Tag: John Lewis

Brainiac On Banjo #092: John Lewis – The Great American Warrior

Brainiac On Banjo #092: John Lewis – The Great American Warrior

Hound dogs on my trail / School children sitting in jail / Black cat cross my path / I think every day’s gonna be my last / Lord have mercy on this land of mine / We all gonna get it in due time / I don’t belong here / I don’t belong there / I’ve even stopped believing in prayer — Nina Simone, “Mississippi Goddam,” 1964

The first time I was able to have a conversation with the late Representative and true American hero John Lewis was about six years ago at the Baltimore Comic-Con. It was during set-up so the room was comparatively open and, as I was attempting to locate my booth I saw Representative Lewis behind a table. His name was on the sign behind his table — “Congressman John Lewis.” I did one of those patented Tex Avery eyeball takes.

I previously had been at the Heroes Convention at the Charlotte North Carolina Convention Center. A bunch of older white guys were walking around wearing suits that, each, could feed a family of four for three months. In the midst of that gaggle was Sarah Palin. I looked around to make sure I was at the right place because I could not believe these folks were there to add to their Funko Pops collections.

I was right; the state Republican Convention was upstairs and the comic-con was downstairs. The white men in their expensive suits looked disgusted but, to be fair, they always look that way. Sarah saw the cosplayers and beamed a megawatt smile. So you can’t say I’ve never said anything nice about Sarah Palin.

But this time, the statesman at hand was there for a comic book show. Considering he worked in Congress, seeing a couple thousand people dressed up as The Joker (including babies) was just another day at work. I approached him, he offered me a seat, and we chatted about the relationship between comic books and political organizing. It was one of those “holy crap” moments that make life wonderful.

Rep. Lewis did say I was the first to recognize him at the show. I laughed and said “Oh, just wait until the show starts.” He looked skeptical, but my prediction quickly came to pass: that was just about the only time during the show that I could see him clearly from the aisle. Continue reading “Brainiac On Banjo #092: John Lewis – The Great American Warrior”

Brainiac On Banjo 048: Tragedy, Horror and Justice Denied

Brainiac On Banjo 048: Tragedy, Horror and Justice Denied

 

I entered the first grade in 1956 and I graduated from high school in 1968. During those dozen years, I did not hear one word from my teachers about the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II. I did not read about it in any of my schoolbooks. I didn’t hear about it from my family, or from newspapers, radio, or television.

Being something of a history freak and heavily under the influence of George Santayana, I initially stumbled across this horror in fairly superficial terms. As time went on and we moved from incarcerating Asian-Americans in America to killing the natives of southeast Asia, I had been able to gather a great quantity of information about the internment camps… but, even so, I had only scratched the surface. Continue reading “Brainiac On Banjo 048: Tragedy, Horror and Justice Denied”

Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mind #021: Bizarro-Congressman Says GOP Not Racist

Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mind #021: Bizarro-Congressman Says GOP Not Racist

In this space last week, I pontificated on the hypocrisy of the Republican Party’s slapping Iowa Rep. Steve King on the wrist (fairly hard) for his overt racism without ever uttering a murmur about the 800 pound gorilla of racism, His Petulance King Donald The Last. Well, there was at least one other response to this story, and it appeared last week in the newspaper U.S.A. Today.

The piece was written by Congressman Will Hurd, Republican from Texas’s 23rd District. Rep. Hurd is something of an endangered species: he is the only black Republican in the House of Representatives. There have been only six others since the onset of the Great Depression; the fact that there’s only one such representative in 2019 does not inure to the benefit of his party’s image.  Continue reading “Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mind #021: Bizarro-Congressman Says GOP Not Racist”