First Short Quiz

[johnkarls]

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From: john@johnkarls.com
To: Our 158 Members Individual-by-Individual
Bcc:
Subject: RL-SL – First Short Quiz – Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson – For July 31
Date: Sat, July 6, 2019 – from 1:56 am MDT to 3:29 MDT (since individual-by-individual)
Attachments:
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To: Our 158 Members Individual-by-Individual (for reasons explained below in the PS)

Dear Friends,

Hopefully you received our regular weekly e-mails the last three weeks about resuming our regular monthly meetings.

[They are available at viewtopic.php?f=548&t=1789&p=2476&hilit ... f81b#p2476.]

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Our Focus Book for July 31 = “Brown Girl Dreaming” by Jacqueline Woodson

Amazon.com – 2016 paperback (349 pages) for $8.00 + shipping; $9.99 Kindle
Salt Lake City Library – original 2014 hard cover – 6 of 9 copies currently available
Salt Lake County Library – original 2014 hard cover – 25 of 37 copies currently available

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Short Quiz – Introducing Jacqueline Woodson and Putting Her in Historical Context

1. Is Jacqueline Woodson the author of more than 30 award-winning books? Was her “Miracle Boys” adapted into a TV mini-series by Spike Lee? Did she serve 2015-2017 as the Poetry Foundation’s “Young People’s Poet Laureate”? Is she currently finishing her 2018-2019 term as the U.S. Library of Congress’ “National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature”?

2. Raised in South Carolina and Brooklyn, is her “Brown Girl Dreaming” a 349-page memoir of poems in which she shares how it was to grow up an African American in the 1960’s and 1970’s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights Movement?

3. Was Abraham Lincoln’s stated objective for fighting the American Civil War “to preserve the union” (rather than “to abolish slavery”) because he wanted desperately to keep the 6 “slave states” that did NOT join the Confederacy, from doing so?

4. Did Abraham Lincoln’s famous 9/22/1862 “Emancipation Proclamation” actually abolish slavery or was it merely AN ULTIMATUM issued pursuant to his Commander-in-Chief power (A) to declare free ONLY THE SLAVES who were AS OF 1/1/1963 “held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people of which shall be in rebellion against the United States….” and (B) to offer each of the Confederacy’s slaves freed pursuant to Part A (IF ANY) immediate employment (for those who met military standards) in the Union Army/Navy?

5. Did the actual freeing of the slaves in the 11 Confederate States have to wait until the Union Army/Navy actually freed them (NB: Abraham Lincoln was assassinated before the end of the war)?

6. And did the actual freeing of the slaves in the 6 “slave states” that did NOT join the Confederacy (and, accordingly, were NOT freed according to Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation/Ultimatum) have to await the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which did not occur until after the end of the war?

7. Did post-war “Reconstruction” of the Confederacy feature so-called “carpetbaggers” (a “carpetbag” was a cheap suitcase constructed from common floor carpet) who flocked south from northern states in order to seek political office and/or business opportunities – against which Southern society was helpless from a legal viewpoint because most of its males, as felons who had committed treason, were disqualified from voting and the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution extending voting rights to women would not be passed until 1919 and ratified in 1920?

8. Did the American South then feature low-grade guerilla warfare against the “carpetbaggers” and freed slaves by vigilantes known as the Ku Klux Klan?

9. Did America’s “worst president” (for many reasons NOT related to race relations), Woodrow Wilson (A) segregate the U.S. armed forces, (B) purge the U.S. Civil Service of African Americans (which is the historical reason for the present-day civil-service rules which make it so difficult to fire a U.S. Civil Servant), and (C) appoint segregationists to the U.S. Supreme Court?

10. Did President Harry Truman’s famous 7/26/1948 Executive Order 9981 to integrate the U.S. Armed Forces have any immediate effect, or did it have to await the inauguration of President Eisenhower in 1953 to be enforced?

11. Did the U.S. Supreme Court’s famous 5/17/1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision (declaring unconstitutional segregation laws providing for dual school systems under the Court’s infamous “separate but equal” 5/18/1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson) have any immediate effect, or did it have to wait more than 3 years for President Eisenhower to be re-elected before he was willing to enforce it?

