Mary Lee Brady, Ph.D. 
| | Patriotism by African-Americans before, during and after the Revolutionary and Civil Wars generated liberties, rights and reactions that men like David Horowitz will never acknowledge or understand. David Horowitz is wrong again about patriotism, and not enlightened about faith, hope and love of country he has never understood to exist among millions of African Americans and others his color but not his kind. 
According to official U.S. Government records, approximately 5,000 young men of African heritage served in ranks of 300,000 patriots in American cause and rebellion against Great Britain, ... during period of the Continental Army under George Washington from 1775 to 1883. Thousands more uncounted African-Americans like William Lee were conscripted as slaves to be personal bodyguards, espionage spies on British forces, build fortifications, bury the dead, provide supplies and a host of other duties to support Washington's Army. Lee paid a price for liberty but had to wait for George Washington to die before it was legally available to him but not his wife and offspring. "The Bloods" as Madison Hemings Jefferson (see: Madison Hemings' Story) would later sarcastically refer to them in his memoirs, ... were enslaved to the ideology of slavery valued even more so than "liberty" despite claims to the contrary by their ideological offspring generations even to this day. Professor Henry Wiencek, in his book about George Washington entitled "Imperfect God" ... shines his light on truths far too many scholars ignore. It was a long and bloody war exceeded only by the Civil War of 1861-1865 in which approximately 200,000 young men of African heritage served in uniform (40,000 killed) plus an additional 200,000 who served as paid laborers building railway lines, digging entrenchments and especially burials of the dead. So it pains those of us whose ancestors paid a dear price for our freedom to hear derogatory comments by anti-Black protagonists like David Horowitz to an audience at Duke University that "Whites gave them their freedom." Our question to him is "Who gave you your freedom?" The Persians? Romans? Russians? Germans? How about God, or do you no longer believe in the possibility of divine intervention in human affairs? Why is it non-scholarship for African-American students to search for truths inspired by their faith rather than your sense of academic righteousness propagated to youth as so-called conservatism? Another hypothetical question for Horowitz: If 10 enslaved women in 1775 gave birth to an average 5 slaves each before the U.S. Constitution in 1787, ... would half the 50 new slaves breed an average of 5 slaves each year 1807-1808 when Congress ordered slave imports to cease from Africa? Of the 125 new slaves bred, would half (63 females) breed 5 or more slaves by year 1826 when Thomas Jefferson died and the dye was cast for slavery ending by mass bloodshed? Indeed between the year 1820 and 1840, tens of thousands of female slave breeders gave birth to hundreds of thousands of young males that would hear the trumpet call to escape slavery and battle for liberty. No one gave them freedom, and official data records that by year 1850 up until mid-Civil War, ... over 50,000 slave runaways occurred each year even though most were caught. But the talented tenth like Frederick Douglass would have the perfect hatred to bring down a cotton curtain of injustice soaked in blood, sweat and tears. Why did people like Douglass, Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman think God was involved in the struggle? Should scholars care to hear their stories of functional faith or merely review empirical data studies? Sons and daughters of the First and Second American Revolutions are still marching despite amazing revisionist histories propagated by self serving Vietnam War Era (1963-1973) draft evaders like Horowitz born in 1939. He first gained notoriety by his anti-war editorials in Ramparts Magazine read by fellow evaders at the University of California at Berkley, ... referring to himself as a war resistor and those who accepted conscription as pawns and knights betraying the cause of solidarity with Marxism beliefs of his parents. His heritage never included beliefs that most educated African-Americans held precious and dear, ... up from slavery. 
Horowitz, like literate offspring of many 20th century immigrants to America, read newspaper and magazine descriptions of the Black flight from behind the cotton curtain, read a few or several books by writers like James Baldwin and maybe even a biography about Julius Rosenwald the great 19th century Jewish benefactor to African-Americans up from slavery, ... and subsequently imagined himself an expert witness on thirty million people of African heritage via categorizations and classifications in his mind's eye. By age fifty, he realized his reasoning was inferior so he blamed African-Americans like Jesse Jackson for causing him much emotional embarrassment in supporting failed causes of non-believers like that of Huey Newton. Our view is that Horowitz ventured into the world of ghetto attitudes and behaviors expecting to find solidarity with his values; but, found instead non-believers determined to create an environment of comfort and power imitating men with power they knew nothing about. It was not uncommon for men on the bottom of a society to seek the top of mountains beyond their wildest imagination. It happened in America, Africa and the Caribbean where many Huey Newton's imagined they knew things not given to other people like themselves. 
