One of the most important fields of human endeavor is agriculture. Tons of our ancestors were some of the greatest cultivators of agriculture in human history. Agriculture is diverse as well. It deals with crop development, livestock production, aquaculture, fisheries, and forestry for food and non-food products. To know about agriculture, you have to know about economics, business arrangements, the essence of the weather (including climate change), the population control of animals, and other important subject matter. During the early times of human history, human beings used agriculture to build up civilizations in the four corners of the Earth. The domestication of many animals contributed to the growth of agriculture. About 105,000 years ago, human beings started to gather grains. Modern-day farming as we know it today existed ca. 11,500 years ago. About 10,000 years ago, sheep, goats, pigs, and cattle were domesticated. Plants have been cultivated independently in many areas of the world. Small farms produce a third of the world's food, but large farms are commonplace in Earth. The largest one percent of farms in the world are greater than 50 hectares and operate more than 70 percent of the world's farmland. Almost 40 percent of agricultural land is found on farms larger than 1,000 hectares. Five of every six farms on Earth are less than 2 hectares and take up only about 12 percent of all the agricultural world. Foods, fibers, fuels, and raw materials are dealt with in the concept of agriculture. In our time in the 21st century, we have to deal with climate change, agronomy, pesticides, fertilizers, deforestation, antibiotic resistance, and pollution involving agriculture. Activists are working all of the time in making agriculture improve while confronting the major issues of the environment today. The Earth constantly changes. That is why it is crucial for us to know about soil development, animal species, and other topics in order to comprehend fully about agriculture. Our survival is based on agriculture literally to be perfectly honest.
One of the most unsung civil rights activists in the world was the pioneer, Gloria Richardson. She lived to be 99 years old, and her legacy is set on a firm foundation of the ancestors who risked their lives for our liberation. Gloria Richardson was a human being that I knew for years. For years, she lived in the Eastern Shore of Maryland area before, where many of my distant cousins live at. I have been to the region before as well. Gloria Richardson was the leader of the Cambridge movement, which was about civil rights human being seeking to liberate Cambridge, Maryland from oppression during the early 1960's. It was a major era of civil rights when black people used legitimate self-defense against white racist terrorists in Cambridge, Maryland. Later, Gloria Richardson was one of the signatories to "The Treaty of Cambridge", signed in July 1963 with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and state and local officials. It was an effort at reconciliation and commitment to change after a riot the month before. She was restricted to speak at the August 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. That was egregiously wrong. Later, she moved to New York City to help civil rights and economic development in Harlem locally. Gloria Richardson (who was praised by Malcolm X, who was her friend), like Ella Baker and Fannie Lou Hamer, promoted the image of black women as being active warriors for racial justice. They spoke their minds, didn't back down from evil, and inspired future generations to dream plus act in a positive direction. She lived in New York City by the time of her transition on July 15, 2021. Her sacrifice, courage, and intellect will always be remembered by us.
Jimi Hendrix was probably the greatest guitar player in history. He was a major innovator of rock music. Hendrix has been celebrated by people from across the world. Seattle is the place of his birth. As a child, he loved to play the guitar during the 1950's. He learned notes and music by ear. Hendrix was a veteran of the U.S. Army too. His early girlfriend named Lithofayne Pridgon inspired him in the music scene. Hendrix was a great blues player in his own right. He won first prize at the Apollo Theater amateur contest in February 1964. He worked with the Isley Brothers as a guitarist too. He joined Little Richard too. By 1966 and 1967, he got into a more psychedelic rock sound. His music was 20+ years ahead of its time. For the record, hip hop, R&B, rock, and funk came from the blues and jazz from the Delta. So, music is universal, and Jimi Hendrix had that universal quality as an artist. Jimi Hendrix had songs like Hey Joe, Purple Haze, and the Wind Cries Mary. Much of his unreleased music has been released to the public a few years ago. Many people don't know that Jimi Hendrix was a political activist. He spoke out against racism, inequality, and against the Vietnam War. Jimi Hendrix praised the Black Panther Party. His rock band the Band of Gypsys influenced the development of P-funk by the 1970's. Therefore, Jimi Hendrix was a black genius whose legacy is just now being appreciated on a higher level in the 21st century.
Rest in Power Jimi Hendrix.
