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The Death of The Great Jessie Belvin was
never fully investigated.I have found
numerous articles,theories and speculation
of the real circumstances of his death.
Below I have pasted article on this
mystery into the death of one the great R@B
singers of music.
Ist article on Jessie Belvin
Jesse Belvin is a name that not many people recognise these days -- he's a footnote in the biographies of people like Sam Cooke or the Penguins, someone whose
contribution to music history is usually summed up in a line or two in a book about someone else.
The problem is that Jesse Belvin was simply too good, and too prolific, to have a normal career. He put out a truly astonishing number of records as a songwriter,
performer, and group leader, under so many different names that it's impossible to figure out the true extent of his career. And people like that don't end up having
scholarly books written about them.
And when you do find something that actually talks about Belvin himself, you find wild inaccuracies. For example, in researching this episode, I found over and over
again that people claimed that Barry White played piano on the song we're looking at today, "Goodnight My Love". Now, White lived in the same neigbourhood as Belvin,
and they attended the same school, so on the face of it that seems plausible. It seems plausible, at least, until you realise that Barry White was eleven when
"Goodnight My Love" came out.
Even so, on the offchance, I tracked down an interview with White where he confirmed that no, he was not playing piano on doo-wop classics before he hit puberty. But
that kind of misinformation is all over everything to do with Jesse Belvin.
The end result of this is that Jesse Belvin is someone who exists in the gaps of other people's histories, and this episode is an attempt to create a picture out of
what you find when looking at the stories of other musicians. As a result, it will almost certainly be less accurate than some other episodes. There's so little
information about Belvin that if you didn't know anything about him, you'd assume he was some unimportant, minor, figure.
But in 1950s R&B -- among musicians, especially those on the West Coast -- there was no bigger name than Jesse Belvin. He had the potential to be bigger than anyone,
and he would have been, had he lived. He was Stevie Wonder's favourite singer of all time, and Etta James argued to her dying day that it was a travesty that she was
in the rock and roll hall of fame while he wasn't. Sam Cooke explicitly tried to model his career after Belvin, to the extent that after Cooke's death, his widow kept
all of Cooke's records separate from her other albums -- except Belvin's, which she kept with Cooke's.
Marv Goldberg, who is by far the pre-eminent expert on forties and fifties black vocal group music, refers to Belvin as the genre's "most revered stylist". And at the
time he died, he was on the verge of finally becoming as well known as he deserved to be. So let's talk about the life -- and the tragic death -- of Mr Easy himself:
[Excerpt: Jesse Belvin, "Goodnight My Love"]
Like so many greats of R&B and jazz, Belvin had attended Jefferson High School and studied music under the great teacher Samuel Browne, who is one of the great unsung
heroes of rock and roll music. One of the other people that Browne had taught was the great rhythm and blues saxophone player Big Jay McNeely.
McNeely was one of the all-time great saxophone honkers, inspired mostly by Illinois Jacquet, and he had become the lead tenor saxophone player with Johnny Otis' band
at the Barrelhouse Club, and played on records like Otis' "Barrel House Stomp":
[Excerpt: Johnny Otis, "Barrel House Stomp"]
As with many of the musicians Otis worked with, McNeely soon went on to a solo career of his own, and he formed a vocal group, "Three Dots and a Dash".
Three Dots and a Dash backed McNeely's saxophone on a number of records, and McNeely invited Belvin to join them as lead singer. Belvin's first recording with the
group was on "All That Wine is Gone", an answer record to "Drinking Wine Spo-De-O-Dee".
[Excerpt: Big Jay McNeely with Three Dots and a Dash, "All That Wine is Gone"]
After recording two singles with McNeely, Belvin went off to make his own records, signing to Specialty Records. His first solo single, "Baby Don't Go", was not
especially successful, so he teamed up with the songwriter Marvin Phillips in a duo called Jesse and Marvin. The two of them had a hit with the song "Dream Girl":
[Excerpt: Jesse and Marvin, "Dream Girl"]
"Dream Girl" went to number two on the R&B charts, and it looked like Jesse and Marvin were about to have a massive career. But shortly afterwards, Belvin was drafted.
It was while he was in the armed forces that “Earth Angel” became a hit -- a song he co-wrote, and which we discussed in a previous episode, which I'll link in the
show notes. Like many of the songs Belvin wrote, he ended up not getting credit for that one -- but unlike most of the others, he went to court over it and got some
royalties in the end.
Marvin decided to continue the duo without Jesse, renaming it "Marvin and Johnny", and moved over to Modern Records, but he didn't stick with a single "Johnny".
Instead "Johnny" would be whoever was around, sometimes Marvin himself double-tracked. He had several minor hit singles as "Marvin and Johnny", including "Cherry Pie",
on which the role of "Johnny" was played by Emory Perry:
[Excerpt: Marvin and Johnny, "Cherry Pie"]
"Cherry Pie" was a massive hit, but none of Marvin and Johnny's other records matched its success. However, on some of the follow-ups, Jesse Belvin returned as one of
the Johnnies, notably on a cover version of "Ko Ko Mo", which didn't manage to outsell either the original or Perry Como's version:
[Excerpt: Marvin and Johnny, "Ko Ko Mo"]
Meanwhile, his time in the armed forces had set Belvin's career back, and when he came out he started recording for every label, and under every band name, he could.
Most of the time, he would also be writing the songs, but he didn't get label credit on most of them, because he would just sell all his rights to the songs for a
hundred dollars. Why not? There was always another song.
As well as recording as Marvin and Johnny for Modern Records, he also sang with the Californians on Federal:
[Excerpt: The Californians, "My Angel"]
The Sheiks, also on Federal :
[Excerpt: The Sheiks, "So Fine"]
The Gassers, on Cash:
[Excerpt: The Gassers, "Hum De Dum"]
As well as recording under his own name on both Specialty and on John Dolphin's Hollywood Records. But his big project at the time was the Cliques, a duo he formed
with Eugene Church, who recorded for Modern. Their track, "The Girl in My Dreams" was the closest thing he'd had to a big success since the similarly-named "Dream
Girl" several years earlier:
[Excerpt: The Cliques, "The Girl in my Dreams"]
That went to number forty-five on the pop chart -- not a massive hit, but a clear commercial success.
And so, of course, at this point Belvin ditched the Cliques name, rather than follow up on the minor hit, and started making records as a solo artist instead. He
signed to Modern Records as a solo artist, and went into the studio to record a new song.
Now, I am going to be careful how I phrase this, because John Marascalco, who is credited as the co-writer of "Goodnight My Love", is still alive. And I want to stress
that Marascalco is, by all accounts, an actual songwriter who has written songs for people like Little Richard and Harry Nilsson.
But there have also been accusations that at least some of his songwriting credits were not deserved -- in particular the song "Bertha Lou" by Johnny Faire:
[Excerpt: Johnny Faire, "Bertha Lou"]
Johnny Faire, whose real name was Donnie Brooks, recorded that with the Burnette brothers, and always said that the song was written, not by Marascalco, but by Johnny
Burnette, who sold his rights to the song to Marascalco for fifty dollars -- Burnette's son Rocky backs up the claim.
Now, in the case of "Goodnight My Love", the credited writers are George Motola and Marascalco, but the story as it's normally told goes as follows -- Motola had
written the bulk of the song several years earlier, but had never completed it. He brought it into the studio, and Jesse Belvin came up with the bridge -- but he said
that rather than take credit, he just wanted Motola to give him four hundred dollars. Motola didn't have four hundred dollars on him, but Marascalco, who was also at
the session and is the credited producer, said he could get it for Belvin, and took the credit himself.
That's the story, and it would fit with both the rumour that Marascalco had bought an entire song from Johnny Burnette and with Belvin's cavalier attitude towards
credit. On the other hand, Marascalco was also apparently particularly good at rewriting and finishing other people's half-finished songs, and so it's entirely
plausible that he could have done the finishing-up job himself.
Either way, the finished song became one of the most well-known songs of the fifties:
[Excerpt: Jesse Belvin, "Goodnight My Love"]
Belvin's version of the song went to number seven in the R&B charts, but its impact went beyond its immediate chart success. Alan Freed started to use the song as the
outro music for his radio show, making it familiar to an entire generation of American music lovers. The result was that the song became a standard, recorded by
everyone from James Brown to Gloria Estefan, the Four Seasons to Harry Connick Jr. If John Marascalco *did* buy Jesse Belvin's share of the songwriting, that was about
the best four hundred dollars he could possibly have spent.
Over the next year, Belvin recorded a host of other singles as a solo artist, none of which matched the level of success he'd seen with "Goodnight My Love”, but which
are the artistic foundation on which his reputation now rests. The stylistic range of these records is quite astonishing, from Latin pop like "Senorita", to doo-wop
novelty songs like "My Satellite", a song whose melody owes something to "Hound Dog", credited to Jesse Belvin and the Space Riders, and released to cash in on the
space craze that had started with the launch of the Russian satellite Sputnik:
[Excerpt: Jesse Belvin and the Space Riders, "My Satellite"]
That featured Alex Hodge of the Platters on backing vocals. Hodge's brother Gaynel Hodge, who like Belvin would form groups at the drop of a hat, joined Jesse in yet
another of the many groups he formed. The Saxons consisted of Belvin, Gaynel Hodge, Eugene Church (who had been in the Cliques with Belvin) and another former
Jefferson High student, Belvin's friend Johnny "Guitar" Watson.
Watson would later become well known for his seventies "gangster of love" persona and funk records, but at this point he was mostly making hard electric blues records
like "Three Hours Past Midnight":
[Excerpt: "Three Hours Past Midnight", Johnny "Guitar" Watson]
But when he worked with Belvin in the Saxons and other groups, he recorded much more straightforward doo-wop and rock and roll, like this example, "Is It True":
[Excerpt: The Saxons, "Is It True"]
The Saxons also recorded as the Capris (though with Alex Hodge rather than Gaynel in that lineup of the group) and, just to annoy everyone who cares about this stuff
and drive us all into nervous breakdowns, there was another group, also called the Saxons, who also recorded as the Capris, on the same label -- at least one single
actually came out with one of the groups on one side and the other on the other. Indeed, the side featuring our Saxons had previously been released as a Jesse Belvin
solo record.
Anyway, I hope in this first half of the story I've given some idea of just how many different groups Jesse Belvin recorded with, and under how many different names,
though I haven't listed even half of them. This is someone who seemed to form a new group every time he crossed the street, and make records with most of them, and a
surprising number of them had become hits -- and "Goodnight My Love" and "Earth Angel" had become the kind of monster perennial standard that most musicians dream of
ever writing.
And, of course, Belvin had become the kind of musician that most record companies and publishers dream of finding -- the kind who will happily make hit records and
sell the rights for a handful of dollars.
That was soon to change. Belvin was married; I haven't been able to find out exactly when he married, but his wife also became his songwriting partner and his manager,
and in 1958 she seemed to finally take control of his career for him.
But before she did, there was one last pickup group hit to make.
Frankie Ervin had been Charles Brown's replacement in Johnny Moore's Three Blazers, and had also sung briefly with Johnny Otis and Preston Love. While with Brown's
group, he'd developed a reputation for being able to perform novelty cash-in records -- he'd made "Dragnet Blues", which had resulted in a lawsuit from the makers of
the TV show Dragnet, and he'd also done his Johnny Ace impression on "Johnny Ace's Last Letter", a single that had been rush-released by the Blazers after Johnny Ace's
death:
[Excerpt: Johnny Moore's Three Blazers, "Johnny Ace's Last Letter"]
Ervin was looking for a solo career after leaving the Blazers, and he was put in touch with George Motola, who had a suggestion for him. A white group from Texas
called The Slades had recorded a track called "You Cheated", which looked like it could possibly be a big hit -- except that the label it was on wasn't willing to come
to terms with some of the big distributors over how much they were charging per record:
[The Slades, "You Cheated"]
Motola wanted to record a soundalike version of the song with Jesse Belvin as the lead singer, but Belvin had just signed a record contract with RCA, and didn't want
to put out lead vocals on another label. Would Ervin like to put out the song as a solo record?
Ervin hated the song -- he didn't like doo-wop generally, and he thought the song was a particularly bad example of the genre -- but a gig was a gig, and it'd be a
solo record under his own name. Ervin agreed to do it, and Motola got Jesse Belvin to put together a scratch vocal group for the session. Belvin found Johnny "Guitar"
Watson and Tommy "Buster" Williams at a local ballroom and got them to come along, and on the way to the session they ran into "Handsome" Mel Williams and pulled him
in.
They were just going to be the uncredited backing vocalists on a Frankie Ervin record, and didn't spend much time thinking about what was clearly a soundalike cash-in.
But when it came out it was credited as "The Shields" rather than Frankie Ervin:
[Excerpt: The Shields, "You Cheated"]
That's Belvin singing that wonderful falsetto part.
Frankie Ervin was naturally annoyed that he wasn't given the label credit for the record. The recording was made as an independent production but leased to Dot
Records, and somewhere along the line someone decided that it was better to have a generic group name rather than promote it as by a solo singer who might get ideas
about wanting money.
In a nice bit of irony, the Shields managed to reverse the normal course of the music industry -- this time a soundalike record by a black group managed to outsell the
original by a white group. "You Cheated" ended up making number twelve on the pop charts -- a massive hit for an unknown doo-wop group at the time.
Ervin started touring and making TV appearances as the Shields, backed by some random singers the record label had pulled together -- the rest of the vocalists on the
record had been people who were under contract to other labels, and so couldn't make TV appearances.
