Namaste

The Life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
1869-1948

"When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall — think of it, always."

"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?"

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."

"There are many causes that I am prepared to die for but no causes that I am prepared to kill for."

1869
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi born in Porbandar in Gujarat.

1893
Gandhi leaves for Johannesburg for practicing law and is thrown out of a first class train car because he is colored.

1906
Mohandas K. Gandhi, 37, speaks at a mass meeting in the Empire Theater, Johannesburg on September 11 and launches a campaign of nonviolent resistance (satyagraha) to protest discrimination against Indians. The British Government had just invalidated the Indian Marriage.

1913
Mohandas Gandhi in Transvaal, South Africa leads 2,500 Indians into the in defiance of a law, they are violently arrested, Gandhi refuses to pay a fine, he is jailed, his supporters demonstrate. On November 25, and Natal police fire into the crowd, killing two, injuring 20.

1914
Mohandas Gandhi returns to India at age 45 after 21 years of practicing law in South Africa where he organized a campaign of “passive resistance” to protest his mistreatment by whites for his defense of Asian immigrants. He attracts wide attention in India by conducting a fast --the first of 14 that he will stage as political demonstrations and that will inaugurate the idea of the political fasting.

1930
A civil disobedience campaign against the British in India begins March 12. The All-India Trade Congress has empowered Gandhi to begin the demonstrations (see 1914). Called Mahatma for the past decade, Gandhi leads a 165-mile march to the Gujarat coast of the Arabian Sea and produces salt by evaporation of sea water in violation of the law as a gesture of defiance against the British monopoly in salt production

1932
Gandhi begins a "fast unto death" to protest the British government's treatment of India's lowest caste "untouchables" whom Gandhi calls Harijans -- "God's children." Gandhi's campaign of civil disobedience has brought rioting and has landed him in prison, but he persists in his demands for social reform, he urges a new boycott of British goods, and after 6 days of fasting obtains a pact that improves the status of the "untouchables" (Dalits)

1947
India becomes free from 200 years of British Rule. A major victory for Gandhian principles and non-violence in general.

1948
Gandhi is assassinated by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu fanatic at a prayer meeting

Timeline from http://www.kamat.com/mmgandhi/mkgtimeline.htm

Unsung Hero

Without the Montgomery bus boycott, we would not know the name "Rosa Parks." Without the people standing before the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, we might now know Martin Luther King's Dream. If hundreds of thousands of families with school children had not chosen integration across the South, the "Little Rock Nine" would be a distant memory.

The trails of the trailblazers will fade if their path is not followed by others; every leader requires followers for their vision to become reality. The civil rights movement, in fact all movements that attack injustice, became a movements when everyday people, most whose names will never make it into history books, dedicates their lives to it, sacrificed so that justice would in fact roll down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.

In Pearl, Mississippi, the Jenkins family, faithful Christians, took the opportunity to take a stand for justice and enrolled their children, starting with their third grader, in the public school system, becoming the first African-American family in that town to do so. Their decision made them the target of great hatred; they received threats, a fire bomb was thrown at their home, bullets were fired into their walls. Mrs. Jenkins was a housekeeper, and even her employer was treated to a yard full of white crosses when he refused to fire her. Perhaps the worst terror came from a group of white teenagers who would race their car down the Jenkins' street without regard to the toys of the children playing there, hurling insults and slurs the whole time. One night, as they prepared to spray dust as they turned to leave the neighborhood, the only sputter they heard was their engine as they ran out of gas. The teenage Jenkins' saw their opportunity, as the white teenagers who had so terrorized them became the ones in need of mercy. Rev. Willi Jenkins, their father, came out with a shotgun, wondering what was going on. As he stood on his porch, the driver of the car asked for help. Rev. Jenkins, recognizing the opportunity for justice, chose mercy. Silently, he went to his car, siphoned gas, and filled the tank of the white teenagers, and they left. I don't know if Rev. Jenkins ever marched in a protest or held a picket sign, but can only imagine that his children and grandchildren could not help but be different people, different kinds of Christians, different kinds of Americans, because of his actions.

Mohandas Gandhi, whose sculpting of nonviolent civil resistance transformed the history of the 20th century, and particularly influenced the American civil rights movement, once said, "When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall — think of it, always." That's what happened one night in Pearl, Mississippi.

