inMemphis, Tennessee.On the following day, King wasassassinated.
The speech primarily concerns the Memphis sanitation strike. King calls for unity, economic actions, boycotts, and non-violent protest, while challenging the United States to live up to its ideals. At the end of the speech, he discusses the possibility of an untimely death.
Regarding the strike, King stated that:
The issue is injustice. The issue is the refusal of Memphis to be fair and honest in its dealings with its public servants, who happen to be sanitation workers.
He warned the protesters not to engage in violence, lest the issue of injustice be ignored because of the focus on the violence. King argued that peaceful demonstrations were the best course of action, the only way to guarantee that their demands would be heard and answered.
Regarding the Civil Rights Movement, King demanded that the United States defend for all its citizens what is promised in the United States Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and stated that he would never give up until these natural rights were protected, saying:
Somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right. And so, just as I said, we aren't going to let dogs or water hoses turn us around. We aren't going to let any injunction turn us around. We are going on.
Regarding economic boycotts, King advocated boycotting white goods as a means of non-violent protest. He said that the individual Negro is poor, but together they are an economic powerhouse, and they should use this power to stop support for racist groups and instead empower black businesses.
Although the industries might not listen to protests, they would be forced to listen to boycotts lest they be driven out of business. King named several businesses as targets for the boycott:
Go out and tell your neighbours not to buy Coca-Cola in Memphis. Go by and tell them not to buy Sealtest milk. Tell them not to buy -what is the other bread? Wonder Bread. And what is the other bread company, Jesse? Tell them not to buy Hart's bread. As Jesse Jackson has said, up to now, only the garbage men have been feeling pain; now we must kind of redistribute the pain.
Toward the end of the speech, King refers to threats against his life and uses language that prophetically foreshadowed his impending death, but reaffirming that he was not afraid to die:
Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live -a long life; longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. So I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
The language is seen by some as a prophetic analogy. King was referring to events described in the Biblical book of Deuteronomy. In it, Moses is the leader of the people of Israel, who follow him to life in a Promised Land. Before they reach it however, Moses is informed by God that, because of an incident in which he did not follow God's directions, he will not reach the land himself, but will only see it from a distance.
Then Moses climbed Mount Nebo... There the Lord showed him the whole land... Then the Lord said to him, This is the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob ... I will let you see it with your eyes, but you will not cross over into it. -Deuteronomy 34:1–4.
Shortly after, Moses dies, and his successor Joshua leads them into the Promised Land.
Today, The Grandma is relaxing at home. She has decided to listen to some music, and she has chosen MahaliaJackson's songs, the American gospel singer who was born on a day like today in 1911.
Mahalia Jackson (born Mahala Jackson; October 26, 1911-January 27, 1972) was an American gospelsinger, widely considered one of the most influential vocalists of the 20th century.
With a career spanning 40 years, Jackson was integral to the development and spread of gospel blues in black churches throughout the U.S. during a time when racial segregation was pervasive in American society, she met considerable and unexpected success in a recording career, selling an estimated 22 million records and performing in front of integrated and secular audiences in concert halls around the world.
The granddaughter of enslaved people, Jackson was born and raised in poverty in New Orleans. She found a home in her church, leading to a lifelong dedication and singular purpose to deliver God's word through song.
She moved to Chicago as an adolescent and joined the Johnson Singers, one of the earliest gospel groups. Jackson was heavily influenced by blues' singer Bessie Smith, adapting her style to traditional Protestant hymns and contemporary songs. After making an impression in Chicago churches, she was hired to sing at funerals, political rallies, and revivals. For 15 years, she functioned as what she termed a fish and bread singer, working odd jobs between performances to make a living.
Nationwide recognition came for Jackson in 1947 with the release of Move On Up a Little Higher, selling two million copies and hitting the number two spot on Billboard charts, both firsts for gospel music.
Jackson's recordings captured the attention of jazz fans in the U.S. and France, and she became the first gospel recording artist to tour Europe. She regularly appeared on television and radio, and performed for many presidents and heads of state, including singing the national anthem at John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Ball in 1961.
Motivated by her experiences living and touring in the South and integrating a Chicago neighbourhood, she participated in the civil rights movement, singing for fundraisers and at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. She was a vocal and loyal supporter of Martin Luther King, Jr. and a personal friend of his family.