But the original Shields members reunited for the followup single, "Nature Boy", where they were joined by the members of the Turks, who were yet another group that
Belvin was recording with, and who included both Hodge brothers:
[Excerpt: "Nature Boy", the Shields]
That, according to Ervin, also sold a million copies, but it was nothing like as successful as "You Cheated". The record label were getting sick of Ervin wanting
credit and royalties and other things they didn't like singers, especially black ones, asking for. So the third Shields record only featured Belvin out of the original
lineup, and subsequent recordings didn't even feature him.
But while Belvin had accidentally put together yet another million-selling group, he had also moved on to bigger things. His wife had now firmly taken control of his
career, and they had a plan. Belvin had signed to a major label -- RCA, the same label that Elvis Presley was on -- and he was going to make a play for the big time.
He could still keep making doo-wop records with Johnny "Guitar" Watson and Eugene Church and the Hodge brothers and whoever else, if he felt like it, but his solo
career was going to be something else. He was going to go for the same market as Nat "King" Cole, and become a smooth ballad singer.
He was going to be a huge star, and he actually got to record an album, Just Jesse Belvin. The first single off that album was "Guess Who?", a song written by his wife
Jo Anne, based on a love letter she had written to him:
[Excerpt: Jesse Belvin, "Guess Who?"]
That song made the top forty -- hitting number thirty-three on the pop chart and managed to reach number seven on the R&B charts. More importantly, it gained Grammy
nominations for both best R&B performance and best male vocal performance. He lost to Dinah Washington and Frank Sinatra, and it's not as if losing to Dinah Washington
or Frank Sinatra would have been an embarrassment.
But by the time he lost those Grammies, Jesse was already dead, and so was Jo Anne.
And here we get into the murkiest part of the story. There are a lot of rumours floating around about Jesse Belvin's death, and a lot of misinformation is out there,
and frankly I've not been able to get to the bottom of exactly what happened. When someone you love dies young, especially if that someone is a public figure, there's
a tendency to look for complex explanations, and there's also a tendency to exaggerate stories in the telling. That's just human nature. And in some cases, that
tendency is exploited by people out to make money.
And Jesse and Jo Anne Belvin were both black people who died in the deep South, and so no real investigation was ever carried out. That means that by now, with almost
everyone who was involved dead, it's impossible to tell what really happened.
Almost every single sentence of what follows may be false. It's my best guess as to the order of events and what happened, based on the limited information out there.
On February the sixth, 1960, there was a concert in Little Rock Arkansas, at the Robinson Auditorium. Billed as "the first rock and roll show of 1960", the headliner
was Jackie Wilson, a friend of Belvin's. Jesse had just recorded his second album, "Mr Easy", which would be coming out soon, and while he was still relatively low on
the bill, he was a rising star.
That album was the one that was going to consolidate Belvin's turn towards pop balladry in the Nat "King" Cole style, but it would end up being a posthumous release:
[Excerpt: Jesse Belvin with the Marty Paich Orchestra, "Blues in the Night"]
It was an all-black lineup on stage, but according to some reports it was an integrated audience. In fact some reports go so far as to say it was the first integrated
audience ever in Little Rock.
Little Rock was not a place where the white people were fans of integration -- in fact they were so against it that the National Guard had had to be called in only two
years earlier to protect black children when the first school in Little Rock had been integrated. And so apparently there was some racial abuse shouted by members of
the audience. But it was nothing that the musicians hadn't dealt with before.
After the show they all drove on towards Dallas. Jackie Wilson had some car problems on the way, and got to their stop in Dallas later than he was expecting to. The
Belvins hadn't arrived yet, and so Wilson called Jesse's mother in LA, asking if she'd heard from them.
She hadn't. Shortly after setting off, the car with Jesse and Jo Anne in had been in a crash. Jesse and the drivers of both cars had been killed instantly. Kirk Davis,
Belvin's guitarist on that tour, who had apparently been asleep in the back seat, was seriously injured but eventually came out of his coma. And Jesse had apparently
reacted fast enough to shield his wife from the worst of the accident. But she was still unconscious, and seriously injured.
The survivors were rushed to the hospital, where, according to Etta James, who heard the story from Jackie Wilson, they refused to treat Jo Anne Belvin until they knew
that they would get money. She remained untreated until someone got in touch with Wilson, who drove down from Dallas Texas to Hope, Arkansas, where the hospital was,
with the cash. But she died of her injuries a few days later.
Now, here's the thing -- within a fortnight of the accident, there were rumours circulating widely enough to have been picked up by the newspapers that Belvin's car
had had its tyres slashed. There were also stories, never confirmed, that Belvin had received death threats before the show. And Jackie Wilson had also had car trouble
that night -- and according to some sources so had at least one other musician on the bill. So it's possible that the car was sabotaged.
On the other hand, Belvin's driver, Charles Shackleford, had got the job with Belvin after being fired by Ray Charles. He was fired, according to Charles, because he
kept staying awake watching the late-night shows, not getting enough sleep, and driving dangerously enough to scare Ray Charles -- who was fearless enough that he used
to ride motorbikes despite being totally blind.
So when Jesse and Jo Anne Belvin died, they could have been the victims of a racist murder, or they could just have been horribly unlucky. But we'll never know for
sure, because the institutional racism at the time meant that there was no investigation.
When they died, they left behind two children under the age of five, who were brought up by Jesse's mother. The oldest, Jesse Belvin Jr, became a singer himself, often
performing material written or made famous by his father:
[Excerpt: Jesse Belvin Jr, "Goodnight My Love"]
Jesse Jr. devoted his life to finding out what actually happened to his parents, but never found any answers.
2nd Article on Jessie Belvin
Little Rock Revisited (One)
One of the first posts in this blog dealt with the deaths of Jesse Belvin, Jo Ann Belvin (Jesse’s wife and manager), and the driver of their car, Charles Ford, who
were involved in a two-car collision near Hope, Arkansas, on February 6, 1960. Jesse and Charles died in the collision, and Jo Ann succumbed to her injuries the
following week. The Belvins were friends of Jackie Wilson, who appeared on the same concert bill with Jesse the night before in Little Rock and figured in the various
accounts of the concert and its aftermath.
Theories on the Internet. Many people believed that the Belvin vehicle had been sabotaged, and at the time I started this blog, I knew that a variety of stories about
the concert itself, the Belvins, and Jackie Wilson were available on the Internet.
A popular version of what happened that night in Little Rock had Jackie Wilson refusing to perform to a white audience, leading to everyone on the bill being run out
of town ahead of an angry mob. In this version, while the performers argued with police and promoters inside the venue, racists outside the venue tampered with cars
belonging to Arthur Prysock, Jesse Belvin, and Jackie Wilson, causing the Belvin crash as well as damage to the Prysock and Wilson vehicles.
A second version of the Little Rock concert and subsequent auto crash was advanced by a man named Eric Lenaburg, who described himself as an investigative journalist
who had been working on the story on and off for decades. This man insisted that there was foul play, that Jesse Belvin’s life had been threatened during the week
running up to the concert, and that the concert was the first integrated-audience concert in Little Rock history.
The Etta James account. As I began to follow up on these stories, I had in mind a passage from the Etta James as-told-to biography, Rage to Survive.* Jackie and Etta
were friends, and he is mentioned frequently in the book, often coming to Etta’s rescue when she was in difficult straits. Etta claims to have gotten her information
on the automobile crash from Jackie, meaning she would have been recalling something from at least two decades earlier. She says that the driver of Jesse Belvin’s car
caused the accident by being asleep at the wheel. One paragraph of her account described the accident itself:
Musicians in the car behind Jesse’s told me of this horrible glow they saw up ahead, this red glare that lit the sky where the two cars collided. Charles was killed
instantly. And so was Jesse. Jesse had his arm around Jo Ann–they were both asleep–but was so quick that on impact he grabbed her head and shoved it beneath the car
radio. The collision was so powerful that when they opened the door they saw that Jesse Belvin, whose head had gone through the windshield, was nearly decapitated. His
nose was separated from his mouth. His clothes were in shreds, like a scarecrow. They rushed the bodies to a hospital. Knowing Charles and Jesse were dead, their main
concern was for Jo Ann. But the hospital, run by white doctors, wanted to know who was paying. No one had enough money. Jo Ann was left unattended with a crushed
pelvis, a crushed chest, a broken arm. She was left in a coma until they could reach Jackie Wilson in Dallas. Jackie drove back to Arkansas to pay the doctors. It
turned out that the town, Hope, Arkansas, birthplace of Bill Clinton, was also the birthplace of Jesse Belvin. Jesse died three miles from the house where he was born.
The part of the story about Jackie having to go back to pay the hospital had a familiar ring. There are many stories about hospitals in the South in that era refusing
to treat African Americans, and no doubt some of them are true. Unfortunately, many of these stories are not true. For example, the family of Dr. Charles Drew, the
brilliant surgeon who developed the system for plasma donation and transfusion, spent years refuting the rumor that Drew was refused medical treatment after an
automobile accident in North Carolina in 1950. Recognizing this meme, I was skeptical on that point.
Another paragraph from this book, one describing the funeral, also did not seem quite likely. According to Tony Douglas, Jackie did not attend his own father’s funeral
nor his son’s funeral. If he had an aversion to funerals, would he have been likely to sing at Jesse and Jo Ann’s?
I traveled from Chicago to the funeral in Los Angeles. It took them three days to sew Jesse together. The open caskets were devastating. To see two beautiful young
people dead, a man and a wife, head to head in matching caskets—man, that was more than we could take. None of us could contain ourselves. Jackie Wilson sang, but he
was so broke up he could barely make a sound. We all know Jesse was the next superstar. He’d just gotten the big break with RCA, just gotten started, just . . .
Each account had points I that did not seem likely. In the “riot” account, I could not see why Jackie Wilson would refuse to play for the white audience. African
American entertainers played for white audiences routinely. Not playing would mean no one would get paid. Lenaburg’s version was interesting, but it rested entirely on
his investigative skills, and I could find no other work by this reporter.
When I started writing the blog a year and a half ago, I hoped readers might be able to help me sort out the facts about these events. I did find help and some
answers, but one person tried to lead me to false conclusions. At this point I am still looking for information, but I have learned a great deal with the help of a
university librarian, Jesse Belvin Jr, and some of his family members. The next few posts will cover what I have learned.
_____________________________
* James, Etta, and David Ritz. Rage to Survive: The Etta James Story. DaCapo Press, 1998
Little Rock Revisited (Two)
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After Jesse and Jo Ann Belvin died, their two small sons were reared by Jesse’s mother. The older son, Jesse Jr, was less than five years old at the time. As I have
said in an earlier post, he has lived his life in hopes of separating rumor and fact about his parents’ deaths. Jesse Jr is also a singer. We became acquainted at
first after I commented on his vocal uploads on YouTube and he told me that his grandmother spoke of Jackie Wilson as a great friend of his parents.
Jackie’s phone call. According to what Jesse Jr was told growing up, the first indication his Los Angeles-based family got that something had gone wrong was a
telephone call from Jackie Wilson. Jackie had reached Dallas, the next stop on the tour, but Jesse and Jo Ann had not arrived. He stated that he had had car problems,
that he thought someone had messed with his tires, and that as a result had gotten to Dallas late. Even though Jackie had left Little Rock before Jesse and Jo Ann,
they should have arrived in Dallas before him, he felt, and he wanted to know if they had called home.
This call does not fit the scenario of “all those on the bill being run out of Little Rock at gunpoint.” It is too much of a stretch to believe that Jackie would make
this call and yet not divulge anything about so dramatic an experience.
The “run out of town” urban legend. In all likelihood, The Los Angeles Sentinel is the source of the story that the performers on the bill were run out of Little Rock.
Jesse and Jo Ann both grew up in Los Angeles, and Jesse had been a fixture on the LA music scene for years before he became a national success. Consequently, the
Sentinel covered the deaths and the funeral and ran several other related stories.
On February 18, less than two weeks after the concert and crash, the Sentinel ran an article headlined “Slashed Tires On Belvin’s Auto Probed.” The story began with
these two paragraphs:
A pressing investigation got underway this week to probe reports that tires on singer Jesse Belvin’s car had been willfully slashed hours prior to the fatal accident
that claimed the life of the singer, his wife, and three others [their driver and the two occupants of the other vehicle] Feb. 5.
Investigators said it has be definitely established that tires on the cars of entertainers Jackie Wilson and Arthur Prysock, who were also en route to Dallas from
Little Rock, were slashed, [sic] before the trio left the city.
The article continues with what appears to be an accurate description of the vehicles owned by the three artists−one that conflicts with information in Etta James’s
book, by the way—and states clearly that the concert was a segregated “dance” concert of the sort that was common at the time: one show for a Black audience and one
for a white audience. The article states that Jackie Wilson played for the Black audience, but “the bandleader” refused to play for the white audience because it
“failed to appear on time.”
Huh? How does an audience fail to appear on time? Performers can fail to appear on time, but how does a whole audience get the time wrong? We should also note that a
segregated dance concert does not fit at all with Lenaburg’s contention that this is the first integrated concert (not dance concert, just concert) in Little Rock’s
history.
Another thing about the Sentinel story that I found troubling was the absence of any quotations from either Jackie Wilson or Arthur Prysock. Either or both could have
been reached by telephone. Why is there no first-person account from anyone present at the concert that night? If what the Sentinel printed was true, why does the
article not specify the source of the information?
Slashed tires. Finally, of course, there is the problem of how “slashed tires” left the performers with functional vehicles. If the tires had to be replaced before the
entertainers could leave, how would that fact align with being run out of town? And if the tires were replaced on the Belvins’ automobile, what would “slashed tires”
have to do with the collision that took five lives?
