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dare to be a fool
I received this in an email and just couldn’t resist posting it today because it is truth…
Every Hero Begins as Fool
In celebration of April Fool’s Day, I want to encourage you to be more “foolish” in your life. There is power in daring to be different.
Great advances have never come from the conventionally minded among us, those who worship their data, never wear purple, and chastise the unknown. Change comes from us “madcaps” who obey the mandate to be alive — and chase the gleam of inspiration, the truth we know in our bones — more than the facts that are known.
The world’s healers, industry leaders, artists and visionaries of tomorrow — are likely the neglected fools of right now, scrambling to pay their rent while devoting themselves to bold ideas and inexhaustible generosity. Let’s face it, some half-cocked chuckleheads of the past gave us electricity, medicine, automobiles, a few trips to the pale white moon and back, not to mention hair dye and decaffeinated coffee. God bless them all. Can you imagine the Wright brothers assuming they could snub the laws of gravity and fly? Think about it. Many of us cower and shrink, thinking we’re extravagant, for believing we might just write a screenplay that sells.
Fools dare to be alive, even on a Monday. Fools dare to take off their shoes, turn off the computer and walk outside into the sun. They know the power, healing, and strength of having fun. Fools dare to take off their thinking cap and try on their feelings fedora.
Fools dare to try new things and do them badly. Fools dare to rest when they are tired. Fools dare to sing off key and they dare to sing on key in a voice that melts all separation and brings sadness to its knees. Fools dare to wander down provocative paths in their lives, try scenic routes and detours and stuff their bursting satchels with jewels. Fools dare to step into the river beyond the concrete structures of “how it’s always been done,” and allow themselves to be carried onto new and holy ground.
Prudence and conservatism have not advanced our culture. It took the voices on the outskirts to make a noise that changed the world. It’s taken a handful of rabble rousers to vote for women’s rights, freedom from slavery, and to oppose war, hunger, and hatred. It takes fools to raise awareness and fools to raise the bar. It takes fools to stir the hearts of mankind into becoming the great lovers and leaders we are meant to be. Every time we watch the Academy Awards or the Olympics, I think of all the “foolish dreamers” involved who believed they had something in them that deserved commitment, development, and a jostling chance. Every hero begins as fool.
So dare the ridicule of the narrow-minded and dim-sighted. Dare to still believe. Dare to feel. Dare to trust your guiding light. Dare to ignore gravity and take flight. Dare to be a hero. Dare to be a fool.
©Copyright 2010 Tama J. Kieves. All rights reserved.
april fool
Readers of the Madison, Wis., Capital-Times had a scare on April 1, 1933 — a front-page photo showed that the state capitol had collapsed.
The words “April Fool” appeared in small type both in the caption and at the end of the accompanying article, but readers were not amused.
“There is such a thing as carrying a joke too far,” wrote one, “and this one was not only tactless and void of humor as well, but also a hideous jest.”
the greatest negro?
I immediately thought of Obama while reading this article and am quite, quite certain that most agree that he is indeed a “Negro.” That there was debate around Douglass’ negrocity ( I like to make up words sometimes) is of interest to me because I’m fascinated by the fact that mulatto was a valid and recognized identity in America before 1920. Then it wasn’t anymore. The ranking of Negroes from greatest to least strikes me as ludicrous. That being said, the question, “Will Obama go down in history as the greatest Negro who ever lived?” popped into my head. And then I thought that seeing as he isn’t one “in the full sense of the term,” MLK probably outranks him. How quickly I went from judging the system of rankings to ordering some myself!
Knoxville’s farewell to a civil-rights icon
By Robert Booker
A large crowd packed into Logan Temple A.M.E. Zion Church to honor the memory of the country’s best known civil-rights advocate. Among them were Knoxville’s black elite.
It was Feb. 25, 1895, and they had come to say farewell to Frederick Douglass, who had been born into slavery and died six days earlier.
