Benjamin Banneker, Thomas Jefferson and the Question of Racial Equality

In the year 1791 an unusual correspondence took place.  Benjamin Banneker, a free African American and an astronomer, mathematician, surveyor, almanac writer and farmer, wrote a letter to then Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson.  Banneker’s letter was a plea for justice for African American slaves and a statement of racial equality and it challenged Jefferson’s suppositions of the inferiority of blacks.  At a time when most Americans shared Jefferson’s racial views, men like Benjamin Banneker were around to show the wrongness of such views.

Benjamin Banneker was born on November 9, 1731 to Mary and Robert Banneker.  Mary’s parents were Molly Welsh, a European, and Banneka, a member of the Dogon tribe in Africa that had knowledge of astronomy.  Banneka was originally a slave of Molly, but Molly freed and married him and they lived in a small farm to the west of Baltimore, Maryland.  This place was out of the way from the more mainstream South, so attitudes towards African Americans were more tolerant.  Mary received her learning from her parents, and she taught Benjamin how to read, farm, and interpret the sky.  This information is from wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Banneker).

As a teen, Benjamin Banneker was taught by Peter Heinrich, a Quaker farmer who built a school near the Banneker farm.  The Quakers were leaders of the antislavery movement in colonial America and its members were advocates of racial equality, which made them perfect neighbors for a free African American who needed friendship and access to education.  The Ellicotts, another Quaker family, supplied Banneker with books so he could learn more about astronomy and sent the family his astronomical calculations predicting solar and lunar eclipses.   In 1791, Banneker surveyed for Major Andrew Ellicott the 100 mile area that would later become the District of Columbia.   He created the Benjamin Banneker Almanac, which had his astronomical calculations.  An anti-slavery society published Banneker’s almanac from 1792 to 1797.  This almanac was the basis of Banneker’s initial correspondence between himself and Thomas Jefferson. 

Thomas Jefferson needs no introduction to most Americans.  The author of the Declaration of Independence, our third President, a champion of religiuos tolerance and of the values of the Enlightenment, Jefferson was one of the most influential of our Founding Fathers.  On the pressing question of slavery, one can judge Jefferson based on two parts of his life:  Jefferson’s actions before the 1780s, when he was an active leader in trying to abolish slavery;  and Jefferson after the 1780s, when he receded from a leadership role and tried to avoid the issue.  Joseph Ellis, in his insightful book, American Sphinx, wrote about Jefferson’s early activist role in trying to abolish slavery:

“If Jefferson had a discernible public position on slavery in the mid-1790s, it was that the subject should be allowed to retire gracefully from the field of political warfare, much as he was doing by retiring to Monticello.  This represented a decided shift from his position as a younger man, when he had assumed a leadership role in pushing slavery onto the agenda in the Virginia Assembly and the federal Congress.   His most famous formulations, it is true, were rhetorical:  blaming the slave trade and the establishment of slavery itself on George III in the Declaration of Independence;  denouncing slavery as amorally bankrupt intitution that was doomed to extinction in Notes on Virginia.  His most practical proposals, all of which came in the early 1780s, envisioned a program of gradual abolition that featured an end to the slave trade, the prohibition of slavery in all the western territories and the establishment of a fixed date, he suggested 1800, after which all newly born children of slaves would be emancipated.  To repeat, up through this stage of his political career, he was a member of the vanguard that insisted on the incompatibility of slavery with the principles on which the American republic was founded.  Throughout this early phase of his life it would have been unfair to accuse him of hypocrisy for owning slaves or to berate him for failing to provide moral leadership on America’s most sensitive political subject.  It would in fact have been much fairer to applaud his efforts, most of them admitedly futile, to inaugurate antislavery reform and to wonder admiringly how this product of Virginia’s planer class had managed to develop such liberal convictions.”

In 1769 Jefferson proposed unsuccessfully that the Virginia House of Burgess emancipate the slaves of Virginia.  In 1778 he successfully passed a bill through the same legislature for the banning of future slaves to Virginia.  Jefferson authored on April 1784 a proposal to the Continental Congress that would’ve abolished slavery in the Northwestern Territory of the U.S.  that failed to pass by a single vote.   As President, he signed a bill abolishing the slave trade in 1807. 

As Joseph Ellis noted, after the mid 1780s, Jefferson stopped taking the lead in the fight for the abolition of slavery.   Two reasons stand out.  At around the mid 1780s, Jefferson began to realize how deeply in debt he was.   A large amount of Jefferson’s wealth depended on the value of his slaves, through either the selling or renting out of his slaves.  This was one way in which Jefferson could raise capitol to fend off his creditors.  So Jefferson wanted an emancipation plan that would compensate the slaveowners, and he felt that the U.S. government just didn’t have the money to do so. 