In fact, the concert was not a “dance concert” but a standard concert. It took place in an auditorium, and it began at 7:00 pm on Friday, April 5, 1960. The crash that
took Jesse Belvin’s life and the lives of four others took place on Highway 67, well beyond the town of Hope, at around 6:00 am the next morning.
Eric Lenaburg’s account. At this point I will turn to the story according to Eric Lenaburg, who contacted me after reading my original posts about the Little Rock
concert and the car crash. He provided two email addresses and a telephone number and encouraged me let him know if I heard from anyone else with information beyond
what he knew about the events. He also provided me with a summary of what his “years of investigation” had uncovered.
The concert, he assured me, was the first concert ever performed in Little Rock in front of an integrated audience. Jesse Belvin, he told me, was the headliner, and
Jackie Wilson and Arthur Prysock were the only other acts on the bill. How, I wanted to know, did Jackie end up second on the bill. Eric insisted that Jesse was the
bigger star, and I told him that idea was ridiculous. However, Jackie’s performances were incendiary, and I said (on this blog) that if Eric was correct about the
billing, it might have been arranged as a form of “crowd control.” Jesse Belvin, freshly signed to RCA Victor, was to be marketed thereafter as a balladeer. If concert
promoters wanted to avoid any overly exuberant behavior on the part of the audience, perhaps it was deemed best to have “Mr. Excitement” followed by “Mr. Easy.”
I was uneasy about much of what Lenaburg had to say, but I took him at his word and believed he had done the investigative work he described. Yes, I bellieved him for
many months, actually. Then Jesse Belvin Jr and I set out to test Mr. Lenaburg’s findings. In the end, I don’t accept anything from Lenaburg, and you shall read why in
the next installment.
Little Rock Revisited (Three)
3 Replies
For several months I pondered what Eric Lenaburg had to tell me. Bits and pieces had to be wrong. He told me that Jesse Belvin had received death threats for the week
before the concert. Belvin wasn’t in Little Rock for the week before the concert, so how did he receive these threats? In those days, entertainers on the road
communicated by telephone or Western Union telegrams. To reach them, you had to know exactly where to find them.
Lenaburg also told me some story about Bill Clinton being close enough to the crash site to hear the noise. He claimed to have contacted Clinton’s office. I happened
to have a friend whose college roommate grew up in Hope, Arkansas, with Clinton. She said that Bill’s family moved out of Hope that year.
And there was the billing Lenaburg insisted on, with Jackie, “Mr. Excitement,” going on before Jesse, “Mr. Easy.” Over time it seemed less and less likely to me. After
all, if you only wanted a tamed-down Jackie Wilson on the bill, why not just get another entertainer, someone who would keep people quietly in their seats?
The little things became one big question mark about Lenaburg’s “investigations.”
First steps are important. After a while, Jesse Belvin Jr and I decided to see what we could find as a team, and my early research brought me to a quick conclusion
that nothing Lenaburg said could be trusted.
I asked myself what the first step should be for anyone looking into these events, and then I took that first step: through Inter-Library Loan, I ordered microfilm of
the local newspapers for the pertinent dates. Although Lenaburg insisted that he had made many trips to Little Rock over the years, he apparently did not bother to
check the newspapers—or perhaps he just thought no one else would. Looking for news stories about the accident, I also uncovered an advertisement for the concert
itself. It was in the Friday, February 5, edition of the Arkansas Gazette, a morning paper at the time.
Ark Gazette 60.02.05 (Fri)Who would you say is at the top of this bill? And does this bill not promise more than three acts? Note that there is only one time listed
for the show, so there is a possibility that the seating was integrated, but it is also quite possible that the seating was segregated within the venue.
Two entertainers from this bill, Bobby Freeman and Bobby Lewis, may still be living, but I have not been able to contact either of them. Still, I hold out hope of
hearing from someone who can say for certain whether the seating was integrated or segregated. Perhaps someone reading this now will have information on the important
issue. One thing is clear from the advertisement: the concert was not a dance concert. Robinson Auditorium would not have accommodated that activity.
Another thing is significant: the Little Rock, Hope, and Texarkana newspapers I scoured had no information about the concert itself and no mention of any altercation.
All the information was about the collision and the results of the accident.
Could the newspapers have suppressed information about the entertainers having been run out of town?
Not likely. Three years earlier, Little Rock had been the focus of national attention for racial confrontations over the integration of Central High School. As a
national focal point on racial conflict, I doubt such a story could be hidden. Also, I found (online) a court document from a lawsuit filed against Twin City Amusement
Co. (the ticket agent listed on this ad). The suit resulted from a racially-charged incident that occurred in a parking lot after one of their concerts, a concert that
took place only a year after the one Jackie headlined. Race was everyday news in Little Rock. In short, I think it’s unlikely that the papers would refrain from
reporting on performers having been run out of town by an angry mob.
Anyway, the “run out of town” scenario relied on the concert not taking place. And it did.
Jesse Belvin’s cousin. Jesse Belvin Jr kept urging me to call his cousin—actually his father’s first cousin—a man who lived in Texarkana then and who lives there now,
a man who was the last member of the family to see Jesse Sr alive.
I am not going to identify the cousin by name. I asked him if I could write what he told me, and that was fine with him, but when I asked if he would read it online,
just to see if I got everything right, he said he did not have a computer and did not know how to use one. I figure that if he has gotten to age seventy-two without
the Internet, it’s not fair to drag him onto it now, so I will just call him Billy.
Jesse Belvin’s mother came from the Texarkana area, and prior to the Little Rock and Dallas concerts on Jesse’s schedule, Jesse and Jo Ann set aside a week to visit
with family. Among those family members was Billy, a young man who loved cars and was immediately taken with the vehicle Jesse pulled into his driveway: a 1959 “aqua-
colored” Cadillac Sedan de Ville. To his surprise and delight, Jesse tossed him the keys and told him to take it for a spin. (You may want to check out a twin of the
vehicle on YouTube.)
Billy was one of the most charming people I have ever spoken with, and we talked about the music of the Fifties and Sixties, Jackie Wilson, and Sam Cooke, in addition
to the events in Little Rock back in 1960. Billy told me that Jesse and Jo Ann stayed with the family about a week before going off somewhere in Texas for rehearsals.
Everyone had a great time, and Jesse told Billy that he and Jo Ann would stop back in Texarkana again for a day or so in between a couple concert dates and driving
back to Los Angeles.
Instead, Billy would see Jo Ann unconscious in a hospital bed and identify Jesse’s body in a morgue.
Kirk Davis. I spoke to Billy prior to receiving the microfilm of the newspapers, so I was unaware at that point that there had been a fourth person in the Belvin
vehicle. In addition to the driver, Charles Ford, and Jesse and Jo Ann, all of whom rode in the front seat of the car, there was a guitarist named Kirk Davis in the
back seat, possibly asleep at the moment of the crash. Davis survived the wreck and was hospitalized in Texarkana for many weeks after the accident. Kirk was far from
his wife and home in Detroit, and Billy visited him regularly through his weeks of hospitalization. When Kirk was finally released from the hospital, he stayed at
Billy’s house until his wife could drive down from Detroit to take him home.
Kirk’s injuries were severe (indeed one newspaper account said there was little hope for his recovery), and he was somewhat disfigured by his injuries. Once he
regained consciousness, he endured a great deal of pain. Out of consideration for the ordeal Kirk had been through, Billy did his best to steer their conversations
away from the accident and its aftermath, but Kirk did tell Billy that he had secured the gig as Jesse’s guitarist through his union, and he said that he had been very
eager to work with Jesse, because Jesse was a rising star. Kirk also spoke of the concert itself, and he did not mention anything amiss or unusual about the
performance.
The concert definitely took place.
Related
Hundreds of Brent Geese flocking overhead at Goldhanger Creek on the River Blackwater Estuary in the County of Essex (UK).
Thousands of Brent Geese migrate to the Goldhanger Creek area each autumn after their summer holidays in Siberia.
www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/natures-home-magazine/...
www.wildlifetrusts.org/where_to_see_brent_geese
My Maldon, Dengie and the River Blackwater Estuary album flic.kr/s/aHsk7cnJ7a
Photograph taken by and copyright of my regular photostream contributor David and is posted here with very kind permission.
Realtor Photos
All images are for educational purposes and are under copyright of creators and owners.
From the LA Times:
The four-bedroom Midcentury classic reflects the actor's love for entertaining guests, including Ronald Reagan, at home.
The Beverly Hills Midcentury classic, with many of the original features and décor from the time of the comedian's purchase nearly a half-century ago, has a '60s vibe.
The single-story house was a place where guests could feel at home.
" Ronald Reagan would stop by to visit, and Dad would tell him jokes standing in the kitchen," said son Gregory Amsterdam, who lived there through his college years and beyond. "There were people popping in and out all the time."
The Amsterdams often entertained at home, throwing dinner parties in the formal dining room for 10 to 15 guests. Other times the area around the kidney-shaped swimming pool in the backyard was used for parties of 50 to 60, Amsterdam said.
"My father loved the sun," Amsterdam said, to the point where he would walk backward on a golf course to face it. The senior Amsterdam sometimes wrote jokes while lounging in the pool area. "If there was any hint of sun, he would be out there getting a suntan."
The family made additions to the house during their ownership, changing the footprint from a T-shape to a J by adding what they called a play room with large picture windows, a television, a card table and a desk, where the comic also worked on material.
The 5,854-square-foot house has walls of glass that open to the backyard, a living room with a fireplace and a step-down bar, a breakfast room, a den with a fireplace, four bedrooms and 4 1/2 bathrooms. There is a three-car garage and large motorcourt.
Morey Amsterdam, who died in 1996 at age 87, played fellow office worker Buddy Sorrell on "The Dick Van Dyke Show" (1961-66). The gregarious actor was in show business for more than seven decades years.
"My father really loved people," Gregory Amsterdam said. "He'd go out to get the mail, and Starline Tour would go by and he'd stop to talk."
- June 19, 2010 - Lauren Beale, Los Angeles Times
Kamera: Zenza Bronica SQ-Ai
Linse: Zenzanon PS 50mm + extension tube
Film: Rollei Retro 400S @ ISO 400
Kjemi: Rodinal (1:25 / 10:30 min. @ 20°C)
-Monday 19 February 2024: I have just watched the whole proceedings of today’s opening statements by Palestine in the International Court of Justice in Den Haag, where in this new case the legality, policies and practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are in question.
This is truly an historic moment. And the presentation today was immensely powerful. I was so impressed by the whole legal team and the entire presentation of the case. In particular, I was blown away by the sharp and precise presentation by the lawyer Paul Reichler and the emotional appeal of Riyad Mansour. This was monumental.
Together with South Africa’s separate genocide case against Israel, I am certain we are finally witnessing the beginning of the end of the Zionist regime and justice at last for the Palestinian people. Today Palestine had 3 hours of presentation. In the next few days, more than 50 additional countries will also present their statements.
Here is history in the making.
International Court of Justice: Opening hearing on the legal consequences of Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories (publ. 19 February 2024) [Video]
International Court of Justice: Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem [Transcripts and Documents]
Mr REICHLER:
3. THE ILLEGALITY OF ISRAEL’S PROLONGED OCCUPATION, ANNEXATION AND SETTLEMENT OF THE OCCUPIED PALESTINIAN TERRITORY
1. Mr President, Members of the Court, it is an honour for me to appear before you, and a privilege to speak on behalf of the State of Palestine.
2. I will address the legality of Israel’s prolonged occupation, annexation and settlement of the Occupied Palestinian Territory. In so doing, I will identify the elements that determine whether, and in what circumstances, a belligerent occupation is, or becomes, unlawful under international law; I will then review the evidence to assess whether those elements are present here; and I will show that, based on the applicable law and the well-established and undisputed facts, Israel’s 56-year occupation of Palestinian territory is manifestly and gravely unlawful, and that international law requires that it be brought to an end, completely and unconditionally.
I. The applicable rule of law
3. The applicable rule of law is straightforward. As Pictet wrote in 1958, “occupation . . . is essentially a temporary . . . situation”. This remains the law. In December 2022, the General Assembly, in resolution 77/126, recognized that “the occupation of a territory is to be a temporary, de facto situation, whereby the occupying Power can neither claim possession nor exert its sovereignty over the territory it occupies”. This rule is neatly explained in the Written Statement of Switzerland:
“The laws of occupation are built on the idea that occupation is only a temporary situation. They are based on four fundamental principles . . .: 1) the occupying power does not acquire sovereignty over the territory it occupies . . . 2) the occupying power must maintain the status quo ante and must not take any measures which might bring about permanent changes”.
The law is thus crystal clear: occupation can only be a temporary state of affairs. A permanent occupation is a legal oxymoron.
II. The permanent character of the Israeli occupation
4. Mr President, what makes Israel’s ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territory unlawful is precisely its permanent character, and what demonstrates its permanence are:
(i) Israel’s de jure and de facto annexation of Jerusalem and the West Bank;
(ii) its claims of sovereignty over these areas, which it refers to by their biblical names, Judea and Samaria, and considers integral parts of the State of Israel;
(iii) its establishment of hundreds of permanent Israeli settlements, with over 700,000 Israeli settlers, who have been promised by successive Israeli governments that they will never be removed; and
(iv) the multitude of official statements and documents that openly declare Israel’s intention to incorporate all of the occupied territory east of the Green Line into the State of Israel as a permanent part of a single Jewish State extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
A. Declarations of permanence by Israel’s highest authorities
5. As I will show you, the evidence is overwhelming and leaves no room for serious dispute about Israel’s actions or its intentions. As Israel’s Cabinet Secretary wrote in June of last year:
“Judea and Samaria were not seized from a sovereign state recognized by international law, and the State of Israel has a right to impose its sovereignty over these areas as they comprise the cradle of history of the Jewish people and are an inseparable part of the Land of Israel.”
