View allAll Photos Tagged Segregation
Exposition : The color line
Du mardi 04 octobre 2016 au dimanche 15 janvier 2017
Quel rôle a joué l’art dans la quête d’égalité et d’affirmation de l’identité noire dans l’Amérique de la Ségrégation ? L'exposition rend hommage aux artistes et penseurs africains-américains qui ont contribué, durant près d’un siècle et demi de luttes, à estomper cette "ligne de couleur" discriminatoire.
—————
« Le problème du 20e siècle est le problème de la ligne de partage des couleurs ».
Si la fin de la Guerre de Sécession en 1865 a bien sonné l’abolition de l'esclavage, la ligne de démarcation raciale va encore marquer durablement la société américaine, comme le pressent le militant W.E.B. Du Bois en 1903 dans The Soul of Black Folks. L’exposition The Color Line revient sur cette période sombre des États-Unis à travers l’histoire culturelle de ses artistes noirs, premières cibles de ces discriminations.
Des thématiques racistes du vaudeville américain et des spectacles de Minstrels du 19e siècle à l’effervescence culturelle et littéraire de la Harlem Renaissance du début du 20e siècle, des pionniers de l’activisme noir (Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington) au réquisitoire de la chanteuse Billie Holiday (Strange Fruit), ce sont près de 150 ans de production artistique – peinture, sculpture, photographie, cinéma, musique, littérature… – qui témoignent de la richesse créative de la contestation noire.
this being america, i cannot help but wonder if somebody might end up suing this doctor for segregating patients. but in times such as now, when the next flu epidemic is about to hit, this probably makes a lot of sense.
Rapid strata formation in soft sand (field evidence).
Photo of strata formation in soft sand on a beach, created by tidal action of the sea.
Formed in a single, high tidal event. This example displays geological features observed in sedimentary rock formations.
This natural example of rapid, simultaneous stratification refutes the Superposition Principle, and the Principle of Lateral Continuity.
The Superposition Principle only applies on a rare occasion of sedimentary deposits in perfectly, still water. Superposition is required for the long evolutionary timescale, but the evidence shows it is not the general rule, as was once believed. Most sediment is laid down in moving water, where particle segregation is the general rule, resulting in the simultaneous deposition of strata/layers as shown in the photo.
See many other examples of rapid stratification with geological features: www.flickr.com/photos/101536517@N06/sets/72157635944904973/
Rapid, simultaneous formation of layers/strata, through particle segregation in moving water, is described by sedimentologists (working on flume experiments) as a law ...
"Upon filling the tank with water and pouring in sediments, we immediately saw what was to become the rule: The sediments sorted themselves out in very clear layers. This became so common that by the end of two weeks, we jokingly referred to Andrew's law as "It's difficult not to make layers," and Clark's law as "It's easy to make layers." Later on, I proposed the "law" that liquefaction destroys layers, as much to my surprise as that was." Ian Juby, www.ianjuby.org/sedimentation/
The example in the photo is the result of normal, everyday tidal action. Where the water movement is very turbulent, violent, or catastrophic, great depths (many metres) of stratified sediment can be laid down in a short time. Certainly not the many millions of years assumed by evolutionists.
The composition of strata formed in any deposition event. is related to whatever materials are in the sediment mix. Whatever is in the mix will be automatically sorted into strata/layers. It could be sand, or other material added from mud slides, erosion of chalk deposits, coastal erosion, volcanic ash etc. Any organic material (potential fossils), alive or dead, engulfed by, or swept into, a turbulent sediment mix, will also be sorted and buried within the rapidly, forming layers.
See many other examples of rapid stratification with geological features: www.flickr.com/photos/101536517@N06/sets/72157635944904973/
Stratified, soft sand deposit. demonstrates the rapid, stratification principle.
Important, field evidence which supports the work of the eminent, sedimentologist Dr Guy Berthault MIAS - Member of the International Association of Sedimentologists.
(Dr Berthault's experiments (www.sedimentology.fr/)
And also the experimental work of Dr M.E. Clark (Professor Emeritus, U of Illinois @ Urbana), Andrew Rodenbeck and Dr. Henry Voss, (www.ianjuby.org/sedimentation/)
Location: Sandown beach, Isle of Wight. Formed 18/01/2018, This field evidence demonstrates that multiple strata in sedimentary deposits do not need millions of years to form and can be formed rapidly. This natural example confirms the principle demonstrated by the sedimentation experiments carried out by Dr Guy Berthault and other sedimentologists. It calls into question the standard, multi-million year dating of sedimentary rocks, and the dating of fossils by depth of burial or position in the strata.
Mulltiple strata/layers and several, geological features are evident in this example.
Dr Berthault's experiments (www.sedimentology.fr/) and other experiments (www.ianjuby.org/sedimentation/) and field studies of floods and volcanic action show that, rather than being formed by gradual, slow deposition of sucessive layers superimposed upon previous layers, with the strata or layers representing a particular timescale, particle segregation in moving water or airborne particles can form strata or layers very quickly, frequently, in a single event.
And, most importantly, lower strata are not older than upper strata, they are the same age, having been created in the same sedimentary episode.
Such field studies confirm experiments which have shown that there is no longer any reason to conclude that strata/layers in sedimentary rocks relate to different geological eras and/or a multi-million year timescale. www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PVnBaqqQw8&feature=share&.... they also show that the relative position of fossils in rocks is not indicative of an order of evolutionary succession. Obviously, the uniformitarian principle, on which the geologic column is based, can no longer be considered valid. And the multi-million, year dating of sedimentary rocks and fossils needs to be reassessed. Rapid deposition of stratified sediments also explains the enigma of polystrate fossils, i.e. large fossils that intersect several strata. In some cases, tree trunk fossils are found which intersect the strata of sedimentary rock up to forty feet in depth. upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/08/Lycopsi... They must have been buried in stratified sediment in a short time (certainly not millions, thousands, or even hundreds of years), or they would have rotted away. youtu.be/vnzHU9VsliQ
In fact, the vast majority of fossils are found in good, intact condition, which is testament to their rapid burial. You don't get good fossils from gradual burial, because they would be damaged or destroyed by decay, predation or erosion. The existence of so many fossils in sedimentary rock on a global scale is stunning evidence for the rapid depostion of sedimentary rock as the general rule. It is obvious that all rock containing good intact fossils was formed from sediment laid down in a very short time, not millions, or even thousands of years.
See set of photos of other examples of rapid stratification: www.flickr.com/photos/101536517@N06/sets/72157635944904973/
Carbon dating of coal should not be possible if it is millions of years old, yet significant amounts of Carbon 14 have been detected in coal and other fossil material, which indicates that it is less than 50,000 years old. www.ldolphin.org/sewell/c14dating.html
www.grisda.org/origins/51006.htm
Evolutionists confidently cite multi-million year ages for rocks and fossils, but what most people don't realise is that no one actually knows the age of sedimentary rocks or the fossils found within them. So how are evolutionists so sure of the ages they so confidently quote? The astonishing thing is they aren't. Sedimentary rocks cannot be dated by radiometric methods*, and fossils can only be dated to less than 50,000 years with Carbon 14 dating. The method evolutionists use is based entirely on assumptions. Unbelievably, fossils are dated by the assumed age of rocks, and rocks are dated by the assumed age of fossils, that's right ... it is known as circular reasoning.
