Ridgewood NJ, During what could only be described as one of the most bizarre Village Council meetings I’ve attended in quite some time, Councilwoman Gwenn Hauck publicly accused the “Friends of the Schedler House” organization of turning down a $45k donation from an unnamed individual.
However, according to an officer of “Friends of the Schedler House,” no $45k donation was ever offered by the “unnamed individual.” What did happen was during a recent meeting between members of the organization and selected Village officials, Councilwoman Hauck merely suggested that a particular individual might be willing to donate the sum.
As you might expect, even though she was publicly corrected, Councilwoman Hauck offered no public apology for her erroneous accusation.
UPDATE: Village Council predicted to vote 3-2 on 8/12 to demolish Schedler House to facilitate construction of a 90 foot baseball field with concession stand.
Despite voting in support of spending up to $500k in “preliminary costs” for the design of a parking garage with a currently unknown shape, size, and final cost, Aronsohn and Hauck object to spending $45k to save the Schedler House. Pucciarelli is on his honeymoon, so he wasn’t there to make a fool of himself too.
So there you have it folks. The Three Stooges will have one of the most historic buildings in Northwest Bergen County demolished just to secure the Sports Council votes next year.
The Ridgewood Public Library, 125 N Maple Ave, Ridgewood, NJ 07450
Graydon Through the Years: The Ridgewood Public Library invites you to share memories of Graydon Pool through stories and photographs. We will be hosting a program on Graydon Pool on Thursday, July 23rd at 7pm and are looking to include your memories along with historical background on the park. If you have a memory or photograph to share, please email heritagecenter@ridgewoodlibrary.org or call 201-670-5600 ext. 135 to talk to our Local History Librarian Sarah Kiefer. Please send stories and photographs by July 15th so that they may be included in the program.
Graydon Pool Memberships and Aquatic Programs
Please visit the Graydon Pool homepage at www.ridgewoodnj.net/graydon to learn about membership rates, program offerings and pool amenities. Be sure to bookmark our Graydon homepage on your computer for future special events and program offerings. Opening day for Graydon Pool was Saturday, June 6th.
2015 season memberships may now be purchased online via Community Pass at www.ridgewoodnj.net/communitypass. Be sure to refer to your online confirmation when purchase is complete for detailed information on how to obtain your photo identification badge.
Aquatic programs, including the Graydon Swim Team and instructional and recreational swim, are also available online at Community Pass, or you may review levels and print program registration forms from our Graydon homepage referenced above. Meet the Aquatic Staff and learn more on the following dates at the pool.
American Red Cross Waterfront Lifeguard Training (recertification/bridging and new) is available through Ridgewood Parks and Recreation. Details/registration are also available on the Graydon Pool homepage.
On July 19, 1910, the governor of the U.S. state of Washington proclaimed the nation’s first “Father’s Day.” However, it was not until 1972, 58 years after President Woodrow Wilson made Mother’s Day official, that the day became a nationwide holiday in the United States…..
ORIGINS OF FATHER’S DAY
The campaign to celebrate the nation’s fathers did not meet with the same enthusiasm–perhaps because, as one florist explained, “fathers haven’t the same sentimental appeal that mothers have.” On July 5, 1908, a West Virginia church sponsored the nation’s first event explicitly in honor of fathers, a Sunday sermon in memory of the 362 men who had died in the previous December’s explosions at the Fairmont Coal Company mines in Monongah, but it was a one-time commemoration and not an annual holiday. The next year, a Spokane,Washington woman named Sonora Smart Dodd, one of six children raised by a widower, tried to establish an official equivalent to Mother’s Day for male parents. She went to local churches, the YMCA, shopkeepers and government officials to drum up support for her idea, and she was successful: Washington State celebrated the nation’s first statewide Father’s Day on July 19, 1910. Slowly, the holiday spread. In 1916, President Wilson honored the day by using telegraph signals to unfurl a flag in Spokane when he pressed a button in Washington, D.C.In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge urged state governments to observe Father’s Day. However, many men continued to disdain the day. As one historian writes, they “scoffed at the holiday’s sentimental attempts to domesticate manliness with flowers and gift-giving, or they derided the proliferation of such holidays as a commercial gimmick to sell more products–often paid for by the father himself.”
