BS: Witnessing Barack Obama's Inauguration

15 Jan 09 - 03:02 PM (#2540628)
Subject: BS: Witnessing Barack Obama's Inauguration
From: Azizi

This Mudcat thread focused on a desire for folk singer Odetta to sing at Barack Obama's inauguration.

The cover of the February 2, 2009 Nation Magazine features artist J.P. Marvoudis' drawing of historical figures who he would have liked to have witnessed Barack Obama's inauguration. That drawing can be seen by clicking here. That link takes you to a dailykos diary written by that artist.

How many of these historical figures do you recognize?*

And if you could draw the people surrounding Barack Obama at his inauguration, who would you draw?

This may be the same question, but by virtue of their life work, which other historical or contemporary individuals or organizations do you think paved the way for Barack Obama to become the 44th president of the USA?

* Spoiler alert, Here's a key identifying the people in the drawings.

I'll add some names in my next post to this thread.

Thanks in advance for your participation in this thread.

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15 Jan 09 - 03:14 PM (#2540635)
Subject: RE: BS: Witnessing Barack Obama's Inauguration
From: Azizi

I would have liked for Fannie Lou Hammer and the other members of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to have witnessed Barack Obama's inauguration. I believe that their courage and advocacy helped pave the way for Barack Obama's election.

Here's an excerpt of Fannie Lou Hammer's Wikipedia page:

"Fannie Lou Hamer (born Fannie Lou Townsend on October 6, 1917 – March 14, 1977) was an American voting rights activist and civil rights leader.

She was instrumental in organizing Mississippi Freedom Summer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and later became the Vice-Chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, attending the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in that capacity. Her plain-spoken manner and fervent belief in the Biblical righteousness of her cause gained her a reputation as an electrifying speaker and constant champion of civil rights"

-snip-

Fannie Lou Hammer indicated that she was a civil rights activist because she was "sick and tired of being sick and tired".

I believe that she will at President Obama's inauguration in spirit.

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15 Jan 09 - 03:28 PM (#2540644)
Subject: RE: BS: Witnessing Barack Obama's Inauguration
From: Azizi

I would also have loved to have seen Gwendolyn Brooks witnessing Barack Obama's inauguration.

Here's an excerpt from Gwendolyn Brook's Wikipedia page:

Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks (7 June 1917 – 3 December 2000) was an American poet. She was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1985...

In addition to the National Book Award nomination and the Pulitzer Prize, Brooks was made Poet Laureate of Illinois in 1968. In 1985, Brooks became the Library of Congress's Consultant in Poetry, a one year position whose title changed the next year to Poet Laureate. In 1988, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame"...

-snip-

Here is an excerpt of Gwendolyn Brook's poem To The Diaspora

I could not have told you then that some sun
would come,
somewhere over the road,
would come evoking the diamonds
of you, the Black continent--
somewhere over the road.
You would not have believed my mouth.

When I told you, meeting you somewhere close
to the heat and youth of the road,
liking my loyalty, liking belief,
you smiled and you thanked me but very little believed me.

Here is some sun. Some.
Now off into the places rough to reach.
Though dry, though drowsy, all unwillingly a-wobble,
into the dissonant and dangerous crescendo.
Your work, that was done, to be done to be done to be done.

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15 Jan 09 - 03:43 PM (#2540658)
Subject: RE: BS: Witnessing Barack Obama's Inauguration
From: Amos