Also, Thomas Jefferson wanted to free the slaves, but he also wanted a way for the black population to be separated from the white population.  He gave his reasons in his Notes on Virginia:

“Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites;  ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained;  new provocations;  the real distinctions that nature has made;  and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of one or the other race”

Unlike some of the other Founding Fathers who were against slavery, Jefferson shared some of the same racist assumptions as many whites at the time.  Some of the Founders, like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, felt that any perceived inferiority of African Americans was due to the degrading instititution of slavery and was not inherent in their race, which enabled them to see a time when freed African Americans could be integrated with whites in American society.   While Jefferson deplored slavery, he felt that African Americans were inferior in certain areas and he noted those areas in his book Notes on the State of Virginia.  This made him very pessimistic about any integrated racial society.

Even with the prejudiced atmosphere of the time, however, there were many African American accomplishments that could contadict Thomas Jefferson’s racial assumptions.  Phillis Wheatley was a famed African American poetess who was producing poems as good as any white poet.  Henry Wiencek, in his book, Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America, notes that 5,000 African Americans fought in George Washington’s army, and George Washington handpicked the Rhode Island unit, which happened to be 75 percent black, to carry out the most important military assignment that eventually won the war.  Benjamin Banneker, with his proven accomplishments in astronomy, surveying, mathematics, and writing, directly challenged Jefferson in his letter of August 19, 1791 (http://afroamhistory.about.com/library/blbanneker_letter.htm).

Benjamin Banneker begins his letter with a plea to Jefferson to help relieve the sufferings of those African Americans living under the yolk of slavery.  Banneker wrote:

“Sir,
I am fully sensible of the greatness of that freedom, which I take with you on the present occasion ; a liberty which seemed to me scarcely allowable, when I reflected on that distinguished and dignified station in which you stand, and the almost general prejudice and prepossession, which is so prevalent in the world against those of my complexion.

 I suppose it is a truth too well attested to you, to need a proof here, that we are a race of beings, who have long labored under the abuse and censure of the world ; that we have long been looked upon with an eye of contempt ; and that we have long been considered rather as brutish than human, and scarcely capable of mental endowments.

 Sir, I hope I may safely admit, in consequence of that report which hath reached me, that you are a man far less inflexible in sentiments of this nature, than many others ; that you are measurably friendly, and well disposed towards us ; and that you are willing and ready to lend your aid and assistance to our relief, from those many distresses, and numerous calamities, to which we are reduced. Now Sir, if this is founded in truth, I apprehend you will embrace every opportunity, to eradicate that train of absurd and false ideas and opinions, which so generally prevails with respect to us ; and that your sentiments are concurrent with mine, which are, that one universal Father hath given being to us all ; and that he hath not only made us all of one flesh, but that he hath also, without partiality, afforded us all the same sensations and endowed us all with the same faculties ; and that however variable we may be in society or religion, however diversified in situation or color, we are all of the same family, and stand in the same relation to him.

 Sir, if these are sentiments of which you are fully persuaded, I hope you cannot but acknowledge, that it is the indispensible duty of those, who maintain for themselves the rights of human nature, and who possess the obligations of Christianity, to extend their power and influence to the relief of every part of the human race, from whatever burden or oppression they may unjustly labor under ; and this, I apprehend, a full conviction of the truth and obligation of these principles should lead all to. Sir, I have long been convinced, that if your love for yourselves, and for those inestimable laws, which preserved to you the rights of human nature, was founded on sincerity, you could not but be solicitous, that every individual, of whatever rank or distinction, might with you equally enjoy the blessings thereof ; neither could you rest satisfied short of the most active effusion of your exertions, in order to their promotion from any state of degradation, to which the unjustifiable cruelty and barbarism of men may have reduced them.”

Benjamin Banneker directly repudiates the racist notions that somehow African Americans have inferior mental endowments that whites and that they are a more brutish race.   It seems that Banneker has heard of Jefferson efforts as a young man to abolish slavery through legislation and his outspoken criticism of the institution, and he hopes that Jefferson shares also Banneker’s belief on black’s intellectual equality with whites.  The purpose of Banneker’s letter seemed to be to persuade Jefferson, as Secretary of State of the U.S., to continue his efforts to fight for the emancipation of African Americans and to fight the prejudices that have grown around this race.   Banneker used Jefferson’s own words to try get Jefferson to continue in his fight.

“This, Sir, was a time when you cleary saw into the injustice of a state of slavery, and in which you had just apprehensions of the horrors of its condition. It was now that your abhorrence thereof was so excited, that you publicly held forth this true and invaluable doctrine, which is worthy to be recorded and remembered in all succeeding ages : “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal ; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Here was a time, in which your tender feelings for yourselves had engaged you thus to declare, you were then impressed with proper ideas of the great violation of liberty, and the free possession of those blessings, to which you were entitled by nature ; but, Sir, how pitiable is it to reflect, that although you were so fully convinced of the benevolence of the Father of Mankind, and of his equal and impartial distribution of these rights and privileges, which he hath conferred upon them, that you should at the same time counteract his mercies, in detaining by fraud and violence so numerous a part of my brethren, under groaning captivity and cruel oppression, that you should at the same time be found guilty of that most criminal act, which you professedly detested in others, with respect to yourselves.”