Ridgewood Nj , Happy Mothers day to all the moms . before the all the flowers , chocolate and brunch ;Mother’s Day as it’s known today in the United States dates back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It started in 1868 to allow mothers of Union and Confederate soldiers to get together .
Here re five interesting facts about “Mothers day” :
1. Mother’s Day probably started as a way for mourning women to honor fallen soldiers. “Mother’s Friendship Day” was organized in 1868 to allow mothers of Union and Confederate soldiers to get together.
2. The earliest iterations of Mother’s Day in the U.S. were organized for several reasons, but celebrating mothers wasn’t among them. U.S. women’s groups in the late 1800s came together in West Virginia to tackle everything from infant mortality to disease and milk contamination. In 1870, a composer by the name of Julia Ward Howe issued a “Mother’s Day Proclamation,” urging women to become politically active and to promote peace following the U.S. Civil War, according to National Geographic.
3. The official holiday’s founder Anna Jarvis boycotted the holiday. Jarvis, a native of West Virginia, organized the first Mother’s Day celebration at a church in Grafton, West Virginia, in 1908 in memory of her own mother, who died three years earlier. She successfully campaigned to have the day adopted nationally, but by the time of her death in 1948, Jarvis had spent most of her personal wealth fighting the holiday she helped conceive. She apparently found the commercialization of Mother’s Day deplorable and sued groups that used the name “Mother’s Day” name to promote consumerism. She even lobbied the government to remove it from the U.S.’ official calendar.
4. Jarvis never married and was childless. In many ways, Jarvis’ unwavering devotion to preserving what she thought was the true origin of the holiday was more about her ego than anything else. “Everything she signed was Anna Jarvis, Founder of Mother’s Day. It was who she was,” historian Katharine Antolini, author of “Memorializing Motherhood: Anna Jarvis and the Struggle for Control of Mother’s Day,” told National Geographic.
5. The carnation was the original Mother’s Day flower. Some groups sold carnations every year to fundraise for their causes, something Jarvis vehemently opposed.
Proclamation of Thanksgiving Washington, D.C. October 3, 1863
This is the proclamation which set the precedent for America’s national day of Thanksgiving. During his administration, President Lincoln issued many orders similar to this. For example, on November 28, 1861, he ordered government departments closed for a local day of thanksgiving.
Sarah Josepha Hale, a 74-year-old magazine editor, wrote a letter to Lincoln on September 28, 1863, urging him to have the “day of our annual Thanksgiving made a National and fixed Union Festival.” She explained, “You may have observed that, for some years past, there has been an increasing interest felt in our land to have the Thanksgiving held on the same day, in all the States; it now needs National recognition and authoritive fixation, only, to become permanently, an American custom and institution.”
Prior to this, each state scheduled its own Thanksgiving holiday at different times, mainly in New England and other Northern states. President Lincoln responded to Mrs. Hale’s request immediately, unlike several of his predecessors, whoignored her petitions altogether. In her letter to Lincoln she mentioned that she had been advocating a national thanksgiving date for 15 years as the editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book. George Washington was the first president to proclaim a day of thanksgiving, issuing his request on October 3, 1789, exactly 74 years before Lincoln’s.
The document below sets apart the last Thursday of November “as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise.” According to an April 1, 1864, letter from John Nicolay, one of President Lincoln’s secretaries, this document was written by Secretary of State William Seward, and the original was in his handwriting. On October 3, 1863, fellow Cabinet member Gideon Welles recorded in his diary how he complimented Seward on his work. A year later the manuscript was sold to benefit Union troops.
By the President of the United States of America.
A Proclamation.
The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consiousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.
In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth.
The Great Thanksgiving Hoax or the Real Story of Thanksgiving
Each year at this time school children all over America are taught the official Thanksgiving story, and newspapers, radio, TV, and magazines devote vast amounts of time and space to it. It is all very colorful and fascinating.