* Regarding the radiometric dating of igneous rocks, which is claimed to be relevant to the dating of sedimentary rocks, in an occasional instance there is an igneous intrusion associated with a sedimentary deposit -
Prof. Aubouin says in his Précis de Géologie: "Each radioactive element disintegrates in a characteristic and constant manner, which depends neither on the physical state (no variation with pressure or temperature or any other external constraint) nor on the chemical state (identical for an oxide or a phosphate)."
"Rocks form when magma crystallizes. Crystallisation depends on pressure and temperature, from which radioactivity is independent. So, there is no relationship between radioactivity and crystallisation.
Consequently, radioactivity doesn't date the formation of rocks. Moreover, daughter elements contained in rocks result mainly from radioactivity in magma where gravity separates the heavier parent element, from the lighter daughter element. Thus radiometric dating has no chronological signification." Dr. Guy Berthault www.sciencevsevolution.org/Berthault.htm
Visit the fossil museum:
www.flickr.com/photos/101536517@N06/sets/72157641367196613/
Just how good are peer reviews of scientific papers?
www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/60.full
www.examiner.com/article/want-to-publish-science-paper-ju...
The neo-Darwinian idea that the human genome consists entirely of an accumulation of billions of mutations is, quite obviously, completely bonkers. Nevertheless, it is compulsorily taught in schools and universities as 'science'.
Segregation in public places was still legal on February 1, 1960m when four African American college students deliberately sat down at this "whites only" lunch counter at an F.W. Woolworth store in Greensboro, North Carolina. When denied service and asked to leave, they remained in their seats. Over the next six months, hundreds of students and church and community members joined the protest. Their activism ultimately led to the desegregation of the lunch counter on July 25, 1960.
The National Museum of American History (NMAH), administered by the Smithsonian Institute, collects, preserves and displays American heritage in the areas of social, political, cultural, scientific and military history. The museum, which first opened in 1964 as the Museum of History and Technology, is located on the National Mall in one of the last structures designed by McKim, Mead & White. It was renamed in 1980, and closed for a 2-year, $85 million renovation by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP from 2006 to 2008.
The Smithsonian Institution, an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its shops and its magazines, was established in 1846. Although concentrated in Washington DC, its collection of over 136 million items is spread through 19 museums, a zoo, and nine research centers from New York to Panama.
An African American man drinking from a "Colored" water cooler in streetcar terminal, Oklahoma City,1939. Sign on the left points to White Women/Colored Women restroom entrance. Right sign points to its " White Men/Colored Men" counterpart.
Vintage African American photography courtesy of Black History Album, The Way We Were.
Follow Us On Twitter @blackhistoryalb
Exposition : The color line
Du mardi 04 octobre 2016 au dimanche 15 janvier 2017
Quel rôle a joué l’art dans la quête d’égalité et d’affirmation de l’identité noire dans l’Amérique de la Ségrégation ? L'exposition rend hommage aux artistes et penseurs africains-américains qui ont contribué, durant près d’un siècle et demi de luttes, à estomper cette "ligne de couleur" discriminatoire.
—————
« Le problème du 20e siècle est le problème de la ligne de partage des couleurs ».
Si la fin de la Guerre de Sécession en 1865 a bien sonné l’abolition de l'esclavage, la ligne de démarcation raciale va encore marquer durablement la société américaine, comme le pressent le militant W.E.B. Du Bois en 1903 dans The Soul of Black Folks. L’exposition The Color Line revient sur cette période sombre des États-Unis à travers l’histoire culturelle de ses artistes noirs, premières cibles de ces discriminations.
Des thématiques racistes du vaudeville américain et des spectacles de Minstrels du 19e siècle à l’effervescence culturelle et littéraire de la Harlem Renaissance du début du 20e siècle, des pionniers de l’activisme noir (Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington) au réquisitoire de la chanteuse Billie Holiday (Strange Fruit), ce sont près de 150 ans de production artistique – peinture, sculpture, photographie, cinéma, musique, littérature… – qui témoignent de la richesse créative de la contestation noire.
Local call number: N045652
Title: City Island Field: Daytona Beach, Florida
Date: ca. 1946
General Note: City Island Ball Park, renamed Jackie Robinson Ball Park in 1990, was built circa 1915. Daytona Beach was the first city in Florida that allowed Robinson to play during spring training in 1946 when he was a member of the Montreal Royals of the International League. Both Sanford and Jacksonville, citing segregation laws, refused to let Montreal play an exhibition game against the Brooklyn Dodgers, parent club of Robinson's Royals. Daytona Beach agreed to the game, which was played on March 17, 1946. As a result of the resistance by Jacksonville, the Dodgers moved spring training to City Island Ball Park, and in 1948 built Dodgertown in Vero Beach. Jackie Robinson Ball Park was later added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places on October 22, 1998.
Physical descrip: 1 photonegative - b&w - 4 x 5 in.
Series Title: General Collection
Repository: State Library and Archives of Florida, 500 S. Bronough St., Tallahassee, FL 32399-0250 USA. Contact: 850.245.6700. Archives@dos.myflorida.com
Persistent URL: floridamemory.com/items/show/153612
Thanks to ghostbones* for the Pollution texture.
*He is no longer active on Flickr so the link to the texture has been deleted.
on 'holism and evolution', segregation and zionism. jannie smuts feeling frisky, parliament square, adderley street, cape town. bronze staue by ivan graham mitford-barberton.
from wikipedia-
Jan Christiaan Smuts OM, CH, ED, PC, KC, FRS[1] (24 May 1870 – 11 September 1950) was a prominent South African and British Commonwealth statesman, military leader and philosopher. In addition to holding various cabinet posts, he served as prime minister of the Union of South Africa from 1919 until 1924 and from 1939 until 1948. Although Smuts had originally advocated racial segregation and opposed the enfranchisement of black Africans, his views changed and he backed the Fagan Commission's findings that complete segregation was impossible. Smuts subsequently lost the 1948 election to hard-line Afrikaners who created apartheid. He continued to work for reconciliation and emphasised the British Commonwealth’s positive role until his death in 1950.[2]
He led a Boer Commando in the Second Boer War for the Transvaal. During the First World War, he led the armies of South Africa against Germany, capturing German South-West Africa and commanding the British Army in East Africa. From 1917 to 1919, he was also one of the members of the British War Cabinet and he was instrumental in the founding of what became the Royal Air Force (RAF). He became a field marshal in the British Army in 1941, and served in the Imperial War Cabinet under Winston Churchill. He was the only man to sign both of the peace treaties ending the First and Second World Wars.
Early life
Jacobus and Catharina Smuts, 1893.