Banneker used the words of the Declaration of Independence to show Jefferson to show the contradictions between the high ideals of freedom and equality of America and the practice of slavery within its borders.   Jefferson’s attempts of abolishing showed that he was well aware of those contradictions, but having an African American point out those contradictions to him must have been jarring.    Banneker’s letter was a direct reproach towards Jefferson’s own racist beliefs and I hope it had the effect of changing them.  As proof of the intellectual prowess of Afrian Americans, Banneker offered the example of his own almanac, which he sent along with this letter.  He wrote:

“And now, Sir, although my sympathy and affection for my brethren hath caused my enlargement thus far, I ardently hope, that your candor and generosity will plead with you in my behalf, when I make known to you, that it was not originally my design ; but having taken up my pen in order to direct to you, as a present, a copy of an Almanac, which I have calculated for the succeeding year, I was unexpectedly and unavoidably led thereto.

 This calculation is the production of my arduous study, in this my advanced stage of life ; for having long had unbounded desires to become acquainted with the secrets of nature, I have had to gratify my curiosity herein, through my own assiduous application to Astronomical Study, in which I need not recount to you the many difficulties and disadvantages, which I have had to encounter.

And although I had almost declined to make my calculation for the ensuing year, in consequence of that time which I had allotted therefor, being taken up at the Federal Territory, by the request of Mr. Andrew Ellicott, yet finding myself under several engagements to Printers of this state, to whom I had communicated my design, on my return to my place of residence, I industriously applied myself thereto, which I hope I have accomplished with correctness and accuracy ; a copy of which I have taken the liberty to direct to you, and which I humbly request you will favorably receive ; and although you may have the opportunity of perusing it after its publication, yet I choose to send it to you in manuscript previous thereto, that thereby you might not only have an earlier inspection, but that you might also view it in my own hand writing. “

Jefferson replied to Banneker in August 30, 1791.  He wrote a gracious letter which stated:

“Sir,
I thank you, sincerely, for your letter of the 19th instant, and for the Almanac it contained. No body wishes more than I do, to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren talents equal to those of the other colors of men ; and that the appearance of the want of them, is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence, both in Africa and America. I can add with truth, that no body wishes more ardently to see a good system commenced, for raising the condition, both of their body and mind, to what it ought to be, as far as the imbecility of their present existence, and other circumstances, which cannot be neglected, will admit.

I have taken the liberty of sending your Almanac to Monsieur de Condozett, Secretary of the Academy of Sciences at Paris, and Member of the Philanthropic Society, because I considered it as a document, to which your whole color had a right for their justification, against the doubts which have been entertained of them.

 I am with great esteem, Sir, Your most obedient Humble Servant,

THOMAS JEFFERSON.”

I don’t know if Jefferson changed his views on race after reading Banneker’s letter, but I hope it did.  Jefferson is one of my heroes, and I have other heroes, like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Malcolm X, who held racist views as young men but had the capacity to outgrow those racist views.  Banneker did a service to directly challenge the prejudice of his times with his letter to Jefferson and the example of his intellectual accomplishments.

A Year Back At Church

About a year ago I started attending St. Thomas Episcopal Church. It’s a wonderful church in the heart of the city of Sunnyvale. At the time I was trying out different churches to see where I would feel comfortable being at and where I could find God again. Since that time I’ve been reading what I can about the Episcopal church and getting to know the people at St. Thomas better. They have been very kind to me. I asked the pastor if I could submit some cartoons for the church bulletin to illustrate some of their weekly passages and she agreed. I’ll illustrate this post with a few of those cartoons.

One of the things that struck me was how similar the Episcopalian service seemed to the Roman Catholic service. I grew up Catholic, so it was in some ways like returning home to a service that was so similar to those of my childhood. I think the only major difference was that the pastor was a woman. That didn’t really bother me, as I’ve always thought that women are just as good spiritual leaders as men. Another thing that I noticed was the care that they had for their Book of Common Prayer. The Book of Common Prayer was created in 1549 and has over the centuries been revised periodically. It’s a book that has various prayers, services and modes of worship of the Episcopal Church and as I’ve read through it, many wonderful prayers. Each Sunday, our service is based on the services starting on page 323. Over the past year, we’ve had various prayers for the elections, for our veterans, for the safety of people who’ve gone through natural disasters, and I admire this congregation for bringing the worries of this nation in prayer.

After the worship we usually have donuts and coffee and talk to each other about our week. A group then goes out for morning coffee, while another group goes for a discussion on their sermon. I enjoy the talks and listening to the very different opinions that people hold. We all have different experiences and it’s a learning experience to hear how those experiences shape how we understand the bible readings and the sermon of the week. The pastor, Reverend Wendy Smith, has very insightful sermons and during the discussions, she is a good listener who makes sure that everyone is heard and their opinions are respected. That has been one of the things that I most like about this church.