Mahalia Jackson was born to Charity Clark and Johnny Jackson, a stevedore and weekend barber. Clark and Jackson were unmarried, a common arrangement among black women in New Orleans at the time. He lived elsewhere, never joining Charity as a parent. Both sets of Mahalia's grandparents were born into slavery, her paternal grandparents on a rice plantation and her maternal grandparents on a cotton plantation in Pointe Coupee Parish about 160 km north of New Orleans.
Throughout her career, Jackson faced intense pressure to record secular music, but turned down high-paying opportunities to concentrate on gospel. Completely self-taught, Jackson had a keen sense of instinct for music, her delivery marked by extensive improvisation with melody and rhythm.
She
was renowned for her powerful contralto voice, range, an enormous stage
presence, and her ability to relate to her audiences, conveying and
evoking intense emotion during performances.
Passionate and at times frenetic, she wept and demonstrated physical expressions of joy while singing.
Her success brought about international interest in gospel music, initiating the Golden Age of Gospel making it possible for many soloists and vocal groups to tour and record.
Popular music as a whole felt her influence, and she is credited with inspiring rhythm and blues, soul, and rock and roll singing styles.
In a very cold December, Jackson arrived in Chicago. For a week she was miserably homesick, unable to move off the couch until Sunday when her aunts took her to Greater Salem Baptist Church, an environment she felt at home in immediately, later stating it was the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me.
Jackson's arrival in Chicago occurred during the Great Migration, a massive movement of black Southerners to Northern cities. Between 1910 and 1970, hundreds of thousands of rural Southern blacks moved to Chicago, transforming a neighbourhood in the South Side into Bronzeville, a black city within a city which was mostly self-sufficient, prosperous, and teeming in the 1920s. This movement caused white flight, with whites moving to suburbs, leaving established white churches and synagogues with dwindling members. Their mortgages were taken over by black congregations in good position to settle in Bronzeville. Members of these churches were, in Jackson's term, society Negroes who were well-educated and eager to prove their successful assimilation into white American society. Musical services tended to be formal, presenting solemnly delivered hymns written by Isaac Watts and other European composers. Shouting and clapping were generally not allowed as they were viewed as undignified. Special programs and musicals tended to feature sophisticated choral arrangements to prove the quality of the choir.
In 1937, Jackson met Mayo "Ink" Williams, a music producer who arranged a session with Decca Records. She recorded four singles: God's Gonna Separate theWheat From the Tares, You Sing On, My Singer, God Shall Wipe Away All Tears,and Keep Me Every Day.
A constant worker and a shrewd businesswoman, Jackson became the choir director at St. Luke Baptist Church. She bought a building as a landlord, then found the salon so successful she had to hire help to care for it when she travelled on weekends.
Each engagement Jackson took was farther from Chicago in a non-stop string of performances.
In 1946, she appeared at the Golden Gate Ballroom in Harlem. In attendance was Art Freeman, a music scout for Apollo Records, a company catering to black artists and audiences, concentrating mostly on jazz and blues.
Her first release on Apollo, Wait 'til My Change Comes backed with I'm Going to Tell God All About it One of These Days did not sell well. Neither did her second, IWant to Rest with He Knows My Heart. Berman asked Jackson to record blues and she refused. Berman told Freeman to release Jackson from any more recordings, but Freeman asked for one more session to record the song Jackson sang as a warm-up at the Golden Gate Ballroom concert. Move On Up a Little Higher was recorded in two parts, one for each side of the 78 rpm record.
As Jackson's singing was often considered jazz or blues with religious lyrics, she fielded questions about the nature of gospel blues and how she developed her singing style.
In 1954, Jackson learned that Berman had been withholding royalties and had allowed her contract with Apollo to expire. Mitch Miller offered her a $50,000-a-year (equivalent to $480,000 in 2021) four-year contract, and Jackson becamethe first gospel artist to sign with Columbia Records, a much larger company with the ability to promote her nationally.
Columbia worked with a local radio affiliate in Chicago to create a half hour radio program, The Mahalia Jackson Show. She appeared on a local television program, also titled The Mahalia Jackson Show, which again got a positive reception but was cancelled for lack of sponsors. Despite white people beginning to attend her shows and sending fan letters, executives at CBS were concerned they would lose advertisers from Southern states who objected to a program with a black person as the primary focus.