Champion Gone Awry

Jack Johnson became the first African American to earn boxing's heavyweight title when he defeated reigning champion Tommy Burns of Canada in 1908. Johnson's victory made him a hero to the black community but sparked outrage among many whites, who found it impossible to accept a black man as the heavyweight champ. Boxing promoters scrambled to find a "white hope" capable of wresting the crown from Johnson, but he continued his dominance by besting all of his challengers. Outside of the ring, however, Johnson's personal conduct and run-ins with the law severely damaged his reputation, and in 1913 he left the country following his conviction for violation of the Mann Act. After twice defending his title in Europe, Johnson surrendered his crown in Havana in 1915 when white boxer Jess Willard won by a knockout in the twenty-sixth round of their title bout.

From http://nmaahc.si.edu/section/programs/view/35

Mississippi John Hurt

Mississippi John Hurt

Charmian Reading's portrait of "Mississippi" John Hurt (1893-1966) pictures the celebrated blues guitarist performing in 1966, in conjunction with the March Against Fear, a 220-mile march from Memphis to Jackson, Mississippi, to champion civil rights reform. Hurt spent most of his life in a small town not far from the marchers' route, and when he learned of their presence he came out to lend his support. Prior to appearing at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963, an event that led to widespread acclaim, Hurt lived in relative obscurity in Mississippi, playing occasionally for local audiences. Although he had recorded a selection of songs back in 1928, he worked principally as a farmer and a laborer, supporting his wife and fourteen children. His "rediscovery" in the 1960s led to new opportunities to record and to perform, and prompted a nationwide blues revival.

From http://nmaahc.si.edu/section/programs/view/22

Wildfire - "Forever Free"

EDMONIA "WILDFIRE" LEWIS (1843-1911)

Lewis, whose mother was Chippewa Indian and whose father was a freeman of African descent, was born in upstate New York in 1843. Upon entering Oberlin College, where she studied literature, she changed her name from Wildfire to Mary Edmonia. In 1863, Lewis moved to Boston to study under a portrait sculptor. Funds from the sale of a medallion of John Brown, leader of the rebellion at Harpers Ferry and a bust of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, commander of the all African American 54th Massachusetts Infantry of the Union Army, enabled Lewis to study in Europe. Lewis continued her studies of neoclassical forms in Italy where she made "Forever Free," her most famous work. Lewis' last known major work, "Death of Cleopatra," was presented at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876. Lewis's focus on African Americans and Native Americans - -deemed questionable at the time - -as well as the disappearance of abolitionist patronage may have contributed to her decline in popularity as an artist.

From http://www.pbs.org/wnet/aaworld/arts/lewis.html

Images - 

“Edmonia Lewis,” c. 1870, Henry Rocher, albumen ailver print (National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution) - http://nmaahc.si.edu/attachments/41/motto_edmonia_lewis_original_medium.jpg

“Forever Free,” 1867, marble - http://english.uiowa.edu/courses/boos/galleries/afamgallery/image/lewisfree1867.jpg

"Let Your Motto Be Resistance"

Henry Highland Garnet, a abolitionist and preacher, famously said in 1843,

"Strike for your lives and liberties....

Let your motto be Resistance! Resistance! RESISTANCE!....

What kind of resistance you...make you must decide by the circumstances that surround you...."

This quotation became the theme of the inaugural exhibit of the National Museum of African-American History and Culture, the newest of the Smithsonian Institution's museums in Washington, D.C.  Curators assembled portraits from the National Portrait Gallery's collection of African-Americans who have chosen resistance through a large variety of means, in their daily lives.  These week's selections will be taken from the exhibit.

Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing

Nearly everyone has heard the song "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing," and most have been inspired by it. However, the product of Harlem Renaissance sculptor Augusta Fells Savage's inspiration is considerably more beautiful than most. Her piece, "The Harp," created in 1939 for the New York World's Fair, does with sculpture what the song does with language. Combined with the fact that it was created the same year that Marian Anderson sang before thousands at the Lincoln Memorial, it gives new meaning to the vision of "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing."

The lyrics, by James Weldon Johnson, in 1900 and performed by his brother for an elementary school celebration of Lincoln's birthday -

Lift every voice and sing,
'Til earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on 'til victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chast'ning rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
'Til now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land.

Image of "The Harp" taken from http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai3/community/text4/savagetheharp.pdf