Each February, millions of African Americans and other citizens of the United States celebrate African American History Month. This year, the Denver Urban Spectrum’s blogging site, SpectrumTalk , is highlighting the achievements of prominent Black Americans through my new blog.
To begin with, I would like to introduce you to Carter G. Woodson, the initiator of the African American History Month commemoration. He was known as the “Father of Negro History.”

Woodson was born on a farm in New Canton, Va., in 1875, one of nine children. His mother was a slave. He attended Frederick Douglass High School in Hunting, W.Va., at the age of 20. He entered Berea College in Kentucky and gradated in 1903. He was hired as a teacher by his former high school.

Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in 1915, the Journal of Negro History in 1916, and the Negro History Bulletin in 1937.

In 1926, Woodson initiated Negro History Week to celebrate and commemorate contributions made by African Americans. It was held during the second week of February, taking in the birthdays of the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. During the 1960s, the renamed Association for the Study of African American Life and History also renamed and extended Negro History Week as African American History Month.

Woodson died in 1950.

Bob Jackson blogs on SpectrumTalk about great African Americans during Black History Month. Jackson, a Chicago native, is a retired staff writer and columnist for the Rocky Mountain News, where he worked for 22 years, starting in 1982. He wrote the column CITYSCAPE, and specializes in writing about ethnic minority affairs.

Jackson also worked as a general assignment reporter for the Chicago American and Chicago Today for 11 years. He covered the 1963 March on Washington; the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala.; the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's Poor People's Campaign; The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr's, Chicago campaign; and riots in Detroit, Chicago and Los Angeles.

What took you so long?

And What is the reason that we still keep people from realizing their true worth and dignity.

It remains and enigma how it is possible to be self consumed with tyranny and greed.

On Jan. 31, 1865, the House of Representatives passed a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery.

You can only wonder what in the world was anyone thinking in the first place to participate in this gruesome process of subjugation and tyranny.

We are a curious lot having done this exercise of injustice over thousands of years with endless cruelty and lack of compassion.

Our ancestors faired no worse in denying the human rights and dignity of others.

Supposedly the civilized world was more discerning in their reflection of what is ethical, but that was not true and still remains an elusive ambition, 150 years after this fateful decision of the US House of Representatives.

By BOB HERBERT
Published: January 29, 2010
I had lunch with Howard Zinn just a few weeks ago, and I’ve seldom had more fun while talking about so many matters that were unreservedly unpleasant: the sorry state of government and politics in the U.S., the tragic futility of our escalation in Afghanistan, the plight of working people in an economy rigged to benefit the rich and powerful.

Howard Zinn, Historian, Is Dead at 87 (January 29, 2010)

Mr. Zinn could talk about all of that and more without losing his sense of humor. He was a historian with a big, engaging smile that seemed ever-present. His death this week at the age of 87 was a loss that should have drawn much more attention from a press corps that spends an inordinate amount of its time obsessing idiotically over the likes of Tiger Woods and John Edwards.

Mr. Zinn was chagrined by the present state of affairs, but undaunted. “If there is going to be change, real change,” he said, “it will have to work its way from the bottom up, from the people themselves. That’s how change happens.”

We were in a restaurant at the Warwick Hotel in Manhattan. Also there was Anthony Arnove, who had worked closely with Mr. Zinn in recent years and had collaborated on his last major project, “The People Speak.” It’s a film in which well-known performers bring to life the inspirational words of everyday citizens whose struggles led to some of the most profound changes in the nation’s history. Think of those who joined in — and in many cases became leaders of — the abolitionist movement, the labor movement, the civil rights movement, the feminist revolution, the gay rights movement, and so on.

Think of what this country would have been like if those ordinary people had never bothered to fight and sometimes die for what they believed in. Mr. Zinn refers to them as “the people who have given this country whatever liberty and democracy we have.”

Our tendency is to give these true American heroes short shrift, just as we gave Howard Zinn short shrift. In the nitwit era that we’re living through now, it’s fashionable, for example, to bad-mouth labor unions and feminists even as workers throughout the land are treated like so much trash and the culture is so riddled with sexism that most people don’t even notice it. (There’s a restaurant chain called “Hooters,” for crying out loud.)