1. Barack Obama

 2. Michelle Obama

 3. Martin Luther King Jr.

 4. Thurgood Marshall

 5. Rosa Parks

 6. Barbara Jordan

 7. Cynthia Wesley

 8. Carole Robertson

 9. Denise McNair

10. Addie Mae Collins

11. Emmett Till

12. Susan B. Anthony

13. C.T. Vivian

14. James Meredith

15. Homer Plessy

16. Harvey Milk

17. Ida B. Wells

18. Malcolm X

19. Bayard Rustin

20. John Lewis

21. Mahatma Gandhi

22. Abraham Lincoln

23. Frederick Douglass

24. Cesar Chavez

25. Sojourner Truth

26. Nelson Mandela

27. Stephen Biko

28. Oliver Brown (Brown v. Board of Education)

29. Chief Joseph

30. Lyndon Johnson

31. Medgar Evers

32. Rev. James Reeb

33. Fred Shuttleworth

34. W.E.B. Du Bois

35. Ralph Abernathy

36. Viola Gregg Liuzzo

37. Marcus Garvey

38. Andrew Goodman

39. James Chaney

40. Michael Schwerner

41. John Brown

42. Jackie Robinson

43. Dolores Huerta

44. Mary White Ovington

45. William Lloyd Garrison

46. Wang Dan

47. Stephen Samuel Wise

48. Harriet Tubman

49. Dred Scott

50. Booker T. Washington

51. David Richmond (and)
52. Joseph McNeil (Greensboro Four)

53. Martin Delany

54. The Little Rock Nine

55. William Still

56. Thomas Garrett

57. Elizabeth Cady Stanton

58. Samuel Burris

59. Thomas Paine

60. Abigail Kelley Foster

61. Jesse Jackson

62. Eugene V. Debs

63. Lucretia Mott

64. Paul Robeson

65. Henry David Thoreau

66. Shirley Chisholm

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I have heard of most of these good people but I owuld be at a loss to define their reputations, mostly.

A

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15 Jan 09 - 04:05 PM (#2540683)
Subject: RE: BS: Witnessing Barack Obama's Inauguration
From: Azizi

Oh Amos, you spoiled all the fun!

Did you identify any of these without looking at the cover key?

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15 Jan 09 - 04:08 PM (#2540690)
Subject: RE: BS: Witnessing Barack Obama's Inauguration
From: Amos

Sure! But not many. But knowing the whole list doesn't really make them much easier to identify visually, so you still have your brain-teaser intact!!


A

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15 Jan 09 - 04:13 PM (#2540695)
Subject: RE: BS: Witnessing Barack Obama's Inauguration
From: Azizi

Amos, I'm sure you know who Emmit Till is.

But did you recognize Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, Denise McNair
and Addie Mae Collins as the names of the four little girls who dead in the 1963 Birmingham, Alabama church bombing ?

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15 Jan 09 - 04:30 PM (#2540715)
Subject: RE: BS: Witnessing Barack Obama's Inauguration
From: frogprince

And, to sing along with Odetta: Mahelia Jackson, Miriam Makeba, Marian Anderson, and Paul Robeson.

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15 Jan 09 - 04:35 PM (#2540721)
Subject: RE: BS: Witnessing Barack Obama's Inauguration
From: catspaw49

I can think of any number of others who should witness this event such as.............

Orval Faubus
James Eastland
Ross Barnett
Bobby Frank Cherry
George Wallace
Bull Connors
Lester Madddox
Byron Delay Beckwith
Nathan Bedford Forrest
David Duke
Cecil Price   
Lawrence Rainey   
Wayne Roberts   
Edgar Ray Killen   
Sam Bowers
Jesse Helms
Strom Thurmond

.............and that's just for starters.

Spaw

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15 Jan 09 - 05:09 PM (#2540739)
Subject: RE: BS: Witnessing Barack Obama's Inauguration
From: Azizi

You got that right, Spaw!

lol!

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15 Jan 09 - 05:16 PM (#2540743)
Subject: RE: BS: Witnessing Barack Obama's Inauguration
From: Amos

Trust Spaw to throw a brick through the window of limited thinking!! :D Good post.


A

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15 Jan 09 - 05:40 PM (#2540767)
Subject: RE: BS: Witnessing Barack Obama's Inauguration
From: Rapparee

Why, Spaw! You missed

Theodore G. Bilbo

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15 Jan 09 - 06:20 PM (#2540814)
Subject: RE: BS: Witnessing Barack Obama's Inauguration
From: Amos

Listen Mister Bilbo,
Listen to me!
I'll give you a lesson
In history.
Listen while I tell you that
The people that you hate
Are the very same folks who made America great.


Shades of Pete Seeger.


