"Galveston's Response to the Hurricane of 1900," Mary G. Ramos

"After the Storm

When the wind and rain stopped and the water receded, the survivors emerged from their shelters to a horrific sight. Bodies lay everywhere. Many victims were buried in the huge piles of rubble that covered the city; they were discovered only as the clean-up progressed. Structures in two-thirds of the city were totally destroyed. In the remaining one-third, most buildings were badly damaged.

The Galveston News published a stark single sheet on Sunday morning, headed, "Galveston News. Sunday Sept. 9, 1900. Following is list of dead as accurately as News men have been able to make it. Those who have lost relatives should report same at News office. This list will be corrected and added to as returns come in." There followed a two-column list of names.

There will probably never be a full accounting of all the people who perished in the 1900 storm. In the semitropical climate, the most urgent task was disposing of the remains of the victims for health reasons. Because of the powerful stench of decaying bodies, searchers wore handkerchiefs saturated with camphor over their noses, and many drank whiskey to dull the horror. When not enough volunteers could be found for this grisly task, men were rounded up at gunpoint or bayonet point to do it.

At first, the remains were transported on barges into the Gulf, weighted with heavy rocks, and dumped overboard. When some of the bodies began to float ashore several days later, funeral pyres were used to cremate the victims.

About 70 victims a day were found during the first month after the storm. The funeral fires burned into November. Not until Feb. 10, 1901, was the last body found. A final list of 4,263 dead was published in the Galveston News in early October, but many bodies were never identified. The best estimates give the number of dead as about 6,000 people in the city, while another 4,000-6,000 died elsewhere on the island and on the nearby mainland.

Besides the human toll, the value of damaged property was estimated at $30 million, including 3,600 homes destroyed. The wagon bridge had washed away, leaving railroads the only transportation to the mainland..., Mary G. Ramos, Editor Emerita, Texas Almanac 1998–1999.

"Galveston"s Horrific Hurricane of 1900"

"Every heart's a hurricane," Erin Hanson

Origami Crane

Erin Hanson

"Breathe"

India Arie

Haiku Death Match: 2017 National Poetry Slam, Denver Colorado

Hurricane Harvey-

“Torrential rain, high wind” drive

Waves of fear and flight

"France Confronts Slavery, A Demon of its Past, " James McAuley

Paris’s only significant slavery memorial — a bronze statue of broken chains —
sits in front of an ornate building once owned by the Bank of France.
(James McAuley/The Washington Post)

“'...I wish to give to France an institution it still lacks, a foundation for the memory of the slave trade, slavery and its abolition,' (he) President François Hollande told reporters.  The government’s announcement comes after years of frustration in France’s black community — one of the largest in Europe — over what they consider the effacement of a traumatic history...."

"...For Louis-Georges Tin, the president of the Representative Council of France’s Black Associations (CRAN), which led the campaign for the new foundation, the long public failure to grapple with slavery and its legacy sends a clear message.  'It clearly means that black lives do not matter,' he said in an interview...."

"...In the 18th and 19th centuries, France was among the major European slave-trading nations, capturing and selling an estimated 1.4 million people before leaders outlawed slavery in 1848.  The country’s coffers grew rich from colonial conquests in Africa, Southeast Asia and the Caribbean, where slave labor generated the commodities that French merchants then sold in Europe.

When metropolitan France finally outlawed slavery — a generation before the United States — liberation brought freedom only in theory for many blacks in French territories overseas. 'Slavery was abolished, and the old slaves became citizens,' said the historian Frédéric Regent, a renowned expert on the French slave trade. 'They even elected deputies. But the plantation economy continued with the same masters, who then became ‘employers.’ 

'What was different between that and slavery?' Tin asked. 'Nothing.'

This form of economic subjugation overseas persisted well into the 1960s, when France, crippled by two world wars, lost its former empire. Many argue that the injustice persists today in the form of socioeconomic disparity between young whites and blacks, increasingly confined to peripheral suburbs and low-paying jobs," "France Confronts Slavery..., " James McAuley, Washington Post, May 28, 2016 .

ReunionWeb

"George," Brian Francis and Christopher Michael

Write About Now



  “'I didn’t, didn’t do it,' Wilford Hunter said Stinney told him. 
He said, ‘Why would they kill me for something I didn’t do?’ ”

"...After a two-hour trial and a 10-minute jury deliberation, Stinney was convicted of murder on April 24 and sentenced to die by electrocution, according to a book by Mark R. Jones. At the time, 14 was the age of criminal responsibility. His lawyer, a local political figure, chose not to appeal.

Stinney’s initial trial, the evidence – or lack of it – and the speed with which he was convicted seemed to illustrate how a young black boy was railroaded by an all-white justice system. ...,""...10 Years to Convict...70 Years to Exonerate...," Lindsey Bever, Democracy Dies in Darkness: The Washington Post, December 18, 2014.

"...A few miles off I-95, past acres of brown-and-white fields where blackbirds circle overhead, this small town in the heart of Deep South cotton country isn't known for much. It has a post office and a few churches, some abandoned houses and some nicer ones, ramshackle trailers and cotton fields. After church on a recent Sunday there, George Frierson was scuffing a shiny black dress shoe across some gravel at a railroad crossing. Back when he was a kid the rail line split this tiny, rural town along racial lines. But for blacks like him growing up in Alcolu, the train tracks signified something even more sinister than segregation.

'Where they actually found the girls' bodies, they say it was just along the tracks,' he said...," "...A Modern Understanding...," Juvenile Justice Information Exchange, Corey Hutchins, December 11, 2013.

Free

To live

To love

To count the stars above

Full moon rising

In the "Mood Indigo"

Of shimmering sky.

To dream

To hope

To curse the world below--

Static and stagnating,

 Imperceptible revolution

A comforting lullaby.

In war

In peace

To be 

You and me

Like meteors blazing

Within and without:

Boundless.

Phyliss Hyman
Terri Klausner
Sophisticated Ladies

"I Woke Up," Jameson Fitzpatrick

and it was political.

I made coffee and the coffee was political.

I took a shower and the water was.

I walked down the street in short shorts and a Bob Mizer tank top and they were political, the walking and the shorts and the beefcake silkscreen of the man posing in a G-string. 

I forgot my sunglasses and later, on the train, that was political, when I studied every handsome man in the car. Who I thought was handsome was political.

I went to work at the university and everything was
very obviously political, the department and the institution.

All the cigarettes I smoked between classes were political,where I threw them when I was through.

I was blond and it was political. So was the difference between “blond” and “blonde.”

I had long hair and it was political. I shaved my head and it was.

That I didn’t know how to grieve when another person was killed in America was political, and it was political when America killed another person, who they were and what color and gender and who I am in relation.

I couldn’t think about it for too long without feeling a helplessness like childhood. I was a child and it was political, being a boy who was bad at it. I couldn’t catch and so the ball became political.

My mother read to me almost every night and the conditions that enabled her to do so were political.

That my father’s money was new was political, that it was proving something.

Someone called me faggot and it was political.

I called myself a faggot and it was political.

How difficult my life felt relative to how difficult it was
was political. I thought I could become a writer
and it was political that I could imagine it.

I thought I was not a political poet and still my imagination was political.

It had been, this whole time I was asleep.

Jameson Fitzpatrick