Volume 1, Issue 8, December 13, 2015
In this issue…
Quote Of The Week:
Booker Taliaferro WashingtonBook Of The Month: “Power Shift: Knowledge, Wealth, and Violence at the Edge of the 21st Century” By Alvin Toffler
IT’S YOUR Health: Physical Fitness
Public Service Announcements
· The rechartering for The Head Cornerstone Corporation in the State Of Delaware as well as all updated business licenses and associated issues are forth coming pending litigation. Thank you.
· Visit WWW.Ready.gov at your earliest convenience so that you may be informed of basic protective measures before, during, and after disasters/emergencies, learn disaster prepared activities, training, plans, and what shelters are in or near your community, develop an emergency plan for yourself and your family in the event of an actual disaster/emergency, build an disaster/emergency supply kit including a basic emergency medical/trauma bag in case of an event, and GET INVOLVED!
· Get your CPR (Cardio-Pulomonary Resuscitation) and Basic First Aid/First Responder/Basic Life Support including child birth and Emergency Pediatric Care training today. Check with the American Heart Association at WWW.Heart.org for locations. It may just save a life.
· It’s a lot of fun and excitement, it’s healthy, it’s a great family activity, and it’s very practical. Find a course in self defense for you and your loved ones and learn to protect yourselves. You just never know.
· We have the constitutional right to BEAR ARMS and many states have the CCW (Conceal Carry Weapon) License for when you and your loved ones are outside of your home environment. Search the web for free information concerning the Conceal Carry Laws as well as other valuable information. Get the CCW License today (where applicable) for you and your family members of age and LEARN HOW TO SHOOT. You’ll feel better that you did.
· WATER; it’s very essential for normal body functions and not only carries nutrients to your cells, but flushes out the toxins in are bodies that lead to diseases such as cancers, diabetes, and heart diseases. According to the Mayo Clinic and the Institute of Health, water consumption varies for each person depending on many factors associated with life styles, such as current health, activities, and where you live. Be informed about what your daily intake should be and “drink up”. It will make YOUR world a better place.
Historical Fact Of The Week: African Americans; Part VIII
Editorial Commentary: Coming soon!
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Character, not circumstances, makes the man.”
Booker Taliaferro Washington
April 5, 1856 – November 14, 1915
An African American educator, author, orator, and adviser to presidents of the United States. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was one of the dominant leaders in the African American communities. Washington was from the last generation of African American leaders born into slavery to become a leading voice of the former slaves and their descendants. He led the growth of Tuskegee Institute, a historically African American college in Alabama and forerunner of Tuskegee University. As lynchings in the South reached a peak in 1895, Washington gave a speech, known as the “Atlanta compromise,” which brought him national fame. He called for African American progress through education and entrepreneurship, rather than trying to challenge directly the Jim Crow segregation and the disenfranchisement of African American voters in the South.
Washington mobilized a nationwide coalition of middle-class African American, church leaders, and Caucasian American philanthropists and politicians, with a long-term goal of building the community’s economic strength and pride by a focus on self-help and schooling. But, secretly, he also supported court challenges to segregation and passed on funds raised for this purpose. Booker T. Washington mastered the nuances of the political arena in the late 19th century, which enabled him to manipulate the media, raise money, strategize, network, pressure, reward friends and distribute funds while punishing those who opposed his plans for uplifting African Americans. His long-term goal was to end the disenfranchisement of the vast majority of African Americans, who still lived in the South. Washington’s work on education problems helped him enlist both the moral and substantial financial support of many major Caucasian American philanthropists. He became a friend of such self-made men as Standard Oil magnate Henry Huttleston Rogers; Sears, Roebuck and Company President Julius Rosenwald; and George Eastman, inventor of roll film and founder of Kodak, and developer of a major part of the photography industry. These individuals and many other wealthy men and women funded his causes, including Hampton and Tuskegee institutes. The schools which Washington supported were founded primarily to produce teachers, a key need for the race in the 19th century. Freedmen strongly supported literacy and education as the keys to their future.
Graduates had often returned to their largely impoverished rural southern communities to find few schools and educational resources, as the Caucasian American-dominated state legislatures consistently underfunded African American schools in their segregated system. To address those needs, in the 20th century Washington enlisted his philanthropic network to create matching funds programs to stimulate construction of numerous rural public schools for African American children in the South. Working especially with Julius Rosenwald from Chicago, Washington had Tuskegee architects develop model school designs. The Rosenwald Fund helped support the construction and operation of more than 5,000 schools and supporting resources for the betterment of African Americans throughout the South in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The local schools were a source of communal pride and were priceless to African American families when poverty and segregation severely limited the life chances of the pupils. A major part of Washington’s legacy, the model rural schools continued to be constructed into the 1930s, with matching funds from the Rosenwald Fund. Washington also helped with the Progressive Era by forming the National Negro Business League.His autobiography, Up From Slavery, first published in 1901, is still widely read in the early 21st century.