Several years ago I had been involved in a series of conflicts at another church, and I wanted to find a place where one could ask questions and express a difference of opinion without fear of retaliation. When I attended an evangelical church, I learned to be quiet about my views because I knew people would not approve of how liberal I am. But I didn’t want to attend a church with the opposite problem, where people who weren’t liberal felt afraid to speak. Though St. Thomas is a fairly liberal church, more conservative voices are not afraid of speaking out, and they seem to have friends and are not shunned.

I think this tolerance for differing views is due to the Episcopal Church’s idea of the Via Media and the history of the Elizabethan Settlement within the greater Anglican Church, of which the Episcopal Church is a member. Diana Butler Bass wrote a good definition of the Via Media in her book Strength for the Journey.

She wrote:

“Episcopalians pride themselves on one particular aspect of their tradition: they are the church of the via media, the middle way. Forged in the decades following the Protestant Reformation, Anglicanism defined itself as Protestant in its theology and Catholic in its worship. Its two foundational documents- the Thirty-Nine Articles, with their Protestant doctrines, and the Book of Common Prayer, with its medieval liturgical practices- present the vision of a comprehensive church.”

In finding St. Thomas, I found a place where I could ask questions, make friends, and learn from a group of believers. I can’t say that I’m a strong and faithful Christian, but I can say that I’m in a place that can help me to find God again. In looking through the Book of Common Prayer, I found a prayer that I thought could end this post.

“O God, by whom the meek are guided in judgment, and light riseth up in darkness for the godly: Grant us, in all our doubts and uncertainties, the grace to ask what thou wouldest have us to do, that the Spirit of wisdom may save us from all false choices, and that in thy light we may see light, and in thy straight path may not stumble; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen”

 

The Elizabethan Settlement occured in 1559, during the early part of Queen Elizabeth’s reign. During the previous reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary I, the Church of England had been in a constant battle between Christians over its severing its ties with the Roman Catholic Church and attempts to reestablish the ties to Rome. When Elizabeth I came to the throne in 1558, she had to find some way to settle the religious conflicts brewing in England. So in January 1559, Queen Elizabeth’s first parliament passed two act, the “Act of Supremacy” and the “Act of Uniformity“. These acts abolished any foreign jurisdiction in England, made Elizabeth the Supreme Governor of the British church and state, and established the Book of Common Prayer of 1552 as the official prayer book. It had elements to try to pacify both sides of the Protestant and Catholic divide, and though Puritans and some Catholics were not supportive, the Elizabethan Settlement had the support of the vast majority of England and it led to a period of religious peace and tolerance during most of her reign.

I admire the via media because of my experiences in both Protestant and Catholic Churches. There are things in the Catholic Church that I admire and there are things in the Catholic Church I dislike. And the same goes for my feelings of the Protestant, or Evangelical, Church. The Episcopal Church seems to combine the best of both worlds.

One of the things though, that has caused a lot of pain within the Episcopal Church has been the recent controversies involving the ordination of women and gay clergy and bishops. In 1974 women began to be ordained within the Episcopal Church for the first time, followed by the ordination of women bishops in 1988, and this caused great controversy within its ranks. The conflicts within the church grew more heated with the ordination of openly gay priests, culminating in the consecration of Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire in 2003.

Episcopalians have a lot of sadness and anger at the recent controversies. Some people want the church to remain neutral on these social issues as they feel that a church should be a place where people could put aside their political differences and come together to worship God. They support gay rights and women’s rights, but believe that such issues should be debated in the political realm and not within the church walls. Those who hold an opposite view believed that the church’s stance is an attempt to be inclusive of groups that have historically been marginalized within the church community. If women and gays are going to be equal members of the church community, they should be treated equally in all matters.

Though I am firmly on the side of having women and gay clergy, I sympathize with the anguish that long time Episcopalians have over seeing the Anglican Church being divided by these issues. I’ve only been an Episcopalian for about a year, so I don’t have the emotions invested in the church the way long time Episcopalians have. Though it’s been painful for the church, I admire the Episcopalians for their courage in debating these issues out in the public. It seems that whenever Christian churches have tried to stifle debate or to cover things up, it has always had a bad effect on the church in the long run. Though I admire the Catholic Church, for instance, I think their decision to try to cover up the pedophilia problem of some of their priests was a big mistake that only made the problem worse.

One of the most admirable things of St. Thomas is their commitment to social services. They run a program called Our Daily Bread that prepares lunches for needy people 3 times a week. The church also takes part in a rotating shelter program with other churches in the area, where for a month they get to shelter and feed homeless men. St. Thomas also provides English classes for those trying to learn the language.

