Southern Bookman

Jason Gay's rules for family touch football a Thanksgiving tradition

I fell into the Thanksgiving spirit reading another edition of Jason Gay's rules for family touch football.

The Wall Street Journal sportswriter has been doing the column for 11 years, and it's still fresh and funny.

Gay's annual rules column evokes the love and understanding of family get-togethers, the bittersweet travails of aging and the joy of new generations.

The touch-football rules column is now as much a part of the holiday as the Macy's Parade in New York City, turkey and dressing, and pro football games.

With political conflicts dividing families and Covid still hanging over the country, Gay's column celebrates shared traditions that still unite us.

The column brought memories of friends and loved ones who've passed away, and Thanksgivings of years past:

Furman Bisher's annual AJC column giving thanks for the blessings in his life.

The AJC's annual ad-heavy Thanksgiving paper.

Trips to Louisiana, Ohio and New York City. Years at home, hosting others.

Driving from Chattanooga to Atlanta with my then fiance and mother-in-law to be.

A family feast at the Waldorf Astoria and walking through snow past Radio City Music Hall to watch the Macy's parade, its famous helium-filled cartoon characters floating by, tossed by the wind.

Golf with my father at Baton Rouge's Sherwood Forest Country Club.

An LSU-Arkansas game at Tiger Stadium.

Taking my then small children to a Georgia-Georgia Tech freshman game at frigid Grant Field.

Late night trips to Hartsfield-Jackson Airport to pick up a child coming home from college and Joe, my late brother-in-law, flying in from New York City.

My now grown-up children home from school in Gainesville, Baton Rouge and Princeton.

Watching Alex Karras and the Detroit Lions beat Vince Lombardi's undefeated Green Bay Packers.

Family gatherings, the voices and laughter of so many now gone.

I'm thankful to be thankful.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Farewell, Dave Hickey, the last gonzo

Dave Hickey like Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson brought an intense personal sensibility to journalism.

The last of a generation that began with Wolfe and Mailer's "new journalism," Hickey gained cultish fame with his 1997 collection "Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy."

The essay collection champions Hank Williams, Liberace, Stan Brakhage, Norman Rockefeller, Chet Baker and other popular artists with the same attention he gives to Cezanne, de Kooning, Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock. In an essay on basketball, he praises Julius Erving and James Naismith's original game rules.

Hickey, who like Thompson and Mailer defined himself as an outlaw rebelling against prevailing cultural strictures, died Nov. 12 at age 82 at his home in Santa Fe, N.M. He'd been battling heart disease for years.

A native of Fort Worth, Texas, Hickey as a child moved with his family to Los Angeles. He ridiculed Texas' provincial boosterism, but never lost the state's contrarian viewpoint. When Hickey was 11, his father, a car salesman and jazz musician, killed himself, a major influence on Hickey's independent outlook.

Rootless as a young man, Hickey opened an art gallery in Austin called "A Clean Lighted Place," which struggled against the Texas capital's parochial aesthetic values. He then moved to New York City, where he managed a gallery, reportedly quitting in protest of a Yoko Ono exhibition.

Discovering himself as a writer, Hickey was editor of Art in America before finding a home as a professor at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, becoming the most famous representative of that school since Jerry Tarkanian's Runnin' Rebels.

In one of the best essays in "Air Guitar," Hickey celebrates Las Vegas for its freedom from New York City and Los Angeles' cultural dogmas. He also loved Las Vegas' wide-open entertainment and gambling culture.

"Air Guitar" and the influential chapbook "The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays on Beauty," earned him a MacArthur "Genius grant," in 2001, the proceeds of which he fed into Vegas slot machines.

While he appreciated mass popular culture, he also called for a return to rigorous standards in judging artworks. He blasted the contemporary art world for its commercialism and turn from traditional artistic values.

Like his journalistic predecessors, Hickey was accused of machoism, although he considered underappreciated abstract painter Joan Mitchell the best artist of her generation. Feminist critics saw his defense of beauty as elitist. At the end of his career, he published "25 Women: Essays on Their Art." That too was viewed as paternalistic.