Jackson broke into films playing a missionary in St. Louis Blues (1958), and a funeral singer in Imitation of Life (1959).
While attending the National Baptist Convention in 1956, Jackson met MartinLuther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy, both ministers emerging as organizers protesting segregation.
As gospel music became more popular -primarily due to her influencesingers began appearing at non-religious venues as a way to spread aChristianmessage to non-believers.
Jackson toured Europe again in 1964, mobbed in several cities and proclaiming, I thought I was the Beatles!, in Utrecht. She appeared in the film The Best Man(1964).
Jackson's recovery took a full year, during which she was unable to tour or record, ultimately losing 23 kg. From this point on she was plagued with near-constant fatigue, bouts of tachycardia, and high blood pressure as her condition advanced.
She was once more heartbroken upon learning of the assassination of MartinLuther King Jr. She attended the funeral in Atlanta where she gave one of her most memorable performances of Take My Hand, Precious Lord. With this, Jackson retired from political work and personal endorsements.
While touring Europe months later, Jackson became ill in Germany and flew home to Chicago where she was hospitalized. In January 1972, she received surgery to remove a bowel obstruction and died in recovery.
On a day like today in 1968, MartinLuther King Jr, the African American Baptistminister and activist who became the most visible spokesperson and leader in the American civil rights movement, was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.
The Grandma wants to talk about the struggle of Black People along the American history, a struggle that continues nowadays.
Also, on a day like today, we celebrate the birthday of one of the greatest civil rights activist, MayaAngelou, who was a great poet and memoirist.
Maya Angelou (born Marguerite Annie Johnson; April 4, 1928-May 28, 2014) was an American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist.
She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, films, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees.
Angelou is best known for her series of seven autobiographies, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up to the age of 17 and brought her international recognition and acclaim.
She became a poet and writer after a string of odd jobs during her young adulthood. These included fry cook, sex worker, nightclub performer, Porgy and Bess cast member, Southern Christian Leadership Conference coordinator, and correspondent in Egypt and Ghana during the decolonization of Africa.
She was also an actress, writer, director, and producer of plays, films, and public television programs. In 1982, she was named the first Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
She was active in the Civil Rights Movement and worked with Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.
Beginning in the 1990s, she made approximately 80 appearances a year on the lecture circuit, something she continued into her eighties. In 1993, Angelou recited her poem On the Pulse of Morning (1993) at the first inauguration of Bill Clinton, making her the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961.
With the publication of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou publicly discussed aspects of her personal life. She was respected as a spokesperson for Black people and women, and her works have been considered a defence of Black culture. Her works are widely used in schools and universities worldwide, although attempts have been made to ban her books from some US libraries.
Angelou's most celebrated works have been labelled as autobiographical fiction, but many critics consider them to be autobiographies. She made a deliberate attempt to challenge the common structure of the autobiography by critiquing, changing and expanding the genre. Her books centre on themes including racism, identity, family and travel.
Marguerite Annie Johnson was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 4, 1928, the second child of Bailey Johnson, a doorman and navy dietitian, and Vivian (Baxter) Johnson, a nurse and card dealer. In an astonishing exception to the harsh economics of African Americans of the time, Angelou's grandmother prospered financially during the Great Depression and World War II because the general store she owned sold needed basic commodities and because she made wise and honest investments.
Angelou met novelist John Oliver
Killens in 1959 and, at his urging, moved to New York to concentrate on
her writing career. She joined the Harlem Writers Guild, where she met
several major African-American authors, including John Henrik Clarke,
Rosa Guy, Paule Marshall, and Julian Mayfield, and was published for the
first time.
In 1960, after meeting civil rights
leader Martin Luther King Jr. and hearing him speak, she and Killens
organized the legendary Cabaret for Freedom to benefit the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and she was named SCLC's
Northern Coordinator. According to scholar Lyman B. Hagen, her
contributions to civil rights as a fundraiser and SCLC organizer were
successful and eminently effective.
Angelou also began her pro-Castro and anti-apartheid activism during this time.
