Beltane: Roots and Wings

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Beltane (May 1st) is an ancient Celtic holiday, a celebration of fertility as spring gets underway.  It still bears echoes in May poles (a mating dance) and May flowers, but in its ancient Celtic time people were encouraged to couple in the fields as an invitation to plants and animals to be fruitful and multiply. As we multiply, we need to give our children sturdy roots, and when the time is right, bless their wings and let them fly away.  Children need both roots and wings—roots to make them feel safe and give them a “starter” identity, wings to fly to new places and ways of being in the world.

Seven years ago, I went to my 60th high school reunion in Torrington, Connecticut.  It was my first reunion ever. and one of few visits to my hometown after graduating from college and getting married. My sister, my mother and my brother were all living elsewhere.  In 1959, my mother’s the youngest child, I had spread my wings and fled Torrington into the richer soil of academia, first in Storrs at UConn, then in South Carolina as a Clemson professor. I wasn’t coming back.

Torrington is an old town full of dead factories and new housing developments.  My family on both sides has lived there for many generations. Aunts, uncles and cousins dotted the landscape.  I picked apples in my grandfather’s orchard and attended the annual family reunion with people I rarely saw at any other time..  I grew up in the church of my maternal ancestors and was married there. At the Congregational church we sang from the Pilgrim Hymnal and attended Pilgrim Fellowship in high school. We knew who we were, In a town that was heavily populated by Catholics—Polish, Irish, but mostly Italian, we were New England Yankees, Protestant, hard-working, private, frugal, often unimaginative, cautious. 

Torrington High School’s Class of 1959 reunion was a surprisingly pleasant; warm welcome, old familiar faces, catching up on everyone’s past.  I was assured that I was so smart and they knew I would do great things—me, Alan, and Carol, the three nerds at the top of the class.  Later that weekend I visited UConn with my college roommate to recall where my wings first landed me, Unlike Torrington, UConn had changed.  We sought out the few familiar landmarks–the skating pond, the Congregational church.  Our old dorm still bore the same name but had been updated, as did”The Jungle,” a group of men’s dorms where my future husband was living in 1959.

My mother gave me roots, but she didn’t think wings were such a good idea. I could go to the local branch of UConn, she said.  No, I said, I’m going to the main campus.  You can be a teacher, a nurse, or a secretary, she said.  I think I’ll be an engineer, I replied. (That was shortly after Sputnik.)  But being rooted in time and space among ancestors and hills, relatives and neighbors gave me the confidence to sprout wings. They eventually flew me to marriage and an adult life as an economics professor in faraway South Carolina. There I repotted myself and put down new roots, which in turn provided soil for my three daughters– home town, high school friends (they regularly attend reunions), second cousins and a grandmother who moved here ten years after I did.  They still enjoy visiting their hometown.  One daughter, two sons-in-law, and two granddaughters are Clemson grads and tiger fans. My oldest daughter moved away, saying she was too liberal to live in the South, but after adventures in Charlotte and Dallas she would up back in Clemson, working for Clemson as a graphic designer. Another daughter lives a few hours away in Aiken SC, while the third developed big wings that took her to many places before settling in New Jersey.

There are no Congregational churches in the area, so I became first a Lutheran and then a Unitarian Universalist, a faith community that shares a history and a liberal approach to religion with my ancestral faith. I learned how to respectfully hold onto and affirm my worldview while treating those of others with respect. I let my daughters choose their colleges (within some financial limits) and their majors—an economist and a physicist looking on in wonder as they grew into an artist, a musician, and a librarian/photographer.

I am grateful for my roots and my wings, and I am pleased that my daughters return to their roots while also spreading their wings.   I wish the same for every child.

Thanks, Mom!

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It’s Mother’s Day for every living being on earth.  Some of us remember as children celebrating Mother’s Day by making breakfast in bed or taking over some daily chores. Or making a card.  What can we do for our mother Gaia, the earth, today?

We can stop treating our mother the way the boy in Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree did.  Haven’t read it? It’s a good place to start your reflection on the primrose path from modest requests to exploitation.