Tammi Terrell is not here physically, but her legacy lives on as a heroic singer. Her journey in life's road has been rough. We know of the stories. Books, an episode from Unsung that I watched, and other sources documented her valleys. Yet, she was a kind soul who wanted love and respect as an equal human being. Her sound magnificently flourished despite the pain that she had experienced in her life. Tammi Terrell was an icon of Motown music, and her wit plus strength were admirable. Every song from her was like a pure exercise of talent. One of her best friends was Marvin Gaye. Their chemistry as friends was undeniable. He was her support and vice versa. When Marvin Gaye was very shy back in the 1960's, Tammi Terrell inspired him to be more expressive with his personality. Tammi Terrell was from the streets of Philadelphia. Philadelphia is home to many soul-singing legends then and now (from Jill Scott, Black Thought, The Three Degrees, Patti Labelle, and to Musiq Soulchild). She went to Germantown High School in Philadelphia. Tammi Terrell sang duets with Marvin Gaye and made solo records. Your Precious Love is one of her great records from her. If This World Were Mine was another one of her classics too. "I Can't Believe You Love Me" became Terrell's first R&B top forty single, followed almost immediately by "Come On and See Me." After recovering from her first surgery, Terrell returned to Hitsville studios in Detroit and recorded "You're All I Need to Get By". Both that song and "Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing", reached No. 1 on the R&B charts. Tammi Terrell was engaged to a real man named Dr. Ernest Garrett, who was a doctor. She passed away in 1970 of brain cancer at the age of 24 years old. Marvin Gaye, or his close friend, never got over her passing. Marvin Gaye was a real friend to her. Tammi's life signified the beauty of music, and how we have to do our part in treating our neighbors as ourselves. Tammi Terrell was a nice, gentle soul who only wanted peace and love.
Rest in Power Sister Tammi Terrell.
The events of the 1963 March on Washington, D.C. were diverse. Representatives from the Big Ten groups addressed the crowd. The big mistake in the march was that none of the official speeches was made by a woman. Dancer, activist, and actress Josephine Baker gave a speech during the preliminary offerings, but women were limited in the official program to a "tribute" led by Bayard Rustin, at which Daisy Bates also spoke briefly. Floyd McKissick read James Farmer's speech because Farmer had been arrested during a protest in Louisiana; Farmer wrote that the protests would not stop "until the dogs stop biting us in the South and the rats stop biting us in the North." There were more than 10 major speakers in the rally who were including A Philip Randolph (the March director), Walter Reuther (UAW leader and leader of AFL-CIO), Roy Wilkins (from the NAACP), John Lewis (Chair of SNCC), Daisy Bates (a leader from Little Rock, Arkansas), Dr. Eugene Carson Blake (part of the United Presbyterian Church and the National Council of Church), CORE's Floyd McKissick, National Urban League leader Whitney Young, Rabbi Joachim Prinz (of the American Jewish Congress), Mathew Ahmann (of the National Catholic Conference), Josephine Baker, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The closing remarks were made by A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin, who were march organizers. The march led with the Pledge and a list of progressive demands.
Iconic singer Marian Anderson was scheduled to lead the National Anthem. She was unable to arrive on time. So, Camilla Williams performed in her place. The invocation was made by Washington's Roman Catholic Archbishop Patrick O'Boyle. Opening remarks were given by march director A. Philip Randolph, followed by Eugene Carson Blake. There was an ironic celebration of black women fighters for freedom, but black women weren't allowed to speak massively in the march (which was wrong and a product of sexism). Daisy Bates spoke briefly in place of Myrlie Evers, who had missed her flight. The tribute introduced Daisy Bates, Diane Nash, Prince E. Lee, Rosa Parks, and Gloria Richardson.
Following that, speakers were SNCC chairman John Lewis, labor leader Walter Reuther, and CORE chairman Floyd McKissick (substituting for arrested CORE director James Farmer). The Eva Jessye Choir sang, and Rabbi Uri Miller (president of the Synagogue Council of America) offered a prayer. He was followed by National Urban League director Whitney Young, NCCIJ director Mathew Ahmann, and NAACP leader Roy Wilkins. After a performance by singer Mahalia Jackson, American Jewish Congress president Joachim Prinz spoke, followed by SCLC president Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Rustin read the March's official demands for the crowd's approval, and Randolph led the crowd in a pledge to continue working for the March's goals. The program was closed with a benediction by Morehouse College president Benjamin Mays.