He was born on 24 May 1870, at the family farm, Bovenplaats, near Malmesbury, in the Cape Colony. His parents, Jacobus Smuts and his wife Catharina, were prosperous, traditional Afrikaner farmers, long established and highly respected.[3]
Jan was quiet and delicate as a child, strongly inclined towards solitary pursuits. During his childhood, he often went out alone, exploring the surrounding countryside; this awakened a passion for nature, which he retained throughout his life. As the second son of the family, rural custom dictated that he would remain working on the farm; a full formal education was typically the preserve of the first son. However, in 1882, when Jan was twelve, his elder brother died, and Jan was sent to school in his brother's place. Jan attended the school in nearby Riebeek West. He made excellent progress here, despite his late start, and caught up with his contemporaries within four years. He moved on to Victoria College, Stellenbosch, in 1886, at the age of sixteen.[4]
At Stellenbosch, he learned High Dutch, German, and Ancient Greek, and immersed himself further in literature, the classics, and Bible studies. His deeply traditional upbringing and serious outlook led to social isolation from his peers. However, he made outstanding academic progress, graduating in 1891 with double First-class honours in Literature and Science. During his last years at Stellenbosch, Smuts began to cast off some of his shyness and reserve, and it was at this time that he met Isie Krige, whom he was later to marry.[5]
On graduation from Victoria College, Smuts won the Ebden scholarship for overseas study. He decided to travel to the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom to read law at Christ's College, Cambridge.[6] Smuts found it difficult to settle at Cambridge; he felt homesick and isolated by his age and different upbringing from the English undergraduates. Worries over money also contributed to his unhappiness, as his scholarship was insufficient to cover his university expenses. He confided these worries to a friend from Victoria College, Professor J. I. Marais. In reply, Professor Marais enclosed a cheque for a substantial sum, by way of loan, urging Smuts not to hesitate to approach him should he ever find himself in need.[7] Thanks to Marais, Smuts's financial standing was secure. He gradually began to enter more into the social aspects of the university, although he retained his single-minded dedication to his studies.[8]
During his time in Cambridge, he found time to study a diverse number of subjects in addition to law; he wrote a book, Walt Whitman: A Study in the Evolution of Personality, although it was unpublished until 1973.[9] The thoughts behind this book laid the foundation for Smuts' later wide-ranging philosophy of holism.[10]
Smuts graduated in 1893 with a double First. Over the previous two years, he had been the recipient of numerous academic prizes and accolades, including the coveted George Long prize in Roman Law and Jurisprudence.[11] One of his tutors, Professor Maitland, a leading figure among English legal historians, described Smuts as the most brilliant student he had ever met.[12] Lord Todd, the Master of Christ's College said in 1970 that "in 500 years of the College's history, of all its members, past and present, three had been truly outstanding: John Milton, Charles Darwin and Jan Smuts."[13]
In 1894, Smuts passed the examinations for the Inns of Court, entering the Middle Temple. His old Cambridge college, Christ's College, offered him a fellowship in Law. However, Smuts turned his back on a potentially distinguished legal future. By June 1895, he had returned to the Cape Colony, determined that he should make his future there.[14]
Climbing the ladder
Main article: Jan Smuts in the South African Republic
Smuts began to practise law in Cape Town, but his abrasive nature made him few friends. Finding little financial success in the law, he began to divert more and more of his time to politics and journalism, writing for the Cape Times. Smuts was intrigued by the prospect of a united South Africa, and joined the Afrikaner Bond. By good fortune, Smuts' father knew the leader of the group, Jan Hofmeyr. Hofmeyr in turn recommended Jan to Cecil Rhodes, who owned the De Beers mining company. In 1895, Smuts became an advocate and supporter of Rhodes.[15]
When Rhodes launched the Jameson Raid, in the summer of 1895–6, Smuts was outraged. Feeling betrayed by his employer, friend and political ally, he resigned from De Beers, and left political life. Instead he became state attorney in the capital of the South African Republic, Pretoria.[15]
After the Jameson Raid, relations between the British and the Afrikaners had deteriorated steadily. By 1898, war seemed imminent. Orange Free State President Martinus Steyn called for a peace conference at Bloemfontein to settle each side's grievances. With an intimate knowledge of the British, Smuts took control of the Transvaal delegation. Sir Alfred Milner, head of the British delegation, took exception to his dominance, and conflict between the two led to the collapse of the conference, consigning South Africa to war.[16]
The Boer War
Main article: Jan Smuts in the Boer War
Jan Smuts and Boer guerrillas during the Second Boer War, ca. 1901
On 11 October 1899, the British invaded the Boer republics, beginning the Second Boer War. In the early stages of the conflict, Smuts served as Paul Kruger's eyes and ears, handling propaganda, logistics, communication with generals and diplomats, and anything else that was required. In the second phase of the war, Smuts served under Koos de la Rey, who commanded 500 commandos in the Western Transvaal. Smuts excelled at hit-and-run warfare, and the unit evaded and harassed a British army forty times its size. President Kruger and the deputation in Europe thought that there was good hope for their cause in the Cape Colony. They decided to send General de la Rey there to assume supreme command, but then decided to act more cautiously when they realised that General de la Rey could hardly be spared in the Western Transvaal. Consequently, Smuts was left with a small force of 300 men, while another 100 men followed him. By this point in the war, the British scorched earth policy left little grazing land. One hundred of the cavalry that had joined Smuts were therefore too weak to continue and so Smuts had to leave these men with General Kritzinger. Intelligence indicated that at this time Smuts had about 3,000 men.[17]
To end the conflict, Smuts sought to take a major target, the copper-mining town of Okiep. With a full assault impossible, Smuts packed a train full of explosives, and tried to push it downhill, into the town, where it would bring the enemy garrison to its knees. Although this failed, Smuts had proven his point: that he would stop at nothing to defeat his enemies. Norman Kemp Smith wrote that General Smuts read from Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" on the evening before the raid. Smith contended that this showed how Kant's critique can be a solace and a refuge, as well as a means to sharpen the wit.[18] Combined with their failure to pacify the Transvaal, Smuts' success left the United Kingdom with no choice but to offer a ceasefire and a peace conference, to be held at Vereeniging.[17]
Before the conference, Smuts met Lord Kitchener at Kroonstad station, where they discussed the proposed terms of surrender. Smuts then took a leading role in the negotiations between the representatives from all of the commandos from the Orange Free State and the South African Republic (15–31 May 1902). Although he admitted that, from a purely military perspective, the war could continue, he stressed the importance of not sacrificing the Afrikaner people for that independence. He was very conscious that 'more than 20,000 women and children have already died in the concentration camps of the enemy'. He felt it would have been a crime to continue the war without the assurance of help from elsewhere and declared, "Comrades, we decided to stand to the bitter end. Let us now, like men, admit that that end has come for us, come in a more bitter shape than we ever thought."[19] His opinions were representative of the conference, which then voted by 54 to 6 in favour of peace. Representatives of the Governments met Lord Kitchener and at five minutes past eleven on 31 May 1902, Acting President Burger signed the Peace Treaty, followed by the members of his government, Acting President de Wet and the members of his government.[20]
A British Transvaal[edit]
Main article: Jan Smuts and a British Transvaal
Jan Smuts, c. 1914
For all Smuts' exploits as a general and a negotiator, nothing could mask the fact that the Afrikaners had been defeated and humiliated. Lord Milner had full control of all South African affairs, and established an Anglophone elite, known as Milner's Kindergarten. As an Afrikaner, Smuts was excluded. Defeated but not deterred, in January 1905, he decided to join with the other former Transvaal generals to form a political party, Het Volk (People's Party),[21] to fight for the Afrikaner cause. Louis Botha was elected leader, and Smuts his deputy.[15]