Hickey wrote for a variety of publications, including Art News, the Village Voice, Texas Monthly and Rolling Stone. Along with art and popular music, he also wrote about television and the movies.

In "Air Guitar," he recalled the Texas writer Grover Lewis, and Lewis' friendship with Larry McMurtry, ground also covered by a McMurtry memoir.

Hickey biographer Daniel Oppenheimer wrote a warm appeciation of Hickey for Texas Monthly, the first to report Hickey's death.

As Oppenheimer details, Hickey like other literary exiles remained stamped by his native land.

 

It was only a partial lunar eclipse, but a show for the ages

Good morning, moon.

Awaking at 3 a.m. Friday, I decided to venture into the predawn cold to view the partial lunar eclipse, the longest in 581 years.

As the old Cat Stevens song played in my mind, I marveled at the full moon shrouded by the earth's shadow, leaving a gleaming crescent sliver. Like spectators in a vast theater, stars and planets sparkled in the uncommonly clear sky.

I went inside to warm up for a while, then returned to see the eclipse at its peak coverage of nearly 98 percent at 4:03 a.m. The promised red glow was more a brown smudge, yet still majestic and mystical.

Beginning at 1:15 a.m. when the moon slipped into the earth's shadow, the partial lunar eclipse was the longest since Feb. 18, 1440. The next longest partial lunar eclipse, 2 minutes longer than Friday's, will occur on Feb. 8, 2669. If human beings are left by then, they'll probably be playing golf on Mars.

But we celestial extravaganza fans won’t have to wait long for more moon magic. A longer total lunar eclipse will occur on Nov. 8, 2022.

Going back to bed, I discovered that the moon had been visible all along through the bedroom window. Sinking toward sleep, I watched the lunar light advance against the receding shadow.

 

 

 

 

Investgation leads to exonerations in Malcolm X assassination

Two men convicted of Malcolm X's assassination were to be exonerated Thursday, according to a blockbuster report in The New York Times.

Like other shocking assassinations of the era, Malcolm's murder on Feb. 21, 1965 in Harlem's Audubon Ballroom continues to torment American history.

Muhammad Aziz, 83, and the deceased Khalil Islam were wrongly convicted of the civil rights leader's slaying because the FBI and New York Police Department neglected to disclose evidence that would have exonerated them, according to the Times report.

The Nation of Islam is still suspected of  instigating Malcolm's killing. The civil rights leader had become estranged from the group, moving away from its virulent anti-white rhetoric. Malcolm had planned in his speech to announce a new, less militant organization. 

William Bradley, an Nation of Islam bodyguard, has been identified as the likely killer. Another convicted assailant, Mujahid Abdul Halim, known as Talmadge Hayer at the time, confessed to involvement in the attack and said Aziz and Islam had not been involved.

A 22-month investigation into the case by New York City District Attorney Cyrus Vance and Aziz defense attorney David Shanies found that the  excluded evidence proved their innocence. Aziz and Islam spent decades in prison, often in solitary confinement.

While conspiracy theorists have speculated about government involvement in Malcolm's slaying, the investigation found no evidence of an FBI and New York City conspiracy, although both law enforcement agencies had undercover operatives at the ballroom when the killing occurred in a hail of gunfire.

Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, told the Times that the case shows the legal system's racist bias and propensity to rush to judgment. A number of blacks falsely convicted of capital crimes have been freed through EJI's investigations.

The dismissal of a government conspiracy won't dampen suspicions of government involvement in Malcolm's death, as well as other 1960s assassinations, most prominently President John F. Kennedy's.

Conspiracy advocates like San Francisco author David Talbot have cast doubts on the Warren Commission's finding that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the Kennedy assassination. Talbot believes the CIA was behind the president's 1963 killing in Dallas. He also disputes that Sirhan Sirhan was Robert Kennedy's killer. Conspiracy adherents also claim government involvement in Martin Luther King Jr.'s death.