As purported legal authority, the Cabinet Secretary invoked the First Book of Maccabees, written in the year 100 BC, chapter 15, verse 33:
“It is not a foreign land we have taken nor have we seized the property of foreigners, but only our ancestral heritage, which for a time had been unjustly occupied by our enemies.”
6. This was followed in August of last year by a message broadcast on Israel’s Army Radio by Israel’s Heritage Minister:
“Sovereignty must be extended within the borders of the West
Bank . . . and in the most prudent way, to create international recognition that this place is ours . . . There is no Green Line, it is a fictitious line that creates a distorted reality and must be erased.”
7. In September 2023, Israel’s Prime Minister literally erased the Green Line, in his presentation to the United Nations General Assembly. As you saw earlier, he depicted the State of Israel as extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, eliminating not only the Green Line but all traces of Palestine. This was no oversight; it was an act of the Head of Government, with all the attribution that it implies. The same message was delivered by Israel’s Finance Minister in Paris, six months earlier, when he denied the existence of Palestine and declared that Palestinians do not constitute a people. Previously, he said:
“We are here to stay. We will make it clear that our national ambition for a Jewish State from the river to the sea is an accomplished fact, a fact not open to discussion or negotiation.”
This has been Israel’s consistent position. Here is the map of Israel produced by its armed forces and published by the Government in 2021. One State, Israel, from the river to the sea. There is no Green Line; there is no Palestine. Instead, Palestine has been replaced by “Judea” and “Samaria”, which, according to Israel’s highest officials, are now integral parts of the State of Israel.
B. Annexation and settlement of Jerusalem
8. As these official statements and maps demonstrate, Israel makes no secret of its intention to retain permanently the entire area east of the Green Line. Its annexation of occupied Palestinian territory began in 1967 with legislation annexing East Jerusalem, which Israel increased eleven-fold in size to incorporate not only the Holy City but also vast areas of the West Bank surrounding the City. Its Defence Minister, Moshe Dayan, declared at the time:
“The Israel Defence Forces have liberated Jerusalem . . . We have returned to this most sacred shrine, never to part from it again.”
In 1990, the Israeli Cabinet instructed the Foreign Minister to notify the Secretary-General of the United Nations that
“Jerusalem is not, in any part, ‘occupied territory’; it is the sovereign capital of Israel”.
In June 1996, the Guidelines of the incoming Israeli Government stated:
“Jerusalem, the capital of Israel, is one city, whole and undivided, and will remain forever under Israel’s sovereignty.”
More recently, in assuming office in December 2022, the current Prime Minister declared that
“[t]he Jewish people are not occupiers in their own land nor occupiers in our eternal capital Jerusalem”.
As these official statements make clear, Israel’s dominion over Jerusalem and the incorporated area of the West Bank is not intended to be temporary. It has been repeatedly proclaimed by Israel’s highest authorities to be “eternal”.
9. In furtherance of this end, more than 230,000 Israeli Jewish settlers - encouraged, subsidized and protected by the Israeli Government and occupation forces - have been installed in East Jerusalem, dramatically altering the demographic composition of the Holy City by creating an Israeli Jewish majority.
C. Annexation and settlement of the West Bank
10. Israel has been equally clear in declaring its permanence in the West Bank, where more than 465,000 Israeli Jewish settlers have been implanted with the support of every Israeli government since 1967, in over 270 ever-expanding settlements, spread throughout this territory, in what can only be described as a vast colonial enterprise. These settlements, whose accelerated growth and distribution over the years are illustrated on your screens now, are a key instrument of Israel’s annexation of the West Bank; this is both their purpose and their effect.
11. As the Secretary-General reported to the General Assembly in 2015:
“Occupation is supposed to be temporary because the annexation or acquisition of territory by force is strictly prohibited under international law . . . In the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the establishment and maintenance of the settlements amount to a slow, but steady annexation of the occupied Palestinian territory.”
12. Israel has made no secret of the intended permanence of these settlements. In 2010, Prime Minister Netanyahu told Israeli settlers in the West Bank:
“Our message is clear. ‘We are planting here, we will stay here, we will build here. This place will be an inseparable part of the State of Israel for eternity.’”
In August 2019, the Prime Minister announced that:
“The time has come to apply Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and to also arrange the status of all Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria . . . They will be part of the State of Israel.”
In January 2020, Israel’s Defence Minister, Naftali Bennett, declared:
“Our objective is that within a short amount of time . . . we will apply sovereignty to all of Area C, not just the settlements, not just this bloc or another.”
13. This area, which is depicted in red on your screens now, comprises over 61 per cent of the West Bank. The Defence Minister proclaimed:
“I solemnly declare that Area C belongs to Israel.”
This area includes the Jordan Valley, which is the water reservoir, the breadbasket and the source of life for the entire West Bank.
14. In December 2022, the Guiding Principles of the incoming Israeli Government declared:
“The Jewish people have an exclusive and indisputable right to all parts of the Land of Israel. The Government will promote and develop the settlement of all parts of the Land of Israel - the Galilee, the Negev, the Golan and Judea and Samaria.”
The coalition agreement between the political parties that formed the Government included this pledge:
“[T]he Prime Minister will lead the formulation and promotion of policy in which sovereignty will be applied in Judea and Samaria, while choosing the timing and weighing all the national and international interests of the State of Israel.”
III. Israel’s defiance of the Security Council, the General Assembly and the Court
15. General Assembly resolution 77/126 was adopted on 12 December 2022, just as the current Israeli Government was assuming office. The resolution pointedly recalled:
“[T]he principle of the inadmissibility of the acquisition of land by force and therefore the illegality of the annexation of any part of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, which constitutes a breach of international law” and the resolution condemned Israel’s “annexation of land, whether de facto or through national legislation”.
16. Israel has thoroughly disregarded resolution 77/126, just as it disregarded all prior General Assembly and Security Council resolutions declaring illegal the annexation of any part of the Occupied Palestinian Territory and the establishment of Israeli settlements there. These include but are by no means limited to:
* - Security Council resolution 252 of 1968, declaring Israel’s acquisition of territory by military conquest “inadmissible”;
* - resolution 476 of 1980, which “[r]eaffirm[ed] the overriding necessity for ending the prolonged occupation of Arab territories” in 1980 and “[s]trongly deplore[d] the refusal of Israel . . . to comply with the relevant resolutions of the Security Council and the General Assembly”;
* - resolution 478 of 1980, which “determine[d] that all legislative and administrative measures and actions taken by Israel . . . to alter the character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem, and in particular the ‘basic law’ on Jerusalem, are null and void and must be rescinded forthwith”;
* - resolution 2334 of 2016, which “reaffirm[ed] . . . the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force”, and condemned “all measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967 . . . including, inter alia, the construction and expansion of settlements, transfer of Israeli settlers, confiscation of land, demolition of homes and displacement of Palestinian civilians”; and
* - at least 28 General Assembly resolutions, which expressly condemned Israel’s “annexation” of Jerusalem and the West Bank.
* 17. Israel has also blatantly disregarded the obligations reflected in the Court’s 2004 Advisory Opinion in the Wall case. Since then, instead of dismantling the wall, Israel has extended it from a length of 190 km to more than 460 km38, encompassing hundreds of additional square kilometres of Palestinian land, and incorporating it into the State of Israel. In its Advisory Opinion, the Court expressed concern lest
“the construction of the wall and its associated régime create a ‘fait accompli’ on the ground that could well become permanent, in which case, and notwithstanding the formal characterization of the wall by Israel, it would be tantamount to de facto annexation”
18. And that is precisely what has happened over the past 20 years, not only within the expanded confines of the wall, but all across the West Bank, most of which has now been annexed de facto by Israel. In 2022, the report of the United Nations International Commission of Inquiry concluded:
“Israel treats the occupation as a permanent fixture and has - for all intents and purposes - annexed parts of the West Bank . . . The International Court of Justice anticipated such a scenario in its 2004 advisory opinion . . . This has now become the reality.”
19. The Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory reached the same conclusion:
“The occupation by Israel has been conducted in profound defiance of international law . . . Its 55-year-old occupation burst through the restraints of temporariness long ago. Israel has progressively engaged in the de jure and de facto annexation of occupied territory.”
IV. Recent acceleration of Israel’s annexation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory
20. Mr President, Israel’s ongoing annexation of the West Bank accelerated in 2023, with the largest ever expansion of settlements in the territory. Twenty-two new settlements were authorized and more than 16,000 new housing units were built, funded or planned by Israeli authorities. As explained by Israel’s Finance Minister:
“The construction boom in Judea and Samaria and all over our country continues . . . We will continue to develop the settlement[s] and strengthen the Israeli hold on the territory.”
21. In developing its settlements, Israel has invested heavily in the infrastructure needed to supply them with water and electric power, as well as a network of roads and highways to connect them to one another and to Israel itself. These investments, in the hundreds of millions of dollars, attest to the intended permanent character of the settlements. The roads, which Palestinians are forbidden to use, and a pervasive system of roadblocks and checkpoints, prevent Palestinians - but not Israeli settlers - from moving from place to place in the West Bank, and they isolate Palestinian communities by cutting them off from one another. Israel’s settlement expansion has thus both uprooted Palestinians from their homes to make room for new settlements, and forced them to live in disconnected and non-contiguous enclaves, which the Special Rapporteur has called
“a fragmented archipelago of 165 disparate patches of land”. This achieves the fundamental objective of the occupation: permanent acquisition of the maximum amount of Palestinian territory, with the minimum number of Palestinians in it.
22. In furtherance of this objective, and with increasing frequency, armed groups of settlers, supported by Israel’s occupation forces and encouraged by government ministers, have violently expelled thousands of peaceful Palestinian civilians from their ancestral villages and lands. A United Nations Fact Finding Mission confirmed:
“[T]he motivation behind this violence and the intimidation against the Palestinians and their properties is to drive the local populations away from their lands and allow the settlements to expand.”
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights reported in March 2023:
“[S]ettler violence further intensified, reaching the highest levels ever recorded by the United Nations.”
In November 2023, the High Commissioner warned that the situation had further deteriorated with “a sharp increase in settler violence and takeover of land across the West Bank. Since 7 October,” he continued, “nearly 1,000 Palestinians from at least 15 herding communities have been forced from their homes”.
23. The Secretary-General, in his most recent report, issued on 25 October 2023, expressly linked the expansion of Israeli settlements to the permanent acquisition of Palestinian territory:
“[S]uccessive Israeli Governments have consistently advanced and implemented policies of settlement expansion and takeover of Palestinian land.
The policies of the current Government in this regard are aligned, to an unprecedented extent, with the goals of the Israeli settler movement to expand long- term control over the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and, in practice, to further integrate those areas within the territory of the State of Israel.”
V. Application of the law to the facts
24. Mr President, Members of the Court, taking account of this evidence, as well as that described in the State of Palestine’s two written submissions, I turn to the law and how it applies to this occupation. The Written Statement of Switzerland is, once again, directly on point. It highlights the distinction between the law of occupation and the legality of a particular occupation:
“The law of occupation and the legality of occupation are two different questions. The law of occupation applies independently of the question of the legality of the occupation. Occupation is a situation subject to international humanitarian law, whereas its legality is covered by the United Nations Charter.”
25. In relation to the legality of the occupation under the Charter, Switzerland observes:
“The United Nations has consistently reaffirmed the principle of the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force, and condemned Israeli measures aimed at modifying the demographic composition, the character and the status of Jerusalem and the Occupied Palestinian Territory as a whole, notably the construction and extension of settlements, the transfer of Israeli settlers, the confiscation of land, the demolition of homes and the displacement of Palestinian civilians.”
In Switzerland’s view:
“The measures taken by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory lead to fundamental changes, particularly demographic changes, that can have a permanent character.” In such circumstances, Switzerland expressly invites the Court “to rule on the consequences of the permanent character of the measures taken by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as to the status of the occupation under general international law, in particular the Charter of the United Nations”.
26. Many States agree with this approach. France, too, underscores the temporary character of lawful occupation. This is a requirement that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory plainly fails to meet. As France states:
“[I]f the restrictions authorised by a regime of occupation were justifiable in the period following the military operations, they are not any more today. These points have been reiterated by the Security Council and the General Assembly on numerous occasions concerning Israel’s obligation to withdraw from the ‘occupied’ territories.”
27. France calls out, in particular, Israel’s annexation of occupied territory:
“The status of occupying power does not confer any legal title justifying annexation . . . The passage of time is not sufficient, as regards the acquisition of territory by force, to render lawful a situation that is gravely unlawful.”
On Israel’s vast network of settlements and hundreds of thousands of settlers in the occupied territory, France states:
“These permanent establishments are obviously incompatible with the necessarily temporary character of the occupation.”
28. Thirty-five of the States and international organizations that submitted written statements have addressed the legality of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory. Only two of these 35, to which I will come, argued that the occupation is not unlawful. Key excerpts reflecting the views expressed by the overwhelming majority - that the occupation is unlawful as a whole and must be brought to an end - are collected in Chapter 2 of the State of Palestine’s Written Comments. Here are three brief but emblematic examples:
29. The African Union
“invites the Court to conclude that the prolonged Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories is, in itself, unlawful . . . [T]he policies and practices associated with it amount to de facto and de jure annexation of the Palestinian territories, which violates the prohibition on the acquisition of territory by force.”
