#70
What is on the Back of the Two Dollar Bill?
The back of the $2 bill has an engraving of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. In the image is a man who has dark skin and wearing a powdered wig while sitting at the table just to the left of the men standing in the center of the engraving. This dark skinned man is John Hanson in his position as president of the continental congress.
In the original painting hanging in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, the dark skinned man does not appear!!!
A "Black" Man, A Moor, John Hanson
was the First President of the United States! 1781-1782 A.D.
George
Washington was really the 8th President of the United States!
First President of the U.S.
George
Washington was not the first President of the United States. In fact, the
first President of the United States was one John Hanson. Don't go
checking the encyclopedia for this guy's name - he is one of those great
men that are lost to history. If you're extremely lucky, you may actually
find a brief mention of his name.
The new
country was actually formed on March 1, 1781 with the adoption of The
Articles of Confederation.
This
document was actually proposed on June 11, 1776, but not agreed upon by
Congress until November 15, 1777. Maryland refused to sign this document
until Virginia and New York ceded their western lands (Maryland was afraid
that these states would gain too much power in the new government from
such large amounts of land).
Once the signing took place in 1781, a President was needed to run the country.
John Hanson was chosen unanimously by Congress (which included George
Washington). In fact, all the other potential candidates refused to run
against him, as he was a major player in the revolution and an extremely
influential member of Congress.
As the
first President, Hanson had quite the shoes to fill. No one had ever been
President and the role was poorly defined. His actions in office would set
precedent for all future Presidents.
He took
office just as the Revolutionary War ended. Almost immediately, the troops
demanded to be paid. As would be expected after any long war, there were
no funds to meet the salaries. As a result, the soldiers threatened to
overthrow the new government and put Washington on the throne as a
monarch.
All the
members of Congress ran for their lives, leaving Hanson as the only guy
left running the government. He somehow managed to calm the troops down
and hold the country together. If he had failed, the government would have
fallen almost immediately and everyone would have been bowing to King
Washington. In fact, Hanson sent 800 pounds of sterling silver by his
brother Samuel Hanson to George Washington to provide the troops with
shoes.
Hanson,
as President, ordered all foreign troops off American soil, as well as the
removal of all foreign flags. This was quite the feat, considering the
fact that so many European countries had a stake in the United States
since the days following Columbus.
Hanson
established the Great Seal of the United States, which all Presidents have
since been required to use on all official documents.
President Hanson also established the first Treasury Department, the first
Secretary of War, and the first Foreign Affairs Department.
Lastly,
he declared that the fourth Thursday of every November was to be
Thanksgiving Day, which is still true today.
The Articles of Confederation only allowed a President to serve a one year
term during any three year period, so Hanson actually accomplished quite a
bit in such little time.
Six
other presidents were elected after him - Elias Boudinot (1783), Thomas
Mifflin (1784), Richard Henry Lee (1785), Nathan Gorman (1786), Arthur St.
Clair (1787), and Cyrus Griffin (1788) - all prior to Washington taking
office.
So what
happened?
Why
don't we ever hear about the first seven Presidents of the United States?
It's
quite simple - The Articles of Confederation didn't work well. The
individual states had too much power and nothing could be agreed upon.
A new
doctrine needed to be written - something we know as the Constitution.
And that
leads us to the end of our story.
George
Washington was definitely not the first President of the United States. He
was the first President of the United States under the Constitution we
follow, today.
And
the first seven Presidents are forgotten in history.
* * * * *
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WATCH THIS VIDEO FOR THE TRUTH ABOUT RELIGION
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"...in
these times of storm and stress, this program will be opposed. Our
Movement, therefore, must be well knit together. It must have
moral and spiritual vision, understanding, and wisdom."
-- A.
Philip Randolph
JOHN HANSON
(1781-1782 A.D.)
The March on Washington Movement 1942 was led by A. Philip Randolph, International President of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, A. F. of L. Click the link above for excerpts from keynote address to the Policy Conference of the March on Washington Movement, meeting in Detroit, Michigan, September 26, 1942.
Is this the next President of the U.S.A.?