A

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15 Jan 09 - 06:26 PM (#2540821)
Subject: RE: BS: Witnessing Barack Obama's Inauguration
From: DougR

Amos: I don't see Karl Marx on your list, or even the Rev. Mr. Wright, or the current Mayor of Chicago, or the current governor of Illinois!

DougR

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15 Jan 09 - 07:30 PM (#2540878)
Subject: RE: BS: Witnessing Barack Obama's Inauguration
From: Azizi

I just thought of two other people I'd love to see at Barack Obama's inauguration.

I'd love for actor, director, poet, playwright, writer, and social activist Ossie Davis to be there as himself, or as Jeremian {Pop}, a senior citizen who is an expert on African-American history, the role that he played in Spike Lee's movie about the million man march Get On The Bus.

And I'd love to see Atticus Finch at Barack Obama's inauguration-that's right Atticus Finch, the courageous and principled Depression era White Southern lawyer in the movie To Kill A Mockingbird .

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15 Jan 09 - 08:10 PM (#2540909)
Subject: RE: BS: Witnessing Barack Obama's Inauguration
From: catspaw49

I hope that from wherever she watches, Harper Lee will enjoy the event. A great writer who was never satisfied with anything and had only one novel published, Harper Lee is an American of no small importance. TKAM was voted best novel of the 20th century by the Library Journal.......and I'm not one to go against them. Along with many others my life was changed when I first read it and it remains THE favorite novel and movie for both Karen and me.

Spaw

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15 Jan 09 - 09:05 PM (#2540933)
Subject: RE: BS: Witnessing Barack Obama's Inauguration
From: curmudgeon

Hey Doug! What about Mother Jones, Bill Heywood, Joe Hill, Gurley Flynn, Eugene Debs, Woody Guthrie, Utah Philips?

Your 50s era Red baiting is beneath you - Tom Hall

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15 Jan 09 - 10:23 PM (#2540984)
Subject: RE: BS: Witnessing Barack Obama's Inauguration
From: Amos

Doug R;

In the generosity of the moment, I am going to ignore that snide remark.

You have a very confused picture of me, I am afraid.


A

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17 Jan 09 - 07:16 AM (#2541164)
Subject: RE: BS: Witnessing Barack Obama's Inauguration
From: Azizi

Another person I would have loved to witnsess Barack obama's inauguration is Jackie Robinson

Here is a long excerpt from jackie Robinson's Wikipedia page.
[The numbers given in the text refer to footnotes]

"Jack Roosevelt "Jackie" Robinson (January 31, 1919 – October 24, 1972) was the first African-American Major League Baseball player of the modern era.[1] Although not the first African-American professional baseball player in United States history, Robinson's 1947 Major League debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers ended approximately 60 years of baseball segregation, breaking the baseball color line, or color barrier.[2] At that time in the United States, many white people believed that blacks and whites should be kept apart in many aspects of life, including sports.[3] Despite this obstacle, Robinson went on to have an exceptional baseball career.

Robinson played on six World Series teams and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962. He earned six consecutive All-Star Game nominations and won several awards during his career. In 1947, Jackie won The Sporting News Rookie of the Year Award and the first MLB Rookie of the Year Award. Two years later, he won the National League MVP Award—the first black player to do so.[4] On April 15, 1997, the 50-year anniversary of his debut, Major League Baseball retired Robinson's jersey number 42 across all MLB teams in recognition of his accomplishments in a ceremony at Shea Stadium.[5]

He also had success away from the baseball field. Robinson was the first African-American Major League Baseball analyst and the first black vice president of a major American corporation.[6] In the 1960s, he helped to establish the Freedom National Bank, an African-American owned and controlled entity based in Harlem, New York.[7] Due to his achievements, Robinson was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal.[6][8] In 1950, he played himself in the biographical film The Jackie Robinson Story.[9] In 1946, Robinson married Rachel Annetta Isum,[10] and after Robinson died of a heart attack in 1972, she founded the Jackie Robinson Foundation."[11][12]...