Horowitz's perceptions, as an advisor to Huey Newton, were flawed about both Black and White cultural dynamics that mattered most in changing America for better or worse. Horowitz and even Huey Newton likely had no idea of the magnitude of deceit by Black Panther members claiming to have been military veterans, ... but in reality were ex-convicts parading in black berets and leather jackets as a fighting force. Almost to a man, they all claimed to not only be veterans but also training and multiple tours of duty in Vietnam in the known best and brightest units, .... like the 173rd Airborne Brigade and its hero Private Milton Olive. Even worse, as Dr. King feared for them, ... they attracted attention from men with real power, like the FBI and Pentagon, who could and would exterminate any perceived threats to the United States. Along with fellow youth like Tom Hayden, Abby Hoffman and Jane Fonda, he helped create the term of "new left" to distinguish them and fellow anti-war believers from Democratic Party liberalism of Lyndon Johnson they perceived to be wrong. Horowitz imagined Marxist oriented young Black men like Huey Newton in Oakland and San Francisco, even those in the prisons such as Elbridge Cleaver, ... were superior to religious oriented ones following the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King or Malcolm X as seekers of righteousness in their faith rather than judgments espoused by new left ideologies. 
By alleged superior reasoning attested by a perceived superior liberal education at Berkley, Horowitz had embraced the rationale of Huey Newton (above) as organizer of a very visible ghetto-based Black Panther Party membership of Castro and Che Guvera imitators, ... rather than the decidedly inferior Black College Christian Leadership Movement of Dr. Martin Luther King with unregimented student believers in Christ. Horowitz claims to have lost faith in Black Panther organization after experiencing murder of a White woman who threatened to expose their corruption, ... which by color based circular reasoning he has managed to blame on liberalism of men like Jesse Jackson and the rest of us he never knew to be or matter in the body and spirit of Jesus Christ. The notion of liberals being left of center is a play on words. The leftists never cared or knew of activist liberal behavior and spirits of young men like Milton Olive of Chicago serving in Vietnam, but yearning to become a minister of the gospel among those living poor of spirit in Chicago, ... after completing military service for which he had volunteered as an honorable means up and out of ghetto enslavement. Other youth like Reverend Jesse Jackson, also opposed warfare but dramatically differed from leftists. Black ministers like Jesse not only preached funerals of dead servicemen like Milton Olive but also entered into long lasting Christian fellowship with their survivors. 
Like many young Black men in the early 1960s, ... Milton Olive joined the Army from his birth city of Chicago, and by 1965 was serving as a Private First Class in Company B of 2nd Battalion (Airborne), 503d Infantry Regiment, 173d Airborne Brigade in Vietnam. The armed forces were viewed by many young men as a promised equal opportunity born of struggles by the World War II generation of men like Jackie Robinson to make it so in a nation that was legally segregated, north and south, east and west as men of power chose it to be. On October 22, 1965, while moving through the jungle with four fellow soldiers in Phu Cuong, ... Olive sacrificed his life by smothering an enemy-thrown grenade with his body. Believers can believe he did it in memory of Christ, not out of stupidity nor for glory or pay. His calling on that hot day, place and time in Vietnam was to give his life for that of Christ in the bodies of the men he saved? How do we know whether or not he was called to the real ministry of Christ in that time and place? We do not, ... but how and when is the gospel spread? By preachers prancing about like minstrels or by living to help others. For his actions on that day, he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. At a ceremony on the steps of the White House, on April 21, 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson presented Milton Olive's Medal of Honor to his father and stepmother. Also in attendance were two of the four men whose lives were saved by Olive's actions. We are reminded that President Johnson, as he pushed forward Civil Rights legislation to help African-Americans was well aware that nearly 100,000 African American young men were among over 500,000 American troops in Vietnam. Milton Olive, a believer, did not die in vain, so long as believers believe that he was in the cause up from slavery and segregation during a time and place when courage mattered to men with real power to help others! Milton Olive's body was returned to the United States and buried in West Grove Cemetery, Holmes County, Mississippi. In 1999, the city of Chicago recognized Olive by naming a park on Lake Michigan in his honor.