All mothers like flowers (except for some with allergies…).  Plant something that b\blooms.  Plant something that invites bees and butterflies to visit your yard. A bird bath for her feathered children.  No mosquito spraying or toxic herbicides—birds eat mosquitos but shouldn’t drink water that has been sprayed, and dogs and cats roam in grass that is contaminated and harmful to those sprays.     While you are at it, plant a small vegetable garden (or a large one, if you have time to spare) that is organic in every way.  Organic fertilizer. Mushroom compost.  Space permitting, plant a tree, Gaia will be proud of you.

There are other ways in which you can gift your earth mother-–less pollution from fossil fuels, lower the thermostat in our shared house by resisting or reversing climate change in partners with other mother-loving tree huggers.  Hassle hour city council about mosquito spraying and other toxic practices.  Push them for bike paths and sidewalks. streets and more public transportation.

At night, try to enjoy your canopy of starry sky, but it may be hard to see if for all the light pollution.  Can you turn down the lights a little so we can see the earth, and the sound pollution so we can hear the birds?

Thanks, Mother Gaia.  We hope we have come up with some gifts that will last all year and beyond for your grandchildren and outs.

Celebrating (?) Income Tax Day

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Thursday, April 15th, is the day to settle accounts with the federal government.  It used to be March 15th, but since Congress itself can never produce a budget by October 1st (used to be July 1st), our legislators blessed us with our very own procrastination opportunity. They also blessed many of us middle class folks by eliminating  the incentive to itemize. A big $17,000 standard deduction for a single person, $32,000 for a couple discourages itemizing.. It takes a lot of charity, medical bills and state taxes to claim that much, and it makes filing faster and easier.  The current income tax code also thoughtfully discarded the exemption for dependents, thus discouraging taxpayers from having children that the nation would have to feed and educate.  (At least the government doesn’t have to vaccinate them anymore.)

If we don’t celebrate sales tax day, or property tax day, or tariff day what’s so special about the income tax?  The answer is that it is the only tax that doesn’t demand a larger share of their income from the poor than the rich.  It is less progressive than it used to be but more progressive than any other tax.  In fact, most of the sources of federal, state and local tax revenue are regressive. Progressive means your tax bill is a larger share of your income as you move up the income scale.  Regressive taxes take a smaller share of your income as your income rises

Forty-one other states use income taxes, but mostare less progressive because they want to be atracitive to business location and high-income residents. are not very progressive—in fact, many of them have flat rates, and only some kind of standard deduction makes these states a little bit progressive.  The mainstay of many states (45) revenue systems is the retail sales tax..

The sales tax is regressive for two reasons.  First, poor people spend all of their income, rich people don’t. The part the rich salt away to invest or at least save does not pay any sales tax.  Second, even if the rich spend their money they spend more on services, and states tend to tax more tangible goods and relatively few

Think about being rich. There are limits to how much you can consume of food and clothing, but no end to the services you can enjoy. (Think gardeners, nannies, house cleaners, hairdressers, life coaches, tutoring for your wayward children, travel..)  Also, sales taxes of all kinds—regular sales tax, gasoline tax, alcohol tax, tobacco tax, tariffs, are all paid in small amounts in our daily rounds. They add up, but they never show up as visibly as   income tax withholding from your paycheck the end of the week or month. The income tax is not exactly a model of fairness, but we have to pay for government services somehow, and it is the least unfair of all the kinds of taxes humans have invented.  With that less than ringing endorsement, I invite you to gather your paper and visit your computer or your tax person and make your confession of what you owe the government,

Four Strong Women of the Distant Past

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During Wone’s Herstory Week, I would like to share some of my favorite very historical women with you, all role models for 21st century feminist seeking to reclaim their heritage.  Two of them you most certainly have heard of and the other two, maybe not.  In chronological order, they are Boudicca, Hypatia, Eleanor of Aquitaine and Joan of Arc, or in her native French, Jeanne d’Arc.

Boudicca was queen of the Iceni, a Celtric tribe of western Britain during Roman rule, born in 60 or 61 CE.  Her husband had signed a will leaving his kingdom half to his widow and half to Rome.  Rome wasn’t satisfied.   In fact, they expressed their dissatisfaction by raping Boudicca’s daughters and flogging the queen in public. Outraged, Boudicca raised an army, captured Londinium (London), and defeated the Roman army a second time before losing the third and final battle.  She took poison rather than being paraded through Rome and being thrown to the lions.

