Quotes: " Think about it: We went into slavery
pagans; we came out
Christians. We went into slavery pieces of property; we
came out American citizens. We went into slavery with chains
clanking about our wrists; we came out with American ballots in
our hands. ...
When we rid ourselves of prejudice, or racial
feeling, and look the facts in the face, we must acknowledge,
notwithstanding the cruelty and moral wrong of slavery, we are
in a stronger and more hopeful position, materially, intellectually,
morally, and religiously, than is true of an equal number of black
people in any other portion of the globe." --Booker T. Washington
Farmer Was Voice for Civil Rights Date: 07/10/1999
From: AOL News
.
cc: The Associated Press, By BOB LEWIS
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - At the end, James Farmer had long since lost
sight in the eyes that had beheld so much injustice and witnessed
the pivotal moments in America's struggle for racial equality.
Diabetes stilled the legs that had walked treacherous miles on the
roads of the hostile South during the Freedom Rides of the 1960s.
But, oh, that voice!
Right up to his final days, nothing had muted the mighty, flowing
baritone that helped mold and inspire the civil rights movement for
one generation, then brought it back to life for college students
of a later time.
Farmer died Friday at Mary Washington Hospital in Fredericksburg,
Va., after years of failing health. He was the last of the 1960s'
Big Four civil rights giants - the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., NAACP
chief Roy Wilkins and Urban League leader Whitney Young.
Farmer helped found the Congress of Racial Equality in 1942 and
later led Freedom Riders deep into Dixie in a nonviolent but perilous
effort to desegregate interstate buses and bus terminals. In 1964,
three young men he had recruited into CORE were killed in Neshoba
County, Miss., and buried in an earthen dam.
One time, a bus loaded with Freedom Riders was burned to the ground
and its occupants barely escaped. Farmer spent 40 days and 40 nights
in Mississippi jails and prisons.
He lived with fear but never gave in to it.
``Anyone who said he wasn't afraid during the civil rights movement
was either a liar or without imagination,'' Farmer said in a 1991
interview. ``I was scared all the time. My hands didn't shake but
inside I was shaking.''
In 1964, Farmer led a march in Plaquemine, La., and was confronted
by mounted troopers and the Ku Klux Klan. The marchers sought refuge
in a church, and the Klan surrounded it, shouting ``Where's Farmer?''
The demonstrators hid Farmer in a hearse that was parked behind the
church. The hearse spirited him off to New Orleans on a frightening
four-hour ride over Louisiana back roads.
``They were trying to kill him. They looked everywhere for him,''
said Val Coleman, an aide to Farmer in those days.
Farmer later turned to politics, losing a congressional election
in New York in 1968, then serving in the Nixon administration as
an assistant secretary in the Department of Health, Education and
Welfare. Disillusioned, he left government two years later.
In 1980, Farmer moved to Virginia and began writing about the civil
rights struggle in his autobiography, ``Lay Bare the Heart.'' It
was a way to ensure that the movement's gains were not forgotten
or relinquished, a concern that abided with Farmer throughout his
life and eventually led him to teaching.
``He was quite worried that we have a long way to go with race problems
in this country,'' said Philip Hall, who met Farmer in 1985 and soon
hired him as a history professor at Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg.
Farmer worried that racism still thrived - albeit quietly - in America
and that its only remedy was education, said Hall, the vice president
for academic affairs and dean of the faculty at the college.
``What he brought to us was living civil rights history,'' Hall
said. ``Why, you can just imagine. It was like having Robert E. Lee
lecturing on the Civil War.''
Hall and Farmer became good friends. Hall would watch him lecture,
spellbound by Farmer's oratory just as the students were.
``He had this wonderful, deep preacher's voice and a way of storytelling
that was quite special,'' Hall said. ``He was the man who had actually
done the Freedom Rides. He had been there. He'd lived with the fear
and with the hate, and he had done special things.''