[1] Olive-Harvey College, one of the City Colleges of Chicago is named after him and fellow Medal of Honor recipient Carmel B. Harvey. Milton L. Olive Middle School in Wyandanch, Long Island, NY is named in his honor. We make this point because African-Americans should never forget events and time-lines in which we came up from slavery, persecution, segregation and imitations. We rejoice every time we see a happy young father, mother and children living a better and more fruitful life, ... promised long ago by Christ in which many of us still believe. Indeed, the many generations of young Black men exactly like Milton Olive and Jackie Robinson all the way back to William Lee and James Armistead Lafayette, ... had laid the foundations for not only ending slavery in America, but preparing a high-way via affirmative actions for the coming triumph of Martin Luther King, Jr. in the name of Christ. Their lives were stepping stones in overcoming barriers of ideologies that guys like Horowitz, Limbaugh, and many others in their age-group now choose to embrace as goodness. Horowitz is and was a self-serving non-believer, non-historian of Marxist parents, and admitted agnostic, ... who has nevertheless claimed "Redemption" and imagined himself an expert on African-American heritage for a market-place hungering for evidence to confirm their superior existence to people up from slavery in, out and beyond the body of Christ. His great bid card regularly played in the modern racism game is that affirmative action is un-American; ... and, African and African-American studies at most institutions affording affirmative action admissions are not scholarship and should be abolished. He professes to those who listen to him that affirmative action invasions of undeserving African-Americans up from slavery is degrading superior institutions of Higher Education such as University of California at Berkley, ... and denying deserving students such as he was when very few Blacks were recruited, admitted or graduated. He rationalizes his interest in African-American interests on basis of past illusions about liberalism as he perceived it, ... during enlightenment by Marxist parents who were members of the Communist Party, USA and years of education at Berkley and association with the Black Panther propaganda of Elbridge Cleaver. Plus, so we imagine, Horowitz has read and listened to many other false prophets in his life-time. Their world was that of left and right movements for power, ... never the moral center manifested by successful African-American movements up from slavery. To Horowitz, desires by African heritage students to learn more about their ancestors, rather than good White people like himself, ... is not scholarship and should be excluded from curriculums. 
He is not interested in youth learning the ancestral hurdles of Paul Lawrence Brady on right center, a descendent of William Lee and Betty Hemings, ... who became a Marine and college graduate interested in his own heritage along with that of David Horowitz included in the curriculums of his high school in Michigan. Hurdles of consequence to the 1960s self-proclaimed intellects like David Horowitz, Huey Newton, Angela Davis, Bobby Seales, Stokely Carmichael, Rap Brown, Elbridge Cleaver and many others, ... were about who had power. They toyed with various ideologies and envisioned the generation of "Black Power" under their empowerment among impoverished masses of African-Americans living in urban centers like Oakland, Chicago, New York City, Pittsburgh, Detroit, etc. Malcolm X was perceived to be potentially powerful because he organized young men to monitor misbehavior by York City police. To them and their ideologies there was no moral center significance such as preached by Dr. King warning against violence and pretentions at having such capabilities or intentions, ... in the face of adversaries who were masters of violence. 
King was dismissed as powerless by Horowitz leftists and reviled as a likely communist by anti-Black right-wing he now embraces as righteous. How could this be? Well in the first place, Horowitz was out of place thinking that he understood dynamics of African-American existence during the past five centuries, ... beginning with the Caribbean Islands long before Jamestown. Most people of African heritage have never been monolithic nor defined themselves solely on the basis of color, even in Africa and in the face of White Americans with the power to categorize and classify other human beings as this, that, less than, equal too, inferior and superior. Power to most enlightened and educated people of African heritage was not Black or White but existed in the meta-physical world of ancestors, God and as a result of slavery, ... Jesus Christ as the Lord who lifted them up. Ideologies not ancestor or God centered have never attracted much of a following among African Americans, ... as was the case among the Black Panther Party whose nationwide numbers were miniscule compared to the religious based organizing past up from slavery. 
