It's a bit reassuring to think that hardly anyone will see these posts. There's got to be something jarring about an ignorant white guy's take on Black History Month. Still the motivation is to try for a little while to become not quite so ignorant.

An old interview with the mucisian Taj Mahal came to mind where he talked about how he got his name. I couldn't find that interview, but the story was that Taj Mahal's father admired Gandhi and named him Taj in an Indian frame of mind. I've probably botched the story. But Taj Mahal is a wonderful storyteller and has been generous about giving interviews. Here are a couple: www.coraconnection.com/pages/...le.html and especially www.puremusic.com/taj2.html

I remember hearing some Jazz songs with Gandhi at the center; one of the singers has some sort of royal title, but I can't for the life of me think what it is. Here's the Wikipedia on Jazz Royalty en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_royalty

What intriques me is obviously the ideas of Gandhi were part of the cultural currency before Martin Luther King, Jr. Okay, the idea of civil disobedience was written about by Thoreau en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henr...id_Thoreau but there's always been a question in my mind where this whole philosophy of nonviolence for social justice came from. As a baby boomer, it seemed something outside the American traditon of violence in service to one cause or another.

Gandhi's tactics were important to the movement here in the USA as this interesting essay by Richard G. Fox, "How Westerners Rewrote Gandhi's Message" reveals www.neh.gov/news/humanit...1/gandhi.html It's from that essay I learned about James L. Farmer, he's the guy in the picture. Farmer was awarded the Medal of Freedom in 1998 www.medaloffreedom.com/JamesFarmer.htm

>[T]he Medal of Freedom is designed for persons the president deems to have made especially meritorious contributions to the security of national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public and private endeavors.<

Farmer founded the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in 1942. CORE organized The Freedom Riders:

"On one tense occasion in the early 1960's, after a particularly vicious spate of violence, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy suggested that Farmer's followers postpone some of their "freedom rides" -- designed to desegregate the interstate bus system in the South -- so that everyone could "cool off." Farmer refused, saying, "We have been cooling off for 350 years."

Farmer's died in July 1999. It takes a month of February to remember the contributions of black people to human civilization. I hope I'll remember James Farmer's name in July, in November, and all year long.

Farmer wrote: Lay Bare the Heart: An Autobiography of the Civl Rights Movement www.amazon.com/gp/product...006-6669561