She had joined the crowd cheering for Fidel Castro when he first entered the Hotel Theresa in Harlem New York during the United Nations 15th General Assembly on 19th September 1960.
In 1961, Angelou performed in Jean Genet's play The Blacks, along with Abbey Lincoln, Roscoe Lee Brown, James Earl Jones, Louis Gossett, Godfrey Cambridge, and Cicely Tyson. Also in 1961, she met South African freedom fighter Vusumzi Make; they never officially married.
She and her son Guy moved with Make to Cairo, where Angelou worked as an associate editor at the weekly English-language newspaper The Arab Observer.
In 1962, her relationship with Make ended, and she and Guy moved to Accra, Ghana, so he could attend college, but he was seriously injured in an automobile accident. Angelou remained in Accra for his recovery and ended up staying there until 1965. She became an administrator at the University of Ghana, and was active in the African-American expatriate community. She was a feature editor for The African Review, a freelance writer for the Ghanaian Times, wrote and broadcast for Radio Ghana, and worked and performed for Ghana's National Theatre. Likewise, she performed in a revival of The Blacks in Geneva and Berlin.
In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr.
asked Angelou to organize a march. She agreed, but postponed again, and
in what Gillespie calls a macabre twist of fate, he was assassinated
on her 40th birthday (April 4).
When I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
was published, Angelou was hailedas a new kind of memoirist, one of
the first African-American women who were able to publicly discuss their
personal lives.
In late 2010, Angelou donated her personal papers and career memorabilia to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. They consisted of more than 340 boxes of documents that featured her handwritten notes on yellow legal pads for I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, a 1982 telegram from Coretta Scott King, fan mail, and personal and professional correspondence from colleagues such as her editor Robert Loomis.
In 2011, Angelou served as a consultant for the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C. She spoke out in opposition to a paraphrase of a quotation by King that appeared on the memorial, saying, The quote makes Dr. Martin Luther King look like an arrogant twit, and demanded that it be changed. Eventually, the paraphrase was removed.
In 2013, at the age of 85, Angelou published the seventh volume of autobiography in her series, entitled Mom & Me & Mom, which focuses on her relationship with her mother.
Angelou died on the morning of May 28, 2014 at the age 86. She was found by her nurse. Although Angelou had reportedly been in poor health and had cancelled recent scheduled appearances, she was working on another book, an autobiography about her experiences with national and world leaders.
During her memorial service at Wake Forest University, her son Guy Johnson stated that despite being in constant pain due to her dancing career and respiratory failure, she wrote four books during the last ten years of her life. He said, She left this mortal plane with no loss of acuity and no loss in comprehension.
Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.
Yesterday, we received sad news about the death of John Robert Lewis, the American civil rights leader and politician, chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)and one of the Big Six leaders of groups who organized the 1963 March on Washington.
The Grandma wants to pay homage to JohnLewis, a symbol of the black struggle in a favour of Civil and Human Rights and against racism and segregation. She considers the best way to pay homage to John Lewis is talking about his life, his activism and his political career.
John Robert Lewis (February 21, 1940-July 17, 2020) was an American civil rights leader and politician.
He was a member of the Democratic Party, and was the U.S. Representative for Georgia's 5thcongressional district from 1987 until his death. He was also the dean of the Georgia congressional delegation. The district he served includes the northern three-quarters of Atlanta.
Lewis, who as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was one of the Big Six leaders of groups who organized the 1963 March on Washington, played many key roles in the civil rightsmovement and its actions to end legalized racial segregation in the United States.
He became a leader of the Democratic Party in the U.S. House of Representatives, serving from 1991 as a Chief Deputy Whip and from 2003 as Senior Chief Deputy Whip. He received many honorary degrees and awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
John Lewis was born on February 21, 1940, in Troy, Alabama, the third of ten children of Willie Mae and Eddie Lewis. His parents were sharecroppers in rural Pike County, Alabama.
As a young child, Lewis had little interaction with white people; by the time he was six, Lewis had seen only two white people in his life. As he grew older he began taking trips into town with his family, where he experienced racismand segregation, such as at the public library in Troy.
Lewis had relatives who lived in northern cities, and he learned from them that the North had integrated schools, buses, and businesses. When Lewis was 11, an uncle took him on a trip to Buffalo, New York, making him more acutely aware of Troy's segregation.