The listing includes but not limited to: ... Black Masonic Organizations, Abolition of Slavery, Civil War Colored Enlistments, Black Colleges and Universities, Colored Women's Clubs, Garvey Youth Appeals, Sleeping Car Porters and Labor Organizing and Desegregation movements. Every single successful movement, including that of Booker T. Washington and Marcus Garvey, began in body of a church, ... heralded in name of Christ, not an ideology. Nothing has changed. African-Americans still congregate for HIM, not them that would be powerful or superior! 
Appealing to ideological bigotry in best traditions of modern anti-affirmative action proponents, ... Horowitz contemptuously proclaimed "Whites gave them their freedom" to audiences not knowledgeable of African-Americans in Messianic faith that ended slavery and helped change America. The Civil War very much helped expose the great historic lies, before and after the war, about chattel slavery and the ante-bellum pundits who tried to rationalize it as both good and necessary, ... proclaiming Blacks too ignorant and inferior to even know who they were, let alone build families and communities in Christ. It is ironic that so many of Horowitz type subscribers hold forth views generated by interaction with impoverished ghetto raised and ruined African-American non-believers and non-achievers who in addition to being categorized inherently inferior, ... are classified as anti-Semites, even though prejudiced against both Arabs and Jews in addition to each other as a result of days and nights of depravity experienced by people not yet up from slavery. Ghetto life is not a love boat and ought not be used for empirical data sampling of the African-American population as a whole. As Messianic believers, we very much know about the existence of anger, hurt and pain among "the least of us" and have struggled even before slavery officially ended to eradicate it. Educated believers understand the struggle to lift them up to the light, not abandon the mission long ago given by Christ himself. Adversaries to Black aspirations have never heard traditional sermons by great ministers of the gospel like Jesse Jackson, and the truly Black love affair with Joseph and Jesus who were Jews. The problem obviously is that gals and guys like Horowitz descended from hatreds that existed in Europe, ... have not ventured into bodies like Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem where Solomon, a devout Hebrew of African heritage is revered and old testament Hebrews like Isaiah regularly cited and praised. 
Quite unlike his namesake King David of Judah who was renowned for his courage in warfare, Horowitz like thousands of other young men his age, ... lacked the courage to accept conscription in the Vietnam War but cleverly opposed it on the basis of morality. He legally avoided conscription by process of a Master's degree in English from the University of California at Berkley, ... where he was able to read about, not hear and support, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) movement by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. As a non-believer, Horowitz could not hear the musical sounds of SCLC as part of a Messianic mission in the long and unending symphony orchestrated by Christ, ... including abolition movement, civil war and Christian Leadership movement. Like King, most enlightened and educated African-Americans with Black College backgrounds referred to SCLC as "The Movement" ... not simply to end segregation but to be whole in the body and spirit of Jesus Christ that guys like Horowitz never did and nor will ever submit to. The problem with men such as him is not so much color but deep set beliefs that Africans are inherently inferior (and thus different). Horowitz, absent a belief in Christ, truly believes most African-Americans (not all) are undeserving of affirmative actions and liberties (including tolerances) historically enjoyed by Whites like himself. For him and his kind of pre-depression and pre-holocaust era conservative reasoning in the early 20th century, ... "what we have we deserve and what we do not have, we do not deserve." 