After the Malcolm slaying findings, pressure will build to reopen other 1960s cases. But it's unlikely that they will be concluded with the same certainty as the exonerations of Aziz and Islam.

Justice will at last be done in the case, but they spent the best part of their lives in prison because of the FBI and NYPD's dereliction of duty.

 

 

 

Not so fast: Merrick Garland takes aim at Penguin Random House-Simon & Schuster merger

The U.S. Justice Department struck a blow for authors with an antitrust lawsuit seeking to block the merger of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster.

"The deal would enable Penguin Random House to exert outsized influence over which books are published in the United States and how much authors are paid for their work," the Justice Department said in announcing the lawsuit filed Nov. 5 in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

Penguin Random House, the largest U.S. book publisher, seeks to buy No. 3 Simon & Schuster in a $2.175 billion deal. As Authors Guild President Douglas Preston noted in a Washington Post op-ed piece applauding the suit, the transaction would reduce the publishing industry's "Big Five" to four.

Further consolidation will likely follow if the Penguin Random House-Simon & Schuster deal goes through. The huge publishing companies also control smaller imprints, which also compete for authors' work.

Preston helpfully noted that the merger would create a book market "monopsony," a dominant buyer, as well as a monopoly, a controlling seller.

Attorney General Merrick Garland noted that the deal would result in fewer books and less variety for consumers. Perhaps so, but it seems strange that the merged company wouldn't seek to print more books, likely weighted toward cooking, lifestyle, health, self-improvement and entertainment.

As Preston noted, Amazon dominates the e-book market as well as influencing book publishing. Preston's article included the obligatory disclosure that Amazon owner and billionaire Jeff Bezos, who seeks monopoly and monopsony control over the U.S. retail market, owns the Washington Post.

The Justice Department a few years ago sided with Amazon in a suit against Apple and the book publishing industry. Preston risked Bezos’ ire by calling for the Justice Department to take action against Amazon's book industry power.

While the book publishers produce a stream of books from right-wing and left-wing perspectives, the industry favors celebrity authors and proven best-sellers. I'm amazed at the flood of books about the Trump administration that shows no sign of abating. Yet each book gives new revelations about Trump's apparent attempt to stage a coup on Jan. 6 and prevent President Biden from taking office.

As right wingers call for removal of books from school libraries, even the burning of books, I can imagine a new Trump administration or other GOP presidency suing publishers for printing books viewed as dangerous. Toni Morrison was targeted in the Republicans' victory in the Virginia governors' race. Can outlawing books be far behind? I'm sure Shakespeare and Dickens will soon be under fire.

Despite qualms about the precedent set by the government suing book publishers, the action will put off the inevitable day when one conglomerate publishes all of the books, newspapers and magazines in the world and sells all of the products. Perhaps our robot masters will ban books altogether, and we will chant "om" to immense computer screens.

 

 

Jack Nelson's posthumous memoir "Scoop" looks back on stellar reporting career

Legendary reporter Jack Nelson was still revered in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution newsroom when I went to work there in 1981, although nearly 20 years had passed since he'd jumped to The Los Angeles Times.

Even old-time Journal reporters who'd competed against Nelson's Atlanta Constitution back in the day lionized him.

Nelson in 12 years at the "South's Standard Newspaper" broke an astounding number of stories, including shocking abuses at the sprawling state mental hospital in Milledgeville. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1960 for his Milledgeville expose.

Establishing The Los Angeles Times Atlanta bureau in 1964, Nelson gained new heights as one of the courageous reporters covering the civil rights movement across the South. Nelson then moved on to the Los Angeles newspaper's Washington Bureau, where he broke key Watergate stories and gained fame as a television pundit and bureau chief.

Nelson's posthumous memoir "Scoop: The Evolution of a Southern Reporter" in the electric language of a good newspaper story traces Nelson's rise from humble origins in rural Alabama and Biloxi, Miss.  He had completed most of the book when he died in 2009 at age 80. His wife, journalist Barbara Matusow, finished the book, consulting his records and notes.