In 1955, Lewis first heard Martin Luther King Jr. on the radio, and he closely followed King's Montgomery bus boycott later that year. Lewis met RosaParks when he was 17, and met King for the first time when he was 18.
John Lewis with Martin Luther King, Jr. (1960)
Lewis graduated from the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, Tennessee, and then received a bachelor's degree in religion and philosophy from Fisk University. As a student, he was dedicated to the civil rightsmovement.
He organized sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in Nashville and took part in many other civil rights activities as part of the Nashville Student Movement. The Nashville sit-in movement was responsible for the desegregation of lunch counters in downtown Nashville.
Lewis was arrested and jailed many times in the nonviolent movement to desegregate the downtown area of the city. He was also instrumental in organizing bus boycotts and other nonviolent protests in the fight forvoter and racial equality.
While a student, Lewis was invited to attend nonviolence workshops held at Clark Memorial United Methodist Church by the Rev. James Lawson and Rev. Kelly Miller Smith. There, Lewis and other students became dedicated adherents to the discipline and philosophy of nonviolence, which he practiced for the rest of his life.
In 1961, Lewis became one of the 13 original Freedom Riders. There were seven whites and six blacks who were determined to ride from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans in an integrated fashion. At that time, several southern states continued to enforce laws prohibiting black and white riders from sitting next to each other on public transportation.
The Freedom Ride, originated by the Fellowship of Reconciliation and revived by James Farmer and Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), was initiated to pressure the federal government to enforce the Supreme Court decision in Boynton v. Virginia (1960) that declared segregated interstate bus travel to be unconstitutional.
The Freedom Rides also exposed the passivity of the government regarding violence against citizens of the country who were simply acting in accordance with the law. The federal government had trusted the notoriously racist Alabama police to protect the Riders, but did nothing itself, except to have FBI agents take notes. The Kennedy Administration then called for a cooling-off period, with a moratorium on Freedom Rides.
In 1963, when Charles McDew stepped down as chairman of the StudentNonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Lewis, one of the founding members of SNCC, was elected to take over.
John Lewis & The March on Washington (1963)
In 1963, as chairman of SNCC Lewis was named one of the Big Six leaders who were organizing the March on Washington, the occasion of Dr. MartinLutherKing's celebrated I Have a Dream speech, along with Whitney Young, A.Philip Randolph, JamesFarmer and Roy Wilkins; Lewis was the youngest of the Big Six.
In 1964, Lewis coordinated SNCC's efforts for Mississippi Freedom Summer, a campaign to register black voters across the South and expose college students from around the country to the perils of African-American life in the South. Lewis traveled the country encouraging students to spend their summer break trying to help people in Mississippi, the most recalcitrant state in the union, to register and vote.
In 1966, Lewis moved to New York City to take a job as the associate director of the Field Foundation. He was there a little over a year before moving back to Atlanta to direct the Southern Regional Council's Community OrganizationProject. During his time with the SRC, he completed his degree from Fisk University.
In 1970, Lewis became the director of the Voter Education Project (VEP), a position he held until 1977.
In 1981, Lewis ran for an at-large seat on the Atlanta City Council. He won with 69% of the vote, and served on the council until 1986.
After nine years as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Fowler gave up the seat to make a successful run for the U.S. Senate.
Lewis represented Georgia's 5th congressional district, one of the most consistently Democratic districts in the nation. Since its formalization in 1845, the district has been represented by a Democrat for all but the nine years the seat was vacant when Georgia seceded during the Civil War.
John Lewis Mural, Atlanta (2020)
Lewis opposed the 1991 Gulf War, and the 2000 U.S. trade agreement with China that passed the House. He opposed the Clinton administration on NAFTA and welfare reform.
Lewis drew on his historical involvement in the CivilRightsMovement as part of his politics.
He made an annual pilgrimage to Alabama to retrace the route he marched in 1965 from Selma to Montgomery -a route Lewis worked to make part of the Historic National Trails program.
In March 2003, Lewis spoke to a crowd of 30,000 in Oregon during an anti-war protest before the start of the Iraq War. He was arrested in 2006 and 2009 and outside the Sudan embassy in protest against the genocide in Darfur.