It is also very deceiving. This official story is nothing like what really happened. It is a fairy tale, a whitewashed and sanitized collection of half-truths which divert attention away from Thanksgiving’s real meaning.
The official story has the pilgrims boarding the Mayflower, coming to America and establishing the Plymouth colony in the winter of 1620-21. This first winter is hard, and half the colonists die. But the survivors are hard working and tenacious, and they learn new farming techniques from the Indians. The harvest of 1621 is bountiful. The Pilgrims hold a celebration, and give thanks to God. They are grateful for the wonderful new abundant land He has given them.
The official story then has the Pilgrims living more or less happily ever after, each year repeating the first Thanksgiving. Other early colonies also have hard times at first, but they soon prosper and adopt the annual tradition of giving thanks for this prosperous new land called America.
The problem with this official story is that the harvest of 1621 was not bountiful, nor were the colonists hardworking or tenacious. 1621 was a famine year and many of the colonists were lazy thieves.
In his ‘History of Plymouth Plantation,’ the governor of the colony, William Bradford, reported that the colonists went hungry for years, because they refused to work in the fields. They preferred instead to steal food. He says the colony was riddled with “corruption,” and with “confusion and discontent.” The crops were small because “much was stolen both by night and day, before it became scarce eatable.”
In the harvest feasts of 1621 and 1622, “all had their hungry bellies filled,” but only briefly. The prevailing condition during those years was not the abundance the official story claims, it was famine and death. The first “Thanksgiving” was not so much a celebration as it was the last meal of condemned men.
But in subsequent years something changes. The harvest of 1623 was different. Suddenly, “instead of famine now God gave them plenty,” Bradford wrote, “and the face of things was changed, to the rejoicing of the hearts of many, for which they blessed God.” Thereafter, he wrote, “any general want or famine hath not been amongst them since to this day.” In fact, in 1624, so much food was produced that the colonists were able to begin exporting corn.
What happened?
After the poor harvest of 1622, writes Bradford, “they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop.” They began to question their form of economic organization.
This had required that “all profits & benefits that are got by trade, working, fishing, or any other means” were to be placed in the common stock of the colony, and that, “all such persons as are of this colony, are to have their meat, drink, apparel, and all provisions out of the common stock.” A person was to put into the common stock all he could, and take out only what he needed.
This “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” was an early form of socialism, and it is why the Pilgrims were starving. Bradford writes that “young men that are most able and fit for labor and service” complained about being forced to “spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children.” Also, “the strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and clothes, than he that was weak.” So the young and strong refused to work and the total amount of food produced was never adequate.
To rectify this situation, in 1623 Bradford abolished socialism. He gave each household a parcel of land and told them they could keep what they produced, or trade it away as they saw fit. In other words, he replaced socialism with a free market, and that was the end of famines.
Many early groups of colonists set up socialist states, all with the same terrible results. At Jamestown, established in 1607, out of every shipload of settlers that arrived, less than half would survive their first twelve months in America. Most of the work was being done by only one-fifth of the men, the other four-fifths choosing to be parasites. In the winter of 1609-10, called “The Starving Time,” the population fell from five-hundred to sixty.
Then the Jamestown colony was converted to a free market, and the results were every bit as dramatic as those at Plymouth. In 1614, Colony Secretary Ralph Hamor wrote that after the switch there was “plenty of food, which every man by his own industry may easily and doth procure.” He said that when the socialist system had prevailed, “we reaped not so much corn from the labors of thirty men as three men have done for themselves now.”
Before these free markets were established, the colonists had nothing for which to be thankful. They were in the same situation as Ethiopians are today, and for the same reasons. But after free markets were established, the resulting abundance was so dramatic that the annual Thanksgiving celebrations became common throughout the colonies, and in 1863, Thanksgiving became a national holiday.
Thus the real reason for Thanksgiving, deleted from the official story, is: Socialism does not work; the one and only source of abundance is free markets, and we thank God we live in a country where we can have them.
