Connect with us

Black History

Fathers/ Fathering: Rediscovering Lost Values

Founding Fathers: This year’s annual May “Rediscovering Lost Values” tour of South-based shrines to the Civil Rights movement was — in the words of diarist Glen Beck — “particularly poignant.”

Actually, those words were a description of Tour students standing on the exterior landing of the Dexter Historic King Memorial Church in Montgomery, Alabama, with fists raised. Beck’s journal excerpt also evokes a moment, the day before, in the lobby of Atlanta’s National Center of Civil and Human Rights.  

This photo features Taharka Robinson, center; Bruce Paul Green, far right, organizers of the journey for the Brooklyn Anti-Violence Coalition organization joined by two other Tour

fathers, standing proudly with fists raised in front of the Center’s famous large-scale “high five” mural, a vision of the Center’s Chief Creative Officer, George C. Wolfe.

Beck’s prose captures the moment: “They stood proud with their fists raised high above their heads. They instinctively marked this moment in time for themselves much like Tommie Smith and John Carlos had done during the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the 1968 Summer Olympics when they each raised a black-fisted glove in solidarity of human rights… They expressed perfectly their own need for equality and unity in this single powerful gesture. Certainly, no one was going to ever forget this trip, especially me.”

Advertisement

 

The journey continues next week, on the way to the July 11 issue when the Hon. Annette Robinson and other women, will have they say. (Photo and text: Bernice Elizabeth Green)