Lawrence Davies, Fredericksburg's former mayor, also became a friend
of Farmer's. When he visited the ailing man in the hospital three
weeks ago, Farmer was alert despite his medications. Together, the
two men said a prayer, Davies said.
``His mind was clear until the very end,'' Davies said. ``He was
still living life to the fullest that his health would allow.''
AP-NY-07-10-99 1458EDT
Copyright 1999 The Associated Press. The information contained in
the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or
otherwise distributed without prior written authority of The Associated
Press.
NewsMax.com's George Putnam E-mail Newsletter December 21, 2001
" One Reporter's Opinion"
If you ever doubted it, what I'm about to tell
you should prove that the action of one person can make a vast difference.
This is the
story of a Missouri farmer who made an enormous sacrifice. His
name is Frank Carver.
When a black woman and her infant son were abducted from their shack
near Diamond Grove, Missouri in 1864, by a band of night raiders,
most of that community just shrugged their shoulders. Not Frank Carver.
He didn't see things that way. He was incensed at the crime and decided
to find the kidnappers himself. It took days of meticulous tracking
until he caught up with the men who were hiding in a dilapidated
barn.
Carver stood outside shouting, "Release that woman and her
child!" He was horrified at the reply. They had already sold
the mother to a slave trader and were about to kill the baby. The
infant was sick and of no use to them. They made the outrageous proposal
that Carver buy the baby from them. Carver had no money but countered
with a deal of his own. His only asset, other than his farm, was
the horse he was riding at the time. It was a good horse. He offered
it in exchange for the baby's life. The trade was made and once the
infant was safely in his arms, he headed home. Over the next several
weeks, he searched for the child's mother. He never found her. So
he named the boy George Washington Carver and raised him as his own.
The rest is a page in scientific history.
The Carvers provided George with a formal
education. He graduated from Iowa State A&M in 1894 with a
degree in Agricultural Science. He introduced the soybean to the
United States. He convinced southern
farmers that their land would be more productive if they rotated
crops, alternated sweet potatoes and peanuts with cotton to enrich
the soil. Dr. Carver developed hundreds of products that could be
made from peanuts, sweet potatoes and their byproducts. Every time
you have a peanut butter sandwich, you can thank Dr. Carver. There
were soaps and ink and flour and insulating materials, synthetic
marble and rubber, oils and cattle feed. These are just a few of
the uses Dr. Carver found for the crops he urged the farmers to grow.
I had the great privilege, as a young reporter,
to interview this incredible genius. It was 1936. He was 72 at
the time. He was visiting
the Twin Cities from Tuskegee Institute where he made his home to
the time of his death. One might say that Dr. Carver rescued the
south's economy and he taught so many of today's agricultural leaders
at Tuskegee in Alabama. His motto was, and he spoke it to me, "It
is my hope to be of the greatest good to the greatest number of my
people."
Shortly before his death, he received one
of many honorary degrees from the University of Rochester. Presenting
the degree, the president
of the university said, "To scientist, educator, benefactor
of your people and America - true to the American tradition - you
made every sacrifice to obtain the best education. You have opened
new doors of opportunity to those Americans who happen to be Negroes.
You have once again demonstrated that in human ability there is no
color line."
Not long before Dr. Carver's death, a visitor
to his laboratory saw him reach out his long, sensitive fingers
to a little flower
on his workbench. "When I touch that flower," he said rapturously, "I
am touching infinity. It existed long before there were human beings
on this earth and will continue to exist for millions of years to
come. Through the flower, I talk to the infinite, which is only a
silent force. It is not a physical contact. It is not in the earthquake,
wind or fire. It is in the invisible world. It is that still, small
voice that calls up the fairies." Suddenly he stopped and after
a moment of reflection, smiled and said, "Many people know this
instinctively."
How I treasure the moments I was privileged to spend with this wondrous
human being!
The legendary George Putnam is 87 years young and a veteran of 67
years as a reporter, broadcaster, commentator... and is still going
strong. George is now back on the air as part of the all-star line-up
of Southern California's KPLS Radio - Hot Talk AM 830.