30. Brazil observes that:
“Occupation is inherently temporary. This is the basic distinction between occupation and annexation.”
Brazil, here, hits the nail right on the head: unlike occupation, annexation is intended to be permanent, and it makes the occupation itself unlawful. In Brazil’s words, Israel’s policies and practices
“render the occupation unlawful as a whole, inasmuch as it would be tantamount to the acquisition of territory by force”.
31. Japan, too, emphasizes that the annexation of occupied territory is unlawful, referring to Article 2 (4) of the United Nations Charter:
“As the ICJ clarified in the Wall Advisory Opinion, the illegality of the acquisition of territory by force is a corollary of the prohibition of use of force incorporated in the UN Charter”,
which Japan calls
“the most fundamental rule of the post-war regime for peace based on the rule of law among nations”.
VI. The indefensibility of Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestinian territory
32. The two outliers are Fiji and the United States. Of all the States that submitted written statements to the Court, only Fiji attempted to defend the occupation as lawful. But even Fiji conceded that Israel has annexed East Jerusalem de jure and that the application of an occupying Power’s laws to the occupied territory, which is the case in the West Bank, constitutes an annexation de facto. Nor did Israel itself deny its annexations of Jerusalem and the West Bank. Its abbreviated written statement is mainly an attack on the General Assembly for its alleged bias. It makes no attempt to defend the legality of its occupation under international law.
33. The only State besides Fiji to defend Israel is the United States. This is not surprising. Whatever offences against international law Israel commits, the United States comes forward to shield it from accountability. Here, the United States attempts to defend Israel, not by arguing that the occupation is lawful, but that it is neither lawful nor unlawful. To reach this conclusion, the United States argues that belligerent occupation is governed exclusively by international humanitarian law and not by the United Nations Charter or general international law. In its own words:
“Although international humanitarian law imposes obligations on belligerents in their conduct of an occupation, it does not provide for the legal status of an occupation to be lawful or unlawful.”
34. Even assuming, arguendo, that this is a correct reading of international humanitarian law, which we dispute, it does not lead to the conclusion that an occupation cannot be unlawful under international law. What about Article 2 (4) of the United Nations Charter, and general international law, including the prohibition on acquisition of territory by force? For the United States, apparently, this peremptory norm does not exist when it comes to Israel’s annexation and settlement of the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Only in such a lawless - and United Nations Charter-less - world could the Israeli occupation be described as “not unlawful”.
35. Notably, the United States ignores the part of the General Assembly’s request that the Court determine the legal status of the occupation under the United Nations Charter, in addition to international humanitarian law and other sources of law; and the United States fails to mention, let alone respond to, Switzerland’s Written Statement, asserting that belligerent occupation is covered both by international humanitarian law and by the United Nations Charter and general international law; and that the legality of the occupation itself is governed by the latter. The United States also ignores the written statements of the many other States which conclude that the Israeli occupation is unlawful as a whole, precisely because its annexation and settlement of the occupied territory constitute a permanent acquisition of territory by force in violation of Article 2 (4) and general international law.
36. Instead, in a single footnote, the United States responds only to those States which submitted that the Israeli occupation is unlawful under Articles 40 and 41 of the Draft Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts. Remarkably, the United States contends that neither of those two articles reflects general international law. This is truly stunning! A persistent failure of a State to fulfil an obligation arising under a peremptory norm is not unlawful under general international law, as provided in Article 40? The injunction in Article 41 - that no State shall recognize as lawful a situation created by a serious breach of a peremptory norm - is not part of general international law? Just how far in disregarding the international legal order will the United States go to exempt Israel from the consequences of its ongoing violation of peremptory norms, including the prohibition on acquisition of territory by force?
37. Apparently, very far indeed. According to former US President Barack Obama, in the
memoir he published in 2020:
“[J]ust about every country in the world considered Israel’s continued occupation of the Palestinian territories to be a violation of international law. As a result, our diplomats found themselves in the awkward position of having to defend Israel for actions that we ourselves opposed.”
This is exactly what the United States is doing - again - in these proceedings.
VII. The occupation is unlawful and must be brought to an end
38. Mr President, Members of the Court, the evidence is before you - in the written submissions of the State of Palestine and dozens of other States and international organizations, and in the voluminous materials supplied to you by the Secretary-General - and it is indisputable. Under the umbrella of its prolonged military occupation, Israel has been steadily annexing the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and it continues to do so. Its undisguised objective is the permanent acquisition of this territory, and the exercise of sovereignty over it, in defiance of the prohibition on acquisition of territory by force.
39. The evidence is not only indisputable, it is of the highest probative value: investigative reports of authoritative United Nations agencies; reports of the Secretary-General; resolutions of the Security Council and the General Assembly; legislative and administrative acts by the Israeli Government; and public statements against interest by the most senior government officials admitting that Israel’s objective is sovereignty over all the territory east of the Green Line and its incorporation into a single Jewish State from the river to the sea. In this case, there is no reason not to take them at their word, because their deeds have been entirely consistent with it.
40. For Israel, as its successive governments have made clear, there is no Palestine. It simply does not exist. In November 2023, Prime Minister Netanyahu declared that his Government would never agree to a Palestinian State in the occupied territory. He later declared:
“I will not compromise on full security control over all the territory west of Jordan - and this is contrary to a Palestinian state.”
Israel’s intransigence was confirmed by its staunchest ally in December 2023, when US President Joe Biden publicly lamented that Israel’s leaders “don’t want anything remotely approaching a two-state solution”.
41. That is the very solution demanded by the Security Council, the General Assembly, the overwhelming majority of States and the State of Palestine itself. It is, in fact, the only solution that can lead to lasting peace and security for the Israeli people as well as the Palestinian people. And it is this very solution that has been frustrated by Israel’s defiant insistence on maintaining its dominion over Palestinian territory in perpetuity. This is why the Court’s advisory opinion is so critical and so urgent. The best, and possibly the last, hope for the two-State solution that is so vital to the needs of both peoples is for the Court to declare illegal the main obstacle to that solution - the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestine - and for it to pronounce, in the clearest possible terms, that international law requires that this entire illegal enterprise be terminated: completely, unconditionally and immediately.
42. Mr President, the law is clear and it demands nothing less. A permanent occupation - one that is founded upon annexation and massive settlement of the occupied territory, and which aims to exercise sovereignty over it - is manifestly and gravely unlawful; it is an ongoing international wrong that must be brought to an immediate end. As the Court ruled in 1971:
“[T]he continued presence of South Africa in Namibia being illegal, South Africa is under obligation to withdraw its administration from Namibia immediately and thus put an end to its occupation of the Territory”.
43. The Secretary-General applied this principle directly to Palestine in his remarks to the Security Council one month ago:
“Palestinians must see their legitimate aspirations for a fully independent, viable and sovereign State realized, in line with United Nations resolutions, international law and previous agreements. Israel’s occupation must end.”
44. Mr President, the proverbial ball is now in your court. The General Assembly has asked you the critical questions. It is now your responsibility to answer them. Silence is not an option. As the immortal Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish, wrote: “In silence we become accomplices.” But, he assured us, when we speak: “Every word has the power to change the world.”
45. Mr President, Members of the Court, your words have such power. In 2004, the Court affirmed the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. In 2024, it is time for you to enable them finally to exercise that right, by freeing them from the unlawful Israeli occupation of their territory, so that they may live in a sovereign and fully independent State of their own, in peaceful and secure coexistence with all their neighbours, including Israel. By upholding international law, which is all the State of Palestine asks you to do, your powerful words will change the world.
46. I thank you Mr President, Members of the Court, for your kind courtesy and patient attention. We are in your hands, Mr President, whether you would like to take the mid-morning break now or call our next speaker.
The PRESIDENT: I thank Mr Reichler. I will invite the next speaker to take the floor after a coffee break of ten minutes. The sitting is suspended.
The Court adjourned from 11.25 a.m. to 11.45 a.m.
... the infallible P.R., which like Jacob's ladder forms a line of union between H. and E., is the ...
An important symbol of the Entered Apprentice Degree. A ladder of several staves or rounds of which three are illustrated tot he candidate as Faith, Hope and Chairty; the three theological virtues.
Source: Masonicdictionary.com
Articles On Jacob's Ladder:
Mackey's Encyclopedia Article
1897 Canadian Craftsman Article
1935 MSA Short Talk Bulletin
JACOB'S LADDER:
The introduction of Jacob's ladder into the symbolism of Speculative Freemasonry is to be traced to the vision of Jacob, which is thus substantially recorded in the twenty-eighth chapter of the Book of Genesis: When Jacob, by the command of his father Isaac, was journeying toward Padanaram, while sleeping one night with the bare earth for his couch and a stone for his pillow, he beheld the vision of a ladder, whose foot rested on the earth and whose top reached to heaven. Angels were continually ascending and descending upon it, and promised him the blessing of a numerous and happy posterity. When Jacob awoke, he was filled with pious gratitude, and consecrated the spot as the house of God.
This ladder, so remarkable in the history of the Jewish people, finds its analogue in all the ancient initiations. Whether this is to be attributed simply to a coincidence-a theory which but few scholars would be willing to accept-or to the fact that these analogues were all derived from a common fountain of symbolism, or whether, as such by Brother Oliver, the origin of the symbol was lost among the practices of the Pagan rites, while the symbol itself was retained, it is, perhaps, impossible authoritatively to determine. It is, however, certain that the ladder as a symbol of moral and intellectual progress existed almost universally in antiquity, presenting itself either as a succession of steps, of gates, of Degrees, or in some other modified form. The number of the steps varied; although the favorite one appears to have been seven, in reference, apparently, to the mystical character almost everywhere given to that number.
Thus, in the Persian Mysteries of Mithras, there was a ladder of seven rounds, the passage through them being symbolical of the soul's approach to perfection. These rounds were called gates, and, in allusion to them, the candidate was made to pass through seven dark and winding caverns, which process was called the ascent of the ladder of perfection Each of these caverns was the representative of a world, or w state of existence through which the soul was supposed to pass in its progress from the first world to the last, or the world of truth. Each round of the ladder was said to be of metal of measuring purity, and was dignified also with the name of its protecting planet. Some idea of the construction of this symbolic ladder may be obtained from the accompanying table.
7. Gold .............. Sun ................ Truth
6. Silver ............ Moon ............ Mansion of the Blessed
5. Iron ............... Mars .............. World of Births
4. Tin ................ Jupiter ........... Middle World
3. Copper ......... Venus .......... Heaven
2. Quicksilver .. Mercury ....... World of Pre-existence
1. Lead ......... ..... Saturn .......... First World
Source: Mackey's Encyclopedia of Freemasonry
Jacob's Ladder: Author Unknown
When this symbol, which is taken from Jacob's Vision (Genesis xxviii), was introduced into English Speculative Freemasonry is not exactly known. But we find allusions to it a little after the middle of the last [18th] century. It apparently was not originally a symbol of Speculative Masonry, but was probably introduced from Hermetic Masonry, about 1776. But we fancy that it came from Hermeticism, of which it was a favorite symbol. Certain it is that we do not find it in any of our far oldest known rituals if indeed they can be depended upon. Gadicke says of it, "Either resting upon the floor cloth or on the Bible, the compasses, and the square, it should lead the thoughts of the brethren to heaven. If we find that it has many staves or rounds, they represent as many moral and religious duties. If it has only three, they should represent Faith, Hope and Charity. Draw Faith, Hope, and Charity from the Bible with these three encircle the whole earth, and order all thy actions by the square of truth, so shall the heavens be opened upon thee."
Curiously enough, in Germany, the `Handbuch' tells us this symbolism is not used, nor on the continent generally. It has been pointed out by Oliver, by the `Handbuch,' and by others, that this is a mystical ladder to be found in the teaching of most other occult systems. Thus in the Mithraic mysteries the seven-runged ladder is said to have been a symbol of the ascent of the soul to perfection. Each of the rungs was termed a gate, and the `Handbuch' declares that the aspirants had to pass through a dark and winding cavern. The last, or Adytum, was full of light, and also assures us that in the old Hebraic Cabala the number of steps (for they had a cabalistic ladder also), was unlimited, until the Essenes reduce the number to seven. The latter Cabalists are said to have made ten Sephriroth - the Kingdom, the Foundation, Splendor, Firmness, Beauty, Justice, Mercy, Intelligence, Wisdom, and the Crown, by which we arrive at the Infinite, as Mackey and others put it.
It is alleged that in the mysteries of Brahma and in the Egyptian mysteries this ladder is also to be found. But this fact seems a little doubtful especially as the Egyptian mysteries little is known. The ladder is, however, to be seen among the hieroglyphics. In the Brahmic mysteries there is, we are told a ladder of seven steps, emblematic of seven worlds. The first and lowest was the Earth; the second, the World of Pre-Existence; the third, Heaven; the fourth, the Middle World, or intermediate region; the fifth, the World of Births; the sixth, the Mansions of the Blest; and the seventh, the Sphere of Truth. Some little difference of opinion exists as to the representation of the Brahmic teaching. It has been stated that in Hermetic or higher Masonry, so-called, the seven steps represent Justice, Equality, Kindness, Good Faith, Labor, Patience and intelligence. They are also represented as Justice, Charity, Innocence, Sweetness, Faith, Firmness and Truth, the Greater Work, Responsibility. But this is quite a modern arrangement in all probability. In Freemasonry it has been said that the ladder with its seven rungs or steps represents the four cardinal and three theological virtues which in symbolism seems to answer to the seven grades of Hermetic symbolism. It must be remembered that we have no actual old operative ritual before us, and on the other hand we must not lay too much store by the negative evidence of later rituals - that is, because we do not find until then actual mention of certain words and symbolisms therefore conclude they did not exist earlier. On the whole, Jacob's ladder in Freemasonry seems to point to the connection between Faith and Heaven, man and God, and to represent Faith, Hope and Charity; or, as it is declared, Faith in God, Charity to all men, and Hope in Immortality.