When his term of office expired, Milner was replaced as High Commissioner by the more conciliatory Lord Selborne. Smuts saw an opportunity and pounced, urging Botha to persuade the Liberals to support Het Volk's cause. When the Conservative government under Arthur Balfour collapsed, in December 1905, the decision paid off. Smuts joined Botha in London, and sought to negotiate full self-government for the Transvaal within British South Africa. Using the thorny political issue of South Asian labourers ('coolies'), the South Africans convinced Prime Minister Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and, with him, the cabinet and Parliament.[15]
Through 1906, Smuts worked on the new constitution for the Transvaal, and, in December 1906, elections were held for the Transvaal parliament. Despite being shy and reserved, unlike the showman Botha, Smuts won a comfortable victory in the Wonderboom constituency, near Pretoria. His victory was one of many, with Het Volk winning in a landslide and Botha forming the government. To reward his loyalty and efforts, Smuts was given two key cabinet positions: Colonial Secretary and Education Secretary.[22]
Smuts proved to be an effective leader, if unpopular. As Education Secretary, he had fights with the Dutch Reformed Church, of which he had once been a dedicated member, who demanded Calvinist teachings in schools. As Colonial Secretary, he opposed a movement for equal rights for South Asian workers, led by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.[22]
During the years of Transvaal self-government, no-one could avoid the predominant political debate of the day: South African unification. Ever since the British victory in the war, it was an inevitability, but it remained up to the South Africans to decide what sort of country would be formed, and how it would be formed. Smuts favoured a unitary state, with power centralised in Pretoria, with English as the only official language, and with a more inclusive electorate. To impress upon his compatriots his vision, he called a constitutional convention in Durban, in October 1908.[23]
There, Smuts was up against a hard-talking Orange River Colony delegation, who refused every one of Smuts' demands. Smuts had successfully predicted this opposition, and their objections, and tailored his own ambitions appropriately. He allowed compromise on the location of the capital, on the official language, and on suffrage, but he refused to budge on the fundamental structure of government. As the convention drew into autumn, the Orange leaders began to see a final compromise as necessary to secure the concessions that Smuts had already made. They agreed to Smuts' draft South African constitution, which was duly ratified by the South African colonies. Smuts and Botha took the constitution to London, where it was passed by Parliament and given Royal Assent by King Edward VII in December 1909.[23]
The Old Boers[edit]
Main article: Jan Smuts and the Old Boers
The Union of South Africa was born, and the Afrikaners held the key to political power, as the majority of the electorate. Although Botha was appointed prime minister of the new country, Smuts was given three key ministries: Interior, Mines, and Defence. Undeniably, Smuts was the second most powerful man in South Africa. To solidify their dominance of South African politics, the Afrikaners united to form the South African Party, a new pan-South African Afrikaner party.[24]
The harmony and cooperation soon ended. Smuts was criticised for his overarching powers, and the cabinet was reshuffled. Smuts lost Interior and Mines, but gained control of Finance. This was still too much for Smuts' opponents, who decried his possession of both Defence and Finance: two departments that were usually at loggerheads. At the 1913 South African Party conference, the Old Boers (Hertzog, Steyn, De Wet), called for Botha and Smuts to step down. The two narrowly survived a confidence vote, and the troublesome triumvirate stormed out, leaving the party for good.[25]
With the schism in internal party politics came a new threat to the mines that brought South Africa its wealth. A small-scale miners' dispute flared into a full-blown strike, and rioting broke out in Johannesburg after Smuts intervened heavy-handedly. After police shot dead twenty-one strikers, Smuts and Botha headed unaccompanied to Johannesburg to resolve the situation personally. Facing down threats to their own lives, they negotiated a cease-fire. But the cease-fire did not hold, and in 1914, a railway strike turned into a general strike. Threats of a revolution caused Smuts to declare martial law. Smuts acted ruthlessly, deporting union leaders without trial and using Parliament to absolve him and the government of any blame retroactively. This was too much for the Old Boers, who set up their own National Party to fight the all-powerful Botha-Smuts partnership.[25]
First World War
During the First World War, Smuts (right) and Botha were key members of the British Army.
During the First World War, Smuts formed the Union Defence Force. His first task was to suppress the Maritz Rebellion, which was accomplished by November 1914. Next he and Louis Botha led the South African army into German South West Africa and conquered it (see the South-West Africa Campaign for details). In 1916 General Smuts was put in charge of the conquest of German East Africa. Col (later BGen) J.H.V. Crowe commanded the artillery in East Africa under General Smuts and published an account of the campaign, General Smuts' Campaign in East Africa in 1918.[26] Smuts was promoted to temporary lieutenant general on 18 February 1916.[27]
While the East African Campaign went fairly well, the German forces were not destroyed. Smuts was criticised by his chief Intelligence officer, Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, for avoiding frontal attacks which, in Meinertzhagen's view, would have been less costly than the inconsequential flanking movements that prolonged the campaign where thousands of Imperial troops died of disease. Meinertzhagen believed Horace Smith-Dorrien (who had saved the British Army during the retreat from Mons), the original choice as commander in 1916 would have quickly defeated the German commander Colonel (later General) Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck. As for Smuts, Meinertzhagen wrote: "Smuts has cost Britain many hundreds of thousands of lives and many millions of pounds by his caution...Smuts was not an astute soldier; a brilliant statesman and politician but no soldier."[28] Smuts was promoted to honorary lieutenant general for distinguished service in the field on 1 January 1917.[29]
Early in 1917 Smuts left Africa and went to London as he had been invited to join the Imperial War Cabinet and the War Policy Committee by David Lloyd George. Smuts initially recommended renewed western front attacks and a policy of attrition, lest with Russian commitment to the war wavering, France or Italy be tempted to make a separate peace.[30] Lloyd George wanted a commander “of the dashing type” for the Middle East in succession to Murray, but Smuts refused the command (late May) unless promised resources for a decisive victory, and he agreed with Robertson that Western Front commitments did not justify a serious attempt to capture Jerusalem. Allenby was appointed instead.[31] Like other members of the War Cabinet, Smuts' commitment to Western Front efforts was shaken by Third Ypres.[32]
In 1917, following the German Gotha Raids, and lobbying by Viscount French, Smuts wrote a review of the British Air Services, which came to be called the Smuts Report. He was helped in large part in this by General Sir David Henderson who was seconded to him. This report led to the treatment of air as a separate force, which eventually became the Royal Air Force.[33][34]
By mid-January 1918 Lloyd George was toying with the idea of appointing Smuts Commander-in-Chief of all land and sea forces facing the Turks, reporting directly to the War Cabinet rather than to Robertson.[35] Early in 1918 Smuts was sent to Egypt to confer with Allenby and Marshall and prepare for major efforts in that theatre. Before his departure, alienated by Robertson's exaggerated estimates of the required reinforcements, he urged Robertson's removal. Allenby told Smuts of Robertson's private instructions (sent by hand of Walter Kirke, appointed by Robertson as Smuts' adviser) that there was no merit in any further advance and worked with Smuts to draw up plans, reinforced by 3 divisions from Mesopotamia, to reach Haifa by June and Damascus by the autumn, the speed of the advance limited by the need to lay fresh rail track. This was the foundation of Allenby's successful offensive later in the year.[36]
Like most British Empire political and military leaders in World War I, Smuts thought the American Expeditionary Forces lacked the proper leadership and experience to be effective quickly. He supported the Anglo-French amalgamation policy towards the Americans. In particular, he had a low opinion of General John J. Pershing's leadership skills, so much so that he wrote a confidential letter to Lloyd George proposing Pershing be relieved of his command and that the US forces be placed "under someone more confident, like himself". This did not endear him to the Americans once it was leaked.[37]