Dear Larry Yates:
You are among the group of "we are the ones we have been waiting for." This is a major statement made just as needed by the right person for the right people. I hope that many of those receiving this message will forward it widely. I hope those who receive it will include those women who have separated themselves from the masses of women of color during these times. Where there is understanding, communication and openness to risks, even if uncomfortable, healing can take place. This is an extremely important message and should also be repeatedly sent to members of the DNC and others in postions of power related to the election. I look forward to others following your lead. I have hope.
Suzanne Brooks
**************************************
Larry Yates
grassroots4obama@yahoogroups.com
To: White Progressives
It is important for us to realize that as whites, we have been
miseducated to be wary -- almost paranoid -- of black leadership. As
a result, we frequently fail to grasp who our real friends are, and
how much we owe them. Overwhelmed by the media's magnifying lens
view of their flaws, we fail to stand up for them in the way that we
should stand up for any ally - perhaps with criticism, but also with
solidarity. And with a recognition of the agenda behind the attacks.
This is a very practical problem, especially this year.
This piece is not about Barack Obama. But it is predictable that
Obama, if he is nominated by the Democrats, will experience attacks
(and not just from Republicans) that have racial inflections. He
will be accused, perhaps with vaguely plausible evidence, of actions
related to black male stereotypes. Are you ready to see past those
attacks, and to speak up, quickly enough to make a difference? Or
will this fresh talented moderate politician, with real potential to
pull together an effective coalition for positive change, be
destroyed the same old way?
Right now, Obama must choose between his own interests and Rev.
Wright, as an individual politician. That's his situation.
But his situation -- and a lot more -- depends to some extent on how
much we allow ourselves again to be jerked around again by our
prejudices. In fact, Obama is in the situation he is because white
liberals and progressives didn't get what was going on and defend
Rev. Wright. He could not defend his minister and mentor unless
there were powerful white voices also doing so. And there were not.
This is not to say that Obama agrees fully with Wright. I have no
idea how much they agree. But the decision to separate himself from
Wright was a political decision.
We live in a country where 98% of formal leaders are white, and
African-American leaders in the media limelight are either
hand-picked (as "good" or as "bad") or are the
few tough enough and hungry enough to stay in the limelight. Even
locally, we may not see grassroots African-American leadership at a
particular moment. So it is very easy to forget how much every
social justice movement, even every civic and neighborhood group,
owes to African-American leadership.
All of us have benefited from the expanded democracy in this country
since the 1950s. I'm not talking about electoral democracy, of
course. There, we aren't doing so well. I'm talking about the
increased comfort that most of us have with organizing and raising
Cain when something goes wrong, from local plans to put in a
landfill to gender discrimination in the workplace to an illegal
war. This grassroots democracy, despite constant corporate pressure
to restrict it, has had important impacts, from halting the nuclear
industry for decades to enabling the fastest-growing antiwar
movement in U.S. history to radically changing the position of
battered women and developmentally disabled people.
In this country with no historical awareness, we tend to think of
this as just "how we are."
But in the 1950s, most people in the USA had been cowed into making
almost no protests. McCarthyism and complacency had almost
completely stifled movements, like the labor movement, that had
shaken the nation in the 1930s. From the movie studios to the
schoolhouse, the atmosphere of fear was pervasive. As for movements
of feminists, of gay people, or for the environment or against war,
their members were numbered in the hundreds nationally. There were
no local defenders of battered women, disabled people were as much
in the closet as gays, and children were being indoctrinated for
survivable nuclear war in our segregated and sexist schools. I have
talked to older white activists who described the period in much the
same terms that people talk of living under Franco or Stalin.
Very few of us whites fully grasp that it was working-class southern
African-Americans that blazed the trail from that to increased
democracy -- the trail that the rest of us have followed. There is a
reason that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is the only US
clergyperson known to all of us, and known globally. It's not
because he was personally a saint -- he wasn't. It's because he came
to be a symbol of the most powerful justice movement of our time,
certainly in the US, and perhaps internationally. That civil rights
movement, along with its sister movement, anti-colonial revolt, shook
not only Jim Crow, but all systems of unjust power, in ways that are
still felt.
Yet even after that great historical lesson, too many white liberals
and progressives have been willing to stand by while the leaders who
stood up for their issues were attacked -- if those leaders happened
to be African-American, and if they were less than perfect. (Which
all leaders are.)
