Darwin in North Carolina (and Tennessee): This Date in History

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BTW, thank you for planting "First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" as one of the longest lasting earworms I've had in years. ;)

Such a great song and I hadn't thought about it in a long time.
 
lawtig02 said:
BTW, thank you for planting "First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" as one of the longest lasting earworms I've had in years. ;)

Such a great song and I hadn't thought about it in a long time.
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How about the woman that inspired the song singing it at the age of 91 (only 2 months ago I believe).

 
If you love the game you owe some gratitude to these guys. “Today (Feb 13) in 1923, the first all-Black basketball team—the New York Renaissance—was established by Bob Douglas in Harlem. They won the 1939 World Championship. Douglas was the first Black man in the NBA Hall of Fame, guiding the Rens to a 2,318-381 record.”
 
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When the character of Sheriff Andy Taylor first appeared in an episode of ‘The Danny Thomas Show,’ aired on February 15, 1960, he was more a bad cop than a good one and in some early episodes of his own show Griffith continued in that role - as an opportunist and slightly mean-spirited trickster. Indeed, sarcasm morphing in to a smidgen or two of sadism is typical enough in rural humor to make it downright hurtful as southern novelists have shown out at times.

Public teasing can come off as mean and go too far. The spectacle of Addie’s decomposing corpse, transported by the poor Bundrens, is an example from Faulkner’s ‘As I Lay Dying.’ The mockery of Boo Radley in ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ hits a similar spot where kidding becomes cruel. In both cases the grittiness of The South drenches us in sweaty matted dust not easily washed away.

But that’s not the Andy that we love — we know now that Griffith made a conscious move away from that sort of representation by the second season. And it’s a good thing for us all - if any of you have seen ‘Face in the Crowd’ you know the kind of malevolence that Griffith could muster up. Thankfully Sheriff Taylor stepped away from that and toward the honest, wise, and thoughtful lawman that we guarded the wise and the simple with a heart of gold.
 
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#OTD (Feb. 15) in 1898 an explosion of “unknown origin” sank the battleship USS Maine in Havana Harbor. 266 died. A blockade of Cuba ensued and war with Spain began in late April. The Terms ‘Yellow Journalism’ and Empire are key to understanding this war—as are Exceptionalism and Racism.

Today the rattling of sabres mixes with the low, steady murmurs of greed, all umbrella-cloaked in protestations of fake pro-democracy sentiments as once again grasping imperialism rears its head in Washington. All that backfilled with a Kiplingesque cadence reciting “The White Man’s Burden” and marching, soaring, and sailing to reoccupy Havana Harbor and bring 21st century Real Estate values to Olde Havana —once and for all.

The “Yellow Journalism” of the historical papers inspires anew a branch of the media so thoroughly propaganda that William Randolph Hearst himself would pale at the brazen product while admiring the thrall enveloping so many, so completely. Even such as he could not have imagined a cultish following so utterly ovine.

Many morning papers of February 16, 1898 shouted to the nation of the tragedy - many called for revenge. Covetous gazes had long spied south into the Caribbean from the Colossus of The North and the sinking of The USS Maine was the spark that worked to take in territory in the region. Serendipitous by the figuring of most in current calculations, designs on the region under trumpism, while easily matching the greed, appear destined to surpass the previous lawlessness.
 
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Although Hearst denies he said this, Diogenes would have never taken a second look at him.


William Randolph Hearst, a prominent newspaper publisher, is credited with saying "You furnish the pictures, and I'll furnish the war" to artist Frederic Remington in 1897. The quote, often cited as a key example of yellow journalism, allegedly came in response to Remington's report that there would be no war in Cuba.
 
donbosco said:
“Henry Berry Lowry was a great, great man” goes the song. #OTD 1872 Lumbee Legend Henry Berry Lowry & accomplices made their last raid in Robeson Cty, taking $28K. He disappeared 4 days later & was never publicly heard from again. The story is complex & debated. Start reading here:

https://ncpedia.org/biography/lowry-henry
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That would be the rough equivalent of 750,000 today.
 
donbosco said:
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#OTD (Feb. 15) in 1898 an explosion of “unknown origin” sank the battleship USS Maine in Havana Harbor. 266 died. A blockade of Cuba ensued and war with Spain began in late April. The Terms ‘Yellow Journalism’ and Empire are key to understanding this war—as are Exceptionalism and Racism.