Statesman[edit]
Smuts and Botha were key negotiators at the Paris Peace Conference. Both were in favour of reconciliation with Germany and limited reparations. Smuts advocated a powerful League of Nations, which failed to materialise. The Treaty of Versailles gave South Africa a Class C mandate over German South West Africa (which later became Namibia), which was occupied from 1919 until withdrawal in 1990. At the same time, Australia was given a similar mandate over German New Guinea, which it held until 1975. Both Smuts and the Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes feared the rising power of Japan in the post First World War world. When former German East Africa was divided into three mandated territories (Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanganyika) Smutsland was one of the proposed names for what became Tanganyika. Smuts, who had called for South African territorial expansion all the way to the River Zambesi since the late 19th century, was ultimately disappointed with the League awarding South West Africa only a mandate status, as he had looked forward to formally incorporating the territory to South Africa.[38]
Smuts returned to South African politics after the conference. When Botha died in 1919, Smuts was elected prime minister, serving until a shocking defeat in 1924 at the hands of the National Party. After the death of the former American President Woodrow Wilson, Smuts was quoted as saying that: "Not Wilson, but humanity failed at Paris."[39]
While in Britain for an Imperial Conference in June 1920, Smuts went to Ireland and met Éamon de Valera to help broker an armistice and peace deal between the warring British and Irish nationalists. Smuts attempted to sell the concept of Ireland receiving Dominion status similar to that of Australia and South Africa.[40]
As a botanist, Smuts collected plants extensively over southern Africa. He went on several botanical expeditions in the 1920s and 1930s with John Hutchinson, former Botanist in charge of the African section of the Herbarium of the Royal Botanic Gardens and taxonomist of note. Smuts was a keen mountaineer and supporter of mountaineering.[41] One of his favourite rambles was up Table Mountain along a route now known as Smuts' Track. In February 1923 he unveiled a memorial to members of the Mountain Club who had been killed in World War I.[41]
For most of the 1930s, Smuts was a leading supporter of appeasement. In December 1934, Smuts told an audience at the Royal Institute of International Affairs that:
"How can the inferiority complex which is obsessing and, I fear, poisoning the mind, and indeed the very soul of Germany, be removed? There is only one way and that is to recognise her complete equality of status with her fellows and to do so frankly, freely and unreservedly...While one understands and sympathises with French fears, one cannot, but feel for Germany in the prison of inferiority in which she still remains sixteen years after the conclusion of the war. The continuance of the Versailles status is becoming an offence to the conscience of Europe and a danger to future peace...Fair play, sportsmanship-indeed every standard of private and public life-calls for frank revision of the situation. Indeed ordinary prudence makes it imperative. Let us break these bonds and set the complexed-obsessed soul free in a decent human way and Europe will reap a rich reward in tranquility, security and returning prosperity."[42]
Though in his Oct. 17th 1934 Rectorial Address delivered at St Andrews University he states that:
"The new Tyranny, disguised in attractive patriotic colours, is enticing youth everywhere into its service. Freedom must make a great counterstroke to save itself and our fair western civilisation. Once more the heroic call is coming to our youth. The fight for human freedom is indeed the supreme issue of the future, as it has always been." [43]
Holism and related academic work
Main articles: Holism and Holism and Evolution
While in academia, Smuts pioneered the concept of holism, which he defined as "[the] fundamental factor operative towards the creation of wholes in the universe" in his 1926 book, Holism and Evolution.[44] Smuts' formulation of holism has been linked with his political-military activity, especially his aspiration to create a league of nations. As one biographer said:
It had very much in common with his philosophy of life as subsequently developed and embodied in his Holism and Evolution. Small units must needs develop into bigger wholes, and they in their turn again must grow into larger and ever-larger structures without cessation. Advancement lay along that path. Thus the unification of the four provinces in the Union of South Africa, the idea of the British Commonwealth of Nations, and, finally, the great whole resulting from the combination of the peoples of the earth in a great league of nations were but a logical progression consistent with his philosophical tenets.[45]
Smuts and segregation
Smuts was for most of his political life a vocal supporter of segregation of the races, and in 1929 he justified the erection of separate institutions for blacks and whites in tones prescient of the later practice of apartheid:
The old practice mixed up black with white in the same institutions, and nothing else was possible after the native institutions and traditions had been carelessly or deliberately destroyed. But in the new plan there will be what is called in South Africa "segregation"; two separate institutions for the two elements of the population living in their own separate areas. Separate institutions involve territorial segregation of the white and black. If they live mixed together it is not practicable to sort them out under separate institutions of their own. Institutional segregation carries with it territorial segregation.[46]
In general, Smuts' view of Africans was patronising, he saw them as immature human beings that needed the guidance of whites, an attitude that reflected the common perceptions of most non-Africans in his lifetime. Of Africans he stated that:
These children of nature have not the inner toughness and persistence of the European, not those social and moral incentives to progress which have built up European civilization in a comparatively short period.[46]
Although Gandhi and Smuts were adversaries in many ways, they had a mutual respect and even admiration for each other. Before Gandhi returned to India in 1914, he presented General Smuts with a pair of sandals made by himself. In 1939, Smuts, then prime minister, wrote an essay for a commemorative work compiled for Gandhi's 70th birthday and returned the sandals with the following message: "I have worn these sandals for many a summer, even though I may feel that I am not worthy to stand in the shoes of so great a man."[47]
Smuts is often accused of being a politician who extolled the virtues of humanitarianism and liberalism abroad while failing to practice what he preached at home in South Africa. This was most clearly illustrated when India, in 1946, made a formal complaint in the UN concerning the legalised racial discrimination against Indians in South Africa. Appearing personally before the United Nations General Assembly, Smuts defended the policies of his government by fervently pleading that India's complaint was a matter of domestic jurisdiction. However, the General Assembly censured South Africa for its racial policies [48] and called upon the Smuts government to bring its treatment of the South African Indians in conformity with the basic principles of the United Nations Charter.[48][49]
At the same conference, the African National Congress President General Alfred Bitini Xuma along with delegates of the South African Indian Congress brought up the issue of the brutality of Smuts' police regime against the African Mine Workers' Strike earlier that year as well as the wider struggle for equality in South Africa.[50]
In 1948 he went further away from his previous views on segregation when supporting the recommendations of the Fagan Commission that Africans should be recognised as permanent residents of White South Africa and not only temporary workers that really belonged in the reserves.[51] This was in direct opposition to the policies of the National Party that wished to extend segregation and formalise it into apartheid. There is however no evidence that Smuts ever supported the idea of equal political rights for blacks and whites. However here is another quote by Smuts:
The idea that the Natives must all be removed and confined in their own kraals is in my opinion the greatest nonsense I have ever heard.[52]
The Fagan Commission did not advocate the establishment of a non-racial democracy in South Africa, but rather wanted to liberalise influx controls of Africans into urban areas in order to facilitate the supply of African labour to the South African industry. It also envisaged a relaxation of the pass laws that had restricted the movement of Africans in general.[53]
Second World War
Smuts, standing left, at the 1944 Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference.