Source: The Craftsman - December 1897
THREE PRINCIPAL ROUNDS:
“And Jacob went out from Beersheba, and went toward Haran. And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and took of the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and beheld a ladder set upon the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and beheld the angels of God ascending and descending on it. And, behold, the Lord stood above it, and said, I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac.” These words (Genesis XXVIII, 10-13 inclusive)v are the foundation of that beautiful symbol of the Entered Apprentice’s Degree in which the initiate first hears”. . . the greatest of these is charity, for our faith may be lost in sight, hope ends in fruition, but charity extends beyond the grave, through the boundless realms of eternity.” At least two prophets besides the describer of Jacob’s vision have spoken aptly reinforcing words Job said (XXXIII, 14-16):
“For God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed: Then he openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instructions.”
And St. John (I,51):
“And he said unto him, Verily, verily I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”
Since the dawn of thought the ladder has been a symbol of progress, of ascent, of reaching upward, in many mysteries, faiths and religions. Sometimes the ladder becomes steps, sometimes a stairway, sometimes a succession of gates or, more modernly, of degrees; but he idea of ascent from darkness to light, from ignorance to knowledge and from materially to spiritually is the same whatever the form of the symbol.
In the Persian Mysteries of Mithras, the candidate ascended a ladder of seven rounds, and also passed through seven caverns, symbolized by seven metals, and by the sun, moon and five planets. The early religion of Brahma had also a seven stepped ladder. In the Scandinavian Mysteries the initiate climbed a tree; the Cabalists made progress upward by ten steps. In the Scottish Rite the initiate encounters the Ladder of Kadosh, also of seven steps, and most of the early tracing boards of the Craft Degrees show a ladder of seven rounds, representing the four cardinal and three theological virtues. At one time, apparently, the Masonic ladder had but three steps. The Prestonian lecture, which Mackey thought was an elaboration of Dunkerly’s system, rests the end of the ladder on the Holy Bible; it reads:
“By the doctrines contained in the Holy Bible, we are taught to believe in the Divine dispensation of Providence, which belief strengthens our “Faith,” and enables us to ascend the first step. That Faith naturally creates in a “Hope” of becoming partakers of some of the blessed promises therein recorded, which “Hope” enables us to ascend the second step. But the third and last being “Charity” comprehends the whole, and he who is possessed of this virtue in its ample sense, is said to have arrived at the summit of his profession, or more metaphorically, into an etherial mansion veiled from mortal eye by the starry firmament.”
The theological ladder is not very old in Masonic symbolism, as far as evidence shows. Some historians have credited it to Matin Clare, in 1732, but on very slender evidence. It seems to appear first is a tracing board approximately dated 1776, and has there but three rounds. As the tracing board is small, the contraction from seven to three may have been a matter of convenience. If it is true that Dunkerly introduced Jacob’s ladder into the degrees, he my have reduced the steps from seven to three merely to emphasize the number three, so important Masonically; possibly it was to achieve a certain measure of simplicity. Preston, however, restored the idea of seven steps, emphasizing the theological virtues by denominating them “principal rounds.
The similarity of Jacob’s Ladder of seven steps to the Winding Stairs, with three, five and seven steps has caused many to believe each but a different form of the same symbol; Haywood says (“The Builder, Vol.5, No.11):
“Other scholars have opined that the steps were originally the same as the Theological Ladder, and had the same historical origin. Inasmuch as this Theo-logical Ladder symbolized progress, just as does the Winding Stair, some argue that the latter symbol must have come from the same sources as the former. This interpretation of the matter my be plausible enough, and it may help towards an interpretation of both symbols, but it suffers from an almost utter lack of tangible evidence.”
Three steps or seven, symbol similar to the Winding Stairs or different in meaning and implications, the theological virtues are intimately interwoven in the Masonic system. Our many rituals alter the phraseology here and there, but the sense is the same and the concepts identical.
According to the dictionary (Standard) Faith is “a firm conviction of the truth of what is declared by another . . .without other evidence: The assent of the mind or understanding to the truth of what God has revealed.”
The whole concept of civilization rests upon that form of faith covered in the first definition. Without faith in promises, credit and the written word society as we know it could not exist. Nor could Freemasonry have been born, much less lived through many centuries without secular, as distinguished from religious, faith; faith in the integrity of those who declared that Freemasonry had value to give to those who sought; faith in its genuineness and reality; faith in its principles and practices.
Yet our ritual declares that the third, not the first, round of the ladder is “the greatest of these” because “faith may be lost in sight.” Faith is not needed where evidence is presented, and in the far day when the human soul may see for itself the truths we now except without demonstrations, faith may disappear without any con- sciousness of loss. But on earth faith in the divine revelation is of the utmost importance to all, especially from the Masonic standpoint. No atheist can be made a Mason. Any man who misstates his belief in Deity in order to become a Mason will have a very unhappy experience in taking the degrees. Young wrote:
“Faith builds a bridge across the gulf of death To break the shock blind nature cannot shun And lands though smoothly on the further shore.”
The candidate that has no “bridge across the gulf” will find in the degrees only words which mean nothing. To the soul on its journey after death, the third round may indeed be of more import than the first; to Masons in their doctrine and their Lodges, the first round is a foundation; lacking it no brother may climb the heights. Hope is intimately tied to faith: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
The dictionary declares hope to be “desire with expectations of obtaining: to trust confidently that good will come.” But the dictionary definition fails to express the mental and spiritual importance of hope. Philosophers and poets have done much better. “Where there is no hope, there can be no endeavor,” says Samuel Johnson, phrasing a truism everyone feels though few express. All ambitions, all human actions, all labors are founded on hope. It may be crystallized into a firm faith, but in a world in which nothing is certain, the future inevitably is hidden. We live, love, labor, pray, marry and become Masons. bury our dead with hope in breasts of something beyond. Pope wrote:
“Hope spring eternal in the human breast; Many never is, but always to be, blest,” blending a cynicism with the truth.
Shakespeare came closer to everyday humanity when he said: “True hope is swift, and flies with swallow’s wings; Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures, kings.”
Dante could find no more cruel words to write above the entrance to hell than:
“Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here.”
Nor can we be argued out of hope; doctors say of a loved one, “she must die,” but we hope; atheists attempt to prove there is no God - we hope. Facts demonstrate that our dearest ambition can never be realized - yet we hope. To quote Young again, we are all:
“Confiding, though confounded; hope coming on, Untaught by trial, unconvinced by proof, And ever looking for the never seen.” And yet, vital though hope is to man, to Masons, and thrice vital to faith. our ritual says that charity is greater than either faith or hope.
To those whom charity means only handing a quarter to a beggar, paying a subscription to the community chest, or sending old clothes to the Salvation army, the declaration that charity is greater than faith or hope is difficult to accept. Only when the word “charity” is read to mean “love,” as many scholars say it should be translated in Paul’s magnificent passage in Corinthians, does our ritual become logically intelligible. Charity of alms can hardly “extend through the boundless realms of eternity.” To give money to the poor is a beautiful act, but hardly as important, either to the giver or the recipient, as faith or hope. But to give love, unstinted, without hope of or faith in reward - that, indeed, may well extend to the very foot of the Great White Throne.
It is worth while to read St. Paul with this meaning of the word in mind; here is the quotation from the King James version, but with the word “love” substituted for the word “charity:”
“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing. Love suffereth long, and is kind; Love enveith not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up. Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth.”
Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Love never faileth; but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.”
“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face; now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, love; these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
It is of such charity that a Mason’s faith is made. He is, indeed, taught the beauty of giving that which is material; the Rite of Destitution shows forth the tender lesson in the first degree; Masonic Homes, Schools, Foundation, Orphanages and Hospitals are the living exponents of the charity which means to give from a plenty to those who have but a paucity.
The first of the principal tenets of our profession and the third round of Jacob’s Ladder are really one; brotherly love is “the greatest of these” and only when a Mason takes to his heart the reading of charity to be more than alms, does he see the glory of that moral structure the door to which Freemasonry so gently, but so widely, opens.
Charity of thought for an erring brother; charity which lays a brotherly hand on a troubled shoulder in comfort; charity which exults with the happy and finds joy in his success; charity which sorrows with the grieving and drops a tear in sympathy; charity which opens the heart as well as the pocket book; charity which stretches forth a hand of hope to the hopeless, which aids the helpless, which brings new faith to the crushed . . .aye, these, indeed, may “extend through the boundless realms of eternity.”
Man is never so close to the divine as when he loves; it is because of that fact that charity, (meaning love,) rather than faith or hope, is truly, “the greatest of these.”
Source: Short Talk Bulletin - Apr. 1935
Masonic Service Association of North America
Museum of Freemasonry - Masonic Library
Jacob’s Ladder:
Jacob’s Ladder is the only reference from the volume of the Sacred Law which is mentioned twice in the Craft Ritual; it must therefore, be considered to be of great importance. In our Masonic ritual, the first mention of Jacob’s ladder describes how Masons are enabled to ascend to the summit of masonry, i.e. Charity. This ascent is made possible from it’s beginning in the doctrines of the Holy Book followed by ascending the steps of Faith and Hope which in turn lead to the summit - CHARITY.
The second mention of Jacob’s Ladder in the ritual is in the explanation of the first Tracing Board which refers to the Volume of the Sacred Law supporting Jacob’s Ladder, but this time it brings us directly to God in Heaven, provided that we are conversant with the Holy Book and are adherent to it’s doctrines.
The Introduction of Jacob’s Ladder into speculative Masonry is to be traced to the vision of Jacob, which is recorded in the book of Genesis. “When Jacob, while sleeping one night , with the bare earth for his couch and a stone for his pillow, beheld the vision of a ladder, whose foot rested on the earth and whose top reached to heaven. Angels were continually ascending and descending upon it, and promised him the blessing of a numerous and happy prosperity. When Jacob awoke, he was filled with pious gratitude, and consecrated the spot as the house of God.”
This ladder, so remarkable in the history of the Jewish people, is to be found in all the ancient initiations. Whether by coincidence, or that they were all derived from a common fountain of symbolism is unknown. However, it is certain that the ladder as a symbol of moral and intellectual progress existed almost universally in antiquity, as a succession of steps, of gates, of degrees or in some other modified form. The number of steps varied; but most commonly was seven in allusion to the mystical importance given to that number. Thus in the Persian mysteries of Mithras, there was a ladder of seven rounds, the passage through them being symbolical of the soul’s approach to perfection. These rounds were called Gates, and, in allusion to them, the candidate was made to pass through seven dark and winding caverns, which process was called the ‘Ascent of the Ladder of Perfection’.
Each round of the ladder was said to be of metal and of increasing purity, and was dignified also with the name of it’s protecting planet. The highest being Gold . &. . . The Sun, next Silver and the Moon . . . through to Lead and Saturn. In the mysteries of Brahma we find the same reference to a ladder of seven steps, with similar names. In Scandinavian mysteries the tree Yggrasil was the representative of the mystical ladder. The ascent of the tree, like the ascent of the ladder, was a change from a lower to a higher sphere - from time to eternity, and from death to life.
In Masonry we find the ladder of Kadosh, which consists of seven steps, commencing from the bottom : Justice - Equity - Kindness - Good Faith - Labour - Patience and Intelligence. The idea of Intellectual progress to perfection is carried out by making the top round represent Wisdom or Understanding.
The ladder in Craft Masonry ought also to consist of seven steps, ascending as follows : Temperance - Fortitude - Prudence - Justice - Faith - Hope - and Charity. But the earliest examples of the ladder present it only with three, referring to the three theological virtues, whence it is sometimes called the Theological Ladder. It seems, therefore, to have been determined by general usage to have only three steps. In the 16th. century it was stated that Jacob’s ladder was a symbol of the progressive scale of intellectual communication between earth and heaven; and upon this ladder, as it were, step by step, man is permitted - with the angels - to ascend and to descend until the mind finds blissful and complete repose in the bosom of divinity.
Jewish writers differ very much in their exposition of the ladder. Abben Ezra thought that it was a symbol of the human mind, and that the Angels represented the sublime meditations of man. Maimonides supposed the ladder to symbolise Nature in it’s operations, giving it four steps, to represent the four elements - the two heavier earth and water - and the two lighter - fire and air. And Raphael interprets the ladder, and the ascent and descent of the Angels, as the prayers of man and the answering inspiration of God. Nicolai says that the ladder with three steps was, among the Rosicrucian Freemasons in the seventeenth century, a symbol of the knowledge of nature. Finally Krause says that Brother Keher of Edinburgh, whom he described as a truthful Mason, had in 1802 assured the members of a Lodge in Altenberg that originally only one Scottish degree existed, whose object was the restoration of James III (1460 ) to the throne of England and that Jacob’s ladder had been adopted by them as a symbol. An authentic narrative is purported to be contained in the archives of the Grand Lodge of Scotland.
In the Ancient Craft degrees Jacob’s ladder was not an original symbol. The first appearance of a ladder is in a Tracing Board, on which is inscribed the date 1776, which agrees with the date of Dunkerley’s revised lectures. In this Tracing Board the ladder has only three rounds, a change from the seven-stepped ladder of the old mysteries, and was later described as having many rounds, but three principal ones.