He was one of eight U.S. Representatives, from six states, arrested while holding a sit-in near the west side of the U.S. Capitol building, to advocate for immigration reform. Lewis also led the 2016 House Democrats sit-in demanding that the House take action on gun control in the wake of the Orlando nightclub shooting and the failure of the United States Senate to act.
In 2013, Lewis became the first member of Congress to write a graphic novel, with the launch of a trilogy titled March. The March trilogy is a black and white comics trilogy about the Civil Rights Movement, told through the perspective of civil rights leader and U.S. Congressman John Lewis. The first volume, March: Book One is written by Lewis and Andrew Aydin, illustrated and lettered by Nate Powell and was published in August 2013, the second volume, March: Book Two was published in January 2015 and the final volume, March: Book Three was published in August 2016.
In an August 2014 interview, Lewis cited the influence of a 1958 comic book, Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story, on his decision to adapt his experience to the graphic novel format. March: Book One became a number one New York Times bestseller for graphic novels and spent more than a year on the lists.
On July 17, 2020, Lewis died at the age of 80 in Atlanta, Georgia.
She has been remembering the Chicago Freedom Movement, a civil rights movement leaded by Martin Luther King Jr. who placed a list of demands on the door of the Chicago City Hall to gain leverage with city leaders on a day like today in 1966.
The Chicago Freedom Movement, also known as the Chicago open housing movement, was led by Martin Luther King Jr., James Bevel and Al Raby. The movement included a large rally, marches, and demands to the City of Chicago. These specific demands covered a wide range of areas besides open housing, and included quality education, transportation and job access, income and employment, health, wealth generation, crime and the criminal justice system, community development, tenants rights, and quality of life.
The Chicago Freedom Movement was the most ambitious civil rights campaign in the North of the United States, lasted from mid-1965 to early 1967, and is largely credited with inspiring the 1968 Fair Housing Act.
The Chicago Freedom Movement represented the alliance of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), and the Coordinating Council of Community Organizations (CCCO). In 1965 SCLC was looking for a site to prove that nonviolence and nonviolent direct action could bring about social change outside of the South.
Since 1962, the CCCO had harnessed anger over racial inequality, especially in the public schools, in the city of Chicago to build the most sustained local civil rights movement in the North. The activism of the CCCO pulled SCLC to Chicago, as did the work of the AFSC's Kale Williams, Bernard Lafayette, David Jehnsen and others, owing to the decision by SCLC's Director of Direct Action, James Bevel, to come to Chicago to work with the AFSC project on the city's West Side.
Chicago Freedom Movement
The Chicago Freedom Movement declared its intention to end slums in the city. It organized tenants' unions, assumed control of a slum tenement, founded action groups like Operation Breadbasket, and rallied black and white Chicagoans to support its goals.
In the early summer of 1966, it and Bevel focused their attention on housing discrimination, an issue Bevel attributed to the work and idea of AFSC activist Bill Moyer. A large rally was held by Martin Luther King at Soldier Field on July 10, 1966. According to a UPI news story that ran the next day, About 35,000 persons jammed Chicago's Soldier Field for Dr. King's first giant 'freedom rally' since bringing his civil rights organizing tactics to the city. Other guests included Mahalia Jackson, Stevie Wonder, and Peter,Paul and Mary.
By late July the Chicago Freedom Movement was staging regular rallies outside of Real Estate offices and marches into all-white neighborhoods on the city's southwest and northwest sides. The hostile and sometimes violent response of local whites, and the determination of civil rights activists to continue to crusade for an open housing law, alarmed City Hall and attracted the attention of the national press.
Martin Luther King, Sidney Poitier & Mahalia Jackson
During one demonstration King said that even in Alabama and Mississippi he had not encountered mobs as hostile to Blacks' civil rights as those in Chicago. In mid-August, high-level negotiations began between city leaders, movement activists, and representatives of the Chicago Real Estate Board.
On August 26, after the Chicago Freedom Movement had declared that it would march into Cicero, site of a fierce race riot in 1951, an agreement, consisting of positive steps to open up housing opportunities in metropolitan Chicago, was reached. The Summit Agreement was the culmination of months of organizing and direct action. It did not, however, satisfy all activists, some of whom, in early September 1966, marched on Cicero over the objection of James Bevel, who had directed the movement for SCLC.