"Scoop" was the nickname Biloxi police bestowed upon the young energetic Nelson when he started his reporting career at the Biloxi Herald. Traces of that brash Southern boy remained in Nelson, even when he became a trusted confidante of presidents and esteemed Washington insider frequently seen on shows like "Washington Week in Review" and "Meet the Press."

After launching his career at the Mississippi gulf coast town where he spent most of his childhood, Nelson served in the Army, stationed at Fort Stewart, Ga. Nelson amusingly tells how he nearly escaped basic training by working as a public information officer. 

He'd attracted the attention of the Constitution with stories sent from Biloxi, and the Atlanta newspaper hired him when he left the army in 1952, at a weekly salary of $85, barely enough to support his family. Nelson colorfully recalls his grueling career at a newspaper notorious for its stinginess.

Atlanta during his years at Ralph McGill's Constitution was transforming from a mid-sized insular Southern city to a major metropolis. Many of Nelson's scoops exposed Georgia's transition from a corrupt rural-dominated state whose government sought to preserve white power.

While Nelson venerated McGill, he clashed with the famed editor. In one shocking case, McGill sought to protect one of his cronies who was the target of a Nelson expose.

Nelson praises the Constitution for fully supporting his investigative pieces. The Constitution's parsimonious and flinty Executive Editor Bill Fields comes off in the balance as a staunch journalist.

In a surprising revelation for those who know Athens as a progressive city today, Nelson recalls a time when the home of the University of Georgia was plagued with gambling and prostitution. Nelson exposed the corruption, receiving the enmity of city boosters and, he says, the UGA student newspaper the Red and Black.

Nelson also castigates Athens as a hotbed of Southern racism, revisiting the shocking killing of Lemuel Penn, a black Washington, D.C. educator and decorated World War II veteran who was killed while passing through the city. Two Klansmen were acquitted of the slaying in a trial in Athens. Nelson doesn't disclose whether the case is one of those civil rights slayings that should be reopened.

Outside of the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnists McGill and Eugene Patterson, the Journal and Constitution shamefully did little to cover the civil rights movement outside of running wire stories, as Nelson acknowledges. He faults himself for ignoring the movement.

Nelson made up for that neglect at the Los Angles Times, traveling across the South with a courageous band of national reporters to cover key moments in Martin Luther King's campaign for civil rights.

In a memorable vignette, Nelson recalls the poignance of a lesser known moment in King's career, when he visited the rural community of Gee's Bend, Ala. and promised the poverty-stricken descendants of slaves that they would receive voting rights and recognition of their human dignity. 

Nelson in an amusing chapter discusses his fraught relationship with Alabama Gov. George Wallace, who singled out Nelson for abuse during press conferences. After Wallace was paralyzed from wounds in an assassination attempt, he turned away from his harsh racism. Nelson was among those with whom Wallace made amends.

While reporting on breaking stories, Nelson also used his investigative skills, notably uncovering police abuses and a coverup in the killing of three black students at South Carolina State University at Orangeburg, S.C., in a protest on Feb. 8, 1968. He also exposed FBI involvement in a complicated entrapment scheme in Meridian, Miss., drawing the hatred of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.

Hoover carried out an acrimonious campaign to discredit Nelson, even after he joined the Los Angeles Times Washington bureau. Hoover made false claims and accusations against Nelson, which continued until Hoover's death.

"Scoop," published by the University of Mississippi Press in 2013, deserves recognition as one of the best journalistic memoirs of the South's transformation after World War II.

Nelson loved White House dinners and fine Washington restaurants. But he always remained a reporter.

 

 

 

 

Whitman, Lincoln seem present at Washington's historic 10th Street corridor

Walt Whitman Way runs off 10th Street in downtown Washington, D.C., a few blocks toward the National Mall from Ford's Theatre, where President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865.

Whitman often walked through the theater's neighborhood, and revered the slain president. Whitman's "Speciman Days" gives one of the best portraits of the rough U.S. capital during the Civil War, and he wrote the impassioned elegies to Lincoln, "Captain, Oh My Captain" and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed."

