The Axe Handles

Signed and autographed . . .

On 2 July 1964, one of the most joyous events in American History occurred.

Dr. Martin Luther King and the leaders of the Great Moral Movement of Our Time, The Civil Rights Movement, finally prevailed upon LBJ — and, master legislator that LBJ was, LBJ had prevailed upon Congress to pass the Civil Rights Bill.

The next day, a group of Ministers of the Gospel tried to enter the Pickrick Restaurant in Atlanta.

Now, the Pickrick’s Proprietor, you see, was a Fine Southern Gentleman with roots in Atlanta going back at least to the Civil War.

You can see the Proprietor in his friendly, folksy way greet and serve the customers of Pickrick in charming, old, but fuzzy and blurred video footage here:

https://crdl.usg.edu/record/ugabma_wsbn_wsbn46919

But you see, that was the old, Southern, Gentlemanly charm with people Mr. Lester liked to be seen with.

Nice, respectable, mostly Southern Baptist, AHEM! — all-White.

Now, in a speech a few years later, Mr. Lester, you see, professed his, ahem!, values:

I don’t come here as Governor of Georgia, although I’m governor of Georgia. I come here because of interest, because of concern, because I’m a citizen, because I’m a parent; but more than all of that, I come here because I’m a Christian. * * *

I want to thank you for your presence and for your conduct. You know, I’m a native of Atlanta, Georgia. More than all these things though, I’m a citizen that’s concerned about the moral status of our community, about the material values of our communities in our state and country, but far and beyond that I am concerned about our youth- about the strength of our youth- their hopes, their goals, their aspirations, their intentions.

So, you would think that Ministers of the Gospel would be greeted with open arms at the Pickrick, which, after all, was owned by a Southern Gentleman of, you see, Traditional Southern and Christian Values, namely, Mr. Lester, a self-described: Christian, this Citizen that’s concerned about the moral status of our community

Well, you see, Mr. Lester, a fine, traditional, “Christian” Southern Gentleman, with roots in Georgia predating the Civil War, was none other than the arch-Segregationist, later-Governor, Lester Garfield MADDOX:

On April 20, 1965, an all-white jury acquitted Lester Maddox of all charges after the white man threatened three young Black seminary students at gunpoint for attempting to enter his racially segregated Atlanta restaurant. The jury deliberated for only 47 minutes before returning its not guilty verdict.

On July 3, 1964, just one day after the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed to prohibit racial segregation in public accommodations like restaurants and hotels, three Atlanta University Center ministerial students named George Willis Jr., Woodrow Lewis, and Albert L. Dunn met for lunch at the Pickrick restaurant. Before they could enter, owner Lester Maddox began yelling at them: “You no good dirty devils! You dirty Communists!” He then pulled out his pistol and pointed it at them, telling them “Get the hell out of here or I’ll kill you.”

Rather than help the three unarmed customers being held at gunpoint, the white patrons eating at the restaurant responded by grabbing “pickrick drumsticks”—pick handles Mr. Maddox kept hanging on his restaurant wall to intimidate Black community members. Mr. Maddox and the group of white customers then chased the three Black men out of the restaurant and into the parking lot, threatening them with violence.

https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/apr/20

Now, you can get a crystal-clear view of what this looked like here, in film of 25 January 1965:

https://crdl.usg.edu/record/ugabma_wsbn_wsbn47697

So, why bring up 60-year-old history.

Well, Armando lived through and vividly remembers this.

This monstrosity seems to have become embarrassed with itself and, while racists didn’t disappear, they became more “subtle” — I guess.

Kind of like, Lee Atwater and the Willy Horton videos used in the 1988 campaign:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/national/the-1988-ad-about-convicted-felon-willie-horton/2016/10/03/c74931f8-8980-11e6-8cdc-4fbb1973b506_video.html

Note: This vile, racist ad was aired during President George H.W. Bush’s 1988 presidential campaign.

This is the same President George H.W. Bush who weighed in against David Duke in Louisiana.

But the same George H.W. Bush who appointed Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, and, of a civil-rights bill of his administration, loudly and slowly intoned, in his trademark way of showing disdain, I will not sign that q-u-o-t-a bill.

THAT George H.W. Bush.

But consider today’s situation.

Consider Marco Rubio, who in 2016 warned against violent and divisive rhetoric of a Con Artist who is trying to take over the Conservative Movement.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has used the strongest available measure, expelling a Diplomat with declaration of “Persona non Grata.”

And who is this expelled Diplomat?

This is Ebrahim Rasool (born 15 July 1962), then Ambassador to the United States from South Africa.

As a veteran of the anti-apartheid struggle and himself a victim of the inequities of that racist system of government, Ebrahim Rasool was always unlikely to mince his words when it came to assessing the new US administration.

* * *

In Rasool's view he thought that President Trump was "mobilising a supremacism" and trying to "project white victimhood as a dog whistle" as the white population faced becoming a minority in the US.