12. Was Joseph Kennedy Sr. (father of President John Kennedy and of Bobby Kennedy) who BTW made his fortune by violating the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (regarding prohibition), widely reviled as a Nazi sympathizer while serving 1938-1940 as the U.S. Ambassador to the U.K. on the Eve of WW-II?

13. When President John Kennedy served in the U.S. Senate 1953-1960, did he have one of the most “right wing” voting records in the Senate?

14. When Bobby Kennedy graduated from the U/Virginia Law School in 1951, did Papa Joe Kennedy get him a job with Papa Joe’s good buddy, Sen. Joe McCarthy, as Assistant Counsel 1952-1955 to McCarthy’s “Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations” which conducted the infamous anti-communist witch-hunts? Did Bobby’s service to Joe McCarthy make rare any news account for the rest of Bobby's life that did not include the adjective “ruthless”?

15. Is it a credit to President Kennedy and brother Bobby as U.S. Attorney General that they “changed their spots” while occupying those offices to become very liberal (for their day) and, inter alia, to support Civil Rights?

16. However, did any significant Civil Rights legislation have to wait until President Johnson succeeded to the presidency following the 11/22/1963 assassination?

17. Did the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibit discrimination in public accommodations (hotels, restaurants, movie theaters, etc.), beef up efforts to integrate public schools, and outlaw employment discrimination?

18. Did the Voting Rights Act of 1965 “guarantee” African Americans the right to vote in federal, state and local elections?

19. Was passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 aided by the assassinations in June 1964 in Mississippi of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner who, under the aegis of the Congress of Racial Equality (“CORE”), had been attempting to register African Americans to vote?

20. During the Summer of 1966, was Yours Truly a member of the first U.S. Government Task Force assembled to enforce the integration of public schools under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, during the course of which he was “within 60 seconds of being assassinated” (literally) according to the North Carolina State Police?

21. Was the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated in Memphis TN on 4/4/1968?

22. Was Bobby Kennedy assassinated 6/6/1968 while running for the Democratic Party nomination for President, primarily on a Civil Rights platform?

23. Is it any wonder that our author, Jacqueline Woodson, who lived the first seven years of her life 1963-1970 in South Carolina, should have had grave doubts about whether the Civil Rights Movement would ever enjoy a modicum of success?

24. BTW, did the U.S. Supreme Court re-segregate U.S. public schools in its 2007 Parents vs. Seattle Public School District No. 1 decision by approving school segregation that resulted from segregated housing patterns (the case involved voluntary busing to achieve integration).

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RSVP’s REQUESTED

The minimum quorum for our meetings has been waived while we are coping with the refusal of Major E-Mail Providers to deliver our e-mail (as documented in the four postings of Section 2 of http://www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org) -- Yours Truly and George Kunath* will discuss each month’s focus book at the scheduled time whether or not there are any additional RSVP’s.

HOWEVER, please RSVP to ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com if you plan to participate, because the RSVP’s can, BY UNANIMOUS VOTE, decide to change the venue from the Salt Lake Library (210 East 400 South) to suit their convenience.

[* George Kunath is one of my former NYC partners with whom I have had a weekly multi-hour gabfest for 31.5 years; George was our world-wide coordinating tax partner on Mobil Oil and on a major private equity fund. George has participated in our meetings for nearly a decade via Skype.]

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SKYPE PARTICIPATION

Non-SLCounty residents (and residents who are out of town) are invited to participate in our meeting via Skype.

If you would like to do so, please press your reply button and type “request participation via Skype” and we will contact you to make appropriate arrangements.

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We hope to see all of you on Wed evening, July 31.

Your friend,

John K.

PS – This e-mail is being sent individual-by-individual because of the refusal of Major E-mail Providers to deliver our e-mail as documented in the four postings in Section 2 of http://www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org.

PPS – To un-subscribe, please press “reply” and type “deletion requested.”