I always wondered why Howard Zinn was considered a radical. (He called himself a radical.) He was an unbelievably decent man who felt obliged to challenge injustice and unfairness wherever he found it. What was so radical about believing that workers should get a fair shake on the job, that corporations have too much power over our lives and much too much influence with the government, that wars are so murderously destructive that alternatives to warfare should be found, that blacks and other racial and ethnic minorities should have the same rights as whites, that the interests of powerful political leaders and corporate elites are not the same as those of ordinary people who are struggling from week to week to make ends meet?

Mr. Zinn was often taken to task for peeling back the rosy veneer of much of American history to reveal sordid realities that had remained hidden for too long. When writing about Andrew Jackson in his most famous book, “A People’s History of the United States,” published in 1980, Mr. Zinn said:

“If you look through high school textbooks and elementary school textbooks in American history, you will find Jackson the frontiersman, soldier, democrat, man of the people — not Jackson the slaveholder, land speculator, executioner of dissident soldiers, exterminator of Indians.”

Radical? Hardly.

Mr. Zinn would protest peacefully for important issues he believed in — against racial segregation, for example, or against the war in Vietnam — and at times he was beaten and arrested for doing so. He was a man of exceptionally strong character who worked hard as a boy growing up in Brooklyn during the Depression. He was a bomber pilot in World War II, and his experience of the unmitigated horror of warfare served as the foundation for his lifelong quest for peaceful solutions to conflict.

He had a wonderful family, and he cherished it. He and his wife, Roslyn, known to all as Roz, were married in 1944 and were inseparable for more than six decades until her death in 2008. She was an activist, too, and Howard’s editor. “I never showed my work to anyone except her,” he said.

They had two children and five grandchildren.

Mr. Zinn was in Santa Monica this week, resting up after a grueling year of work and travel, when he suffered a heart attack and died on Wednesday. He was a treasure and an inspiration. That he was considered radical says way more about this society than it does about him."

Longing for economic and political social justice we must rise and march on, marching on.

COULD IT BE THAT THE SUPREME COURT IS BECOMING POLITICALLY CORRUPT?
By Helen L. Burleson, Doctor of Public Administration

I became very suspicious of the Supreme Court when they gave the election to George W. Bush in 2000. As I learned in Civics in high school, cases were usually heard by lower courts following a particular line of ascension. The information cited here is compatible with what I learned.

“Cases are not directly filed with the US Supreme Court. They must begin in the Federal Circuit in one of the US District Courts or in a state trial court.

If a verdict unsatisfactory to one side in the case is rendered, the next step is to appeal that case to the US Federal Court of Appeals for the Federal District in which the District Court was located, or to the court of appeals for the state in which the case was originally tried.

If the verdict is still unsatisfactory, it may be submitted to the US Supreme Court (unless the case originated in the state court system, in which case it must be petitioned to the state supreme court first) which will then decide on whether it wishes to hear the case, or not.”

If my memory serves me correctly, this process was not followed when there was so much confusion about the Diebold voting machines and hanging chads and pregnant chads. After Catherine Harris, the Secretary of State of the State of Florida, cut off the recount, the next thing I heard was that Bush was appealing to the Supreme Court to hear the case.
That was like magic! It was akin to a child entering kindergarten in September and graduating from elementary school in June of the same year.

Now let’s look at this recent 5 to 4 decision regarding corporations in Campaign Finance Restrictions. The Court defines a corporation as a person and therefore has the rights of persons.

“Bill of Rights
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

I feel compelled to give the Court a lesson in human reproduction.

1. A male and female have intimate contact.
2. The male contributes sperm to a fertile female egg.
3. This egg then forms an embryo.
4. This embryo becomes a fetus.
5. The fetus gestates for nine months in the female’s womb.
6. After nine months of gestation, the fetus which is now a baby is ready for delivery.
7. Under normal circumstances, baring complications, the baby comes into the world through the birth canal.
8. Voila! Now we have a person!

Unless I missed something or there is a void in my knowledge, I’ve never known of a corporation that came through the birth canal.

“In his dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens accused the majority of judicial activism and attacked the use of corporate personhood in the case: "The conceit that corporations must be treated identically to natural persons in the political sphere is not only inaccurate but also inadequate to justify the Court's disposition of this case."