I’ve truly enjoyed becoming an Episcopalian. Whenever I travel, nowadays, I always look for an Episcopalian church in the area and try to attend a service or to just take a picture of the building. In San Francisco there is a church called St. Gregory’s of Nyssa Episcopal Church that has these wonderful murals of various reformer in history, from Jesus to Mother Theresa to Eleanor Roosevelt to Malcolm X. In Kauai, I attended All Saints Episcopal Church and my wife and I met the pastor and his large dog. In Sedona, Arizona is St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, which was across the street from our hotel. 

Emmett Till, Joseph Smith, Matthew Shepard and the Results of Prejudice

A week or so ago,  an insightful person wrote a post to me telling how prejudice affects the way a person lives out their daily lives.  Instead of walking in confidence, people who are discriminated against often live in fear of being harassed.  After reading her comment, I tried to think of examples of where prejudice eventually leads.  In societies that embrace a prejudiced view of a group of people, they often take harsh measures to keep a member of a marginalized group in their place.  In extreme cases, this may even result in lynchings and murder.  The deaths of Emmett Till, Joseph Smith and Matthew Shepard are examples of where prejudice eventually leads.

Emmet Till was a fourteen year old boy in August 1955.  He was raised in Chicago, a city with over five hundred thousand African Americans and opportunities for blacks were greater than for the southern states where Till’s great uncle Mose Wright lived.  The south had, since the end of Reconstruction in the late 1800s, been ruled by Jim Crow laws that segregated whites from blacks.  It was a deeply racist society, and African Americans lived with discrimination, inferior services, and limited economic opportunities.  They were also circumscribed in the social realm as well, as racial prejudices put them in a lower social footing than whites.   Lynchings were common in that area as a way of keeping blacks in fear of challenging the social norms of the time. Though Chicago was not free of racism, it was a far more open culture for African Americans like Emmett Till to live in, with jobs, education opportunities and entertainment that was not open to African Americans in the south.

When Emmett Til visited his great uncle Mose Wright, he did not know of the strict racial rules that governed all of southern life.  So Till broke one of the South’s strongest taboos:  a black male flirting with a white woman.   One morning, Emmett’s cousins dared Emmett to ask a white woman in Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market in Money, Mississippe.  So he accepted the dare and asked the woman out on a date.  As he and his cousins ran out of the market, he yelled at her “Bye, baby,” and gave her a two-note wolf whistle.  Three days later, Roy Bryant, the woman’s husband, and another white man took Emmett Till from his grand uncle’s home in the middle of the night.  Chris Crowe, the author of Getting Away With Murder:  the True Story of the Emmett Till Case, wrote what happened to Emmett:

“Willie Reed, the son of a sharecropper, testified in court that he saw Emmett sitting in the back of a pickup truck carrying two other Blacks and four white men, one of whom Reed identified as J.W. Milam.  Reed said that later that morning he heard sounds of a beating and cries of “Mama, Lord have mercy.  Lord have mercy!”  coming from inside the shed, and saw Milam, carrying a pistol, leave the shed to draw water from a well.  Three other white men were with him.

After the cries stopped, Reed watched as a truck backed up to the shed and three Black men helped the white men lead something wrapped in a tarp into the truck.  Later that day he saw the Black workers hosing blood out of the pickup’s bed.

It’s not known if Emmett was dead or alive when they left the shed.  According to Bryant and Milam, after beating Emmett, they took him to the Tallahatchie River and ordered him to strip.  Milam claimed that even after the beatings, Emmett showed no remorse for what he had done at Bryant’s Market.  That’s when Milam ‘decided it was time a few people got put on notice,’ and he made up his mind to kill Emmett, ‘just so everybody could know how me and my folks stand.’  When their evil deed was finished, Bryant, Milam, and whoever else was involved returned to the plantation, burned Emmett’s clothes and shoes, and then went home to bed.”

On August 31, Emmett Till’s body was found in the Tallahatchie River.   It was horribly disfigured, the result, as one deputy said, of “torture, horrible beating.”  The head had been severely beaten, with one side of the forehead crushed.  An eye had been gouged out.  The skull had a bullet hole just above the right ear.  The neck had been ripped raw by barbed wire wrapped around it.  The body was so disfigured that the only way that Mose Wright could identify it to the police was a ring that was on the corpses finger that belonged to Till’s father.  Mamie Till Bradley, Emmett’s mother, insisted on an open casket viewing to show the world what racists did to her son.

Mormons have faced persecution throughout their history as well.  From beginning they were subject to harassment, violence, intimidation and group lynchings.   Their leaders were often tarred and feathered by hostile crowds, as was the case of Mormon Bishop Edward Partridge in Independence, Missouri on July 20, 1833.  In Missouri on October 30, 1838, a militia of 240 men attacked a group of 30 Mormon families, killing seventeen and injuring twelve.  Near Nauvoo, Illinois in September 10, 1845, a Mormon settlement is burned to the ground by marauding horsemen.  In Leonard J. Arrington and Davis Bitton’s book The Mormon Experience, it gives a quote by Liburn W. Boggs, the governor of Missouri in 1838, that conveys they feeling of hatred that many felt towards Mormons:  “The Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the State if necessary, for the public peace.”  Even today, Mormons face vandalism of their church property and violence in Latin American countries.  According to Wikipedia, The MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base lists 149 individual attacks that have been carried out against Mormon targets in Latin America since 1983.

