A Flu Epidemic In 1820

On October 24, in the year 1820, according to the U.S. Capitol Historical Society's 2020 calendar entry for that day, "J[ohn] Q[uincy] Adams notes that his father [John Adams, the 2nd U.S. president, 1797-1801] is victim of flu epidemic raging in northern cities."

In light of today's COVID-19 pandemic, I would like to get an answer to the following questions: how did they handle the flu? Who was most at risk back then? How severe was it?

We might be able to draw a lesson or two from this history.

Happy Juneteenth 2020

Today is Juneteenth, the day in 1865 when enslaved blacks in Texas learned that President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation two years prior.

Recently various states, municipalities, and companies have designated Juneteenth as a holiday. It may even become a national holiday.

Books On Race And Racism

In light of all the discussions on television, radio, in the print media, and online regarding racism, white privilege, social inequality, police brutality toward people of color, etc., I picked out the following six books from my bookshelves that I plan to read. It is my hope that they will be food for thought on race and race relations.

1. The Rage of a Privileged Class: Why Are Middle Class Blacks Angry? Why Should America Care? by Ellis Cose (HarperCollins, 1993).

2. Einstein on Race and Racism by Fred Jerome and Rodger Taylor (Rutgers University Press, 2005).

3. The Coming Race War in America: A Wake-Up Call by Carl T. Rowan (Little, Brown and Company, 1996).

4. Shocking the Conscience: A Reporter's Account of the Civil Rights Movement by Simeon Booker with Carol McCabe Booker (University Press of Mississippi, 2013).

5. The Eyes of Willie McGee: A Tragedy of Race, Sex, and Secrets in the Jim Crow South by Alex Heard (HarperCollins, 2010).

6. Black Klansman: Race, Hate, and the Undercover Investigation of a Lifetime by Ron Stallworth (Flatiron Books, 2018). Originally published in 2014 by Police and Fire Publishing. The book was the basis for Spike Lee's film.

Ida B. Wells's Portrait On The Twenty-Dollar Bill?

At the risk of being labeled an elitist (and to some, a sexist or male chauvinist), I prefer to have the portrait of Frederick Douglass (1817-1895) on the twenty-dollar bill to replace Andrew Jackson's likeness instead of Harriet Tubman (ca. 1820-1913) as many have proposed. (Jackson (1767-1845) was the seventh president of the United States.)

I am not attempting to disparage or dismiss Tubman's efforts and courage in leading Southern black slaves to freedom in the North via the Underground Railroad. But I think Douglass, a fugitive slave himself, would be a better choice. Not only was he an abolitionist and advocate for women's rights, he was also an eloquent, persuasive orator and writer. In addition, he published an influential newspaper, The North Star and had a close relationship with president Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865).

But if we must have a woman of color on the twenty-dollar bill, then an excellent candidate would be Ida B. Wells (1862-1931). She was a journalist and activist who fought against segregation in the South, especially in Memphis, where she lived and published a newspaper.

One writer called her "a sophisticated fighter whose prose was as tough as her intellect." Another writer described her as "an incredibly courageous and outspoken black woman in the face of innumerable odds," such as intimidation and the threat of being lynched by white segregationists.

To re-evaluate my choice, I went back to listen to a 1949 "lost" episode of  NBC's Destination Freedom that I recorded off the radio in 2018. The half-hour episode called "Woman With a Mission,"written by black dramatist Richard Durham, was about Wells's work as a "famous social welfare worker and woman editor." In the broadcast it was noted that she traveled across the country and abroad advocating for freedom of speech and equal rights for women.

One male voice said she should stay in a woman's place; another described her as having "a tongue like a flaming sword." Such attitudes didn't bother her because she believed her "resistance to tyranny was obedience to God."

For those reasons, I think Ida B. Wells's portrait on the twenty-dollar bill should be considered.

On Reparations For African Americans

I photocopied Ta-Nehisi Coates's super-long article (approximately 25,000 words), "The Case for Reparations," from a  public library copy of The Atlantic magazine's June 2014 issue. I'm looking forward to sitting in a comfortable chair and reading it with a highlighter pen in hand.