The past, present and future come together in the corridor, filled with museums, historic buildings, monuments, government offices and modern commercial developments.

Whitman visited wounded soldiers who lay in cots crowded into the U.S. Patent Office, now the National Portrait Gallery. He sought to raise the young men's spirits, telling them jokes and stories and bringing them pencils, paper and candy.

At Ford's Theatre, the future is represented by school groups that line up to tour the downstairs museum, with extensive exhibits on Lincoln's presidency and the Civil War.

A gallery gives an in-depth rendering of John Wilkes Booth's chilling plot to kill the president and members of his cabinet. Booth's co-conspirators are represented by ghostly statues.  The single-shot derringer with which Booth killed the president gives stark witness to history.

The presidential booth, decorated with bunting as on the night of the assassination, rises above the stage where plays are still performed.

On that pleasant spring night several days after Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia, Lincoln and his wife, Mary, attended the theater for a performance of  the comedy "Our American Cousin." Booth, a famous actor, gained entrance to the booth and shot Lincoln in the back of the head, leaping to the stage below and breaking his left leg. 

Lincoln was carried to the Peterson House across 10th street, and laid diagonally in a bed because of his height. He died at 7:22 the next morning. The house where the president died remains, but has been closed to the public because of the pandemic.

On nearby H Street, Booth co-conspirator Mary Surratt, executed by hanging, ran a boarding house. The street, leading to Chinatown and the Capital One Arena, pulses with bars, hotels and restaurants.

Lincoln, a Shakespeare admirer, would be happy that plays are still performed at Ford's Theatre. Along with books on the slain president, the site's gift shop honors the theater. I was pleased to find a copy of the Penguin Classics edition of Damon Runyon's "Guys and Dolls and Other Writings."

At the Ford Museum,  young students appeared enthralled by Lincoln's presidency and Civil War leadership. A salute to their teachers for bringing them to a place where history’s real.

 

 

World War I poems on the anniversary of Armistice Day

World War I - that most literary of conflicts - ended 103 years ago.

On Nov. 11, 1918, the "war to end all wars" fell silent on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.

Veterans Day is now celebrated in the United States on what began as Armistice Day, marking the conclusion of the war that set the stage for World War II, the Cold War and our present global instability.

I always think on this day of the poets and writers killed in the devastating global war - Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brooke, Guillaume Apollinaire, Edward Thomas, Isaac Rosenberg, Joyce Kilmer - and those who survived: Ernest Hemingway, Robert Graves,  Siegfried Sassoon,  E.E. Cummings, Archibald MacLeish. The war also haunted F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner, who never made it to the battlefields. Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past" gives an unforgettable portrait of Paris taxicabs thrown into action against the German invaders.

The war shaped and devastated poets and writers from all sides: Germany, Austria, Russia, Italy, Turkey, France, Romania, Serbia. Their work reflects a common experience of sacrifice and death.

Here are a few poems for Remembrance Day.

 

Tears
Edward Thomas - 1878-1917

It seems I have no tears left. They should have fallen—
Their ghosts, if tears have ghosts, did fall—that day
When twenty hounds streamed by me, not yet combed out
But still all equals in their rage of gladness
Upon the scent, made one, like a great dragon
In Blooming Meadow that bends towards the sun
And once bore hops: and on that other day
When I stepped out from the double-shadowed Tower
Into an April morning, stirring and sweet
And warm. Strange solitude was there and silence.
A mightier charm than any in the Tower
Possessed the courtyard. They were changing guard,
Soldiers in line, young English countrymen,
Fair-haired and ruddy, in white tunics. Drums
And fifes were playing “The British Grenadiers.”
The men, the music piercing that solitude
And silence, told me truths I had not dreamed,
And have forgotten since their beauty passed.