The modern Masonic ladder, is, as I have already said, a symbol of progress, as it was in the ancient initiations. It’s three principal rounds, representing Faith, Hope and Charity, present us with the means of advancing from earth to heaven, from death to life, from the mortal to immortality. Hence it’s foot is placed on the floor of the Lodge, which is typical of the world, and it’s top rests on the covering of the Lodge, which is symbolic of heaven. Which explains the statement given in the lecture on the Tracing Board of the First Degree in Craft Masonry, that the ladder rests on the Holy Bible and reaches to the heavens.
The Stone:
Before I close I would like to take you back to those words from the Book of Genesis, namely, “. . . .with the bare earth for his couch and a stone for a pillow. . . . “
Almost 4,000 years ago fate brought Jacob’s caravan to a place called Bethel near Jerusalem, then as even now it was the custom for a traveller to bolster his pillow and bedding with stones for a more comfortable position.
With his head resting on a particular stone, Jacob is said to have had his famous dream, which we have heard earlier.
Jacob prospered in wealth and knowledge and was directed by God to return to Bethel. On his return, the Lord again appeared to him saying “I am the God of Bethel”, thus the Lord associated himself not only with the place of the vision but with the Bethel Stone. Jacob took the Stone with him and, from that time on it was always set up as a pillar marking the altar to the God of Israel.
The Bethel Stone, finally, was returned to Jerusalem where it served as the Coronation Stone for the Jewish Kings, ending with the infamous Zedekiah in 581 B.C. According to Irish historians, a few years later (578 B.C. ) a small but distinguished group of strangers, who had fled from Palestine, arrived in Ulster. They had brought with them the Bethel Stone, or Stone of Destiny, together with a Royal harp and an Ark. It is significant to note that a Harp has been the royal arms of Ireland for the last 2,500 years.
The Stone remained in Ireland for over 1,000 years where every king of Ireland was crowned upon it. Till Fearghus Mor ( The Great )took it to the Scottish island of Iona. Here 48 kings of Scotland were crowned upon it until the ninth century, when it was transferred to the town of Scone near Perth for safe keeping by Coinneach Cruadalach (the Hardy) who became King of Scotland. There it remained for 400 years as that nations coronation stone.
In the reign of England’s Edward I it was removed from Scotland (1292 ), either by force or by mutual agreement (the Authorities disagree), and there it remained located under the Coronation Chair in the Westminster Abbey until 1996, when it was returned to Scotland by a special Act of Parliament..
Early Rose Croix:
It would appear from reliable documentation that was still in existence, in Austria, prior to the Second World War, that a form of Rose Croix Masonry was first known in 1747, which had formerly been known as “Knights of the Pelican”. There are a number of references, under a variety of different titles, which all purport to relate to Rose Croix Masonry. These variously date back as far as the Knights Templars of Palestine in 1188 A.D. However, the earliest reference to Rose Croix without any additional appendage, and which seems most likely to be to be in accord with the Order as we know it today, first appeared in 1747.
In the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, from which the Rose Croix Masons of America first received the degree, it was placed 18th. on the list - thus the degree became known ( by common usage ) as the Eighteenth Degree. The degree was conferred inin a body known as a chapter, which derived it’s authority directly from a Supreme Council of the Thirty Third degree, and which conferred with it only one other and inferior degree, that of “Knight of the East and West”. A chapters principal officers being a Most Wise Sovereign and two Wardens. Interestingly, the order had two ‘Obligatory’ days of meeting, Maundy Thursday and Easter Sunday. Maundy Thursday or Holy Thursday is the Thursday before Easter, observed by Christians in commemoration of Christ’s Last Supper. The name ‘Maundy is derived from MANDATUM ( Latin: “commandment” ).
The Jewel of the Rose Croix is a Golden Compasses, extended on an arc to the sixteenth part of a circle - or twenty two and a half degrees. The head of the compasses is surmounted by a triple crown, consisting of three series of points arranged by three, five and seven. Between the legs of the compasses is a cross resting on the arc; it’s centre is occupied by a full blown rose, whose stem entwines around the lower limb of the cross; at the foot of the cross, on the same side, on which the rose is exhibited, is the figure of a Pelican wounding it’s breast to feed it’s young, which are in the nest surrounding it.
An interesting article:
There were several articles in our newspaper (Statesman Journal) last week about $100 bills found in a variety grocery items. We shopped during that time, but alas, didn't find anything in our bags. Turns out we didn't look hard enough! While looking for a treat yesterday, my husband pulled the chocolate bar out all the way. Surprise! - a real 100$ bill fell out. How's that for a new accrual?
Taken for September 2013 Monthly Scavenger Hunt - "New Accrual"
Spaceflight (or space flight) is ballistic flight into or through outer space. Spaceflight can occur with spacecraft with or without humans on board. Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union was the first human to conduct a spaceflight. Examples of human spaceflight include the U.S. Apollo Moon landing and Space Shuttle programs and the Russian Soyuz program, as well as the ongoing International Space Station. Examples of unmanned spaceflight include space probes that leave Earth orbit, as well as satellites in orbit around Earth, such as communications satellites. These operate either by telerobotic control or are fully autonomous.
Spaceflight is used in space exploration, and also in commercial activities like space tourism and satellite telecommunications. Additional non-commercial uses of spaceflight include space observatories, reconnaissance satellites and other Earth observation satellites.
A spaceflight typically begins with a rocket launch, which provides the initial thrust to overcome the force of gravity and propels the spacecraft from the surface of the Earth. Once in space, the motion of a spacecraft – both when unpropelled and when under propulsion – is covered by the area of study called astrodynamics. Some spacecraft remain in space indefinitely, some disintegrate during atmospheric reentry, and others reach a planetary or lunar surface for landing or impact.
History
Main articles: History of spaceflight and Timeline of spaceflight
Tsiolkovsky, early space theorist
The first theoretical proposal of space travel using rockets was published by Scottish astronomer and mathematician William Leitch, in an 1861 essay "A Journey Through Space".[1] More well-known (though not widely outside Russia) is Konstantin Tsiolkovsky's work, "Исследование мировых пространств реактивными приборами" (The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices), published in 1903.
Spaceflight became an engineering possibility with the work of Robert H. Goddard's publication in 1919 of his paper A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes. His application of the de Laval nozzle to liquid fuel rockets improved efficiency enough for interplanetary travel to become possible. He also proved in the laboratory that rockets would work in the vacuum of space;[specify] nonetheless, his work was not taken seriously by the public. His attempt to secure an Army contract for a rocket-propelled weapon in the first World War was defeated by the November 11, 1918 armistice with Germany. Working with private financial support, he was the first to launch a liquid-fueled rocket in 1926. Goddard's paper was highly influential on Hermann Oberth, who in turn influenced Wernher von Braun. Von Braun became the first to produce modern rockets as guided weapons, employed by Adolf Hitler. Von Braun's V-2 was the first rocket to reach space, at an altitude of 189 kilometers (102 nautical miles) on a June 1944 test flight.[2]
Tsiolkovsky's rocketry work was not fully appreciated in his lifetime, but he influenced Sergey Korolev, who became the Soviet Union's chief rocket designer under Joseph Stalin, to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles to carry nuclear weapons as a counter measure to United States bomber planes. Derivatives of Korolev's R-7 Semyorka missiles were used to launch the world's first artificial Earth satellite, Sputnik 1, on October 4, 1957, and later the first human to orbit the Earth, Yuri Gagarin in Vostok 1, on April 12, 1961.[3]
At the end of World War II, von Braun and most of his rocket team surrendered to the United States, and were expatriated to work on American missiles at what became the Army Ballistic Missile Agency. This work on missiles such as Juno I and Atlas enabled launch of the first US satellite Explorer 1 on February 1, 1958, and the first American in orbit, John Glenn in Friendship 7 on February 20, 1962. As director of the Marshall Space Flight Center, Von Braun oversaw development of a larger class of rocket called Saturn, which allowed the US to send the first two humans, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, to the Moon and back on Apollo 11 in July 1969. Over the same period, the Soviet Union secretly tried but failed to develop the N1 rocket to give them the capability to land one person on the Moon.
Phases
Launch
Main article: Rocket launch
See also: List of space launch system designs
Rockets are the only means currently capable of reaching orbit or beyond. Other non-rocket spacelaunch technologies have yet to be built, or remain short of orbital speeds. A rocket launch for a spaceflight usually starts from a spaceport (cosmodrome), which may be equipped with launch complexes and launch pads for vertical rocket launches, and runways for takeoff and landing of carrier airplanes and winged spacecraft. Spaceports are situated well away from human habitation for noise and safety reasons. ICBMs have various special launching facilities.
A launch is often restricted to certain launch windows. These windows depend upon the position of celestial bodies and orbits relative to the launch site. The biggest influence is often the rotation of the Earth itself. Once launched, orbits are normally located within relatively constant flat planes at a fixed angle to the axis of the Earth, and the Earth rotates within this orbit.
A launch pad is a fixed structure designed to dispatch airborne vehicles. It generally consists of a launch tower and flame trench. It is surrounded by equipment used to erect, fuel, and maintain launch vehicles. Before launch, the rocket can weigh many hundreds of tonnes. The Space Shuttle Columbia, on STS-1, weighed 2,030 tonnes (4,480,000 lb) at take off.
Reaching space
The most commonly used definition of outer space is everything beyond the Kármán line, which is 100 kilometers (62 mi) above the Earth's surface. The United States sometimes defines outer space as everything beyond 50 miles (80 km) in altitude.
Rockets are the only currently practical means of reaching space. Conventional airplane engines cannot reach space due to the lack of oxygen. Rocket engines expel propellant to provide forward thrust that generates enough delta-v (change in velocity) to reach orbit.
For manned launch systems launch escape systems are frequently fitted to allow astronauts to escape in the case of emergency.
Alternatives
Main article: Non-rocket spacelaunch
Many ways to reach space other than rockets have been proposed. Ideas such as the space elevator, and momentum exchange tethers like rotovators or skyhooks require new materials much stronger than any currently known. Electromagnetic launchers such as launch loops might be feasible with current technology. Other ideas include rocket assisted aircraft/spaceplanes such as Reaction Engines Skylon (currently in early stage development), scramjet powered spaceplanes, and RBCC powered spaceplanes. Gun launch has been proposed for cargo.
Leaving orbit
This section possibly contains original research. Relevant discussion may be found on Talk:Spaceflight. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations. Statements consisting only of original research should be removed. (June 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
Main articles: Escape velocity and Parking orbit
Launched in 1959, Luna 1 was the first known man-made object to achieve escape velocity from the Earth.[4] (replica pictured)
Achieving a closed orbit is not essential to lunar and interplanetary voyages. Early Russian space vehicles successfully achieved very high altitudes without going into orbit. NASA considered launching Apollo missions directly into lunar trajectories but adopted the strategy of first entering a temporary parking orbit and then performing a separate burn several orbits later onto a lunar trajectory. This costs additional propellant because the parking orbit perigee must be high enough to prevent reentry while direct injection can have an arbitrarily low perigee because it will never be reached.
However, the parking orbit approach greatly simplified Apollo mission planning in several important ways. It substantially widened the allowable launch windows, increasing the chance of a successful launch despite minor technical problems during the countdown. The parking orbit was a stable "mission plateau" that gave the crew and controllers several hours to thoroughly check out the spacecraft after the stresses of launch before committing it to a long lunar flight; the crew could quickly return to Earth, if necessary, or an alternate Earth-orbital mission could be conducted. The parking orbit also enabled translunar trajectories that avoided the densest parts of the Van Allen radiation belts.
Apollo missions minimized the performance penalty of the parking orbit by keeping its altitude as low as possible. For example, Apollo 15 used an unusually low parking orbit (even for Apollo) of 92.5 nmi by 91.5 nmi (171 km by 169 km) where there was significant atmospheric drag. But it was partially overcome by continuous venting of hydrogen from the third stage of the Saturn V, and was in any event tolerable for the short stay.
Robotic missions do not require an abort capability or radiation minimization, and because modern launchers routinely meet "instantaneous" launch windows, space probes to the Moon and other planets generally use direct injection to maximize performance. Although some might coast briefly during the launch sequence, they do not complete one or more full parking orbits before the burn that injects them onto an Earth escape trajectory.
Note that the escape velocity from a celestial body decreases with altitude above that body. However, it is more fuel-efficient for a craft to burn its fuel as close to the ground as possible; see Oberth effect and reference.[5] This is another way to explain the performance penalty associated with establishing the safe perigee of a parking orbit.
Plans for future crewed interplanetary spaceflight missions often include final vehicle assembly in Earth orbit, such as NASA's Project Orion and Russia's Kliper/Parom tandem.
Astrodynamics
Main article: Orbital mechanics
Astrodynamics is the study of spacecraft trajectories, particularly as they relate to gravitational and propulsion effects. Astrodynamics allows for a spacecraft to arrive at its destination at the correct time without excessive propellant use. An orbital maneuvering system may be needed to maintain or change orbits.
Non-rocket orbital propulsion methods include solar sails, magnetic sails, plasma-bubble magnetic systems, and using gravitational slingshot effects.
Ionized gas trail from Shuttle reentry
Recovery of Discoverer 14 return capsule by a C-119 airplane
Transfer energy
The term "transfer energy" means the total amount of energy imparted by a rocket stage to its payload. This can be the energy imparted by a first stage of a launch vehicle to an upper stage plus payload, or by an upper stage or spacecraft kick motor to a spacecraft.[6][7]
Reentry
Main article: Atmospheric reentry
Vehicles in orbit have large amounts of kinetic energy. This energy must be discarded if the vehicle is to land safely without vaporizing in the atmosphere. Typically this process requires special methods to protect against aerodynamic heating. The theory behind reentry was developed by Harry Julian Allen. Based on this theory, reentry vehicles present blunt shapes to the atmosphere for reentry. Blunt shapes mean that less than 1% of the kinetic energy ends up as heat that reaches the vehicle, and the remainder heats up the atmosphere.