* * * * *
Mr. Maybury writes on investments.
This article originally appeared in The Free Market, November 1985.
Rep Garrett with two vets at the Glen Rock street fair
Dear Friend, Today, our nation pauses to remember the sacrifices that have been made by our veterans—every man and woman who proudly defended our country. To a brave few, duty and service are more than words, they are a way of life. As Americans, our freedoms and liberties have been secured because of our veterans. From the Continental Armies of the American Revolution to those returning home today from places abroad, our veterans have proven, time and again, to be among our greatest national treasures.
As President John F. Kennedy—himself an American war hero—once said, “A nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces, but also by the men it honors, the men it remembers.” Today, and every day, please join me in remembering and honoring our veterans.
On Sunday, September 28, 2014 our Nation honors our Gold Star Mothers and families.
The Presidential Proclamation in 2011 commemorating this day pronounces, “As members of a grateful Nation, we owe a debt we can never repay, but hold this sacred obligation forever in our hearts, minds, and actions. We honor their sacrifice, and stand with our service members, military families, and Gold Star families as they have stood for us.” The
American Legion Post 53 and Ridgewood NJ’s Blue Star Families are committed to bringing awareness to our community and to commemorate the sacrifices these mothers and their families have made for our Country.
In the aftermath of World War I, Washington D.C. resident Grace Darling Seibold formed an organization called Gold Star Mothers to support the moms who had lost sons and daughters to the war. Grace’s son, First Lieutenant George Vaughn Seibold, was an aviator killed in combat over France in 1918. In 1928, the small D.C.-based group decided to nationalize its efforts. In 1936, a joint congressional resolution established the last Sunday in September as
Gold Star Mother’s Day. The Gold Star Mothers grew from a support group of 60 women to today’s extensive nationwide network with tens of thousands of members and hundreds of local chapters.
In Ridgewood, NJ the Gold Star Mother’s Day Committee will sponsor our fourth annual event commemorating Gold Star Mother’s Day on Sunday, September 28, at Van Neste Park.
Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.
LABOR DAY LEGISLATION
Through the years the nation gave increasing emphasis to Labor Day. The first governmental recognition came through municipal ordinances passed during 1885 and 1886. From these, a movement developed to secure state legislation. The first state bill was introduced into the New York legislature, but the first to become law was passed by Oregon on February 21, 1887. During the year four more states — Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York — created the Labor Day holiday by legislative enactment. By the end of the decade Connecticut, Nebraska, and Pennsylvania had followed suit. By 1894, 23 other states had adopted the holiday in honor of workers, and on June 28 of that year, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday in the District of Columbia and the territories.
FOUNDER OF LABOR DAY
More than 100 years after the first Labor Day observance, there is still some doubt as to who first proposed the holiday for workers.
Some records show that Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a cofounder of the American Federation of Labor, was first in suggesting a day to honor those “who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.”
But Peter McGuire’s place in Labor Day history has not gone unchallenged. Many believe that Matthew Maguire, a machinist, not Peter McGuire, founded the holiday. Recent research seems to support the contention that Matthew Maguire, later the secretary of Local 344 of the International Association of Machinists in Paterson, N.J., proposed the holiday in 1882 while serving as secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York. What is clear is that the Central Labor Union adopted a Labor Day proposal and appointed a committee to plan a demonstration and picnic.
“The Real Maguire – Who Actually Invented Labor Day?”
THE FIRST LABOR DAY
The first Labor Day holiday was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City, in accordance with the plans of the Central Labor Union. The Central Labor Union held its second Labor Day holiday just a year later, on September 5, 1883.
In 1884 the first Monday in September was selected as the holiday, as originally proposed, and the Central Labor Union urged similar organizations in other cities to follow the example of New York and celebrate a “workingmen’s holiday” on that date. The idea spread with the growth of labor organizations, and in 1885 Labor Day was celebrated in many industrial centers of the country.
Time to Reclaim our Independence : Let’s party like it’s 1776.