See if you can recognize this man. He risked his life working at the
grassroots in the South for civil rights in his youth, facing as
much risk as any GI in Vietnam. He then came to an urban area
farther north, where he pressed successfully for expanded voting
rights locally, and helped build effective community service
organizations. He was among the first big city mayor to support gay
and lesbian rights. He was pursued aggressively by federal law
enforcement, which was however unable to find any financial or
ethical wrongdoing. He was finally disgraced and arrested for a
personal substance abuse problem, compounded by adultery -- a set of
problems he shared with many other middle-aged male politicians. To
most whites, he became a contemptible laughingstock.
Or this one. He is a minister in perhaps the USA's most liberal
Christian denomination, which is mostly white. His church is one of
the largest in the denomination, is racially integrated, and
provides a wide range of services to people in the inner city. He
served honorably in the US military. Though he has a large
African-American following, and could have his own independent
church, he has stuck with his denomination, including with its
strong stance of welcoming gays and lesbians. Recently, for reasons
having nothing to do with him personally, he has experienced a
McCarthy style attack based on comments from his sermons taken out
of context. Millions of whites have accepted the themes of the
attack uncritically.
Martin Luther King, Marion Barry and Jeremiah Wright are/were not
perfect human beings. But they were in the front lines of work that
most white liberals and progressives claim to support -- not just
for African-Americans, but for all of us. They clearly went beyond
"black issues," when they did not have to, while
maintaining mass African-American support. In fact, each faced
criticism by more nationalist African-Americans for doing so, for
working too closely with whites, for taking on issues like the
Vietnam war and gay and lesbian rights.
Did we stand by them in their time of need?
Did we grasp that their personal failings were just an excuse, that
the reason for the attacks was their role in the movement for
justice? (Was Marion Barry the only adulterous substance abusing big
city mayor? Is Rev. Wright the only preacher that damns America or
believes 2 or 3 things you don't agree with?)
Were we willing to forgive them for the occasional error to the
degree we would forgive a Ted Kennedy or an Al Gore, people who have
been near the center of power their whole lives and really have done
and risked so little? Were we willing to point out the hypocrisy of
the attackers, who were real purveyors of addiction, real merchants
of hate?
Did we defend them as we did Bill Clinton, who was unfairly attacked
by the right wing, but who had himself buckled to the right wing by
ending welfare, bombing Iraq, and standing idly by while Big Finance
ramped up its ravaging of working people?
Those who attacked King and Barry and Wright, the J. Edgar Hoovers
and Karl Roves and Fox News, knew exactly what they were doing.
Every leader has flaws, but whites will automatically tend to
magnify those of African-American leaders. Made nervous about those
flaws, we tend not to defend them. Failing to defend them, we weaken
our coalition and strengthen the coalition of racism, corporate
power, and ignorance.
The attackers seek to restore the cynicism and intimidation of the
1950s. We must repair our blind spot towards African American
leadership, or the attackers will succeed again next time.
We whites will never totally lose that feeling of knowing better,
the unconscious sense of being superior as a white person, of being
the center of the rational universe. But we must work hard to
overcome its impact on our behavior. It is self-destructive to fail
to recognize your own allies and defend them (with reservations if
necessary). When King's support flagged and he was killed, Bobby
Kennedy was next. When Marion Barry was successfully disgraced, Bill
Clinton was next. The words of German pastor Niemoller are a moral
lesson, but they are also a very practical one.
First
they came for the communists, and I did not speak out--
African-Americans have been speaking out for themselves, but also
for your basic values, for centuries. Let's hear some loud white
voices -- right away -- against the next smear campaign of an
African-American leader for social justice. You don't have to like
him or her; you just have to understand Niemoller's lesson. By the
time you find someone nice enough for you to feel comfortable
defending, the battle will be over. The next time they come for a
Rev. Wright, don't wait to speak out.
Larry
Yates
From: One of Them
Please pass this on to whoever might benefit.
These are my personal opinions, not those of any organization I am
part of.
because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out --
because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out --
because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out --
because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me --
and there was no one left to speak out for me.