What would make the Robert’s Court give the rights guaranteed in The Bill of Rights to corporations? Could this be the repayment for political appointments, which, coincidentally are for life? Is it merely coincidence that the 5 Justices supporting the proposal to change rules that had been on the books for several decades are all Republican appointees?

When I saw Justice Alito mouth the words, “that’s not true” during President Obama’s State of the Union Speech, it reinforced my suspicions; and it seems to me that the Supreme Court is becoming politically corrupt.

I just finished delivering my first State of the Union, and I wanted to send you a quick note.

We face big and difficult challenges. Change on the scale we seek does not come easily. But I will never accept second place for the United States of America.

That is why I called for a robust jobs bill without delay. It's why I proposed a small businesses tax credit, new investments in infrastructure, and pushed for climate legislation to create a clean energy economy.

It's why we're taking on big banks, reforming Wall Street, revitalizing our education system, increasing transparency -- and finishing the job on health insurance reform.

It's why I need your help -- because I am determined to fight to defend the middle class, and special interest lobbyists will go all out to fight us.

Help me show that the American people are ready to join this fight for the middle class -- add your name to a letter to Congress today:

http://my.barackobama.com/SOTU

We have finished a difficult year. We have come through a difficult decade. But we don't quit. I don't quit.

Let's seize this moment -- to start anew, to carry the dream forward, and to strengthen our union once more.

President Barack Obama

Our president stated this this evening. It means a lot to people who have never seen leadership from a respectable person who loves his family and honors and dignifies the office that he holds. It is hard to believe that people give up when we have someone with integrity to look at and behold that their consciousness is what this nation was supposed to represent. Five principles underscore these values that are evident in a book called, "Democracy at the Crossroads."

First, Let us make peace and live in peace with those who are against us. Let us wage our battles with an idea of negotiating and neither threatening nor disturbing other people.

Second, let us relate in deference to all people with whom we negotiate as equals, with parity and consideration of the merit and worth of all.

Third, Let us seek those who have competence instead of patronage and special interests that diminish the quality of life of some while others are handed their rewards because of their associations.

Fourth, speak Truthfully and with openness toward everyone. Do not fabricate the truth and be open and accountable in your words and deeds. All relations strive for substance and facts that represent reality.

Finally, let us proclaim that all belongs to us, the people, the commonweal, the common good, the wealth is the responsibility of preserving and citizens are the rulers of all things. There is no aristocracy of business interests and no privilege among citizens of any sphere of influence in America. If we adhere to the principles of democracy than we can persevere to put the gyroscope back where it belongs. We will all prosper or none.

Be looking on SpectrumTalk in February for:
Bob Jackson starts blogging about great African Americans during Black History Month. Jackson, a Chicago native, is a retired staff writer and columnist for the Rocky Mountain News, where he worked for 22 years, starting in 1982. He wrote the column CITYSCAPE, and specializes in writing about ethnic minority affairs. Jackson also worked as a general assignment reporter for the Chicago American and Chicago Today for 11 years. He covered the 1963 March on Washington; the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala.; the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's Poor People's Campaign; The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr's, Chicago campaign; and riots in Detroit, Chicago and Los Angeles.

In the spirit of appreciation for common sense, I offer the following:

MY DOCTOR'S BAG

Like all medical school graduates, I received a free monogrammed
doctor's bag from the pharmaceutical industry. In time, my bag wore
out, and I gave it to my father to hold his tools.

As a machinist, carpenter, and home gardener, my father made good use
of my bag; and sometimes he pretended that he was a doctor making
house calls.

Although my father never went to college and didn't understand
medicine, he did understand that the body is a machine that needs
nutritious fruits and vegetables which can be grown at home.

It took me many years of study and practice to understand what my
father intuitively understood. I wish that my medical education had
included courses from practical-minded, plain-spoken, earthy people
like my father.

Let's learn to appreciate such people, because they have much to offer
those of us with more knowledge than common sense.

Hugh Mann
http://organicMD.org
http://www.organicmd.org/doctorbag.html
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/337/dec16_2/a2677#206493

Asparagus (Who Knew????)

Asparagus

My Mom had been taking the full-stalk canned style asparagus that she pureed and she took four tablespoons in the morning and four tablespoons later in the day. She did this for over a month. She is on chemo pills for Stage three lung cancer in the pleural area and her cancer
cell count went from 386 down to 125 as of this past week. Her oncologist said she doesn’t need to see him for three months.