Although one of the officially stated purposes of the march was to support the civil rights bill introduced by the Kennedy Administration, several of the speakers criticized the proposed law as insufficient. Two government agents stood by in a position to cut power to the microphone if necessary. Roy Wilkins announced that legendary sociologist and activist W.E.B. DuBois had died in Ghana the previous night. DuBois was in exile, and the crowd observed a moment of silence in his memory. Wilkins (who was a more moderate civil rights leader. He called Black Power racist which isn't true. Also, he disagreed with Dr. King's opposition to the Vietnam War. Wilkins only opposed the Vietnam War when Nixon was President) and didn't want to announce the news, because he didn't agree with DuBois becoming a Communist. He did because Randolph would have done it. Wilkins said: "Regardless of the fact that in his later years, Dr. Du Bois chose another path, it is incontrovertible that at the dawn of the twentieth century, his was the voice that was calling you to gather here today in this cause. If you want to read something that applies to 1963 go back and get a volume of The Souls of Black Folk by Du Bois, published in 1903." John Lewis of SNCC was the youngest speaker at the event. He wanted to give a stronger speech to criticize the Kennedy administration for the inadequacies of the Civil Rights Act of 1963 and not going far enough to fight for racial justice. James Forman and other SNCC leaders contributed to the revision. They felt that Kennedy didn't do enough to protect southern black human beings and civil rights workers from physical violence by white racists in the Deep South. Many leaders in the march wanted his original speech to be changed. John Lewis at first refused, but he did it out of respect for Randolph (who spent his whole life making the march a reality). The following words of John Lewis's speech are parts that were deleted:
"...In good conscience, we cannot support wholeheartedly the administration's civil rights bill, for it is too little and too late. ...I want to know, which side is the federal government on? ...The revolution is a serious one. Mr. Kennedy is trying to take the revolution out of the streets and put it into the courts. Listen, Mr. Kennedy. Listen, Mr. Congressman. Listen, fellow citizens. The black masses are on the march for jobs and freedom, and we must say to the politicians that there won't be a "cooling-off" period... We will march through the South, through the heart of Dixie, the way Sherman did. We shall pursue our own scorched earth policy and burn Jim Crow to the ground—nonviolently ..."
John Lewis's original speech was sent to organizers and the media. Reuther, O'Boyle, and others falsely thought it was too divisive and militant, but these men didn't experienced what black people experienced for centuries in America. O'Boyle from the Catholic delegation was about to leave the march at one point before the Lewis original speech. Rustin informed Lewis at 2 A.M. on the day of the march that his speech was unacceptable to key coalition members (Rustin also reportedly contacted Tom Kahn, mistakenly believing that Kahn had edited the speech and inserted the line about Sherman's March to the Sea. Rustin asked, "How could you do this? Do you know what Sherman did?" The Confederate terrorists weren't playing checkers. They were traitors). Yet, Lewis did not want to change the speech. Other members of SNCC, including Kwame Ture, were also adamant that the speech is not censored. The dispute continued until minutes before the speeches were scheduled to begin. Under threat of public denouncement by the religious leaders, and under pressure from the rest of his coalition, Lewis agreed to omit some of the passages. Many activists from SNCC, CORE, and SCLC were angry at what they considered censorship of Lewis's speech. In the end, Lewis added a qualified endorsement of Kennedy's civil rights legislation, saying: "It is true that we support the administration's Civil Rights Bill. We support it with great reservation, however." Even after toning down his speech, Lewis called for activists to "get in and stay in the streets of every city, every village and hamlet of this nation until true freedom comes."