After nine years in opposition and academia, Smuts returned as deputy prime minister in a 'grand coalition' government under J. B. M. Hertzog. When Hertzog advocated neutrality towards Nazi Germany in 1939, he was deposed by a party caucus, and Smuts became prime minister for the second time. He had served with Winston Churchill in World War I, and had developed a personal and professional rapport. Smuts was invited to the Imperial War Cabinet in 1939 as the most senior South African in favour of war. On 24 May 1941 Smuts was appointed a field marshal of the British Army,[54]
Smuts' importance to the Imperial war effort was emphasised by a quite audacious plan, proposed as early as 1940, to appoint Smuts as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, should Churchill die or otherwise become incapacitated during the war. This idea was put by Sir John Colville, Churchill's private secretary, to Queen Mary and then to George VI, both of whom warmed to the idea.[55]
In May 1945, he represented South Africa in San Francisco at the drafting of the United Nations Charter.[56] Also in 1945, he was mentioned by Halvdan Koht among seven candidates that were qualified for the Nobel Prize in Peace. However, he did not explicitly nominate any of them. The person actually nominated was Cordell Hull.[57]
After the war[edit]
Jan Smuts Museum, Irene, Pretoria
Smuts continued to represent his country abroad. He was a leading guest at the 1947 wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. [58] At home, his preoccupation with the war had severe political repercussions in South Africa. Smuts's support of the war and his support for the Fagan Commission made him unpopular amongst the Afrikaners and Daniel François Malan's pro-Apartheid stance won the Reunited National Party the 1948 general election.[56]
The 1946 Cadillac Jan Smuts used when he was the prime minister of the Union of South Africa. Jan Smuts Museum, Irene, Pretoria
He accepted the appointment as Colonel-in-Chief of Regiment Westelike Provinsie as from 17 September 1948.[59] On 29 May 1950, a week after the public celebration of his eightieth birthday in Johannesburg and Pretoria, he suffered a coronary thrombosis. He died of a subsequent heart attack on his family farm of Doornkloof, Irene, near Pretoria, on 11 September 1950.[56]
Statue in Parliament Square, London, by Jacob Epstein
Support for Zionism
South African supporters of Theodor Herzl contacted Smuts in 1916. Smuts, who supported the Balfour Declaration, met and became friends with Chaim Weizmann, the future President of Israel, in London. In 1943 Weizmann wrote to Smuts, detailing a plan to develop Britain's African colonies to compete with the United States. During his service as Premier, Smuts personally fundraised for multiple Zionist organisations.[60] His government granted de facto recognition to Israel on 24 May 1948 and de jure recognition on 14 May 1949 (following the defeat of Smuts' United Party by the Reunited National Party in the 26 May 1948 General Election, 12 days after David Ben Gurion declared Jewish Statehood, the newly formed nation being given the name Israel).[61] However, Smuts was deputy prime minister when the Hertzog government in 1937 passed the Aliens Act that was aimed at preventing Jewish immigration to South Africa. The act was seen as a response to growing anti-Semitic sentiments among Afrikaners.[62]
He lobbied against the White Paper of 1939.[63]
Several streets and a kibbutz, Ramat Yohanan, in Israel are named after Smuts.[61]
Smuts' wrote an epitaph for Weizmann, describing him as "the greatest Jew since Moses."[64]
Smuts once said:
“Great as are the changes wrought by this war, the great world war of justice and freedom, I doubt whether any of these changes surpass in interest the liberation of Palestine and its recognition as the Home of Israel.[65]”
Other offices held
In 1931, Smuts became the first President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science not from the United Kingdom. In that year, he was also elected the second non-British Lord Rector of St Andrews University (after Fridtjof Nansen). In 1948, he was elected Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, becoming the first person from outside the United Kingdom to hold that position. He held the position until his death.[66]
Family[edit]
Smuts married Isabella (Isie) Margaretha Krige (in later life known as "Ouma") in 1897. Isie was from Stellenbosch, and lived near Smuts. They had six children.[67]
Legacy[edit]
One of his greatest international accomplishments was the establishment of the League of Nations, the exact design and implementation of which relied upon Smuts.[68] He later urged the formation of a new international organisation for peace: the UN. Smuts wrote the preamble to the United Nations Charter, and was the only person to sign the charters of both the League of Nations and the UN. He sought to redefine the relationship between the United Kingdom and her colonies, helping to establish the British Commonwealth, as it was known at the time. This proved to be a two-way street; in 1946 the General Assembly requested the Smuts government to take measures to bring the treatment of Indians in South Africa into line with the provisions of the United Nations Charter.[48]
In 1932, the kibbutz Ramat Yohanan in Israel was named after him. Smuts was a vocal proponent of the creation of a Jewish state, and spoke out against the rising anti-Semitism of the 1930s.[69]
The international airport serving Johannesburg was known as Jan Smuts Airport from its construction in 1952 until 1994. In 1994, it was renamed to Johannesburg International Airport to remove any political connotations. In 2006, it was renamed again to its current name, OR Tambo International Airport, for the ANC politician Oliver Tambo.[70]
In 2004 Smuts was named by voters in a poll held by the South African Broadcasting Corporation (S.A.B.C.) as one of the top ten Greatest South Africans of all time. The final positions of the top ten were to be decided by a second round of voting but the program was taken off the air owing to political controversy and Nelson Mandela was given the number one spot based on the first round of voting. In the first round, Field Marshal Smuts came ninth.[71]
The Historic fire station #30, which because of segregation laws, was one of only two stations in Los Angeles where African Americans were allowed to work in the early part of the 20th century. Currently, it is the home of the African American Firefighters Museum.
Vintage African American photography courtesy of Black History Album, The Way We Were.