One of the most famous victims of anti-Mormon violence was the death of Joseph Smith, the prophet of the religion.  Anti-Mormon feelings were running high in Illinois and a controversy developed over the publication of a newspaper called the Nauvoo Expositor.  The Expositor made inflammatory accusations against Mormon leaders , which led Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum, who were the mayor and vice mayor, to shut down the paper to keep the peace.  Anti-Mormon groups charged the Smiths with suppressing freedom of the press, and had them jailed in Carthage, Illinois.   According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Joseph_Smith,_Jr.), a mob of about 200 armed men, their faces painted black,tormed the jail in the late afternoon of June 27, 1844.  Wikipedia describes the death of Joseph Smith as follows:

“The mob fired shots through the door and attempted to push the door open to fire into the room. Hyrum Smith was shot in the face, just to the left of his nose. He cried out, “I am a dead man!” and collapsed. His body received five additional gunshot wounds.

“…Smith, Taylor, and Richards attempted to defend themselves. Taylor and Richards attempted to use walking sticks in order to deflect the guns as they were thrust inside the cell, from behind the door. Smith used a small pepper box pistol that Cyrus Wheelock had given him when Wheelock had visited the jail earlier that day. Three of the six barrels misfired…

Joseph Smith made his way towards the window. As he prepared to jump down, Richards reported that he was shot twice in the back and a third bullet, fired from a musket on the ground outside, hit him in the chest.

Taylor and Richards’ accounts both report that as Smith fell from the window, he called out “Oh Lord, my God!”. Some have alleged that the context of this statement was an attempt by Joseph Smith to use a Masonic distress signal.

There are varying accounts of what happened next. Taylor and Richards’ accounts state that Smith was dead when he landed after his fall. One eyewitness, William Daniels, wrote in his 1845 account that Smith was alive when mob members propped his body against a nearby well, assembled a makeshift firing squad, and shot him before fleeing. Daniels’ account also states that one man tried to decapitate Smith for a bounty, but was prevented by divine intervention. There were additional reports that thunder and lightning frightened the mob off. Mob members fled, shouting, “The Mormons are coming,” although there was no such force nearby.”

Gay people also have faced much harassment and discrimination.  This includes assault, rape, torture and murder.  Various religious groups have condemened homosexual behavior as being immoral, and different cultures look down upon LGBT people.  Christian Europe and Muslim countries had in the past enacted codes that punished homosexual behavior with mutilation, ostracism and death.  According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_against_LGBT_people):

“In the United States, the FBI reported that 15.6% of hate crimes reported to police in 2004 were founded on perceived sexual orientation. 61% of these attacks were against gay men, 14% against lesbians, 2% against heterosexuals and 1% against bisexuals, while attacks against GLBT people at large made up 20%.  Violence based on perceived gender identity was not recorded in the report.

In the United States, the FBI reported that for 2006, hate crimes against gays increased to 16%, from 14% in 2005, as percentages of total documented hate crimes across the US. The 2006 annual report, released on November 18, 2007, also said that hate crimes based on sexual orientation are the third most common type, behind race and religion.”

One of the worst instances of violence occurred on October 7, 1998 in Laramie, Wyoming.  Matthew Shepard was a gay student attending the University of Wyoming.  In a bar, he met Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson.  After confiding to them that Matthew was gay, the two men deceived Shepard to leave the bar with them.  McKinney and Russell drove him to a secluded area, where they began to beat Shepard with a pistol.  They then proceeded to tie him to a buck fence, torture and beat him some more, then robbed him of his credit card, wallet, and his shoes.  The two men left Shepard tied to the fence, and they had planned to go to Shepard’s house to burglarize his home.  A boy found Aaron Shepard 18 hours later.  Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Shepard)  wrote about Shepard’s condition:

“Shepard suffered a fracture from the back of his head to the front of his right ear. He had severe brain stem damage, which affected his body’s ability to regulate heart rate, body tempature and other vital signs. There were also about a dozen small lacerations around his head, face and neck. His injuries were deemed too severe for doctors to operate. Shepard never regained consciousness and remained on full life support. As he lay in intensive care, candlelight vigils were held by the people of Laramie.

He was pronounced dead at 12:53 A.M. on October 12, 1998 at Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins.”

