The Old Folks Home

[The Yakima Kid]

I try to forget some of those things but in my minds eye, I can still see the events. Shameful.

Do you need a carpentry discussion?

I don't recall the '68 riot in St. Louis. I do know there were terrible race riots in East St. Louis, Illinois in 1917 that officially killed 39 blacks and 8 whites but other reports put the total at closer to 400.
It started because people were angry that blacks were getting good industrial factory jobs. Then rumors spread about black men fraternizing with white women.
3000 white men descended on the downtown area and randomly attacked black men. Over 200 buildings were destroyed. They even killed a 14 year old boy and scalped his mother.
The governor called in the national guard but reports were that they joined in on the rioting.
It begs the question, why? And the phrase, can't we all just get along?

The East St. Louis riot of 1917 was in part a result of organized labor's opposition to Black workers taking jobs in local industries. Since the AFL made a point of not admitting Blacks into their unions, the Blacks wound up working in non-union shops and as strikebreakers. When Samuel Gompers defended the White mobs mass murder of Blacks, One of the more interesting incidents in the aftermath was Theodore Roosevelt almost coming to blows with Samuel Gompers when Gompers justified the murders and riot. The IWW had a very different take on the matter; and in fact was organized partially in response to the racial exclusivity and lack of interunion support found within the AFL.

Ex-President Theodore Roosevelt nearly came to blows with AFL leader Samuel Gompers during a public appearance shortly after the riot. Roosevelt demanded that those who had perpetrated the violence and murders in East St. Louis be brought to justice. Gompers then rose to address the crowd and, as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, wrote, “He read a telegram which he said he had received tonight from the president of the Federation of Labor of Illinois. This message purported to explain the origin of the East St. Louis riots. It claimed that the labor unions were not responsible for the riots and that they resulted from employers enticing Negroes from the south to the city ‘to break the back of labor.’” Roosevelt jumped up, approached Gompers, brought his hand down onto his shoulder and roared that, “There should be no apology for the infamous brutalities committed on the colored people of East St. Louis.”

 

[bamadude]

Dude, remove the beer from the equation and things might get better?

the 3 posts i set with the 6 pack are all plumb, level, and square with each other. I waited till yesterday morning to set the 4th. Its an inch out of square. Lesson learned and headed out for a 12 pack and some 2x4s.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

I've done worse.

When the screwdriver you are using slips off of the head of the screw and stabs you in your other hand, that's bad. But when it happens two times in as many minutes, that's just stupid.

I was working an impossible job on the assembly line installing an ungodly number of parts on one minivan every minute. One part of the job was installing the coat hooks. The panels had a guide hole where the screw was supposed to go and a tiny hole just below it that - theoretically - was supposed to catch the protruding plastic pin on the backside of the hook. That way you didn't need two hands, you could put the screw with the hook on the Phillips bit on the gun and use your other hand to perform another job. I never could get that skill down. I had to hold the hook with one hand and use the gun with the other. Rushing through the job one time the Phillips bit jumped off the screw and went into my thumb nail spinning wildly and turned into a drill bit in my soft flesh. I'm holding my hand yelling, "I just stabbed myself". I turned my thumb over and there was a hole in the print side. Then I screamed, "it went all the way through." It wasn't a good day.

I work with MA and PHD students and faculty here.

Don't I know this!

One of my friends has degrees, her husband was a PHD, her current boyfriend doesn't have a degree, she works with lots of very highly educated. She declares that the more education one has, the more common sense that gets supplanted.

Maybe that's why Rush Limbaugh thinks he's smart.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

The East St. Louis riot of 1917 was in part a result of organized labor's opposition to Black workers taking jobs in local industries. Since the AFL made a point of not admitting Blacks into their unions, the Blacks wound up working in non-union shops and as strikebreakers. When Samuel Gompers defended the White mobs mass murder of Blacks, One of the more interesting incidents in the aftermath was Theodore Roosevelt almost coming to blows with Samuel Gompers when Gompers justified the murders and riot. The IWW had a very different take on the matter; and in fact was organized partially in response to the racial exclusivity and lack of interunion support found within the AFL.

Ex-President Theodore Roosevelt nearly came to blows with AFL leader Samuel Gompers during a public appearance shortly after the riot. Roosevelt demanded that those who had perpetrated the violence and murders in East St. Louis be brought to justice. Gompers then rose to address the crowd and, as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, wrote, “He read a telegram which he said he had received tonight from the president of the Federation of Labor of Illinois. This message purported to explain the origin of the East St. Louis riots. It claimed that the labor unions were not responsible for the riots and that they resulted from employers enticing Negroes from the south to the city ‘to break the back of labor.’” Roosevelt jumped up, approached Gompers, brought his hand down onto his shoulder and roared that, “There should be no apology for the infamous brutalities committed on the colored people of East St. Louis.”

I did not know that.

ETA
I do know that the initial migration of blacks from the south after the civil war was mostly up the eastern seaboard to cities in the northeast. Not fining sufficient work they were pushed westward and each city in states like PA, OH, IN didn't welcome them. The migration pretty well culminated in Missouri, Kansas and Iowa, primarily St. Louis and Kansas City.

 

[dsqard]

Dude, coulda sworn you said the first three were straight, you drank a six pack, and then the fourth was crooked. Maybe my "oldtimers" is kicking in?

 

[The Yakima Kid]

It was no mistake that Kent State received headlines and has been perpetuated in the national consciousness while almost no one who isn't black is today aware of either Jackson State or the Orangeburg Massacre.

The 1968 St. Louis riots were rather mild. In that year there were riots in over 100 US cities, mostly associated with the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

I do recall a lot of turmoil after MLKs assassination. I was in high school.

There is so much history that has been forgotten. A lot depends on who writes the history books. Bless the journalists of the time.

About all I can remember of history books in grade school are things like the invention of the cotton gin, the major wars, etc..

Not until I was an adult was I aware of the Paraguayan war between Paraguay against Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. It killed a half million people from 1864–1870, possibly another million to disease. 90% of the male population of Paraguay were killed. How can something of that scale not be in history books?

 

[The Yakima Kid]

I did not know that.

ETA
I do know that the initial migration of blacks from the south after the civil war was mostly up the eastern seaboard to cities in the northeast. Not fining sufficient work they were pushed westward and each city in states like PA, OH, IN didn't welcome them. The migration pretty well culminated in Missouri, Kansas and Iowa, primarily St. Louis and Kansas City.

Omaha Nebraska had a significant Black population by the end of WWI or thereabouts. Also Portland, OR, Seattle, WA, and Los Angeles and Oakland, CA.

Some Blacks headed as far west as the Pacific NW (including Idaho) and California during Reconstruction. Some moved in groups and proceeded to undertake various agricultural activities. One California state park, Colonel Allensworth State Historical Park, commemorates a Black Reconstruction era settlement in the San Joaquin Valley.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

Missouri had its share of slaves too. They called the large migration of southern blacks to this area, Kansas Fever.

 

[The Yakima Kid]

One of my friends has degrees, her husband was a PHD, her current boyfriend doesn't have a degree, she works with lots of very highly educated. She declares that the more education one has, the more common sense that gets supplanted.

Maybe that's why Rush Limbaugh thinks he's smart.

And both of the Obamas, and Hilary.

I've pretty much decided that you really can't mess things up until you have a PhD. PhDs seem to believe that anyone who doesn't have a PhD is an ignorant idiot. PhDs refuse to take advice on car repairs from mechanics, and are very sure that farmers and the like are only slightly less intelligent than a turkey. It can be amusing to explain to a PhD on vacation in the Dakotas that he does NOT want to get any closer to take that picture of that buffalo calf.

My father had a PhD. I do not. By the time I was in about the fourth grade I did not wish to be a PhD academic. In those days I wanted to grow up and have a job where I could carry an attache case. My mother tried to rain on my parade by telling me that women didn't carry attache cases. They do now.