Landing
The Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo capsules all splashed down in the sea. These capsules were designed to land at relatively low speeds with the help of a parachute. Russian capsules for Soyuz make use of a big parachute and braking rockets to touch down on land. The Space Shuttle glided to a touchdown like a plane.
Recovery
After a successful landing the spacecraft, its occupants and cargo can be recovered. In some cases, recovery has occurred before landing: while a spacecraft is still descending on its parachute, it can be snagged by a specially designed aircraft. This mid-air retrieval technique was used to recover the film canisters from the Corona spy satellites.
Types
Uncrewed
See also: Uncrewed spacecraft and robotic spacecraft
Sojourner takes its Alpha particle X-ray spectrometer measurement of Yogi Rock on Mars
The MESSENGER spacecraft at Mercury (artist's interpretation)
Uncrewed spaceflight (or unmanned) is all spaceflight activity without a necessary human presence in space. This includes all space probes, satellites and robotic spacecraft and missions. Uncrewed spaceflight is the opposite of manned spaceflight, which is usually called human spaceflight. Subcategories of uncrewed spaceflight are "robotic spacecraft" (objects) and "robotic space missions" (activities). A robotic spacecraft is an uncrewed spacecraft with no humans on board, that is usually under telerobotic control. A robotic spacecraft designed to make scientific research measurements is often called a space probe.
Uncrewed space missions use remote-controlled spacecraft. The first uncrewed space mission was Sputnik I, launched October 4, 1957 to orbit the Earth. Space missions where other animals but no humans are on-board are considered uncrewed missions.
Benefits
Many space missions are more suited to telerobotic rather than crewed operation, due to lower cost and lower risk factors. In addition, some planetary destinations such as Venus or the vicinity of Jupiter are too hostile for human survival, given current technology. Outer planets such as Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are too distant to reach with current crewed spaceflight technology, so telerobotic probes are the only way to explore them. Telerobotics also allows exploration of regions that are vulnerable to contamination by Earth micro-organisms since spacecraft can be sterilized. Humans can not be sterilized in the same way as a spaceship, as they coexist with numerous micro-organisms, and these micro-organisms are also hard to contain within a spaceship or spacesuit.
Telepresence
Telerobotics becomes telepresence when the time delay is short enough to permit control of the spacecraft in close to real time by humans. Even the two seconds light speed delay for the Moon is too far away for telepresence exploration from Earth. The L1 and L2 positions permit 400-millisecond round trip delays, which is just close enough for telepresence operation. Telepresence has also been suggested as a way to repair satellites in Earth orbit from Earth. The Exploration Telerobotics Symposium in 2012 explored this and other topics.[8]
Human
Main article: Human spaceflight
ISS crew member stores samples
The first human spaceflight was Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961, on which cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin of the USSR made one orbit around the Earth. In official Soviet documents, there is no mention of the fact that Gagarin parachuted the final seven miles.[9] Currently, the only spacecraft regularly used for human spaceflight are the Russian Soyuz spacecraft and the Chinese Shenzhou spacecraft. The U.S. Space Shuttle fleet operated from April 1981 until July 2011. SpaceShipOne has conducted two human suborbital spaceflights.
Sub-orbital
Main article: Sub-orbital spaceflight
The International Space Station in Earth orbit after a visit from the crew of STS-119
On a sub-orbital spaceflight the spacecraft reaches space and then returns to the atmosphere after following a (primarily) ballistic trajectory. This is usually because of insufficient specific orbital energy, in which case a suborbital flight will last only a few minutes, but it is also possible for an object with enough energy for an orbit to have a trajectory that intersects the Earth's atmosphere, sometimes after many hours. Pioneer 1 was NASA's first space probe intended to reach the Moon. A partial failure caused it to instead follow a suborbital trajectory to an altitude of 113,854 kilometers (70,746 mi) before reentering the Earth's atmosphere 43 hours after launch.
The most generally recognized boundary of space is the Kármán line 100 km above sea level. (NASA alternatively defines an astronaut as someone who has flown more than 50 miles (80 km) above sea level.) It is not generally recognized by the public that the increase in potential energy required to pass the Kármán line is only about 3% of the orbital energy (potential plus kinetic energy) required by the lowest possible Earth orbit (a circular orbit just above the Kármán line.) In other words, it is far easier to reach space than to stay there. On May 17, 2004, Civilian Space eXploration Team launched the GoFast Rocket on a suborbital flight, the first amateur spaceflight. On June 21, 2004, SpaceShipOne was used for the first privately funded human spaceflight.
Point-to-point
Point-to-point is a category of sub-orbital spaceflight in which a spacecraft provides rapid transport between two terrestrial locations. Consider a conventional airline route between London and Sydney, a flight that normally lasts over twenty hours. With point-to-point suborbital travel the same route could be traversed in less than one hour.[10] While no company offers this type of transportation today, SpaceX has revealed plans to do so as early as the 2020s using its BFR vehicle.[11] Suborbital spaceflight over an intercontinental distance requires a vehicle velocity that is only a little lower than the velocity required to reach low Earth orbit.[12] If rockets are used, the size of the rocket relative to the payload is similar to an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). Any intercontinental spaceflight has to surmount problems of heating during atmosphere re-entry that are nearly as large as those faced by orbital spaceflight.
Orbital
Main article: Orbital spaceflight
Apollo 6 heads into orbit
A minimal orbital spaceflight requires much higher velocities than a minimal sub-orbital flight, and so it is technologically much more challenging to achieve. To achieve orbital spaceflight, the tangential velocity around the Earth is as important as altitude. In order to perform a stable and lasting flight in space, the spacecraft must reach the minimal orbital speed required for a closed orbit.
Interplanetary
Main article: Interplanetary spaceflight
Interplanetary travel is travel between planets within a single planetary system. In practice, the use of the term is confined to travel between the planets of our Solar System.
Interstellar
Main article: Interstellar travel
Five spacecraft are currently leaving the Solar System on escape trajectories, Voyager 1, Voyager 2, Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11, and New Horizons. The one farthest from the Sun is Voyager 1, which is more than 100 AU distant and is moving at 3.6 AU per year.[13] In comparison, Proxima Centauri, the closest star other than the Sun, is 267,000 AU distant. It will take Voyager 1 over 74,000 years to reach this distance. Vehicle designs using other techniques, such as nuclear pulse propulsion are likely to be able to reach the nearest star significantly faster. Another possibility that could allow for human interstellar spaceflight is to make use of time dilation, as this would make it possible for passengers in a fast-moving vehicle to travel further into the future while aging very little, in that their great speed slows down the rate of passage of on-board time. However, attaining such high speeds would still require the use of some new, advanced method of propulsion.
Intergalactic
Main article: Intergalactic travel
Intergalactic travel involves spaceflight between galaxies, and is considered much more technologically demanding than even interstellar travel and, by current engineering terms, is considered science fiction.
Spacecraft
Main article: Spacecraft
An Apollo Lunar Module on the lunar surface
Spacecraft are vehicles capable of controlling their trajectory through space.
The first 'true spacecraft' is sometimes said to be Apollo Lunar Module,[14] since this was the only manned vehicle to have been designed for, and operated only in space; and is notable for its non aerodynamic shape.
Propulsion
Main article: Spacecraft propulsion
Spacecraft today predominantly use rockets for propulsion, but other propulsion techniques such as ion drives are becoming more common, particularly for unmanned vehicles, and this can significantly reduce the vehicle's mass and increase its delta-v.
Launch systems
Main article: Launch vehicle
Launch systems are used to carry a payload from Earth's surface into outer space.
Expendable
Main article: Expendable launch system
Most current spaceflight uses multi-stage expendable launch systems to reach space.
Reusable
Main article: Reusable launch system
Ambox current red.svg
This section needs to be updated. Please update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (August 2019)
The first reusable spacecraft, the X-15, was air-launched on a suborbital trajectory on July 19, 1963. The first partially reusable orbital spacecraft, the Space Shuttle, was launched by the USA on the 20th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's flight, on April 12, 1981. During the Shuttle era, six orbiters were built, all of which have flown in the atmosphere and five of which have flown in space. The Enterprise was used only for approach and landing tests, launching from the back of a Boeing 747 and gliding to deadstick landings at Edwards AFB, California. The first Space Shuttle to fly into space was the Columbia, followed by the Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour. The Endeavour was built to replace the Challenger, which was lost in January 1986. The Columbia broke up during reentry in February 2003.
The Space Shuttle Columbia seconds after engine ignition on mission STS-1
Columbia landing, concluding the STS-1 mission
Columbia launches again on STS-2
The first automatic partially reusable spacecraft was the Buran (Snowstorm), launched by the USSR on November 15, 1988, although it made only one flight. This spaceplane was designed for a crew and strongly resembled the US Space Shuttle, although its drop-off boosters used liquid propellants and its main engines were located at the base of what would be the external tank in the American Shuttle. Lack of funding, complicated by the dissolution of the USSR, prevented any further flights of Buran.
Per the Vision for Space Exploration, the Space Shuttle was retired in 2011 due mainly to its old age and high cost of the program reaching over a billion dollars per flight. The Shuttle's human transport role is to be replaced by the partially reusable Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) no later than 2021. The Shuttle's heavy cargo transport role is to be replaced by expendable rockets such as the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) or a Shuttle Derived Launch Vehicle.
Scaled Composites SpaceShipOne was a reusable suborbital spaceplane that carried pilots Mike Melvill and Brian Binnie on consecutive flights in 2004 to win the Ansari X Prize. The Spaceship Company has built its successor SpaceShipTwo. A fleet of SpaceShipTwos operated by Virgin Galactic planned to begin reusable private spaceflight carrying paying passengers (space tourists) in 2008, but this was delayed due to an accident in the propulsion development.[15]
Challenges
Main article: Effect of spaceflight on the human body
Space disasters
Main article: Space accidents and incidents
All launch vehicles contain a huge amount of energy that is needed for some part of it to reach orbit. There is therefore some risk that this energy can be released prematurely and suddenly, with significant effects. When a Delta II rocket exploded 13 seconds after launch on January 17, 1997, there were reports of store windows 10 miles (16 km) away being broken by the blast.[16]
Space is a fairly predictable environment, but there are still risks of accidental depressurization and the potential failure of equipment, some of which may be very newly developed.
In 2004 the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety was established in the Netherlands to further international cooperation and scientific advancement in space systems safety.[17]
Weightlessness
Main article: Weightlessness
Astronauts on the ISS in weightless conditions. Michael Foale can be seen exercising in the foreground.
In a microgravity environment such as that provided by a spacecraft in orbit around the Earth, humans experience a sense of "weightlessness." Short-term exposure to microgravity causes space adaptation syndrome, a self-limiting nausea caused by derangement of the vestibular system. Long-term exposure causes multiple health issues. The most significant is bone loss, some of which is permanent, but microgravity also leads to significant deconditioning of muscular and cardiovascular tissues.
Radiation
Once above the atmosphere, radiation due to the Van Allen belts, solar radiation and cosmic radiation issues occur and increase. Further away from the Earth, solar flares can give a fatal radiation dose in minutes, and the health threat from cosmic radiation significantly increases the chances of cancer over a decade exposure or more.[18]
Life support
Main article: Life support system
In human spaceflight, the life support system is a group of devices that allow a human being to survive in outer space. NASA often uses the phrase Environmental Control and Life Support System or the acronym ECLSS when describing these systems for its human spaceflight missions.[19] The life support system may supply: air, water and food. It must also maintain the correct body temperature, an acceptable pressure on the body and deal with the body's waste products. Shielding against harmful external influences such as radiation and micro-meteorites may also be necessary. Components of the life support system are life-critical, and are designed and constructed using safety engineering techniques.
Space weather
Main article: Space weather
Aurora australis and Discovery, May 1991.
Space weather is the concept of changing environmental conditions in outer space. It is distinct from the concept of weather within a planetary atmosphere, and deals with phenomena involving ambient plasma, magnetic fields, radiation and other matter in space (generally close to Earth but also in interplanetary, and occasionally interstellar medium). "Space weather describes the conditions in space that affect Earth and its technological systems. Our space weather is a consequence of the behavior of the Sun, the nature of Earth's magnetic field, and our location in the Solar System."[20]
Space weather exerts a profound influence in several areas related to space exploration and development. Changing geomagnetic conditions can induce changes in atmospheric density causing the rapid degradation of spacecraft altitude in Low Earth orbit. Geomagnetic storms due to increased solar activity can potentially blind sensors aboard spacecraft, or interfere with on-board electronics. An understanding of space environmental conditions is also important in designing shielding and life support systems for manned spacecraft.
Environmental considerations
Rockets as a class are not inherently grossly polluting. However, some rockets use toxic propellants, and most vehicles use propellants that are not carbon neutral. Many solid rockets have chlorine in the form of perchlorate or other chemicals, and this can cause temporary local holes in the ozone layer. Re-entering spacecraft generate nitrates which also can temporarily impact the ozone layer. Most rockets are made of metals that can have an environmental impact during their construction.
In addition to the atmospheric effects there are effects on the near-Earth space environment. There is the possibility that orbit could become inaccessible for generations due to exponentially increasing space debris caused by spalling of satellites and vehicles (Kessler syndrome). Many launched vehicles today are therefore designed to be re-entered after use.
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