[Peace-discuss] July 4th float -- okay, seriously...

[Jenifer Cartwright]

Lincoln on Race and Slavery puts things into perspective -- and gives Lincoln points for misinterpreting Jefferson's words (all men created equal, etc) in the Declaration of Independence. Thanks for sending the review, Ron.
 
Here's Wikipedia on Lincoln. Indisputable that Lincoln -- tho' far from perfect -- was nevertheless a remarkable man who successfully dealt with unimaginable challenges during his life -- surely the worst of any president in our nation's history -- and acquited himself well. Born into poverty and self-educated -- only 18 months of formal schooling. Personal losses and tragedy thruout his life didn't defeat him... Surely there's lots of positive stuff here even for AWARE to choose from???
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln
 --Jenifer

--- On Sat, 5/23/09, Ron Szoke <r-szoke at illinois.edu> wrote:


From: Ron Szoke <r-szoke at illinois.edu>
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] July 4th float -- okay, seriously...
To: "E. Wayne Johnson" <ewj at pigs.ag>
Cc: "Peace-discuss" <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
Date: Saturday, May 23, 2009, 10:01 PM


Excerpt from review of recent Lincoln/racism book:

NY Review of Books
Volume 56, Number 10 · June 11, 2009
Lincoln's Black History

By Garry Wills

Lincoln on Race and Slavery
edited and with an introduction by Henry Louis Gates Jr., and coedited by 
Donald Yacovone
Princeton University Press, 343 pp., $24.95

Abraham Lincoln was born into a racist family, in a racist region of our country, 
during a racist era of our history. It would have been amazing if he had not 
begun his life as a racist. Piety toward his memory suppressed that fact for 
generations. Most of us wanted Lincoln to be free of racism, and we read the 
evidence to arrive at that conclusion. No one wanted that more than blacks. 
Henry Louis Gates, the Harvard professor, notes that blacks—from Booker T. 
Washington to Ralph Ellison—did even more than whites to enshrine Lincoln as 
"the American philosopher-king and patron saint of race relations." Gates 
writes of himself (born 1950), "Like most African Americans of my generation, I 
was raised to believe that Lincoln hated slavery because he loved the slaves." 
Black freedmen raised $17,000 for the 1876 statue of Lincoln freeing the slaves 
that stands in Lincoln Park, Washington.
..   .   .

See:  http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22750 

Something honoring Frederick Douglas would seem another possibility in 
harmony with the "legacy of Lincoln" theme.  

-- Ron




-----Inline Attachment Follows-----


_______________________________________________
Peace-discuss mailing list
Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss



      
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/archive/peace-discuss/attachments/20090523/7ec8da1e/attachment.htm