After the open-housing marches and Summit Agreements, the overall Chicago Freedom Movement lost much of its focus and momentum when, by early 1967, Martin Luther King, James Bevel, and SCLC had trained their energies on other projects, mainly, for King and Bevel, the anti-Vietnam war movement.
On July 10, 1966, King placed a list of demands on the door of the Chicago City Hall to gain leverage with city leaders.
Today, The Jones have continued their English classes. They have revised The Comparative of Superiority and Shall.
After working some Social English, the family has created some writings about their Hogwarts' friends, who they miss a lot, although Harry Potter has joined to them in their trip.
The family has been talking about Ireland, its kind people and its generosity and about how to work there and learning English at the same time. Later, The Grandma has been talking about Easter in Naples and Les Caramelles an ancient Catalan tradition. Both events are celebrated during Easter Sunday.
Finally, The Jones have created a story to practise the three most important elements in a composition: adequation, cohesion and coherence. Before, The Grandma had explained the story of the bagpipe, the most popular instrument in Scotland, as important as the Loch Ness, cradle of one of the most wonderful legends: Nessie.
Noelia Jones inside Urquhart Castle, Loch Ness
This afternoon, the family is visiting Loch Ness because they want to meet Nessie and enjoy one of the most beautiful places of the world: the Highlands.
Fifty years ago, in a day like today, The Grandma was visiting Loch Ness for first time in her life. It was an experience impossible to forget for two reasons: because of the beauty of the place and because that day Martin Luther King was killed in Memphis. It was a senseless tragedy like everybody that someone use violence or force to shut up opinions and freedoms. The history shows us that you can kill a person but not his/her ideology meanwhile other people continue his/her struggle: We shall overcome!
Loch Ness, in Scottish Gaelic Loch Nis, is a large, deep, freshwater loch in the Scottish Highlands extending for approximately 37 kilometres southwest of Inverness. Its surface is 16 metres above sea level. It is connected at the southern end by the River Oich and a section of the Caledonian Canal to Loch Oich.
At the northern end there is the Bona Narrows which opens out into Loch Dochfour, which feeds the River Ness and a further section of canal to Inverness, ultimately leading to the North Sea via the Moray Firth. It is one of a series of interconnected, murky bodies of water in Scotland; its water visibility is exceptionally low due to a high peat content in the surrounding soil.
Paqui Jones inside Urquhart Castle, Loch Ness
At Drumnadrochit is the Loch Ness Centre and Exhibition which examines the natural history and legend of Loch Ness. Urquhart Castle is located on the western shore, 2 km east of Drumnadrochit and lighthouses are located at Lochend (Bona Lighthouse) and Fort Augustus.
Loch Ness is known as the home of the Loch Ness Monster, also known as Nessie, a cryptid, reputedly a large unknown animal. It is similar to other supposed lake monsters in Scotland and elsewhere, though its description varies from one account to the next. Popular interest and belief in the animal's existence has varied since it was first brought to the world's attention in 1933.
In Scottish folklore, the Loch Ness Monster or Nessie, is an aquatic being which reputedly inhabits Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands. It is similar to other supposed lake monsters in Scotland and elsewhere, and is often described as being large in size, with a long neck and one or more humps protruding from the water. Popular interest and belief in the creature has varied since it was brought to worldwide attention in 1933. Evidence of its existence is anecdotal, with a few disputed photographs and sonar readings.
The Jones at Urquhart Castle, Loch Ness
The creature commonly appears in Western media where it manifests in a variety of ways. The scientific community regards the Loch Ness Monster as a phenomenon without biological basis, explaining sightings as hoaxes, wishful thinking, and the misidentification of mundane objects.
The creature has been affectionately called Nessie, in Scottish Gaelic: Niseag, since the 1940s.
The word monster was reportedly applied for the first time to the creature on 2 May 1933 by Alex Campbell, water bailiff for Loch Ness and a part-time journalist, in an Inverness Courier report.
