He is the man in the middle.
William Felton was born on February 12, 1934.
His grandfather was the family’s first generation born free on this continent. The young boy would hear stories of how the Ku Klux Klan went after his grandfather because he tried to raise money among the poor blacks to build a schoolhouse and pay a teacher to educate their children.
The young boy would remember his grandfather’s story, and he would remember the racism he and his family lived with daily.
When he was growing up, he remembers his father was once refused service at a gas station until all the white customers were helped first; when his father tried to leave, the attendant put a shotgun in his face, telling him, “Boy, you’re going to buy your gas from me” and he had to wait.
He remembers when his mother walked outside the house, wearing a nice dress, and a white policeman told her to go home and remove the dress because only white women were allowed to wear nice dresses.
He would say later in life, “It stood out, a wall which understanding cannot penetrate. You are a Negro. You are less. It covered every area. A living, smarting, hurting, smelling, greasy substance which covered you. A morass to fight from.”
Before his mother died of kidney failure when he was 12, she had told him, “William, you are going to meet people who just don’t like you. On sight. And there’s nothing you can do about it, so don’t worry. Just be yourself. You’re no better than anyone else, but no one’s better than you.”
Young William Felton would remember those words.
When he tried to make something of himself, he would try sports, but he would immediately be cut from his junior high school basketball team and told he just didn’t understand the game. But, he didn’t give up. He tried again in high school and was almost cut again, but this time the coach saw something in the young William Felton Russell.
“Bill” Russell would go on to win consecutive NCAA titles at the University of San Francisco, an Olympic gold medal in 1956, then help the the Boston Celtics win 11 titles in his 13 seasons. He would become the first African-American coach in professional sports in North America when he was named Celtics player-coach in 1966.
He, however, still would experience racism, as a basketball player and as a person, especially after he challenged social injustice, attending the 1963 March on Washington, supporting Muhammad Ali’s decision not to serve in the military, and even more recently when he posted a picture of himself taking a knee in solidarity with NFL players.
Russell would be criticized, written negatively about in the press. During his early years playing basketball, he would be refused rooms at hotels and service at restaurants. After he was named player-coach, his home would be vandalized, covered with racist graffiti, and his beds defecated on.
But, through it all, he remembered his grandfather, his “heroic dignity against forces more powerful than him… he would not allow himself to be oppressed or intimidated by anyone.”
After he became the first African-American coach in professional sports in North America, he remembered inviting his grandfather to one of his games, how his grandfather was surprised that his grandson was actually the coach of an NBA team. He would ask Russell’s father, “of the white men, too?”
His father would simply reply, yes, “The white men too.”
And, when he got to visit the locker room, his grandfather was shocked that the black players were allowed to shower in the same room with the white players and that there was no “whites only” bathrooms and drinking fountains.
His grandfather would say of his experience watching his grandson play with and coach white players, “I never thought I’d see anything like that.”
His grandfather would cry that day.
His grandfather was proud of him then, and he would have been proud of his grandson even more when Bill Russell received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his accomplishments on the court and in the Civil Rights Movement.
– Courtesy of Jon S. Randall Peace Page
And THIS, my friends, is but one of thousands of stories we MUST remember, MUST teach our children, in order that they not repeat the mistakes of the past. Bill Russell died last July 31st at the age of 88.
This song was released in 1965 when Stevie was a ripe ol’ 15 years of age, and it was the first single that Stevie co-wrote. An accompanying album, Up-Tight (1966), was rushed into production to capitalize on the single’s success. It also garnered Wonder his first two career Grammy Award nominations for Best R&B Song and Best R&B Performance.
In 1957, Katherine provided some of the math for the 1958 document Notes on Space Technology, a compendium of a series of 1958 lectures given by engineers in the Flight Research Division and the Pilotless Aircraft Research Division (PARD). Engineers from those groups formed the core of the Space Task Group, the NACA’s first official foray into space travel, and Katherine, who had worked with many of them since coming to Langley, “came along with the program” as the NACA became NASA later that year.
In 1962, when NASA used computers to calculate John Glenn’s orbit around Earth, Glenn had one request: He wanted Katherine Johnson to personally recheck the calculations made by the new electronic computers before his flight aboard Friendship 7 – the mission on which he became the first American to orbit the Earth.
Johnson worked at the agency until 1986, when she retired after 33 years of service. During her tenure at NASA, Johnson received many prestigious awards, including an honorary Doctor of Law degree and an honorary Doctor of Science degree. In 2015, at age 97, Johnson added another extraordinary achievement to her long list: President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor.
It’s reminiscent of an Abbott and Costello clip, don’t you think? A more stupid man has never sat in the Oval Office. And then the conversation turned to former White House Counsel Don McGahn, who testified under oath to Robert Mueller’s team that Trump had asked him to fire Mueller, and then later that he had asked him to deny that he had ever asked him.
I’m fairly certain that I don’t need to introduce Mr. Rogers to those of you in the U.S., who have almost certainly seen Mr. Rogers on his children’s television show, Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. I find no evidence that it was aired across the pond, however, so Mr. Rogers may not be familiar to our European friends.
During the 33-year tenure of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, he tackled a wide variety of topics, addressing some of the fears and anxieties that most children have, such as the first day of school, a trip to the hospital, death, divorce, AIDS, and war. He felt that children were far too intuitive to accept the normal response of adults to children, “don’t worry about it”, and that kids would worry anyway, so it was better to talk about these things, to explain them.
And he did just that. He tackled the tough subjects that sometimes parents are afraid to talk to their children about. Shortly after his show began in 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated. Mr. Rogers took on the topic in a manner that few could, by explaining that it’s okay to be sad when something like this happens, and that different people react differently to such sadness. It is one of his most memorable and most-watched clips.
On another notable episode, Rogers soaked his feet alongside Officer Clemmons, who was African-American, in a kiddie pool on a hot day. The scene was a subtle symbolic message of inclusion during a time when racial segregation in the United States was widespread.
Mr. Rogers did more than talk to kids each day, he advocated for them. In 1969, Rogers appeared before the United States Senate Subcommittee on Communications. His goal was to support funding for PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, in response to proposed budget cuts. In about six minutes of testimony, Rogers spoke of the need for social and emotional education that public television provided. He argued that alternative television programming like his Neighborhood helped encourage children to become happy and productive citizens, sometimes opposing less positive messages in the media and in popular culture. He even recited the lyrics to one of his songs.
Fred Rogers died on this date in 2003 of stomach cancer, but his memory lives on through the many children, now adults, who were touched by his words and acts of kindness for more than three decades. He won numerous awards, including four daytime Emmys, a 1997 Lifetime Achievement award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and, in 2002, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1999, he was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame.
Filosofa's Word 