VOTER INTIMIDATION, VOTER INTIMIDATION, by the KKK, back then, by Trump Republicans now--just the same, same words even

 

If I have the time and strength, what I am working on now for RACIAL ENCOUNTERS is strong and timely. I just finished 2nd draft of a longish piece on how the writer Albion Tourgee and the former owner of 31 slaves, my McGehee cousin, represented the two sides in North Carolina, Radical Republicans and Democratic champion of Amnesty for the KKK. Meanwhile I have all the compiled materials for a horrific essay about Oklahoma just after statehood when some blacks descended from a slave of NC cousins were realistically trying to get away because of the fast-spreading fad of lynching blacks. (Far away, in Pennsylvania, lynching just then was becoming fun for women to watch and even participate in.) In this chapter I was helped by a multiple connection, if not a blood cousin, Robert C. Carpenter, author of a model book of its kind (and there are few of its kind) GASTON COUNTY, NORTH CAROLINA, IN THE CIVIL WAR. He's the local historian who reprinted a slightly longer version of my JOURNAL OF AMERICAN REVOLUTION article on the Tryon Resolves which is now used for annual gatherings of many of my cousins and his cousins.

            By coincidence, I am being interviewed on Zoom by a woman from Portland who wrote a dissertation on the Tulsa Massacre, the climax of the story I am telling about the blacks in Oklahoma Then the SMITHSONIAN arrived with the TRUTH ABOUT TULSA on the cover and a historical essay going over some of the pre-statehood ground I have gathered documents for. Luckily, my topic is not scooped by the writer, but I will draft it and put it out, next.

            Why am I being interviewed by someone from Portland, Oregon. Well, they have found a couple of dozen people who remember Vanport (as I do) but so far I am the only survivor of East Vanport they have located. You know the towns were built by Henry Kaiser of recycled cardboard in a flood zone and lasted fine until the Columbia rose a few feet (I remember the little reddish dirt of the berm that 3 boys dug a cave in and that two survived, one with a green face). The Columbia washed all the whole towns away, in 1948.

            Now, what's horrific about the Oklahoma story is INTIMIDATION OF VOTERS rampaging, then by Democrats, now by Republicans--who have absolutely no hesitation about trying to keep non-white Americans from voting. Anyhow, some of these chapters I will have to put on my blog. You learn from not one but two Portland requests for interviews that real people see blogs now . . . .

Maunderings . . . .