In Flanders Fields
John McCrae - 1872-1918

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

American Boys, Hello!
Ella Wheeler Wilcox - 1850-1919

Oh! we love all the French, and we speak in French
As along through France we go.
But the moments to us that are keen and sweet
Are the ones when our khaki boys we meet,
Stalwart and handsome and trim and neat;
And we call to them—‘Boys, hello!’
‘Hello, American boys,
Luck to you, and life’s best joys!
American boys, hello!’

We couldn’t do that if we were at home—
It never would do, you know!
For there you must wait till you’re told who’s who,
And to meet in the way that nice folks do.
Though you knew his name, and your name he knew—
You never would say ‘Hello, hello, American boy!’
But here it’s just a joy,
As we pass along in the stranger throng,
To call out, ‘Boys, hello!’

For each is a brother away from home;
And this we are sure is so,
There’s a lonesome spot in his heart somewhere,
And we want him to feel there are friends
right there

In this foreign land, and so we dare
To call out ‘Boys, hello!’
‘Hello, American boys,
Luck to you, and life’s best joys!
American boys, hello!’

I Have a Rendezvous with Death
Alan Seeger - 1888-1916

I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air—
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath—
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows ’twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear...
But I’ve a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.

Dulce et Decorum Est
Wilfred Owen - 1893-1918

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Wartime Christmas
Joyce Kilmer - 1886-1918

Led by a star, a golden star,
The youngest star, an olden star,
Here the kings and the shepherds are,
Akneeling on the ground.
What did they come to the inn to see?
God in the Highest, and this is He,
A baby asleep on His mother’s knee
And with her kisses crowned.

Now is the earth a dreary place,
A troubled place, a weary place.
Peace has hidden her lovely face
And turned in tears away.
Yet the sun, through the war-cloud, sees
Babies asleep on their mother’s knees.
While there are love and home—and these—
There shall be Christmas Day.

 

 

 

An American story at Apple Carnegie Library in nation's capital

Covered by a thin blanket in the cold wind, she sat in the same position on the sidewalk day after day.

She bent over when sleeping, never stretching out on the pavement. Awake, she mumbled incessantly to herself. Her feet, clad in red, blue and yellow socks, poked out as people hurried by. Someone cared enough to bring her food; she ate from a plastic container.

Traffic stopped and started on K Street. People streamed by from the Apple Store, housed in the beautifully renovated beaux-arts Carnegie Library Building, set upon a hill behind her on Mount Vernon Square. Those favored by American capitalism ascended and descended the building's marble steps, stepping around her as she sat, barely moving.

Opened in 1903, the Carnegie Building at the corner of K and 7th Streets served as Washington's Central Library until 1972. The building sat vacant for six years, and was in jeopardy until the Historical Society of Washington established its DC Center there. Maintenance was costly, and a city museum closed.

Apple in 2016 reached an agreement to restore the building, refurbishing its Vermont marble facade and sculptures. The building reopened in 2019, housing one of the company's retail stores and the Historical Society's D.C. Center, a nice private-public synergy. The building rises blocks away from historic Union Station, and sits above one of the district's oldest commercial intersections.

On a splendid autumn afternoon, sunlight streams through a skylight and the building's majestic original windows as customers sit at tables to test the latest MacBooks and I-phones and consult with Apple "Genius" associates.

A grand marble staircase leads to the DC Center's upstairs gallery, gift shop and Kiplinger Research Library. A photo exhibit shows a 1930s visit to D.C. by Amelia Earhart  and teams from the 1924 World Series, won by the Senators of Walter Johnson and Goose Goslin over John McGraw's New York Giants. President Calvin Coolidge grins from the black and white picture, and hard-shell commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis glares. 

Downstairs on the basement floor, a gallery of photos looks back at the building's original history and steel baron Andrew Carnegie's funding of libraries around the county in the early 20th century.

The building is a marvelous display of America at its best, blending past and future, commerce and education. Looking at a photo of Mr. Carnegie seated at his old-fashioned cubbyhole desk in a three-piece suit and polished button-up shoes, I thought he'd be pleased at the shared endeavor.