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17 Jan 09 - 08:04 AM (#2541189)
Subject: RE: BS: Witnessing Barack Obama's Inauguration
From: Azizi

Well, I didn't mean for anything but the book title to be in italics, but at least its better than the entire post being in bold font which I find aesthetically unpleasant to read. I've been known to make that mistake, too.

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17 Jan 09 - 08:12 AM (#2541194)
Subject: RE: BS: Witnessing Barack Obama's Inauguration
From: Azizi

If you have not yet seen the Nation magazine cover that is a drawing of historical figures witnessing Barack Obama being sworn in as president, I urge you to do so.

A picture of that magazine cover is here.

And here's one comment about that magazine cover that was posted in the artist's dailykos diary on that subject:

"Johnmav, your post did bring me to tears.

I had to wait a moment before I could even write this.

You have captured a thousand thoughts, emotions, arguments, and stories, acts of sacrifice, and lifetimes of effort and principled stands in one image.

One image that is breathtaking in its scope, depth of thought, and emotional resonance.

If I had seen this first on the newsstand I would not have been able to keep myself from buying the magazine, whatever it may have been.

I will frame it and hang it. It will be used as a teaching tool. I promise."
-by elropsych on Thu Jan 15, 2009

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17 Jan 09 - 09:21 AM (#2541258)
Subject: RE: BS: Witnessing Barack Obama's Inauguration
From: Bobert

I hadn't even noticed the cover, Miz Aziz... Better go find it and put it in a safe place... Unfortunately, "Nation" comes out like every three or four hours so I don't get them read like I should... I wish they would come out every two weeks or, better yet, once a month... Then I'd have time to get thru one before the next one hits the mail-box...

Lemmie go find this one...

B~

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17 Jan 09 - 09:55 AM (#2541271)
Subject: RE: BS: Witnessing Barack Obama's Inauguration
From: Bobert

Another man who would fully appreciate the Inaguration would have been *Soloman Northup*... Solomon Northup was a free black man who lived in New York at the time when the US Capitol was being built... He was kidnapped and sold into slavery and housed/imprisoned in the "Yellow House" which was at the intersection of 7th and Independence (???) Ave. with other slaves who helped build the Capitol building...

Yes, Mr. Northup would most certainly appreciate this event even more than anyone I can think of who will be there...

B~

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17 Jan 09 - 10:13 AM (#2541284)
Subject: RE: BS: Witnessing Barack Obama's Inauguration
From: wysiwyg

That Mudcat thread did NOT "focus on a desire for folk singer Odetta to sing at Barack Obama's inauguration." It focused on a desire to fulfill HER desire in some small way.

~Susan

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17 Jan 09 - 10:42 AM (#2541307)
Subject: RE: BS: Witnessing Barack Obama's Inauguration
From: Azizi

Sorry, Susan. I stand corrected.

And speaking of standing, here's some information about one of the people who is still living that J.P. Marvoudis' drew in that Nation magazine cover.

Wang Dan was a leader of the Chinese democracy movement, was one of the most visible of the student leaders in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

Here's a link to his Wikipidia page.

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17 Jan 09 - 01:49 PM (#2541493)
Subject: RE: BS: Witnessing Barack Obama's Inauguration
From: wysiwyg

Thanks, A'i. It's a musician-to-musician thing.

~S~

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17 Jan 09 - 02:43 PM (#2541537)
Subject: RE: BS: Witnessing Barack Obama's Inauguration
From: Amos

(Well, exkyoooooze meee!!!) LOL.   

"...With humility of mind let each of you regard one another as more important than himself" (Philippians 2:3)."

Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
(Matthew 18:4).

A

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17 Jan 09 - 03:22 PM (#2541571)
Subject: RE: BS: Witnessing Barack Obama's Inauguration
From: McGrath of Harlow

Here's a song from just before the election which is now pretty well on the button, what with Obama right now on board that train from Illinois to Washington - Obama's Train - Bayou Seco

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17 Jan 09 - 05:28 PM (#2541693)
Subject: RE: BS: Witnessing Barack Obama's Inauguration
From: Ebbie

Like that song! Thanks, McGrath.

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