In the aftermath of the beatings, Moises Kaufman and member of the Tectonic Theater project went to Laramie and conducted over 200 interviews with the townspeople.  These interviews were the basis of their play, The Laramie Project, which chronicles the opinions and insights of 60 people of Laramie.  They showed a community of complex human beings trying hard to deal with the atrocity that took place in their midst.  Jeffrie Lockwood said something that most of the townspeople probably hoped about the identity of the killers:  “My secret hope was that they were from somewhere else, that then of course you can create that distance:  We don’t grow children like that here.   Well, it’s pretty clear that we do grow children like that here…”

All of us as human beings have certain prejudices that we try to overcome.   Without any restraints, prejudice of any sort can lead to the type of violence that Matthew Till, Joseph Smith and Matthew Shepard suffered through.   Even if a person does not experience outright violence, the threat of violence and the oppressive atmosphere of prejudice often makes a discriminated group live in fear.   Lola Wheeler wrote a comment (http://www.everydaycitizen.com/2008/11/mormons_catholics_and_evangeli.html) about the fear that gays go through:

“Gay bashing often includes violence and terrorism. For many gays, a loud bump in the night is more startling than it may be for straight people like you and me. Many (if not most) gay people actually live in fear of real danger. They fear for their jobs, their health, the security of their possessions, the safety of their loved ones and – even – they fear for their lives. “

Lola is right about the quiet violence that prejudice inflicts upon discriminated people.  Hitler was able to exploit the antisemitism that already existed in Germany and push those feelings to horrific extremes.   Groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center (www.splcenter.org),  Soulforce (http://www.soulforce.org/article/7), Call To Action (http://www.cta-usa.org/), and the National Council of La Raza (http://www.nclr.org/) are fighting prejudice in society and in churches. 

Though these were horrific deaths, they helped galvanize communities and inspired people into activism.  The death of Emmett Till was considered by many people to be one of the galvanizing events that started the modern African American Civil Rights movement.  The death of Matthew Shepard had a similar effect upon the LGBT community.  To know about the ways in which their memories help fight prejudice, you can go to the Emmett Till Foundation (http://www.emmetttillmurder.com/Foundation.htm), the Matthew Shepard Foundation (http://www.matthewshepard.org/site/PageServer), and Equality Utah (http://www.equalityutah.org/).

Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and the Fantastic Four

During this Thanksgiving weekend my brother and his family came over to my parents’ house. It was a nice time to spend with family. As I reminisced with my brother, we reminisced about the comic book collection that we once had as children. Somewhere in my parents’ garage is a box of old comics that my brothers and I used to collect.

Among my favorite comics was a one of a group of superheroes called the Fantastic Four. The first comic book I ever read was an old Stan Lee/ Jack Kirby Fantastic Four reprint that I found in my grandparents’ home when I was around 7 and it got me hooked. Though I had started reading comics long after Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had long broken up their partnership, I saw a lot of their work from old reprints that Marvel used to produce of the old Fantastic Four issues. They were a major inspiration for me to want to be an artist.

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby started collaborating on comic books in the 1950s. Both had brought extensive experience into their collaboration. Stan Lee came into the comic book business through the connections of his cousin-in-law, Martin Goodman, who owned Timely Publications, a company that published pulp comics. Through this connection Stan became a leading comic book writer for the publication and during the 1950s he was the chief writer and editor of the Atlas comic book line. Jack Kirby was a major comic artist innovator and creator, collaborating with his childhood friend, Joe Simon, to create Captain America, the Boy Commandos, Boy’s Ranch, Young Romance and other comics that sold millions of copies. After creating Challengers of the Unknown, a popular adventure comic with a quartet of nonsuperpowered heroes, Jack went to Atlas and began to collaborate with Stan.

The Fantastic Four came out in November 1961. At that time, the rival comic company DC came out with a successful comic book called the Justice League of America, which was a group of superheroes consisting of Superman, Batman, the Flash and other superheroes of that company. In response, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created a superhero group of their own. It was like nothing that the comic industry had seen at the time. This group of superheroes did not have flawless personalities like their DC counterparts. The members of the Fantastic Four had very human personalities: they were vain, ill tempered, jealous, and constantly bickering among themselves. In the early issues, these characters had problems paying the bills and even resolving romantic issues.

The Fantastic Four consisted of Reed Richard, a scientific genius but an aloof and somewhat arrogant man; his wife Sue Storm, a kind but somewhat shallow woman; Sue’s brother Johnny, a hot tempered teen who is interested in girls and hotrods; and Ben Grimm, Reed’s best friend and a tough pilot. During an experimental space flight, the group are exposed to cosmic rays and each members gains a super power. Reed Richards gains the ability to stretch his body. Sue is able to turn invisible and create force fields. Johnny has the power to turn to flames and fly. Ben Grimm gains incredible strength, but at the price of being trapped in a hideous rock like body. They live in the top floors of the Baxter Building in New York City, where Reed can work on his scientific experiments. Since they do not have secret identitities, random people frequently stop them on the street or gawk at them when they pass by. Ben has a fan club of street toughs on Yancy Street that alternately teased him and admired him.