Follow Us On Twitter @blackhistoryalb
(photo used for educational purposes only)This is what we get from religion, we get hate, violence, and segregation. When will people give up on the superstition. Thats all religion is. ( I personally think most religious believers are simple minded, ignorant, biggots ! And preachers and clergy are thieves, inlcuding the pope and nuns like mother teresa.) I think we need some Atheist fundamentalism, and demand rights and equality for everyone. For starters I THINK THAT ALL CHURCHES IN THIS COUNTRY SHOULD PAY PROPERTY TAXES LIKE EVERYONE ELSE. Don't let the flag fool you, their not canadian and they will leave if you stop feeding them. They have all the good land and can afford amazing architecture, so up some cash preacher. This also allows the that faith to own the land forever (how much more will you let them get ?). Its a shame that most of the historic buildings in this country are churches, maybe we can turn them in to museums after we chase out the frauds that preach. although I would rather see them burnt down.
Document: Memo from British Ambassador on segregation in US public schools, 8 December 1955. Catalogue ref: FO 371/114445
Description: This September marks the 65th anniversary of the day in 1957 that the 'Little Rock Nine' were able to successfully start attending Little Rock High School, after weeks of being blocked from entering.
The 'Little Rock Nine' were a group of nine African American teenagers who were to be the first Black students to attend Little Rock High School on 1 September 1957. This was three years after the United States Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools were illegal in 1954. However, the Arkansas governor ordered the state's National Guard to block them from entering, and angry mobs threatened their safety. It was only on 25 September 1957, after president Dwight Eisenhower sent federal troops to accompany them, that they were able to start attending classes.
This month's featured document comes from 1955, one year after the 1954 ruling. On 31 May 1955, the Supreme Court issued a new ruling: an order for schools to integrate with 'deliberate speed', as many all-white schools were failing to integrate. The document provides a contemporary view from the UK on the process of desegregation and the complications surrounding it. It also arguably provides some foreshadowing of the events at Little Rock, noting that the ruling has 'exacerbated' racism in the South.
Please note this source includes racist language and is presented here to accurately represent a historical narrative. This language wasn’t acceptable at the time and isn’t acceptable today.
Read a transcript of this document here: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/civil-rig...
Read another document about the Little Rock Nine here: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/civil-rig...
Learn more about the history of Civil Rights in the United States in our 'Civil Rights in America' resource:
www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/civil-rig...
Exposition : The color line
Du mardi 04 octobre 2016 au dimanche 15 janvier 2017
Quel rôle a joué l’art dans la quête d’égalité et d’affirmation de l’identité noire dans l’Amérique de la Ségrégation ? L'exposition rend hommage aux artistes et penseurs africains-américains qui ont contribué, durant près d’un siècle et demi de luttes, à estomper cette "ligne de couleur" discriminatoire.
—————
« Le problème du 20e siècle est le problème de la ligne de partage des couleurs ».
Si la fin de la Guerre de Sécession en 1865 a bien sonné l’abolition de l'esclavage, la ligne de démarcation raciale va encore marquer durablement la société américaine, comme le pressent le militant W.E.B. Du Bois en 1903 dans The Soul of Black Folks. L’exposition The Color Line revient sur cette période sombre des États-Unis à travers l’histoire culturelle de ses artistes noirs, premières cibles de ces discriminations.
Des thématiques racistes du vaudeville américain et des spectacles de Minstrels du 19e siècle à l’effervescence culturelle et littéraire de la Harlem Renaissance du début du 20e siècle, des pionniers de l’activisme noir (Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington) au réquisitoire de la chanteuse Billie Holiday (Strange Fruit), ce sont près de 150 ans de production artistique – peinture, sculpture, photographie, cinéma, musique, littérature… – qui témoignent de la richesse créative de la contestation noire.
Rapid strata formation in soft sand (field evidence).
Photo of strata formation in soft sand on a beach, created by tidal action of the sea.
Formed in a single, tidal event of turbulent, high tide.
See many other examples of rapid stratification with geological features: www.flickr.com/photos/101536517@N06/sets/72157635944904973/
This natural example of rapid, simultaneous stratification refutes the Superposition Principle, the Principle of Original Horizontality and the Principle of Lateral Continuity.
Superposition only applies on a rare occasion of sedimentary deposits in perfectly, still water. Superposition is required for the long evolutionary timescale, but the evidence shows it is not the general rule, as was once believed. Most sediment is laid down in moving water, where particle segregation is the rule, resulting in the simultaneous deposition of strata/layers as shown in the photo.
Where the water movement is very turbulent, violent, or catastrophic, great depths of stratified sediment can be laid down in a short time. Certainly not the many millions of years assumed by evolutionists.
The composition of strata formed in any deposition event. is related to whatever materials are in the sediment mix. Whatever is in the mix will be automatically sorted into strata/layers. It could be sand, or material added from mud slides, erosion of chalk deposits, volcanic ash etc. Any organic material (potential fossils) will also be sorted and buried within the rapidly, formed strata.
Stratified, soft sand deposit. demonstrates the rapid, stratification principle.
Important, field evidence which supports the work of the eminent, sedimentologist Dr Guy Berthault MIAS - Member of the International Association of Sedimentologists.
(Dr Berthault's experiments (www.sedimentology.fr/)
And also the experimental work of Dr M.E. Clark (Professor Emeritus, U of Illinois @ Urbana), Andrew Rodenbeck and Dr. Henry Voss, (www.ianjuby.org/sedimentation/)
Location: Sandown beach, Isle of Wight. Formed 07/12/2017, This field evidence demonstrates that multiple strata in sedimentary deposits do not need millions of years to form and can be formed rapidly. This natural example confirms the principle demonstrated by the sedimentation experiments carried out by Dr Guy Berthault and other sedimentologists. It calls into question the standard, multi-million year dating of sedimentary rocks, and the dating of fossils by depth of burial or position in the strata.
Mulltiple strata/layers are evident in this example.
Dr Berthault's experiments (www.sedimentology.fr/) and other experiments (www.ianjuby.org/sedimentation/) and field studies of floods and volcanic action show that, rather than being formed by gradual, slow deposition of sucessive layers superimposed upon previous layers, with the strata or layers representing a particular timescale, particle segregation in moving water or airborne particles can form strata or layers very quickly, frequently, in a single event.
Such field studies confirm experiments which have shown that there is no longer any reason to conclude that strata/layers in sedimentary rocks relate to different geological eras and/or a multi-million year timescale. www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PVnBaqqQw8&feature=share&.... they also show that the relative position of fossils in rocks is not indicative of an order of evolutionary succession. Obviously, the uniformitarian principle, on which the geologic column is based, can no longer be considered valid. And the multi-million, year dating of sedimentary rocks and fossils needs to be reassessed. Rapid deposition of stratified sediments also explains the enigma of polystrate fossils, i.e. large fossils that intersect several strata. In some cases, tree trunk fossils are found which intersect the strata of sedimentary rock up to forty feet in depth. upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/08/Lycopsi... They must have been buried in stratified sediment in a short time (certainly not millions, thousands, or even hundreds of years), or they would have rotted away. youtu.be/vnzHU9VsliQ
In fact, the vast majority of fossils are found in good, intact condition, which is testament to their rapid burial. You don't get good fossils from gradual burial, because they would be damaged or destroyed by decay, predation or erosion. The existence of so many fossils in sedimentary rock on a global scale is stunning evidence for the rapid depostion of sedimentary rock as the general rule. It is obvious that all rock containing good intact fossils was formed from sediment laid down in a very short time, not millions, or even thousands of years.