James Baldwin was prevented to give his speech, because everybody knows that James Baldwin was too militant and progressive. Baldwin said that the March was co-opted by interests from the establishment. Despite the protests of organizer Anna Arnold Hedgeman, no women gave a speech at the March. Male organizers attributed this omission to the "difficulty of finding a single woman to speak without causing serious problems vis-à-vis other women and women's groups." We know that to be a total lie as tons of women were leaders and activists in the movement. Although Gloria Richardson was on the program and had been asked to give a two-minute speech, when she arrived at the stage her chair with her name on it had been removed, and the event marshal took her microphone away after she said "hello." Richardson, along with Rosa Parks and Lena Horne, was escorted away from the podium before Martin Luther King Jr. spoke. Early plans for the march would have included an "Unemployed Worker" as one of the speakers. This position was eliminated, furthering criticism of the March's middle-class bias. Singers like Mahalia Jackson, Joan Baez, Boy Dylan, Peter, Paul, and Mary, and Odetta performed. Some participants like Dick Gregory wanted more groups to participate in the singing and more black people to be singing. Walter Reuther wanted politicians to address injustices.
Dr. Martin Luther Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech during the march. He gave his dream previously in Detroit months before during the Walk for Freedom movement. The I Have a Dream was both a condemnation of injustices in America and a call for a better future. Dr. Martin Luther King was an American civil rights leader and a Baptist minister. In front of over 250,000 human beings, he gave his speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. It was one of the greatest speeches in human history. In the speech, Dr. King invoked the Emancipation Proclamation, the United States Constitution, and religious themes to make the point that racism and oppression have no place in our world. There are two major parts of the I Have a Dream speech. The first part was the condemnation of American racism, poverty, of injustice in general, and the structural forms of evil harming black Americans. Dr. King wanted to use real language to make a distinction between the American reality (filled with police brutality and economic oppression) and the American dream. Dr. King said that "our federal government has also scarred the dream through its apathy and hypocrisy, its betrayal of the cause of justice." King suggested that "It may well be that the Negro is God's instrument to save the soul of America." Dr. King gave a similar I Have a Dream speech on November 27, 1962, King gave a speech at Booker T. Washington High School in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. The 1963 March on Washington I Have a Dream speech was drafted with the assistance of Stanley Levison and Clarence Benjamin Jones in Riverdale, New York City. Jones has said that "the logistical preparations for the march were so burdensome that the speech was not a priority for us" and that, "on the evening of Tuesday, Aug. 27, [12 hours before the march] Martin still didn't know what he was going to say." Dr. King, a student of American history, invoked the Abraham Lincoln Gettysburg Address too. He wanted to have urgency in his words by saying "Now is the time."
Among the most quoted lines of the speech are "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!" According to US Representative John Lewis, who also spoke that day as the president of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, "Dr. King had the power, the ability, and the capacity to transform those steps on the Lincoln Memorial into a monumental area that will forever be recognized. By speaking the way he did, he educated, he inspired, he informed not just the people there, but people throughout America and unborn generations." King describes the promises made by America as a "promissory note" on which America has defaulted. He says that "America has given the Negro people a bad check", but that "we've come to cash this check" by marching in Washington, D.C. The style of old-school black Christian speeches were found in the cadence of his words. Biblical phrases were found in his words too.
Toward the end of the speech, King departed from his prepared text for a partly improvised peroration on the theme "I have a dream", prompted by Mahalia Jackson's cry: "Tell them about the dream, Martin!" In this part of the speech, which most excited the listeners and has now become it is most famous, King described his dreams of freedom and equality arising from a land of slavery and hatred. In the final parts of the speech, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said these words:
"...And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that, let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, Black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last..."
Immediately, the crowd in Washington, D.C. experienced a sense of euphoria, joy, and happiness over the speech. Hoover hated Dr. King because of jealousy. COINTELPRO head and FBI agent William C. Sullivan considered Dr. King the "most dangerous" black man in the future of the nation after his I Have a Dream speech. At the end of the speech, the crowd soared in joy and inspiration to find solutions. In the wake of the speech and march, King was named Man of the Year by TIME magazine for 1963, and in 1964 he was the youngest man ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
The event featured many prominent celebrities in addition to singers on the program. Josephine Baker, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, James Baldwin, Jackie Robinson, Sammy Davis, Jr., Dick Gregory, Eartha Kitt, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Diahann Carroll, and Lena Horne were among the black celebrities attending. There were also quite a few white and Latino celebrities who attended or helped fund the March in support of the cause: Tony Curtis, James Garner, Robert Ryan, Charlton Heston, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Rita Moreno, Marlon Brando, Bobby Darin, and Burt Lancaster, among others. Judy Garland was part of the planning committee and was also scheduled to perform but had to drop out at the last minute due to commitments to her TV variety series.
