WHITE SKIN - DARK TRUTH

WHITE SKIN - DARK TRUTH #2

Michael Klein challenges us once again in his second essay in the series WHITE SKIN - DARK TRUTH: NEGROES FOR SALE, even while expressing empathy for just how hard facing our own racist history can be. He invokes the wisdom of Nelson Mandela and Frederick Douglass, and goes after Harvard again and Harvard’s own celebrated Zoologist Louis Agassiz—a contemporary of and at odds with Charles Darwin. All the while giving the listener an amazing compilation of resources. That includes Harvard’s own “To Make Their Own Way in the World” chosen by The New York Times as one of the best books of 2023, Molly Roger’s “Delia’s Tears,” “Slave Songs of The United States, The Classic 1867 Anthology,” The Alan Lomax Archives and their Podcast “Been All Around This World,” and still more musical history from Atlantic Record’s “Sounds of the South: A musical journey from the Georgia sea islands to the Mississippi delta.” And the list goes on. Anyone wanting to study up on the history of slavery, and the pictures and songs that the very inhumanity of it produced, will find this essay valuable. And once again he impresses with his own empathy for and identification with the enslaved Papa Renty. Then he sends us off with Ed Lewis and Prisoners, Parchment Farm rendition of “I be so glad when the sun goes down.” Catherine Albrecht, Editor Radio Free Earth

WHITE SKIN - DARK TRUTH #1

Michael Klein takes us on one amazing trip in his first essay in this new series WHITE SKIN - DARK TRUTH: NEGROES FOR SALE. It is a wild fast-forward, chronicling slavery in America from 1619 right through to 1865, and on to the enduring legacy of racism that threatens our very humanity to this day. The magic is that he forces us to look in the mirror, as this sweeping portrait of our history flashes by. His words spoken with anger and shame. Pulling no punches, he takes on Harvard’s seminal role in rationalizing slavery and racism, promoting it with Harvard Zoologist Louis Agassiz’s pseudoscientific theory of polygenism — all the while profiting from it mightily as the plantation rich filled Harvard's coffers for two-hundred and forty-six years. The campus is filled with their statues, and buildings covered in ivy bearing their names. Klein's invective spills over to nearly everyone of our White Skin ancestors, a rogues gallery of our most hallowed leaders, making a mockery of Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence declaring “all men are created equal” while owning six-hundred slaves of his own. And George Washington, owning slaves while serving as our first President. The list is long, no one is spared. Yet somehow Klein manages to both provoke and entertain, skewering the bigots for their fake news, while finding beauty in the resilience of the enslaved and dehumanized — then soothing us with the soulful artistry of poet Forrest Hamer and slave work songs recorded by Alan Lomax. Michael Klein's own fury, balanced by his deep empathy for the human beings that built this nation in an era of unimaginable inhumanity. All the while, Klein demands that we look in the mirror, that we listen and hear, because as he says “We must!” Catherine Albrecht, Editor Radio Free Earth