THE ARTICLE:
Several years ago, a man seeking asparagus for a friend who had cancer. He gave me a photocopied copy of an article, entitled, `Asparagus for cancer' printed in Cancer News Journal, December 1979. p; 'I am a bio-chemist, and have specialized in the relation of diet to health for over 50 years. Several years ago, I learned of the discovery of Richard R. Vensal, D.D.S. that asparagus might cure cancer.

Since then, I have worked with him on his project. We’ve accumulated a number of favorable case histories.
Case one, A man with an almost hopeless case of Hodgkin's disease (cancer of the lymph glands) who was completely incapacitated. Within 1 year of starting the asparagus therapy, his doctors were unable to detect any signs of cancer, and he was back on a schedule of strenuous exercise.

Case two, a successful businessman, who was sixty-eight years old suffered from cancer of the bladder for sixteen years. After years of medical treatments, including radiation without improvement, he went on asparagus. Within three months, examinations revealed that his bladder tumor had disappeared and that his kidneys were normal.

Case three, a man who had lung cancer. On March 5, 1971, he was put on the operating table where they found lung cancer so widely spread that it was inoperable. The surgeon sewed him up and declared his case hopeless. On April 5th he heard about the asparagus
therapy and immediately started taking it. By August, x-ray pictures revealed that all signs of the cancer had disappeared.

Case four, a woman who was troubled for a number of years with skin cancer. She finally developed different skin cancers which were diagnosed by the acting specialist as advanced. Within three months after starting on asparagus, her skin specialist said that her skin looked fine and no more skin lesions. This woman reported that the asparagus therapy also cured her kidney disease, which started in 1949. She had over ten kidney stones, and was receiving government disability payments for an inoperable, terminal, kidney condition. She attributes the cure of this kidney trouble entirely to the asparagus.

I was not surprised at this result, as `The elements of materia medica', edited in 1854 by a Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, stated that asparagus was used as a popular remedy for kidney stones. He even referred to experiments, in 1739, on the power of asparagus in dissolving stones. We would have other case histories but the medical establishment has interfered with our obtaining some of the records. I am therefore appealing to readers to spread this good news and help us to gather a large number of case histories that will overwhelm the medical skeptics about this unbelievably simple and natural remedy. For the treatment, asparagus should be cooked before using, and therefore canned asparagus is as beneficial.

I have corresponded with the two leading canners of asparagus, Giant and Stokely, and I am satisfied that these brands contain no pesticides or preservatives. Place the cooked asparagus in a blender and liquefy to make a puree, and store in the refrigerator. Give the patient 4 full tablespoons twice daily, morning and evening. Patients usually show some improvement in two to four weeks. It can be diluted with water and used as a cold or hot drink.

This suggested dosage is based on present experience, but certainly larger amounts can do no harm and may be needed in some cases.
As a biochemist I am convinced of the old saying that `what cures can prevent'. Based on this theory, my wife and I have been using asparagus puree as a beverage with our meals.

We take two tablespoons diluted in water to suit our taste with breakfast and with dinner. I take mine hot and my wife prefers hers cold. For years, we’ve had blood surveys taken during our regular checkups.

The last blood survey, taken by a medical doctor who specializes in the nutritional approach to health, showed substantial improvements in all categories over the last one, and we can attribute these improvements to nothing but the asparagus drink... As a biochemist, I have made an extensive study of all aspects of cancer, and all of the proposed cures.

As a result, I am convinced that asparagus fits in better with the latest theories about cancer. Asparagus contains a good supply of protein called “histones”, which are believed to be active in controlling cell growth. For that reason, I believe asparagus can be said to contain a substance that I call cell growth “normalizer”. That accounts for its
action on cancer and in acting as a general body tonic.

In any event, regardless of theory, asparagus used as we suggest, is a harmless substance. The FDA cannot prevent you from using it and it may do you much good. It has been reported by the US National Cancer Institute, that asparagus is the highest tested food containing glutathione, which is considered one of the body's most potent
anti-carcinogens and antioxidants.

Please spread the news.... the most unselfish act one can ever do is paying forward all the kindness one has received, even to the most undeserved person.