-
Recent Posts
- Paradise Lost: When Hell Changes Its Name – THE CONUNDRUMS QUOTATIONS PROJECT – CQ-024
- Forgiveness and the Freedom to Move Forward – THE CONUNDRUMS QUOTATIONS PROJECT – CQ-023
- When Books Become Freedom – THE CONUNDRUMS QUOTATIONS PROJECT – CQ-022
- The Courage to Survive – THE CONUNDRUMS QUOTATIONS PROJECT – CQ-021
- The Responsibility of a Second Chance – THE CONUNDRUMS QUOTATION PROJECT – CQ-020
Recent Comments
Archives
- September 2026
- August 2026
- July 2026
- June 2026
- April 2026
- February 2026
- January 2026
- December 2025
- November 2025
- October 2025
- September 2025
- August 2025
- April 2025
- February 2025
- January 2025
- September 2024
- July 2024
- June 2024
- May 2024
- April 2024
- February 2024
- October 2023
- September 2023
- August 2023
- July 2023
- June 2023
- May 2023
- April 2023
- March 2023
- February 2023
- January 2023
- October 2022
- September 2022
- August 2022
- June 2022
- May 2022
- April 2022
- March 2022
- February 2022
- June 2021
- April 2021
- March 2021
- February 2021
- January 2021
- September 2020
- August 2020
- July 2020
- June 2020
- October 2019
- June 2019
- April 2019
- February 2019
- December 2018
- November 2018
- October 2018
- September 2018
- August 2018
- July 2018
- June 2018
- May 2018
- April 2018
- March 2018
- February 2018
- December 2017
- November 2017
- September 2017
- June 2017
- May 2017
- April 2017
- November 2016
- October 2016
- June 2016
- April 2016
- February 2016
- November 2015
- October 2015
- June 2015
- May 2015
- April 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- December 2014
- November 2014
- October 2014
- August 2014
- July 2014
- June 2014
- May 2014
- April 2014
- March 2014
- February 2014
- January 2014
- December 2013
- November 2013
- October 2013
- July 2013
- June 2013
- May 2013
- March 2013
- January 2012
- December 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- June 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
Categories
- Advocacy, Research & Lived Expertise
- Books & Writing Projects
- Criminal Justice & Punishment
- Education & Teaching
- Family, Memory & Personal Essays
- Fiction & Short Stories
- Genealogy
- Growing Up
- Justice Chronicles
- Literature & Cultural Criticism
- Mother's Messages
- Politics & Public Affairs
- Race, History & American Society
- raising black boys
- Reentry & Community
- Religion
- Revolution
- Shawshank Redemption
- Streets of Rage
- The Summer of Capri
- Uncategorized
- urban decay
- Urban Impact
Meta
Tag Archives: Civil War
A Comparison of New York State Laws and Regulations and Slave Codes
In the mid-1980s, while doing research on an essay, which I would entitle, “From the Plantation to the Penitentiary,” I came across something startling. I had already seen the connection between slavery and imprisonment, from the very beginning of the … Continue reading
Posted in Race, History & American Society
Tagged 13th Amendment, 14th Amendment, 15th Amendment, Alabama Slave Code of 1852, Andrew Hacker, Bill Clinton, Black Codes, chain gangs, Civil War, Confederate memorials, Confederate Monuments, Confederate statues, Convict Leasing, Hayes-Tilden Compromise, law and order, Louisiana Slave Code of 1824, NY Correction Law Sec. 170, penal slavery, peonage, private prisons, race card, Reconstruction, Slave Codes, Slavery, South Carolina Slave Code of 1740, Two Nations: Black and White Separate Hostile Unequal
Leave a comment
Dear Daddy: A Love Letter to Your Beloved South
July 15, 2020 Dear Daddy, Last night I dreamt of you for the first time since your death. I woke up with tears in my eyes. Although you have been dead for a little more than 38 years, in the … Continue reading
Posted in Education & Teaching
Tagged being a teenager, Benin & Togo, Cameroon, Civil War, Confederate memorials, Confederate Monuments, Confederate statues, Congo, discrimination, Ellis Island, Emmett Till, Family, fathers, Four White Men Kidnap and Rape Black Girl in Tylertown MS, Ghana, Growing Up, NC, Nigeria, racial reckoning, Segregation, slave ships, Southern Bantu peoples, the South, Township of Bath, Virginia, white supremacy, World War I, World War II, Yeatesville
1 Comment
Juneteenth!
From my award-winning epic poem, “Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass: Remembrance of Things Past and Present”: XXI The Emancipator, the Great Friend of the Negro, wanted to save the Union, at any cost. The South could have … Continue reading
Posted in Justice Chronicles, Politics & Public Affairs
Tagged 1st North Carolina Volunteers, 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, Abraham Lincoln, Black Patriotism, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, Civil War, Confederate States of America, Corps d' Afrique, Day of Jubilee, Emancipation Proclamation, Fort Sumter, Juneteenth, NYC Draft Riots, Poetry, rebel states, Southern disunionists, Southern rebels, Southern Secessionists
1 Comment
On this Day in American history – June 19, 1865 — Juneteenth (From the Equal Justice Initiative)
Although President Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation declared enslaved Black people in Confederate territories free, these locations were under Confederate control, which rejected the freedom of enslaved people on plantations throughout the South. The Proclamation did little to emancipate enslaved … Continue reading
Posted in Race, History & American Society
Tagged 13th Amendment, Black Patriotism, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, Civil War, Confederacy, Emancipation Proclamation, Equal Justice Initiative, Juneteenth, Mass Incarceration, racial hierarchy, racial injustice, racial terror, racial terror lynchings, Reconstruction, Segregation, Slavery, white supremacy
Leave a comment
The South Won the War of Northern Aggression?
Imagine a visitor from another planet, say Mars, is touring the Southern states and is in modern day Virginia. The Martian makes its way to Jamestown, which he finds both interesting, and puzzling. It has familiarized itself with 200 years … Continue reading
Posted in Race, History & American Society, Streets of Rage
Tagged 1619, BlackLivesMatter, Civil War, CNN, Confederacy, Confederate Monuments, Confederate States of America, Confederate Way, CSA, General Douglas MacArthur, Robert E. Lee, Slavery, War of Northern Aggression, World War I, World War II
Leave a comment
Happy Black Independence Day!
Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration commemorating the ending of slavery in the United States, a day more important to descendants of Africans than the Fourth of July. (Read Frederick Douglass’ classic speech, “What is the Fourth of July to … Continue reading
On this day in American history, August 18, 1995 — NAACP Protests Uncovering of “Faithful Slave” Monument
On August 18, 1995, the NAACP sent a letter of protest to the Department of the Interior to protest the uncovering of a decades-old monument in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. In October 1859, white abolitionist John Brown led a raid … Continue reading
On this day in history, May 22, 1872 –Congress Restores Confederates’ Rights with the Amnesty Act of 1872
Even while the Civil War was in progress, the Union offered amnesty to Confederates in an attempt to encourage loyalty to the Union and begin the process of reconstruction. The Confiscation Act of 1862 authorized the President of the United … Continue reading
On this day in history, May 11, 1868 –Convict Leasing Begins in Georgia
After the Civil War, Georgia and other Southern states faced economic uncertainty. Dependent on enslaved black labor that was no longer available after emancipation and ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, Southern economies struggled to find a new solution. For many, … Continue reading
William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters 