Thoughtful Thursdays, Stayed on Freedom’s Call page 39, and Learn By Singing

     What steps do you think we can take to make our history more  inclusive of all of our stories?

     I started my own walking singing tour company in the belief that song was a powerful way to help make this happen.  Some of what I learned is in my book Stayed on Freedom’s Call (last week was page 38…):

 

” … their free status or pay for their upkeep while housed at the jail.   For years, one site of the City Jail was, ironically, the current location of the National Law Enforcement Officers’ Memorial, at the corner of 4 th and G Streets, NW.

That corner, across from “Meigs Red Barn”, as the Old Pension Office was known, is where this walking tour of about 2.5 hours, begins.

1. National Law Enforcement Officers’ Memorial / one site of the DC City Jail: 4 th and G St, NW Imagine the year is 1850 and night has fallen, cooling the city, just passing 10pm.

          You are a Jewish businessman, newly arrived from Baltimore, passing by the City Jail on your way to 7 th street to meet an associate. You cross paths with a well-dressed colored man being led into the jail in irons. He bows courteously to you as you pass by, and you wonder why he could have been arrested. You remember being told that the colored residents of this city, even when free, faced grave difficulties, and to be particularly careful not to discuss abolition, given the disturbances of 15 years ago.

             How, you ask yourself, can public constables, sworn to uphold the law, also be the paid agents of private slave traders? And what to do if ordered to help stop a fleeing slave, given the Rambam’s position that one must not return a slave to his master?    You hear the strains of a song, lifted up in a rich pain-filled contralto from somewhere nearby singing

“Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,

Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, a long way from home…”

2. Plaque above grating, corner of Metro HQ / original site of 1st Adas Israel: 6 th and G St, NW

     The year is 1876, and you ponder the the past 7 years of strife, both within

…
39   “

    So, it turns out that I might have needed to explain a bit more about the importance of song in the lives of slaves, and in the Civil Rights movement…

Page thirty-seven was the previous week,  page 38 was last week, next week will be Page 40…

Action Prompts:

1.) What are your thoughts on this page?  (You can download the entire book for free via the Archive link below…)

2.) Share your thoughts on how this page from Stayed On Freedom’s Call helps continuing empathy-building cooperation, and may also  help, or hinder, inclusive thinking.

4.) Write a story, post or tweet that uses those thoughts.

Dear Readers, ideas on learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning, on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness,  #EndMoneyBail & achieve freedom for All HumanKind? 

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  & #StopSmoking at least for CCOVID-19:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write

-we can learn from the past Stayed on Freedom’s Call for free,

          by Teaching and Learning (Lesson Plans offline) in the present, to

                  help build a kinder future: Do Better (was Baby Acres): a Vision of a Better World

 

Peace     ! שָׁלוֹם

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BSCS

Shira

the year, 2021 CE = year 12021 HE

(5 month GED lesson 16 of 67 plans…), and

                                              Babylon 5 review posts, and my historical fiction serial Ann&Anna posts show how story inspires learning…

Stayed on Freedom’s Call
(free: https://archive.org/details/StayedOnF…)
includes two ‘imagination-rich’ walking tours, with songs, of Washington, DC. New interviews and research are woven into stories of old struggles shared by both the Jewish and African-American communities in the capital city.

Shared histories are explored from a new perspective of cultural parallels and parallel institution-building which brought the two communities together culturally and historically.

 

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.