Hypatia was a scholar, an astronomer, mathematician and philosopher who taught and wrote and studied in “Alexandria, Egypt in the late 4th and early 5th centuries before the fall of Rome. It was extremely rare for a woman to be found in such an exalted scholarly role. Although she was a pagan, she had cordial relations with the Christians and taught both pagan and Christian students.  She was renowned as a teacher. In March 415, she was attacked and murdered by a band of angry Christians.

Our second queen was Eleanor of Aquitaine, born in 1124 CE. She was first married to the dauphin of France and, after annulment, to Henry II of England, Henry was 11 years younger than Eleanor. It was a stormy marriage. He spent much time abroad fighting and she took care of the kingdom and her eight children in his absence.  When he returned, she supported an unsuccessful attempt by her sons to overthrow their father. Outraged, Henry imprisoned Eleanor for 15 years until his death in 1189. She returned to her ancestral lands of Aquitaine and lived there until her death in 1206, the only one of the four to die a natural death.

Joan of Arc was born in 1412 CE in the little French town of Domremy.  A17-year-old peasant girl, she heard voices telling her to go to the aid of the uncrowned  French king Charles VII. She put on armor and set off  to meet the king, who believed her story and sent her to lead the French army against the Burgundians, French allies of the invading English. The King must be crowned in Orleans.  Defeating the Burgundians, she accompanied Charles to his coronation.  However, things took a turn for the worst, and in a subseuqnt battle she was captured by the Burgundians, who forced her to wear women’s clothing, tried her for  heresy, and burned her a the stake in the town of Rouen at the tender age of 19. Her Hershey conviction was later overturned. The patron saint of France, Joan was canonized by the Catholic church in 1920. The second Sunday in May (Mothers’ Day in the United States) is dedicated in France to honoring the nation’s patron saint.

As I watched NCAAW basketball playoffs this week, I hope the young women who played so well know that they come from log line of strong, brave, accomplished women who made a difference in the world.

Celebrate the Women

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March is Women’s History month, a practice started in the United States in 1897 and joined by Australia (starting in 2000), Canada, the United Kingdom, Russia, Hungary and Ukraine. We do have to share the month with the spring equinox and Saint Patrick’s Day, but it’s still a good time to recall a little “herstory” as we celebrate the women who made a difference in significant ways.  Before we do that, however, I want to remind you of a practice that has help to hide or erase history, and that is the common practice of women changing their last name to their husband’s. Remember the old song about “I’ll be with you in apple Blossom time ,I’ll be with you to change your name to m…,” The name change was for a long time just the tip of the iceberg.  Married women were the property of their husbands, who also owned the kids, her assets, her earnings. As they sing in the musical “Suffs”, a women dies when she gets married. She has ceased to exist as a separate person.

 Most of that changed since the suffragists caught the car they were chasing for 72 years and climbed in the back seat in 1920, but the name change is still a widely common practice in more recent years. I changed my name in 1962.  Two of my daughters did the same in 1993 and 1994, and in 2022 so did one of my grandchildren. My oldest daughter who still lives in our hometown told me only partly in jest that her decision to change her name was not only to acquire a name that was easier to spell and pronounce than Ulbrich but also one that would keep her from always being identified with her somewhat outspoken, activist mother.

There is also the challenge of connecting children to both parents, which is easier if the parents share a last name. Hyphenation is an awkward solution, especially in subsequent generations. What last name would you give to the offspring of Joseph Hall- Berwyck and Annabelle Shultz-Foster?   Where do we go next?

But now there is a new reason to NOT change your name.  If you want to be able to vote, get a credit card in your own name, get a passport, or a variety of other things you just might want to do, it is a whole lot simpler for you to do like your brother or your son or your spouse and just say, “This is me. I was named Susan Smith on the day I was born and I’m keeping that name till I die.  No, dear, it doesn’t mean I don’t love you.  But how can I love someone else if I don’t love myself enough to affirm separateness in togetherness?