On 4 August 1933 the Courier published a report by Londoner George Spicer that several weeks earlier, while they were driving around the loch, he and his wife saw the nearest approach to a dragon or pre-historic animal that I have ever seen in my life trundling across the road toward the loch with an animal in its mouth. Letters began appearing in the Courier, often anonymously, claiming land or water sightings by the writer, their family or acquaintances or remembered stories. The accounts reached the media, which described a monster fish, sea serpent, or dragon and eventually settled on Loch Ness monster.
The Grandma with Niseag in Loch Ness, 1968
On 6 December 1933 the first purported photograph of the monster, taken by Hugh Gray, was published in the Daily Express; the Secretary of State for Scotland soon ordered police to prevent any attacks on it. In 1934, interest was further piqued by the surgeon's photograph.
That year, R. T. Gould published an account of the author's investigation and a record of reports predating 1933. Other authors have claimed sightings of the monster dating to the sixth century AD.
The earliest report of a monster in the vicinity of Loch Ness appears in the Life of St. Columba by Adomnán, written in the sixth century AD.
According to Adomnán, writing about a century after the events described, Irish monk Saint Columba was staying in the land of the Picts with his companions when he encountered local residents burying a man by the River Ness. They explained that the man was swimming in the river when he was attacked by a water beast which mauled him and dragged him underwater.
Although they tried to rescue him in a boat, he was dead. Columba sent a follower, Luigne moccu Min, to swim across the river. The beast approached him, but Columba made the sign of the cross and said: Go no further. Do not touch the man. Go back at once. The creature stopped as if it had been "pulled back with ropes" and fled, and Columba's men and the Picts gave thanks for what they perceived as a miracle.
Believers in the monster point to this story, set in the River Ness rather than the loch itself, as evidence for the creature's existence as early as the sixth century.
Sceptics question the narrative's reliability, noting that water-beast stories were extremely common in medieval hagiographies and Adomnán's tale probably recycles a common motif attached to a local landmark. According to sceptics, Adomnán's story may be independent of the modern Loch Ness Monster legend and became attached to it by believers seeking to bolster their claims.
Yesterday, The Beans said goodbye to Washington, D.C. They chose the last places to visit and they have a closer relationship with the idiosyncrasy of the country.
For one hand, they visited the Treasury Building, symbol of the economical power in the country which represents better the idea of capitalism.
For other hand, the family visited Arlington Cemetery, symbol of the politican and military power of the USA.
Finally, The Grandma wanted to visit the Lincoln Memorial to tribute Abraham Lincoln and to remember another important figure of the recent American history: Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Treasury Building in Washington, D.C., is a National Historic Landmark building which is the headquarters of the United States Department of the Treasury. An image of the Treasury Building is featured on the back of the United States ten-dollar bill.
In the spring of the year 1800, the capital of the United States was preparing to move from the well-established city of Philadelphia to a parcel of tidewater land along the Potomac River. President John Adams issued an Executive Order on May 15th instructing the federal government to move to Washington and to be open for business by June 15, 1800. Arriving in Washington, relocated government employees found only one building completed and ready to be occupied: the Treasury Department building. The building was 147 feet long and 57 feet wide, flanking the south-east end of the White House.
Arlington National Cemetery is a United States military cemetery in Arlington County, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., in whose 253 ha the dead of the nation's conflicts have been buried, beginning with the Civil War, as well as reinterred dead from earlier wars. The United States Department of the Army, a component of the United States Department of Defense, controls the cemetery. The national cemetery was established during the Civil War on the grounds of Arlington House, which had been the estate of the family of Confederate general Robert E. Lee's wife Mary Anna (Custis) Lee, a great-granddaughter of Martha Washington.
The Lincoln Memorial is an American national monument built to honor the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. It is located on the western end of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., across from the Washington Monument. Dedicated in 1922, it is one of several monuments built to honor an American president. It has always been a major tourist attraction and since the 1930s has been a symbolic center focused on race relations.
Grandma's memories with Martin Luther King, Jr.
The building is in the form of a Greek Doric temple and contains a large seated sculpture of Abraham Lincoln and inscriptions of two well-known speeches by Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address and his Second Inaugural Address.
The memorial has been the site of many famous speeches, including Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech, delivered on August 28, 1963, during the rally at the end of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
Like other monuments on the National Mall, the memorial is administered by the National Park Service under its National Mall and Memorial Parks group.
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