Outside, the mentally ill lady on the sidewalk speaks her Cassandra's language.

 

 

Washington's National Museum of African-American History an overwhelming experience

The Smithsonian's National Museum of African-American History was packed on the day after Republican Glenn Youngkin won the Virginia governor's race with a racially loaded campaign.

From ground-floor exhibits illuminating slavery's horrifying story to ascending levels portraying reconstruction, the civil rights movement and the black community, the museum soars to the top with displays of African-Americans' essential contributions to music, theater, film, television and literature.

Progressing upward on the museum's ramps is an overwhelming emotional experience, leading from despair at the bottom to joy at the top.

Youngkin triumphed over former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe by raising the specter of "critical race theory," a grad school construct never taught in Virginia schools.

Youngkin ran an ad of a white woman explaining how her now adult son was upset as a high school student by reading an unnamed book later identified as Toni Morrison's "Beloved," a graphic portrait of slavery.

The sanctimonious woman denounced McAuliffe for vetoing a bill when he was governor that would have allowed the removal of books from classrooms.

At the museum's fact-laden slavery exhibits, a mostly middle-aged crowd of blacks and whites stood in shock and sorrow. The exhibits detailed how European ships from the 15th through the 19th centuries shipped millions of Africans from their native countries to the "new world," chained and packed together in foul cramped spaces.

Portugal started the slave trade in 1441, and transported 5.8 million Africans until 1836, the highest number among European nations. Before abolishing the trade in 1807, Great Britain enslaved millions and sent them to its colonies.  France, the Netherlands, and even Denmark were other leading traders.

A listing of ships and their six to eight-week voyages based on insurance records gives factual, disturbing accounts of the death toll on each journey.

The British ship Mary set sail on Oct. 1, 1701, with 143 out of 179 slaves surviving to the end. The Dutch vessel Philadelphia arrived with 298 survivors from the 312 slaves that started its trip on Feb. 22, 1760. The Dutch ship Carolus Secundus, named for British monarch Charles II, had 176 survivors from the cargo of 425 who started out on Nov. 14, 1705.

Charles II granted his brother James, the Duke of York, a charter in 1660 for the Royal African Company, which shifted to the slave trade from its original plan to traffick in gold. James later ascended to the British throne.

Out of the millions of Africans transported across the Atlantic, a relatively small total of 400,000 came to North America before the U.S. Congress outlawed the slave trade in 1807. 

But the end of the Atlantic trade began a horrendous new chapter of domestic slavery in the United States in which families were divided and conditions worsened on deep South plantations. Slaves were bought and sold in barbaric markets and transported within American terrritory.

By 1860, the U.S. slave population had increased to 4 million. The invention of the cotton gin in 1792 made slavery essential to the Southern economy and the production of cotton for British textile mills.

Ensuing exhibits highlight the slaves' perseverance and ingenuity. Slaves turned to music and religion, and were skilled in carpentry, masonry, agriculture and cooking. Slaves built the White House, U.S. Capitol, plantation homes, universities and commercial buildings.

The museum's prevailing theme is that African-American history is essentially American history.

Designed by Ghanaian-British architect David Adjaye and the late architect Philip Freelon, the museum opened in September 2016, a stunning architectural addition to the National Mall's institutions and monuments.

The ornamental, bronze-colored metal lettice honors the ironwork done by slaves and their descendants in Louisiana, South Carolina and elsewhere, according to the museum's web site. The museum's massive windows give views of the slaves' creations, the White House and Capitol.

Leaving the museum, we stood for a moment to view the Washington Monument, honoring the nation's first president and Revolutionary War hero, who owned hundreds of slaves who kept his Mount Vernon plantation running. Across the way, sunshine glowed upon the Jefferson Monument, a memorial to another slave-owning Founding Father.

In a brisk breeze, we walked to the Lincoln Monument, where families took photos before Lincoln's majestic statue.

As I read Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and Second Memorial Address printed on adjoining walls, I looked up at his solemn visage, reassured that his words of reconciliation would one day prevail.