Today the rattling of sabres mixes with the low, steady murmurs of greed, all umbrella-cloaked in protestations of fake pro-democracy sentiments as once again grasping imperialism rears its head in Washington. All that backfilled with a Kiplingesque cadence reciting “The White Man’s Burden” and marching, soaring, and sailing to reoccupy Havana Harbor and bring 21st century Real Estate values to Olde Havana —once and for all.

The “Yellow Journalism” of the historical papers inspires anew a branch of the media so thoroughly propaganda that William Randolph Hearst himself would pale at the brazen product while admiring the thrall enveloping so many, so completely. Even such as he could not have imagined a cultish following so utterly ovine.

Many morning papers of February 16, 1898 shouted to the nation of the tragedy - many called for revenge. Covetous gazes had long spied south into the Caribbean from the Colossus of The North and the sinking of The USS Maine was the spark that worked to take in territory in the region. Serendipitous by the figuring of most in current calculations, designs on the region under trumpism, while easily matching the greed, appear destined to surpass the previous lawlessness.
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To this day there is still some controversy about whether it was a Spanish mine or an accidental internal coal fire that caused the magazine explosion of the USS Maine. Both are plausible with a preponderance of evidence but not definitive evidence pointing to an accident.

And of course at the time, stoked by some of that yellow journalism, most Americans believed it was a Spanish mine.
 
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Anti-Science Forces Have Deep Roots in the United States. In particular, managing science education rather than encouraging free inquiry is the play in GOP-controlled legislatures across the nation. Interestingly, destroying the humanities seems to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with dumbing down science.

Banning topics in schools like African American History and honest instruction on climate change and gender is the latest goal of right-wingers. In the early 20th century Conservative Boll Weevil Southern Democrats also stood between students and intellectual investigation and truth. Bravely, scientists and teachers, joined by some Christians in the population at-large, then as now, have stood for common sense and enlightenment despite the persecution and canceling that ensued. In North Carolina that struggle is an enduring and generational one. Kudos to our elected representatives in 1925 for being smart not stupid. Or at least a majority of them. Kudos also to Professor William L. Poteat of Wake Forest! Dr. Poteat, Caswell County born and raised, was a public intellectual and leading theological liberal among Southern Baptists in the early 20th century.

#OTD (Feb. 19) in 1925 The ‘Poole Anti-Evolution Resolution’ (D.Scott Poole/Hoke County) vs teaching Darwin et. al. in schools was defeated in the NC House. Feckless Governor Cameron Morrison, the namesake of a dorm at UNC and a veteran of the 1898 White Supremacist Wilmington Massacre and Coup D’etàt, backed the bill but ironically (?), Baptist #WakeForest college president (and biology professor) W.L. Poteat was a Strong Nay, declaring that evolution was the “divine method of creation.” That stand rallied thinkers over the Blockhead Faction in the North Carolina General Assembly to put down the legislation by a vote of 67-46.

To our west by summer, Tennessee conservatives had taken up the crusade and the Scopes “Monkey” Trial was on. Poole Bill and Anti-Evolution Fervor In the Volunteer State, high school teacher John T. Scopes was found guilty of teaching evolution though the verdict was dismissed on a technicality. During that trial the acerbic journalist H.L. Mencken described the prosecution and Tennessee conservatives as “Hot for Genesis” and called stand-in prosecutor William Jennings Bryan a buffoon spewing “theocratic bilge.” Mencken’s reporting on that trial helped to make it a national spectacle and illuminate the regressiveness of the anti-science crowd. So too did the fact that the trial was the first ever covered on radio.

Addendum For These Modern Times: And here we are immersed like the frog in the pot atop the flame while not only science but nigh all critical thinking burns bright and hot. And alongside the current attacks on education the progress wrought by a decades of focus and effort to see more clearly elements like variety, fairness, and all-embracing being and behaving are being erased in our schools. The Great Unlearning of The 21st Century would make the hearts of Representative Scott of Hoke County and the other Regressives of 1925 warm and fuzzy. Are there any brave Dr. Poteats out there? Where are they?
 
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