Two days before the memorial, The Knoxville Tribune had its say about Douglass and wondered if he was a true Negro: “If we consider Douglass as a Negro, he was the brightest of his race in America. But he was not a Negro in the full sense of the term. Although born a slave, his father was a white man and his mother was a mulatto. Born a bastard and a slave, he rose to distinction and influences, and there were those among a class of white people who delighted to honor him.
“There are those who class him as the greatest Negro. This estimate of him is extravagant and unwarranted. In the first place he was not a Negro, and in the next place he is outranked by other Negroes. The greatest Negro who ever lived was Toussaint L’Ouverture the Haitian general, whose death was and will always be a dishonor to France. No Negro in this country ever approached L’Ouverture in intellect.”
L’Ouverture (1744-1803) was the Haitian independence leader who took part in the slave revolt in that country in 1790. He joined the Spaniards when they attacked the French in 1793, but fought for the French when they agreed to abolish slavery. By 1801 he had virtual control over Hispaniola, but was arrested and died in a French prison.
The blacks who spoke at the Douglass memorial took issue with the Tribunes’s assessment of him.
Attorney Samuel R. Maples said he wanted “to correct a statement in one of the local papers that Douglass boasted of his white blood and denied being a Negro. This was not true. Douglass never denied being a Negro. He was very proud of his race.”
Attorney William F. Yardley, who had introduced Douglass when he spoke here at Staub’s Opera House Nov. 21, 1881, said Douglass “Was the victim of the great American curse – slavery. He slept with dogs and ate the crumbs from his master’s table, but his great mind and energy lifted him to the loftiest heights of fame. He was not a creature of circumstance but of force. He was tireless and had been the greatest blessing to his race.”
Charles W. Cansler spoke of Douglass as “An anti-slavery agitator who represented a great moral principle and not a minister of malice. He was seventy-eight years old when he died and spent his life earnestly in the extension of freedom and in establishing justice among men. He was the Moses of his race, and it is hard to tell what his heath means to us.”
Rev. J.R. Riley, pastor of Shiloh Presbyterian Church, spoke of Douglass as a leader: “He was carved by the hand of deity to be a great leader, though cradled in the most iniquitous institution – American slavery – and schooled in dire adversity, his power of mind and greatness of spirit had surmounted all, and he stood out boldly as the greatest man of his race and the peer of all great men.”
It seems that Riley, who was pastor of Shiloh from 1891 to 1913, knew Douglass personally and they had many experiences together. He said his friend had “great personal magnetism. His quick wit and ability to read men made him irresistible in his influence among men.”
This image shows the front cover of “Frederick Douglass Funeral March.” At each corner of his portrait are pen and ink drawings in circular frames that depict the slave trade, bondage, auction block, and freedom.
emancipated slaves, white and colored
On January 30, 1864, Harper’s Weekly printed an engraving of a photograph, entitled “Emancipated Slaves, White and Colored,” depicting three adults and five children who had been brought north from Louisiana by Colonel George H. Hanks and set free by Major General Nathaniel P. Banks. The group made a series of public appearances and were photographed as part of a campaign to raise funds for public schools for freed slaves, the first of which was established by Major General Banks in October 1863. The hope was, writes Kathleen Collins in “Portraits of Slave Children,” that “these enigmatic portraits of Caucasian-featured children” would galvanize “Northern benefactors to contribute to the future of a race to which these children found themselves arbitrarily confined” (207). The “white slaves” depicted in the engraving were described by the editor of Harper’s as being “as white, as intelligent, as docile, as most of our own children” (66). “Yet,” he continued, “the ‘chivalry,’ the ‘gentlemen’ of the Slave States, by the awful logic of the system, doom them all to the fate of swine; and, so far as they can, the parents and brothers of these little ones destroy the light of humanity in their souls” (66). In comparing these unfortunate slave children to those of its subscribers, the magazine hoped to stir their emotions against a system so unconscionable that it doomed its own children to a life of unspeakable cruelty.
mulatto diaries 