AMERICAN History: 110 Years Ago, This Morning -- AND... 210 Years Ago...

In response to endemic lynchings (primarily) in the south, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was formed, by Ida B. Wells and W.E.B. Du Bois, among others.

And while it is Black History Month, I also celebrate this as a milestone of American History, writ large(r). One step, in bending the arc of history, toward -- progress:

. . . .In 1908, a deadly race riot rocked the city of Springfield, the capital of Illinois and resting place of President Abraham Lincoln. Such eruptions of anti-black violence -- particularly lynching -- were horrifically commonplace, but the Springfield riot was the final tipping point that led to the creation of the NAACP. Appalled at this rampant violence, a group of white liberals that included Mary White Ovington and Oswald Garrison Villard (both the descendants of famous abolitionists), William English Walling and Dr. Henry Moscowitz issued a call for a meeting to discuss racial justice.

Some 60 people, seven of whom were African American (including W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Mary Church Terrell), signed the call, which was released on the centennial of Lincoln’s birth. . . .

Now you know. Out, into the warm, clear Sonoran breeze. . . .

नमस्ते