Thursday, July 3rd, 2014 by Daniel Horowitz
On this day 238 years ago, the Continental Congress adopted the 1338-word Declaration of Independence in which we declared, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
11 years later, as Benjamin Franklin left Independence Hall after the Constitutional Convention crafted the new constitution, he was reportedly asked by a lady, “well doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” He famously replied, “a republic, if you can keep it.”
Sadly, many of us are spending this 4th of July wondering if our Founders would recognize that republic – that beacon of freedom built upon a strong civil society and ordered liberty. So many ordinary Americans feel our republic is long lost to a foreign socialist utopia centrally managed by an elitist oligarchy in the form of two corrupt political parties.
This small minority of radicals has completely vitiated our most fundamental characteristic as a republic – our sovereign borders. We are now languishing from the flood of over 100,000 illegal immigrants teaming over our southern border, adding to the millions of illegals already here. At stake is nothing less than the preservation of our civil society, sovereignty, and solvency as a nation and as a stable economy. They drain our resources, health care, education, and criminal justice system.
Our veterans are suffering waiting for care under single-payer health care, while private health care providers are being forced to provide immediate treatment to illegal aliens and are being threatened with arrest for speaking out against the threat of diseases. Border agents protecting our republic are now being sued by illegal immigrants for doing their jobs.
We feel like strangers in our own country.
Even without the illegal invasion, our republic is hanging on by a thread.
Almost every American is involuntarily subservient to the federal government for his or her retirement security and healthcare. Over 46 million people, and one-in-four children, rely upon government for food stamps. Under the new Obamacare mandates, an estimated 79 million Americans will be enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP. This culture of dependency, an anathema to our spirit of independence, has saddled us with over $1 million in debt and unfunded obligations for every American taxpayer.
Meanwhile, ordered liberty in a constitutional republic needs a strong civil society and strong families in order to thrive, much like fish in water. Yet, the cultural degeneration, promulgated and encouraged by this small societal elite, has permeated every aspect of American life – to the extent that those of us who adhere to traditional family values are now ostracized and castigated. We have reached the point where we need a group of unelected judges to grant us small morsels of religious liberty from their high benches in Washington. The small minority who push this invidious anti-family agenda now seek to eradicate the very existence of gender to the degree that private individuals and businesses are now being forces to accommodate bizarre and licentious practices.
The “Republican” Party was supposed to serve as the bulwark against attempts to supplant our republican form of government, yet they have become part and parcel of the problem. Decades’ worth of treachery directed towards the party faithful from its leadership has finally culminated with the Mississippi election last week. A long-serving Republican, with the blessing of the entire party establishment, engaged in fraud and race-baiting to repudiate his own party base and steal the election.
We are now living through the worst consequences of elective despotism that James Madison warned about in Federalist 48. Indeed we are strangers in our own country and in our own party.
But thankfully, as we celebrate another Independence Day, there are signs that the original zeal for constitutional governance and freedom still runs through the veins and DNA of so many Americans. We have witnessed ordinary citizens risking their careers and reputation to challenge the entrenched political class with almost no funding and very little resources. Most of them came up short on the first try, but so many of them came close and have succeeded in exposing the duplicitous career politicians.
Second Continental Congress voted for independence on July 2, 1776
We have looked at Richard Henry Lee’s Resolution on Independence. We have learned about the Committee of Five who was responsible for writing the Declaration of Independence. We have read every line of the document and picked them apart. But what happened after it was adopted?
As already discussed the member of the Second Continental Congress voted for independence on July 2, 1776. That should have been America’s birthday. It is not and the Declaration is the reason why.
The duties of the Committee of Five were not complete with the presentation of the Declaration to Congress. They still had one task to complete – getting it printed. As already shown, the Declaration was not signed on the 4th because it was not ready. On that date only John Hancock and Charles Thomson as president and secretary signed the draft which was then delivered to printer John Dunlap. Dunlap worked through the night and the next morning, July 5th, the Dunlap Broadsides were complete. It is estimated that around 200 of these were produced and sent out to the Patriot leaders in each state, to the Continental Army, and of course to Europe. John Adams even sent one to his wife Abigail in Massachusetts. These copies were read aloud in towns across the country, and the people were so moved that it was the date of the Declaration which is honored. Today there are 26 Dunlap Broadsides still known to exist.