Having a clear record of name changes since birth is pretty important.  Especially if you married and divorced and changed your name again.   had a grandmother whose name was Gladys Lillian Barber Hewitt Schultz Rockefeller. She carried her whole marital history on her shoulders.

Norse culture had a solution of sorts to the dilemma of family identification and the right to one’s own name.  If Susan Ingridsdottir and John Larson married, their male children would have the last name Johson and their female children would bear the surname Susansdottir. Only siblings of the same gender would share a surname .It might work in a small culture, but probably not in one as large and diverse as ours. And it relies too much on first names which results in a smaller pool of surnames.

So there is a simple solution.  Here’s your name, kid.  My infant great grandchild). .Mabel Kay Didio, bears her father’s surname. At age three weeks, she has no opinion, but she might develop one.  Got a problem with it?  Complain to your parents or hire a lawyer and change it, just like a movie star. Or find a husband with a last name you like better.   But don’t expect the Board of Elections to trust you unless you go through all those papers around the house to provide proof of name when you want to exercise your duty and privilege of choosing the people who run your country.

In subsequent blogs, I am going to offer brief bios of a selection of female heroines I especially admire for defying convention and/or making a significant impact on the course of human evenes..  I invite you to share your own.  Next installment: will feature ancient and medieval women I admire—Hypatia, Boudicca, Joan of Arc, Eleanor of Aquitaine.

Giving it Up for Lent

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I grew up Protestant in a largely Catholic town.  The Catholics looked like they were having more fun.  Some of them went to mass every day, and they had lots of special days.  One of the practices that struck my fancy was giving up something for the forty days of Lent. All my friends would talk about what to give up. Come Ash Wednesday, they would get ashes on their foreheads and commit themselves to some sacrifice.  Usually it was something like snacks, or ice cream.  They got Sundays off.

My fascination with this exotic religion, compared to my quiet Congregationalism, faded in time, but the idea of giving something up for Lent did not. Catholicism was not a requirement for this particular spiritual practice. Many years I would give up potato chips, or chocolate.  Later as an adult I would give up wine.  I also added a positive dimension, to do something in honor of the season of reflection.  I had a lot of windows, even if they didn’t quite add up to the forty required. I washed one every day.  The glass doors didn’t stay clean, so they filled in the missing days.

This year Lent begins with Ash Wednesday on February 19th. I am returning to my giving up practice, but to add depth and meaning to it, The practice has to be hard and must serve some greater good. Being an economist, I think of my spending and investing and charitable giving as ways to embody my commitment to social justice in all its forms.  I am unhappy that some of the places I shop have enabled antidemocratic behavior by our president, so I explored what firms might be an appropriate target. 

I found lists on the top enablers internet, but quickly eliminated those I have no connection to.them. Don’t own their stock, don’t shop there much. Only three were consumer-oriented. My candidate list narrowed to three: amazon, Walmart, and Home depot.  I patronize Lowe’s rather than Home Depot because it’s closer, so no meaningful potential for action there. That left me amazon and WalMart.

I shop a lot at amazon, for books, clothing, household items, gifts. It won’t be easy, but if it were easy, why bother? So that’s my commitment. No shopping at amazon.  Even on Sundays.

You may not find Lent appealing, or amazon as your choice. but let this blog invite you to consider what firms you are subsidizing in their antidemocratic public policy.  Not all humans are primarily self-interested, but most business corporations are. If enough people boycott them and let the firm know what and why, we of the comfortable  class (as opposed to the oligarch class and the barely hanging on class) can use our spending power (or withhold it) to make a difference. If you want to take a second and third step, do write the company you are giving up for Lent and why.  And encourage your friends to do likewise. Together, we make a difference.