* * *

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio was unequivocal in his response, saying that Rasool was "no longer welcome" in the US because he was a "race-baiting politician who hates America" and Trump.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg10rle1lvo

Contrast here:

Ebrahim Rasool had suffered under Apartheid in South Africa, had followed the heroic Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Mr. Rasool sees the Trump administration in full warfare against “DEI” — firing the four service Judge Advocates General (!!), firing the first woman Chief of Naval Operations, and firing the Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — either because of their sex (woman), their “race” (Black)*, or their Moral and Legal Backbone against SecDef Hedgehog’s planned teaching to permit war crimes by our military!

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* Armando does not accept the theory of “race,” a theory exploded by the anthropologist Frank Boas in the 1930s, and a theory propounded by the singular perpetrator of crimes against humanity — The Third Reich. What Armando loves are the different cultures, prominently the beautiful, proud Black heritage in the United States, from Frederick Douglass through Harriet Tubman, through W.E.B. Du Bois, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, the great movie “Cabin in the Sky” (a must see, beautiful modern enactment of the Mediaeval play, “Everyman” — I urge you — watch it and melt in the musical beauty — all the musical greats circa 1940 are there), through the Great Moral Movement of Our Time (The Civil Rights Movement) — Martin Luther King through the well-missed John Lewis (of “Good Trouble”), and including today’s masterful writer, Jesmyn Ward (“Sing, Unburied, Sing). This beautiful, black culture is a root inspiration to me. But we are one race, and we are each brothers and sisters, with no exceptions.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Apparently, expelling Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool wasn’t evil and absurd enough.

Then came the disgraceful, disgusting spectacle of President Tramp’s subjection of South Africa’s Head of State, Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa, to a viewing of white racist propaganda against remedying Apartheid and meant to justify a white-supremacist nod to Elon Musk to race citizenship bureaucracy to white “victims” — Afrikaaners.

Now, make no mistake.

There should not be community guilt. In the Third Reich, and under Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union, there were unspeakable Crimes against Humanity. But that gives Armando no right to attack Germans or Russians. (Being Bi-Lingual with German, I happen to have many people in the Rheinpfalz that I love and hold tight, and I love German culture.)

But after the Third Reich and Stalin’s Reign of Terror — the only moral answer is — Never again!

The same with Apartheid.

The same with Southern Segregation.

Er . . . actually, segregation in the whole country. I will never forget! New England, California — yep, our parts of the country did segregate.

But it is no accident that President Tramp of old was wanting to restore statues honoring the Lost Cause, the Confederacy.

It is no accident that President Tramp is committed to a war on DEI, which effectively means a frontal attack on civil rights.

President Tramp might as well have shown Mr. Ramaphosa Birth of a Nation (1915).

That would, appropriately, make the second White House viewing of this KKK Film. President Woodrow Wilson viewed this film in the White House.

The advantage of Birth of a Nation is that, at least, the film had made cinematographic innovations in 1915, that later became standard, and why for many years there was in Hollywood the D.W. Griffith Award (Griffith was the 1915 Director), until the KKK-STENCH finally became too much for Hollywood, which belatedly shut down that award!

At least, President Tramp could have shown the KKK Film as, I don’t know, a review of American History?!

But, President Tramp chose to impose on President Ramaphosa a new white-racist-supremacist film with no artistic value whatsoever.

I will here lose my normal restraint . . .

I writhe in Wrath at this Administration’s treatment of leaders of South Africa who suffered under Apartheid, and whose leaders, including Mr. Ramaphosa and Mr. Rasool, represent a great Moral Heritage of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela.

Who the hell do these white-racist, Aryan-Supremacist, ORANGE-Monsters that run this perverted regime THINK THEY ARE?”

And the way this stupid regime is inducing a brain-drain.

Because of President Tramp’s perverse-attention to the Ivy League, Yale Professors are fleeing to Toronto — home of a distinguished, world-recognized University:

https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/28/us/yale-university-scholars-toronto-trump

The stupid, evil policy is sending our best scholars out of country to Great Britain and France:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/25/europe-trump-science-research.html

This post can only concentrate on a few of the present evils at a time.

I mean, how much time does my reader have to plow through all this stuff.

And Armando really wants to talk about beautiful things.

My 54-year-relationship with Nancy, who literally is My Freedom and my Spiritual Inner Growth of my whole adult life, and whom I love wholeheartedly.

Or the great novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing, of Jesmyn Ward.

Or the Art of Anselm Kiefer.

Or the heart-throbbing symphonies and string quartets of Dmitri Mikhailovich Shostakovich.

Or the pure, spirituality of Dostoevsky’s Idiot, as captured in the wondrous translation of Swetlana Geier.

Or the great poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley, that beautiful, innocent atheist and his Prometheus Unbound that sends throbs to my heart for its soaring heroism.

But, no. We have present evils.

A Substack friend, Carol L. Clark, says it all so very well, with such finality, I will only quote her words:

But I tell you and anyone else, anyone who has learned of the Holocaust ought to be immune to hatred of anyone - religious, tribal, gender, racial...whatever."

This is the Substack Post of my ‘Stack friend, Carol L. Clark:

Netanyahu's War