MURDER, as business.

Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, the Duchess of Strathearn in Scotland, departs after officially opening V&A Dundee, Scotland's first design museum on January 29, 2019 in Dundee, Scotland. Photo by Max Mumby. 

"Behind, and beneath the hoopla around the royal house of Britain is the menace of their dark history. It is a foul, bloody history stepped over each time acclaim is raised over the romances of British royalty, but not forgotten by non-whites, who need more than validation. Many recoil in disgust over the way these people's dark history is not addressed, as we are made to feel we should get over it. But, how is that possible when it is still profitable for them their ways of subjugation?" - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 2/7/19

SPARTACUS and JIM CROW

The movie, Spartacus, was good, and for the times extraordinary! But, the novel? It was the book that turned the country upside down! It was banned in the South! I did not understand that until I read it! The author's mastery interpreting Roman history gave the spiritual and the intellectual basis for the governing business of American life: slavery. It was an extraordinary read! - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 4/19/18

Discovery at Monticello Plantation.

With the return of the deep feel of white men, in the White House, dominating and demeaning, and taking advantage of all and everything around them; it is appropriate to return to the many milestones and people who embodied and instilled this into this country. One of the primary men was Thomas Jefferson. The following is an article on Thomas Jefferson to get a feel of how he is regard in the fresh revival of his time under the lead of Donald Trump.


Thomas Jefferson’s iconic Monticello property in Virginia is a national landmark that scholars have long been studying. The plantation estate and the people who lived and worked there hold a significant place in the history of the nation. While there is a great amount of documentation about Jefferson’s primary home, archaeologists recently launched a new initiative to reveal more about the original activities on the grounds. It was amid those efforts that researchers made a discovery in that completely stunned historians. Read on to find out more about the groundbreaking find! 

Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States, primarily resided at his Monticello plantation in Charlottesville, Virginia before he moved to the White House in 1801. Now regarded as a historical landmark, Jefferson began construction on Monticello (which mean “Little Mountain” in Italian) in 1768. 

The sprawling grounds have been well-studied, and an image of the plantation’s main house is even ingrained on the back side of the U.S. nickel. Despite great scrutiny of the estate over the years, a recent discovery on the property revealed details about a long-held mystery that utterly shocked historians. 

Thomas Jefferson was 26-years-old when he started building Monticello on land that he inherited from his father. The massive 5,000-acre plantation was primarily used to cultivate tobacco and wheat. But like many plantations of the time, Monticello has a controversial legacy linked to one of the dark parts of American history. 

to be continued... 

LOOKS BACK!

actors Ray Milland and Jean Arthur in the film, Easy Living, 1937.

My father was 5 years old when the movie, Easy Living, came out in 1937, the Depression was in full swing, and Daddy's father was one of the few who owned his land, and his house. During the Depression that was a significant reality. Strategically, it provided a basis for the assurance that one's family could live through so hard a time! For those like Granddaddy, who cared for those around him he became a centered and central force that created the feel of being held in a community of poor folks. It was during one of the heights of the violence of big city crime bosses, Jim Crow's reign of terror, and a time Colored folks, in the South, were purposely being forced to accept no more than a 4th grade education. That decade was struggle and accomplishment, survival and denial...

The movies were important. They held sanity together for thousands bringing together everyone in dark theaters in suspended reality that blocked the depression of the era!- Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 4/19/18

Kirk Douglas, Jean Simmons and Tony Curtis behind the scenes in Spartacus (1960).

The movie, Spartacus, was good, and for the times extraordinary! But, the novel? It was the book that turned the country upside down! It was banned in the South! I did not understand that until I read it! The author's mastery interpreting Roman history gave the spiritual and the intellectual basis for the governing business of American life: slavery. It was an extraordinary read! - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 4/19/18

BLACK HISTORY month: Education

The Tale of Two Sides 

A Bronx teacher sparks outrage for using black students in cruel slavery lesson
Americans are up in arms about a white public school teacher teaching her students about slavery by demonstrating or rather trying to recreate the experience for her students. The story reads thus:

Kids and parents say this Bronx teacher needs a lesson — in racism.

"Middle School 118 teacher Patricia Cummings shocked and traumatized children in her social studies classes when she singled out black students and told them to lie on the floor for a lesson on U.S. slavery — and then stepped on their backs to show them what slavery felt like, students and a staffer said.

Students said Cummings, who is white, pulled the insensitive stunt in multiple seventh-grade classes as part of a unit on the infamous Middle Passage, in which Africans were kidnapped and brought to America as part of the slave trade.

Kids and adults in Cummings’ school, where the student body is 81% black and Hispanic and just 3% white, were horrified by the offensive lessons they said occurred roughly two weeks ago. 

“It was a lesson about slavery and the Triangle Trade,” said one of Cummings’ students, who asked to remain anonymous.

“She picked three of the black kids,” the boy said, and instructed them to get on the floor in front of the class. “She said, ‘You see how it was to be a slave?’ She said, ‘How does it feel?’ ” 

When a girl on the floor made an uncomfortable joke and said she felt fine, Cummings stepped on her back, the student said.

“She put her foot on her back and said ‘How does it feel?’” the student said. “ ‘See how it feels to be a slave?’ ” 

Cummings was removed from her post for a couple of days following the incident but then returned to class and was in school Thursday.

However, the $68,934-a-year teacher was reassigned away from children later Thursday, after the Daily News contacted the city Education Department about her slavery lesson.

“While the investigation has not been completed, these are deeply disturbing allegations, and the alleged behavior has no place in our schools or in society,” said Education Department spokeswoman Toya Holness.

MS 118 Principal Giulia Cox declined to comment. - story by Kerry Burke for the New York Daily News Thursday, February 1, 2018 

I just have one reaction and it isn't alarm. I am annoyed at the several things about this badly researched article, but one thing initially catching the teacher within me is this: "How shallow are Black Americans?"

There are hands on approaches that must be employed teaching children about slavery because we are moving further and further from the 'feel' of the era. Lies and denial are slowly are eroding the feel of the reason the lessons need to be told to children, who are being raised remotely.

This Bronx teacher was paid to teach in a school with only 3% white students about a subject whites across the country are trying to rewrite. Trying to avoid this history are we to understand no creativity is allowed to teach this subject? Why is the teacher's vision and written plan not made public? Is the issue really about a white woman who has taken the place of the African Storyteller? Do Black Americans tell their stories in depth to their own children, or rely on the schools?

There are more unanswered questions this article did not explore and each one tells on us. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories Feb. 2, 2018