Unexpected Presidents

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Somehow another paean to the god presidents Washington and Lincoln did not speak to me. As I was casting about, a friend suggested that my Presidents’ Day blog focus on those who rise to the office because of the death of the president. There are seven, which is too big a crowd, so I picked three in the 20th century—Teddy Roosevelt, Truman, and LBJ. Two succeeded an assassinated president, and one a followed a president who was known to be at death’s door when he was inaugurated. All three had some remarkable accomplishments.  The “rejects?”  Presidents John Tyler, Andrew Johnson, Chester Arthur, and Calvin Coolidge. After his one incomplete term, Tyler (a slave owner) served in the Confederate legislature. Andrew Johnson was a Confederate sympathizer who barely survived impeachment and did not seek re-election. Serving a single term president, Chester Arthur’’s main legacy was civil service reform after Garfield was shot by a disappointed federal job seeker.

My three choices were all sufficiently successful to be elected on their own after their predecessor’s term expired. (Also true of Calvin Coolidge, but he wasn’t particularly memorable otherwise).

Teddy Roosevelt (for whom the teddy bear is named) succeeded William McKinley shortly after he had begun his second term. McKinley was shot by an anarchist.  Roosevelt, at age 42 the youngest person to ever serve as president, was best known for his love of the outdoors that led to National parks and conservation measures, and for a strong anti-monopoly policy after the excessive accumulation and concentration of power and wealth in the Gilded Age.

Harry Truman, a little-known Senator from Missouri, shocked the world in 1945 by dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to hasten the end of the war. He played a major world role in the postwar period that included the Marshall plan for European recovery, NATO as a shield against Russia, the creation of the World Bank and the international Monetary Fund. A southerner, he is celebrated for integrating the U.S. military. Truman was a determined and energetic campaigner in 1948, earning the nickname “Give ‘em hell, Harry” on his whistlestop campaign, castigating that “do nothing 88th Congress” or not passing any of his legislative proposals.

Lyndon Johnson was at heart a legislator, and is remembered for his great legislative successes—the Voting Rights Act, the civil Rights Act, Medicare and Medicaid., and food stamps  These were truly giant steps in addressing racism and poverty. 

Abe and George will not mind sharing the limelight. So I will be toasting Teddy, Harry, and Lyndon on President’s Day.  I invite you to pick your own, check him out (only males at this point) and sing his praises. It’s a tough job.  It deserves a day of thanks.

Susan B. Anthony and the League of Women Voters

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A group of women gathered in Seneca Falls in 1848 to begin the long march toward entitling women to their right to vote, which was implied but not spelled out in the constitution. It took 72 long years to pass and ratify the 20th amendment acknowledging (not “giving”) women’s right to the vote (And those women were suffragists NOT suffragettes!). Susan B. Anthony, was one of the leaders in that movement, although she didn’t live long enough to see their work come to fruition. Her birthday was February 15th. It is also the birthday of the organization that was the culmination of the suffrage movement.

By early 1920, the momentum for ratification was there. Congress had passed the proposed 20th amendment, and it had been ratified by a number of states, edging closer to 36 (3/4 of the then 48 states). .  Jeanette Rankin was already serving in Congress, casting the lone vote to oppose entry into the Great War. Even before the amendment was ratified the following August, many states had already assented to the right of women to vote. In those states, women were eager to learn about how and where and when to vote and how to use their votes to bring about positive change

Women in states where they could vote began to organize themselves into groups to educate women about voting, and advocating, and understanding the issues that entered into their decisions about who deserved their vote. The League of Women Voters began with four interconnected goals.  First, it wanted to see the ratification process to its finale. Second, they wanted to protect and extend the vote, to get people registered and figure out how to vote.  Third, they wanted people, not just women, to be informed voters who knew what those elected people were doing in city councils and state capitals and Washington DC and how those actions would affect their lives and the lives of their fellow Americans. Finally, they wanted them to be engaged between elections, contacting their legislators and telling them how they wanted their elected representatives to vote, and why they should vote that way. 

Their role, as facilitators of the election process, getting people registered and to the polls, helping them find out who was running as they decided to how to vote, was half the mission the first two goals. That role required that the be neutral arbiters of the process, which meant nonpartisanship.   The other half, which is the part that gets the League caught in the political crossfire, is advocacy. Advocacy meant picking issues, studying them, decided where they as individuals and as the League stand  on issues ranging from balanced budgets to ranked choice voting to reproductive choice to clean air and water. League advocates try very hard to be informed and articulate about the issues they care about.