The more familiar hand written Declaration was the work of Timothy Matlack, a name which should be familiar to fans of the film National Treasure. Matlack was a Philadelphian known for his fine penmanship. The engrossed copy he created was the one which was signed by the members of Congress. This copy was produced not on paper but on parchment, a material made from sheep or other animal skin. Today there are multiple copies of the engrossed Declaration made from the original. One of these copies is kept at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Another, thought to be Jefferson’s own copy, is in the possession of the Library of Virginia. The original, the one signed on August 2nd, 1776 is kept in the rotunda of the National Archives building in Washington, D.C.
In addition to the Dunlap Broadsides and the engrossed copy a third well-known edition was produced. In 1777 Congress asked Mary Katherine Goddard to create a new broadside which would include the signatures, something the Dunlap Broadsides did not include. Nine of these still exist.
The fact that multiple copies of a 200 year old document have been preserved with such care and are so highly valued by collectors should give us pause to consider how well we value this original founding document.
In June of every year, we honor fathers. The first Mother’s Day was celebrated in 1914, but a holiday honoring fathers did not become official until 1966, when President Lyndon Johnson declared that the third Sunday in June would be Father’s Day. President Richard Nixon made this proclamation permanent in 1972. But this doesn’t mean that the holiday was not celebrated before this time.
The idea for Father’s Day is attributed to Sonora Dodd, who was raised by her father after her mother’s death during childbirth. While listening to a sermon at church on Mother’s Day, she thought about all her father had done for her and her siblings and decided fathers should have a day, too. Because Dodd’s father was born in June, she encouraged churches in her area, Spokane, Wash., to honor fathers that month. The first Father’s Day was celebrated in Spokane in 1910.
Over the years, the idea spread, and people lobbied Congress to establish the holiday. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson, who had signed a proclamation establishingMother’s Day, approved the idea, but never signed a proclamation for it. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge made it a national event to “establish more intimate relations between fathers and their children and to impress upon fathers the full measure of their obligations.”
History of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Struggle
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968) was a Baptist minister and social activist who played a key role in the American civil rights movement from the mid-1950s until his assassination in 1968. Inspired by advocates of nonviolence such as Mahatma Gandhi, King sought equality for African Americans, the economically disadvantaged and victims of injustice through peaceful protest. He was the driving force behind watershed events such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the March on Washington, which helped bring about such landmark legislation as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and is remembered each year on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a U.S. federal holiday since 1986.
The King family had been living in Montgomery for less than a year when the highly segregated city became the epicenter of the burgeoning struggle for civil rights in America, galvanized by the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision of 1954. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks (1913-2005), secretary of the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People chapter, refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery bus and was arrested. Activists coordinated a bus boycott that would continue for 381 days, placing a severe economic strain on the public transit system and downtown business owners. They chose Martin Luther King Jr. as the protest’s leader and official spokesman.
By the time the Supreme Court ruled segregated seating on public buses unconstitutional in November 1956, King, heavily influenced by Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) and the activist Bayard Rustin (1912-1987), had entered the national spotlight as an inspirational proponent of organized, nonviolent resistance. (He had also become a target for white supremacists, who firebombed his family home that January.) Emboldened by the boycott’s success, in 1957 he and other civil rights activists–most of them fellow ministers–founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a group committed to achieving full equality for African Americans through nonviolence. (Its motto was “Not one hair of one head of one person should be harmed.”) He would remain at the helm of this influential organization until his death.
In his role as SCLC president, Martin Luther King Jr. traveled across the country and around the world, giving lectures on nonviolent protest and civil rights as well as meeting with religious figures, activists and political leaders. (During a month-long trip to India in 1959, he had the opportunity to meet Gandhi, the man he described in his autobiography as “the guiding light of our technique of nonviolent social change.”) King also authored several books and articles during this time.