Understanding a lot less than he thought himself to know, Horowitz demonstrated his contempt by deciding as a young man, ... the SCLC movement was inferior to that of young men like Huey Newton, founder of the Black Panther Party movement rooted in race based power ideology rather than integration aspirations of men like Jackie Robinson. In fact, it is perhaps impossible for agnostics and atheists to ever comprehend the how and why of Messianic Christians, especially many young men like Henry Hyland Garnett and George Washington Williams who were already free but joined the army to free others. Young Williams below was the Jesse Jackson of his generation and no doubt would have been disliked by men like Horowitz, Thomas and even Huey Newton for exhibiting courage and superiority they did not have. Vietnam era cowardice was no different than any other era in human history, ... with millions of men denying their greatest fear was dying. Some of his fellow draft evaders in the 1960s are older African-Americans like Clarence Thomas, ... putting ideology over courage and faith, and viewing the constitution as a holy robe rather than a man-made tool for self-government "of the people, for the people and by the people." Our view is that a dire need for action is needed to affirmatively assure integration of our true story up from slavery among the mindsets of youth that are targeted by adversaries like Horowitz. The problem of course for African-Americans is that so many tens of thousands had to fight and die before folks like Horowitz would acknowledge them as people rather than property to be given, sold or traded. Many still use circular reasoning of the past masters of language applied against initiatives such as abolition of slavery classified as radical, ending racial segregation as communism and now against affirmative action as so-called "liberal left." Who are they and their contempt? What generated their beliefs? 
For them and their kind of thinkers, freedom was not earned or even deserving to African-Americans, but given by an unconstitutional act of Abraham Lincoln, ... and later as a constitutional amendment lacking ratification by former confederate state's rights advocates for slavery. In their view, slave owners, and even states, were free to grant freedom to a deserving and faithful slave; but, not actions by federal courts or executives to affirm it. They hated many thousands of young men like Henry Garnett. 
And, to them and their most deep held beliefs, slaves were property and not human beings in the Jeffersonian ideals of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness; and, thus runaways were criminals both the federal and all state governments, counties, sheriffs, courts and even municipalities were duty bound by the constitution to pursue, find and punish them. They referred to themselves as constitutional conservatives and opponents like Frederick Douglass as radicals. African-Americans gained their freedom the old fashioned way by believing, struggling and dying for it. They enlisted in numbers and names with Civil War enlistment rates greater than percentages of any other cultural group, ... including confederate rebels who opposed them. We cannot remember Lincoln and Douglass without those who served in the great cause of salvation for "the least of us." West Virginia Culture.Org It matters as to how we view ancestry saviors and their challenges. Since all moral worth is inherited, ... we cannot really matter if living with the attitudes that a boy or girl's ancestry does not matter. It has always mattered, beginning with Christ, that some men and women have given their lives that others might live! Who is a patriot and who is a rebel against teachings of HIM that we embrace? It is unlikely that men like Horowitz can perceive any or many African-Americans as patriots that mattered in setting African-Americans free. http://www.cincinnatilibrary.org/booklists/?id=aacivilwar 
They all mattered and long before ancestors of Horowitz experienced their own holocaust in Europe and fought to live and die free in Israel. The obvious difference however is that Jewish patriarchal cultures know their heritage and name offspring for lineage heroes like David, as compared to African-Americans also up from slavery but increasingly ignorant of who, how, when, where and why? Indeed, most Black mothers do not know how to name boys or girls. And as amply demonstrated by psychological testing of African-American children, ... there is a learned preference among African-American girls for White dolls and rejection of identical Black dolls. It is not unusual that so many boys of African-American heritage by age of puberty assume first and even last names different than that given by their mothers. Such changes are more than common nicknames but also symptoms of deep-set rebellion and resentment to come, ... sort of like the Johnny Cash country and western song about the outlaw cowboy seeking to find and kill the father who as a joke named him "Sue." Many girls and boys are raised to imitate life in the pursuit of happiness rather than contribute to its manifestations by loving and helping others such as themselves. In fact, the horrors of slavery included the release of a lot of people who were in effect mentally ill from decades of truly horrible experiences that rivaled any holocausts in human history. As believers, we believe the teachings of Jesus Christ are very much applicable to mission mandates to teach youth the lessons seen and heard before and after the crucifixion of Christ that many like Horowitz neither believe in or have ever marched for in or out of uniform. Our beliefs are that telling what we have seen and heard from our own ancestors will help enlighten and educate those who would be otherwise ignorant of affirmative actions and negative reactions "up from slavery." |