I have an understandably personal interest in this organization. My great-grandmother marched for women’s suffrage. My mother was a political junkie to her dying day. I am a life member and “founding mother” of my local League which I served numerous times as president as well as four years as o-president of my state League.

For the first hundred years, League managed to keep those two roles balanced and was a trusted source of information to both the public and elected officials.  But partisanship is more intense in the 21st century, and the League’s positions are more often close to that of one party than the other.

Increasingly, some elected officials and candidates try to dismiss or ignore this faithful custodian of democratic process (with a small d) by boycotting candidate events, refusing to supply information about themselves as candidates and ignoring the League’s input on pending legislation or other actions. . Both political parties refused to continue the longtime practice of League-sponsored presidential debates, although candidate forums continue to be a popular service at the state and local levelsThere is clearly a tension between those two roles, the neutral guardian of process and the advocacy for particular outcomes.

Both the safeguarding of elections and the encouragement and practice of informed advocacy are essential to restoring our democracy. As we look beyond 2026 and 2028, the League will be ready to play a leading role in making that happen.

,

Heartless Capitalism Revisited

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Some fifty years ago, I wrote a column for the local newspaper on Heartless Capitalism to run on Valentine’s day.  Faculty in the economics department at Clemson University took turns writing columns once a week.  I told Russell, our coordinator, that I would like to write a column for Valentine’s Day with the title Heartless Capitalism. “What’s it about?” he asked. “I don’t know yet, ”I replied. It turned out endorse a popular theme in political economy of that era, presaging Ronald Reagan as well as the movie Wall street in which Gordon Gecko proclaims that greed is good.

My argument was based on the basic focus of economics, efficiency. In a world of scarce resources and unlimited wants, economists bow at the altar of efficiency.Efficiency means accomplishing the most (output, enjoyment, satisfaction, etc.) our of our available resources OR spending the smallest amount of resources in order to achieve a given outcome.  We taught our students that the goals of microeconomics were efficiency, equity, and freedom, but really only efficiency mattered, We could demonstrate how efficiency was attained with graphs and equations. 

Efficiency is not really a goal, more a way of attaining a goal, which is MORE—economic growth.Moreover, efficiency depends on greed as a motivator.. One way to be more efficient—to get more “stuff” out of your available inputs—is to use relatively more of resources that are abundant and less of the resources that are scarce., because abundant resources are cheap and scarce resources are expensive When land is scarce, we cultivate by methods that focus on yields per acre. When copper is scarce, we substitute other materials. when capital is scarce we use less capital and more labor. And so on. You get the picture. That is how economist’s explain the statement that greed is good. If greed is abundant and altruism is scarce, why not harness the abundant resource of greed to produce more output or produce it at lower cost? 

“Greed is good” became the mantra of  many economists as way to create and sustain economic growth. Greed is good weas a necessary condition for the implied goal, more is better.   I never went that far.  I had read Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful (!973). Much latter, I read Alan Blinder’s 1990 book Hard Heads, Soft Hearts in which he argued that the Republicans were the party of hard heads, hard hearts and the Democrats were the party of soft heads, soft hearts, What we really needed was hard heads, soft hearts. Efficiency is about hard heads. Equity about soft heads, caring about others, compassion, or altruism. Greed is a powerful motivator, but altruism needs to keep it in check.

Both greed and altruism are learned attitudes, embedded in the culture in which one is raised.  Like so many dimensions of life, greed and altruism are not either-or but rather both-and. Greed makes us wealthy. Altruism makes us us better persons and provides us with a world that is more safe, pleasant, and sustainable than greed alone can create.. Greed begets material wealth but at a high unaccounted cost in terms of social relations, equity, and the earth.

As you celebrate this holiday of the heart, listen to both head and heart as you navigate your balance between work and play, being and becoming, giving and getting, earning and caring. Your bottom line needs to be aligned with your lifeline.

Black History Month

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Black History Month succeeded Negro History Month which was established in 1926. Exhibits, readings, displays, and other events remind us of our “favorite” black leaders. Black history gets the shortest month of the year, so we need to celebrate fast. It is followed by Women’s History Month in March and Pride Moth in June, leaving the other nine moths to presumably celebrate Cis-gendered white male contributions to our history.

