July 2, 1864, July 2, 1964 and July 2, 2014

Without Life, Nothing Matters.

By Dennis Howard

July 2nd, 1864

“The Escaped Slave And The Union Soldier.” ¹

THE ESCAPED SLAVE AND THE UNION SOLDIER
Civil War Harper’s Weekly, July 2nd, 1864, page 422,428

“SURELY not the least interesting of the varied war pictures which we present to our readers this week will be two sketches on page 428-one, the picture of a Negro slave, who fled from Montgomery, Alabama, to Chattanooga, for the express purpose of enlisting in the army of the Union; the other, a picture of this same negro, endowed for the first time with his birth-right of freedom, and allowed the privilege dearer to him than any other – that of fighting for the nationwhich is hereafter pledged to protect him and his. Are these not affecting pictures which are here presented to us? On the one side, the poor fugitive oppressed with the weariness of two hundred long miles of dusty travel, a journey interrupted by a thousand necessary precautions, and harassed by timid suggestions of a fate more horrible than death if he is discovered; with his meagre covering of rags about him: and on the other side, the soldier crowned with freedom and honor. Can we not at length have faith in that heroism which has been so gloriously illustrated at Wagner and Olustee and Petersburg, and which, in the face of the Fort Pillow massacre, yet offers itself afresh in the person of a poor fugitive, who, from the heart of the enemy’s country, gives himself, at the risk of death or of a torture worse than death, to a cause simply because it is inevitably associated, with the problem of his freedom?” ²

July 2nd, 1964

The Civil Rights Act Of 1964 Was Landmark Legislation.

“The United States will not be fully free until all of its citizens are free.” ³ — John F. Kennedy

Following the Civil War (1861-1865), the Civil Rights Act of 1866 was passed which prohibited racial discrimination in housing (without any enforcement provisions) and a trio of constitutional amendments. ⁴ Specifically and in order, the Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) ⁵ to the Constitution of the United States of America abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) ⁶ to the Constitution of the United States of America was adopted on July 9th, 1868, as one of theReconstruction Era Amendments (1865-1877) ⁷ and addressed citizenship rights and equal protection of the laws. Finaly, the Fifteenth Amendment (Amendment XV) ⁸ to the Constitution of the United States of America prohibited the federal and state governments from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen’s “race, color, or previous condition of servitude”. ⁹ Nevertheless, in the South many states condoned violence from White supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) ¹⁰ and devised poll taxes,¹¹ literacy tests,¹² “Jim Crow” laws,¹³ “Black Codes,” ¹⁴ the “One-Drop Rule” ¹⁵ and other similar legal constructs to keep Black Americans disenfranchised.

“Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., revealed at Toronto, Canada, Friday that he had been invited by President Kennedy to submit for his signature a Second Emancipation Proclamation. The invitation came after Dr. King visited the White House for a discussion of the segregation problem. The document will be ready before May 17, Dr. King said.” ¹⁶ — The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Established in 1968 by Mrs. Coretta Scott King

For the next eighty (80) years, after the Reconstruction Era (1865-1877), the Congress of the United States of America did not pass a single Civil Rights act. ¹⁷ At last, in 1957, it established a Civil Rights section of the Justice Department, along with a Commission on Civil Rights to investigate discriminatory conditions. ¹⁸ In 1961 John F. Kennedy entered the White House as President of the United States of America,¹⁹ he initially delayed anti-discrimination measures,²⁰ however with violent protests throughout the racially charged and divided South (including Birmingham, Alabama,²¹ where the local police brutally suppressed nonviolent demonstrators with dogs, clubs and high-pressure fire hoses) Kennedy finally decided to act. So in June of 1963 he proposed legislation that would be by far the most comprehensive Civil Rights legislation to date and ultimately would become the Civil Rights Act Of 1964.²² TheCivil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin and ended unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation in schools, at the workplace and by facilities that served the general public.²³ While for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. the Civil Rights Act Of 1964was nothing less than a “Second Emancipation Proclamation,” follow-up legislation such as the Voting Rights Act of 1965,²⁴ which prohibited literacy tests and other discriminatory voting practices and the Fair Housing Act of 1968,²⁵ which banned discrimination in the sale, rental and financing of property was still needed.

July 2nd, 2014

Today The Babies Are Not Free . . .

“It has been 50 years of Civil Rights struggles and 395 years of oppression against Blacks, and still today in the 21st century the babies are not free and the wombs of women are still endangered. Let our people go!” ²⁶ — Dr. Alveda C. King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

ABORTION takes the life of an innocent human being and the death toll is staggering. The number of babies aborted each year worldwide equal more than fifty-seven million 57,000,000.²⁷ The number of babies aborted throughout the world since World War II is more than 1.6 billion.²⁸ The top three (3) countries in number of abortions annually are as follows: (1) Red China with over eleven million (11,000,000), (2) the Former Soviet Union with over six million (6,000,000) and (3) the United States of America with over one million (1,000,000).²⁹ The former Soviet Union has the highest abortion|birth ratio in the world at three-hundred (300) abortions for every one-hundred (100) live births, and declining.³⁰ The city with the highest abortion|birth ratio in the United States of America is Washington, D.C., at two-hundred and sixty-five (265) abortions for every every one-hundred (100) live births.³¹ The total number of abortions in the United States from 1967-2014 has taken over fifty-six million (56,000,000) lives.³² That’s more than the entire population of eighty-two (82) of the largest cities in the United States of America.³³ Since September 11th, 2001, America has aborted more than fourteen (14) million babies.³⁴By way of comparison, that’s more than twice the number Jews killed during the Nazi Holocaust (6,000,000).³⁵ Between 1864 and 1968, 4,946 Black Americans were lynched.³⁶ That’s 47.7 per year. By way of comparison, the number of Black American babies aborted between 1973 and 2014 exceeds more than nineteen (19) million.³⁷ Thats more than 450,000 per year. The number of all American battle deaths since 1776 exceeds six-hundred and fifty-thousand (650,000) lives lost in war.³⁸ By way of comparison, the number of lives lost to abortion in the United States of America between 1967-2014 exceeds more than fifty-seven million (57,000,000).³⁹ The ratio of American abortions to battle deaths in all American wars is 87.6 to 1.⁴⁰ The number of Americans of all ages and races murdered daily by handguns is twenty-eight (28).⁴¹ By way of comparison, the number of American babies of all races killed every day by abortion is over three thousand (3,000).⁴² The fertility rate of women in the United States, which measures the number of expected births the average woman will have in her lifetime, dropped to under 1.87.⁴³ This rate (a record low) is below replacement level (2.1 births per woman), the level at which a given generation can exactly replicate itself.⁴⁴ To make matters worse, the total fertility rate has not been above replacement level since 2007, and it has dropped every year since.⁴⁵ The record is clear, very clear. Abortion in the United States of America has taken more lives than any weapon formed against us to date.