From reading these comics, I could tell that Stan and Jack had a lot of fun creating these comics. Stan and Jack would get together to hash out a general plot, then Kirby would do his art and work out the details of the story. Lee would then dialogue and narrative captions. Their collaboration brought out the best in each other’s talents. Stan Lee’s dialogue was by turns, dramatic, funny, and full of personality. Often the characters sounded like narrators from an old radio drama, with certain words highlighted so it seemed like the characters were always shouting something dramatic at each other. Jack Kirby provided these very powerful art with dramatic compositions, stretched perspectives and highly detailed backgrounds. I loved the way he did machinery and came up with the weirdest looking aliens. As his style took a more bold look, he began experimenting in collage and they were some of the most interesting artwork I’ve seen in comics. His story telling skills were wonderful, and he often did these full page panels that would add a dramatic emphasis to the pace of the story.

In this, Kirby was ably assisted by the people who inked his work. Since Kirby did the art of many comics in the Marvel line, he would do pencil art and let someone else finish the art by inking it. My favorite inker of Jack Kirby’s art is Joe Sinnott. Sinnott did these wonderful thick lines that made Kirby’s figures seem more imposing and powerful. His inking style is a great influence on how I ink my own cartoons.

Stan and Jack collaborated in over 100 issues of the Fantastic Four. It advertised itself as the World’s Greatest Comic, and for a time in the 1960s, it lived up to its title. That time was an especially fertile time for great comic books. Stan Lee was collaborating with Steve Ditko on another wonderful comic book called Spiderman that was breaking new ground of its own. Carl Barks was still creating great comic books with Donald Duck. Harvey Kurtzman was producing parody comics like Goodman Beaver and Little Annie Fanny. And the underground comics produced great talent like Robert Crumb.

Both Stan and Jack were liberal, and in keeping with the times, they expressed their politics in the Fantastic Four. They introduced the Black Panther, the first black superhero, and I suspect they named it after a radical political party called the Black Panthers. An issue of the Fantastic Four had the Silver Surfer trying to get the world to unite against him to show the world the futility of war. The character of Galactus, a creature that can devour worlds, was symbolic of the nuclear bomb and its ability to destroy the world.

A few years ago, Marvel Comics began reprinting all the old Stan Lee/ Jack Kirby Fantastic Four comics in a collection called Essential Fantastic Four. It gave me a chance to read the comics that I missed as a child. My favorite of the old Lee/Kirby comics were the run of Fantastic Four issues from when they meet the Inhumans, to when they meet a group of scientists called the Citadel of Science who are trying to create the perfect creature that would help them rule the world. In the midst of these stories is the most famous of the Fantastic Four stories, the introduction of Galactus and the Silver Surfer.

My favorite Fantastic Four story is a one issue comic called “This Man This Monster“. It concerned a scientist who is jealous of Reed Richards’ fame and glory and decides to impersonate the Thing to try to kill Richards. He finds though that Richards is a selfless and sacrificing man who is about to embark on a dangerous experiment far from the glow of the press. This gives the scientist a change of heart and he decides to sacrifice his own life to save the life of someone he had once been jealous of. It’s a story about second chances, and making a life that serves others. It gets to the heart of what being a hero really is about.

Sadly the Stan Lee/ Jack Kirby partnership ended rather badly. Due to the nature of their partnership, the issue of credit over the writing of the stories became a growing thorn in their collaboration. Jeet Heer wrote an article that explained their dissolution :

“Kirby became the cornerstone of the Atlas line for a number of reasons: he was fast, his art was always solid and, most importantly, he could turn out stories with minimal script assistance. Since Lee had to write almost all the Atlas books, he didn’t have time work out detailed stories. Instead, he developed a method whereby the artists did the primary plotting and Lee would simply add in the dialogue. Later known as the “Marvel Method,” this technique had a beneficial side-effect, since it gave priority to dynamic visual storytelling. On the downside, however, it made the question of authorship extremely murky: if the artist came up with both the plot and images, could Lee really be seen as the sole author of his work?

…Alas, the Lee-Kirby team-work couldn’t last. As Marvel Comics became more popular, the firm increasingly used Lee as a figure-head and spokesman. With his family ties and managerial position, Lee became the public voice of Marvel Comics. In innumerable interviews with journalists, Lee often made it sound as if Marvel comics sprang spontaneous from his imagination, with artists like Kirby and Ditko serving merely as hired hands who carried out his vision. Equally galling was the fact that Lee would receive a sizable salary, comparable to that of a top CEO, while most of artists who worked with him drew a meager free-lancers salary, often without health benefits or a pension. 

Lee’s credit-hogging and relentless self-promotion proved too much for Kirby, who left Marvel Comics for greener pastures in 1970…”

 

The Fantastic Four was an important part of my childhood memories. It was a great influence on my growing interest in art and it helped expand my imagination. I will always be grateful to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby for the wonderful stories and artwork that they produced. This post is not about politics or activism, but just about the feeling of nostalgia that one gets during the holidays. Sometime this month I’m going to go back to my parents’ garage and take a second look for that box of comics.