Although I was born in Connecticut, I have spent most of my adult life in my adopted state of South Carolina.  I teach a short course for the Osher Lifelong Learning Center called “South Carolinians Who Should Be Famous but Aren’t’.” One of my favorites is a black man named Robert Smalls. I learned this story from a colleague in the history department at Clemson University. j was teaching an interdisciplinary honors course on risk and asked Alan Schaffer to give two lectures on great risk takers in history. I don’t remember who the other hero was, but Robert Smalls was unforgettable.

Robert Smalls was born in Beaufort in 1839, the son of a house slave. He grew up with his master’s son as a playmate.  When the master died, Robert became the property of his childhood playmate. They moved to Charleston and Robert was rented out to work on ships.  He was a hard worker and skilled in many tasks, so his master allowed him to marry and have children.  But Robert wanted something more.

The Civil War came, and in 1963, the Union navy blockaded the port of Charleston. The slaves who worked on the ship The Plantation know that the white crew went ashore most nights for rowdy times in the taverns.  Under Roberrt’s leaderships, the black workers hatched a plot. One night, when the white crew members were ashore, the slave crew stowed themselves and their families on the ship and set sail toward the blockading Union ships. Roert knew all the passwords at checkpoints, and having reached close to the Union ships, the crew hauled down the confederate flag and hoisted a white flag of surrender.  Supposedly, his words to the commander of the US. Navy ship were, “Christmas present for Mr. Lincoln.”

The former slaves were welcomed into the Union navy.  Robert Smalls learned to read, write, and navigate.  After the war he returned to Beaufort and served in the state legislature and the U.S. Congress.  While a state legislator, he authored legislation requiring the state to provide free public education for all children, black or white. Even after the end of Reconstruction, he remained active in local politics until his death in 1913.  The main street in the town of Beaufort where he was born is now Robert Smalls Boulevard.

Black History Month

Black History Month succeeded Negro History Month which was established in 1926. Exhibits, readings, displays, and other events remind us of our “favorite” black leaders. Black history gets the shortest month of the year, so we need to celebrate fast. It is followed by Women’s History Month in March and Pride Moth in June, leaving the other nine moths to presumably celebrate Cis-gendered white male contributions to our history.

Although I was born in Connecticut, I have spent most of my adult life in my adopted state of South Carolina.  I teach a short course for the Osher Lifelong Learning Center called “South Carolinians Who Should Be Famous but Aren’t’.” One of my favorites is a black man named Robert Smalls. I learned this story from a colleague in the history department. j was teaching an interdisciplinary honors course on risk and asked Alan Schaffer to give two lectures on great risk takers in history. I don’t remember who the other hero was, but Robert Smalls was unforgettable.

Robert Smalls was born in Beaufort in 1839, the son of a house slave. He grew up with his master’s son as a playmate.  When the master died, Robert became the property of his childhood playmate. They moved to Charleston and Robert was rented out to work on ships.  He was a hard worker and skilled in many tasks, so his master allowed him to marry and have children.  But Robert wanted something more.

The Civil War came, and in 1963, the Union navy blockaded the port of Charleston. The slaves who worked on the ship The Plantation know that the white crew went ashore most nights for rowdy times in the taverns.  Under Roberrt’s leaderships, the black workers hatched a plot. One night, when the white crew members were ashore, the slave crew stowed themselves and their families on the ship and set sail toward the blockading Union ships. Roert knew all the passwords at checkpoints, and having reached close to the Union ships, the crew hauled down the confederate flag and hoisted a white flag of surrender.  Supposedly, his words to the commander of the US. Navy ship were, “Christmas present for Mr. Lincoln.”

The former slaves were welcomed into the Union navy.  Robert Smalls learned to read, write, and navigate.  After the war he returned to Beaufort and served in the state legislature and the U.S. Congress.  While a state legislator, he authored legislation requiring the state to provide free public education for all children, black or white. Even after the end of Reconstruction, he remained active in local politics until his death in 1913.  The main street in the town of Beaufort where he was born is now Robert Smalls Boulevard.