The 1963 March on Washington ended with a great sense of enthusiasm. President John F. Kennedy watched the march on television and was pleased. The march wasn't perfect as it excluded many women speakers, some speeches were watered down, and there was co-option by some establishment interests (as said by Malcolm X and other critics. Malcolm X's Message to the Grass Roots speech criticized the march as a picnic and a circus), but the crowd of the people was inspired to fight for social change. The chances for the civil rights bill increased. Kennedy met with the march leaders in the White House on August 28, 1963. The news media covered the march massively. Randolph and Rustin abandoned their belief in the effectiveness of marching on Washington. King maintained faith that action in Washington could work but determined that future marchers would need to call greater attention to economic injustice. In 1967–1968, he organized a Poor People's Campaign to occupy the National Mall with a shantytown. Segregationists including William Jennings Bryan Dorn criticized the government for cooperating with civil rights activists. Senator Olin D. Johnston rejected an invitation to attend the march, because he was a white segregationist. The march was not perfect, but it inspired grassroots activism that caused the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to exist. Anniversary marches existed in 1983, 1988, and in 2013. Today, we have a long way to go. Kathleen Cleaver said that only revolution would cause American society to have the real redistribution of wealth and power to end exclusion and inequalities. There was the 2020 Virtual March on Washington, D.C. because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It opposed racial injustice and police brutality. On August 28, 2021, people marched for voting rights and for the statehood of Washington, D.C. Among the speakers were Martin Luther King III, his wife and Drum Major Institute president Arndrea Waters King, daughter Yolanda, National Action Network leader Rev. Al Sharpton and Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser. Other speakers at the event included Democratic U.S. Representatives Joyce Beatty, of Ohio, Terri Sewell, of Alabama, Sheila Jackson Lee and Al Green, both of Texas, and Mondaire Jones, of New York; NAACP president Derrick Johnson; and Philonise Floyd, activist and brother of George Floyd.
Since 1963, we have seen the growth of social activism, but racial injustice and economic inequality haven't been gone. We see homeownership being a struggle for many in our communities, and we witness corporate exploitation. By 2013, the Economic Policy Institute created many reports about the topic of "The Unfinished March." These reports studied the goals of the original march and tried to find out how much progress was made. They promoted the views of Randolph and Rustin that civil rights alone can't transform the people's quality of life without economic justice. I agree with them on that issue. The reports said that the March's main goals (of housing, integrated education, and widespread employment at living wages) wasn't accomplished. They mentioned that legal advances were made. Yet, black people in many cases live in concentrated areas of poverty where many black people have miseducation and unemployment. Dedrick Muhammad of the NAACP wrote that racial inequality of income and homeownership has increased since 1963 and worsened during the recent Great Recession.
It has been over one year since the war in Ukraine. Conservative and liberal Putin apologists have been exposed as being hypocrites. The war started with the Russian illegal and immoral invasion of Ukraine. Russian government leaders doing this invasion have done a crime against international law. Putin's goal, as said in his own words, is to colonize Ukraine as Putin doesn't respect Ukraine as its own independent nation. Putin is not a progressive, but a far-right nationalist who has an authoritarian government. In Russia now, Russian dissidents are readily arrested, religious liberty is restricted, the freedom of the press is restricted, and innocent people are arrested all of the time. Many Russian Tsars and Stalin once colonized Ukraine. Therefore, the Ukrainian people deserve our solidarity and support to fight for democracy and freedom. Russia's invasion is part of imperialism (or the domination and exploitation of other locations by capitalist states). Putin made it clear that he wanted to conquer Ukraine before the war started. Russian forces have raped civilians, used bombs on civilian targets (including churches and schools), and made many lies about Ukraine. We know that many Western/NATO forces are supporting Ukraine's resistance, not out of revolutionary reasons, but because they want to have imperialist influence in that region. NATO is complicit in the interventions of Libya, etc. We must be clear to oppose Western imperialism and Russian imperialism. We support the right of the Ukrainian people to defeat Russian aggression so Ukraine can be its own independent nation. We support Russian dissidents in fighting for freedom in Russia. The war should end with Russian military forces ending their invasion of Ukraine.
By Timothy
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