In 1960 King and his family moved to Atlanta, his native city, where he joined his father as co-pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church. This new position did not stop King and his SCLC colleagues from becoming key players in many of the most significant civil rights battles of the 1960s. Their philosophy of nonviolence was put to a particularly severe test during the Birmingham campaign of 1963, in which activists used a boycott, sit-ins and marches to protest segregation, unfair hiring practices and other injustices in one of America’s most racially divided cities. Arrested for his involvement on April 12, King penned the civil rights manifesto known as the “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” an eloquent defense of civil disobedience addressed to a group of white clergymen who had criticized his tactics.
Later that year, Martin Luther King Jr. worked with a number of civil rights and religious groups to organize the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, a peaceful political rally designed to shed light on the injustices African Americans continued to face across the country. Held on August 28 and attended by some 200,000 to 300,000 participants, the event is widely regarded as a watershed moment in the history of the American civil rights movementand a factor in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The march culminated in King’s most famous address, known as the “I Have a Dream” speech, a spirited call for peace and equality that many consider a masterpiece of rhetoric. Standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial–a monument to the president who a century earlier had brought down the institution of slavery in the United States—he shared his vision of a future in which “this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'” The speech and march cemented King’s reputation at home and abroad; later that year he was named Man of the Year by TIME magazine and in 1964 became the youngest person ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
In the spring of 1965, King’s elevated profile drew international attention to the violence that erupted between white segregationists and peaceful demonstrators in Selma, Alabama, where the SCLC and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) had organized a voter registration campaign. Captured on television, the brutal scene outraged many Americans and inspired supporters from across the country to gather in Selma and take part in a march to Montgomery led by King and supported by President Lyndon Johnson (1908-1973), who sent in federal troops to keep the peace. That August, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, which guaranteed the right to vote–first awarded by the 15th Amendment–to all African Americans.
The events in Selma deepened a growing rift between Martin Luther King Jr. and young radicals who repudiated his nonviolent methods and commitment to working within the established political framework. As more militant black leaders such as Stokely Carmichael (1941-1998) rose to prominence, King broadened the scope of his activism to address issues such as the Vietnam War and poverty among Americans of all races. In 1967, King and the SCLC embarked on an ambitious program known as the Poor People’s Campaign, which was to include a massive march on the capital.
On the evening of April 4, 1968, King was fatally shot while standing on the balcony of a motel in Memphis, where he had traveled to support a sanitation workers’ strike. In the wake of his death, a wave of riots swept major cities across the country, while President Johnson declared a national day of mourning. James Earl Ray (1928-1998), an escaped convict and known racist, pleaded guilty to the murder and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. (He later recanted his confession and gained some unlikely advocates, including members of the King family, before his death in 1998.)
After years of campaigning by activists, members of Congress and Coretta Scott King, among others, in 1983 President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004) signed a bill creating a U.S. federal holiday in honor of King. Observed on the third Monday of January, it was first celebrated in 1986.
Veterans Day – Ridgewood, NJ – November 11, 2013 – American Legion Post 53
Nov 11, 2013
by Joe Burns
Ridgewood NJ, Selected pictures from yesterdays Veterans Day Ceremonies at Veterans Field in Ridgewood.
The focus of this year’s ceremony was the Korean War. The Master of Ceremonies was Bob Paoli, Commander of American Legion Post 53; The National Anthem was sung by the Harmony Celebration Chorus; Reverand Kyu Tae Pak, Midland Park United Methodist Church opened the ceremonies with a prayer; Ridgewood Mayor Paul Aronsohn made opening remarks; Sgt. 1st Class Ron Zier spoke about the Korean War and his service there; Retired HoHoKus Police Chief Robert Re spoke about the war and his service in Korea at that time; veterans in the audience were honored for their military service, and Sally Ann Tumas-Skoric sang “God Bless America” with the audience joining in. Many students from Benjamin Franklin Middle School and Ridgewood High School were in the audience.
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