See set of photos of other examples of rapid stratification: www.flickr.com/photos/101536517@N06/sets/72157635944904973/
Carbon dating of coal should not be possible if it is millions of years old, yet significant amounts of Carbon 14 have been detected in coal and other fossil material, which indicates that it is less than 50,000 years old. www.ldolphin.org/sewell/c14dating.html
www.grisda.org/origins/51006.htm
Evolutionists confidently cite multi-million year ages for rocks and fossils, but what most people don't realise is that no one actually knows the age of sedimentary rocks or the fossils found within them. So how are evolutionists so sure of the ages they so confidently quote? The astonishing thing is they aren't. Sedimentary rocks cannot be dated by radiometric methods*, and fossils can only be dated to less than 50,000 years with Carbon 14 dating. The method evolutionists use is based entirely on assumptions. Unbelievably, fossils are dated by the assumed age of rocks, and rocks are dated by the assumed age of fossils, that's right ... it is known as circular reasoning.
* Regarding the radiometric dating of igneous rocks, which is claimed to be relevant to the dating of sedimentary rocks, in an occasional instance there is an igneous intrusion associated with a sedimentary deposit -
Prof. Aubouin says in his Précis de Géologie: "Each radioactive element disintegrates in a characteristic and constant manner, which depends neither on the physical state (no variation with pressure or temperature or any other external constraint) nor on the chemical state (identical for an oxide or a phosphate)."
"Rocks form when magma crystallizes. Crystallisation depends on pressure and temperature, from which radioactivity is independent. So, there is no relationship between radioactivity and crystallisation.
Consequently, radioactivity doesn't date the formation of rocks. Moreover, daughter elements contained in rocks result mainly from radioactivity in magma where gravity separates the heavier parent element, from the lighter daughter element. Thus radiometric dating has no chronological signification." Dr. Guy Berthault www.sciencevsevolution.org/Berthault.htm
Visit the fossil museum:
www.flickr.com/photos/101536517@N06/sets/72157641367196613/
Just how good are peer reviews of scientific papers?
www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/60.full
www.examiner.com/article/want-to-publish-science-paper-ju...
The neo-Darwinian idea that the human genome consists entirely of an accumulation of billions of mutations is, quite obviously, completely bonkers. Nevertheless, it is compulsorily taught in schools and universities as 'science'.
Exposition : The color line
Du mardi 04 octobre 2016 au dimanche 15 janvier 2017
Quel rôle a joué l’art dans la quête d’égalité et d’affirmation de l’identité noire dans l’Amérique de la Ségrégation ? L'exposition rend hommage aux artistes et penseurs africains-américains qui ont contribué, durant près d’un siècle et demi de luttes, à estomper cette "ligne de couleur" discriminatoire.
—————
« Le problème du 20e siècle est le problème de la ligne de partage des couleurs ».
Si la fin de la Guerre de Sécession en 1865 a bien sonné l’abolition de l'esclavage, la ligne de démarcation raciale va encore marquer durablement la société américaine, comme le pressent le militant W.E.B. Du Bois en 1903 dans The Soul of Black Folks. L’exposition The Color Line revient sur cette période sombre des États-Unis à travers l’histoire culturelle de ses artistes noirs, premières cibles de ces discriminations.
Des thématiques racistes du vaudeville américain et des spectacles de Minstrels du 19e siècle à l’effervescence culturelle et littéraire de la Harlem Renaissance du début du 20e siècle, des pionniers de l’activisme noir (Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington) au réquisitoire de la chanteuse Billie Holiday (Strange Fruit), ce sont près de 150 ans de production artistique – peinture, sculpture, photographie, cinéma, musique, littérature… – qui témoignent de la richesse créative de la contestation noire.
The entrance to a segregation cell in De Rode Pannen ("The Red Rooftiles"), a former prison building in Veenhuizen. It was built in 1939 and used for various types of inmates until 2008. Nowadays it can be visited with a guide from the nearby prison museum.
Students from Maryland State College flee a police dog on Main Street in Princess Anne, Maryland after a demonstration against segregation at a town restaurant February 22, 1964 was broken up by police.
Sixty-two were injured when police and fire fighters cleared the streets using police dogs and fire hoses and Maryland was again in the national spotlight for its racial discrimination.
The Maryland chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) had been sponsoring demonstrations attempting to desegregate the Eastern Shore and began picketing in Annapolis March 3rd in response to Princess Anne.
A special session of the state legislature had been called to consider both a tax increase and an increase in teacher salaries. The crisis forces Gov. Milliard Tawes to put the full weight of his office behind a bill banning discrimination in businesses that accommodated the public across the state.
At one point the CORE demonstrations were so disruptive to the state legislature that the NAACP asked the group to suspend demonstration and go home. CORE refused.
A weak bill had passed the legislature the previous year that permitted counties to “opt out” and the entire Eastern Shore did so. The special session ultimately passed a bill that covered the whole state, but exempted establishments that sold alcoholic beverages.
Segregationists petitioned the new law to a referendum in November where it passed 53%-47%, despite ;white supremacist opposition..
The federal 1964 Civil Rights Act, however, predated Maryland’s law when it was signed July 2nd by President Lyndon Johnson and provided broader protections than Maryland's.
For more information and related flic.kr/s/aHsk4UiXYi
The photographer is unknown. The image is an auction find.
Built in 1931-32, the Lincoln-Grant School, a large, Art Deco-style buff brick structure designed by E. C. Landberg, served the local African-American population in Covington, Kentucky during the period of Jim Crow laws and enforced segregation. Prior to this facility, the elementary school occupied a structure built in 1880 on 7th Street, renamed Lincoln School in 1909, and sharing facilities with William Grant High School, opened in 1886, later forming the Lincoln-Grant School. The building, located on Greenup Street in Covington's Eastside neighborhood, housed facilities for Kindergarten all the way through High School for local people of color, whom were denied admission at the city's other, all-white public schools. The large, symmetrical three-story building features a raised concrete basement, decorative brick trim, limestone trim around the entrance with Art Deco motifs, large windows, and a central core towards the rear of the building, home to an auditorium, cafeteria, and gymnasium. The school continued to serve local people of color until desegregation of the Covington City School District was instated in 1965, after which the city's other public schools became open to people of color, and the William Grant High School program was consolidated with Holmes Junior-Senior High School. From 1965 until 1976, the building served as the 12th District Elementary School, before it closed due to declining enrollment and an oversized facility, intended to serve middle school and high school students, in addition to elementary school students. The building was, for a time, home to the Northern Kentucky Community Center, before budgetary cuts caused it to languish in a largely vacant state for several years. More recently, the building, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2013, has been renovated and adaptively reused as the Lincoln-Grant Scholar House in 2017, which provides support and housing for single parents pursuing higher education.
Men and women are separated in many Syrian mosques. Here, the two sides come together to view a holy relic. The contrast between the two sides is amazing. I'm not sure the guy is supposed to be looking over the other side.
Located on NE 4th, OKC
This theater was one of four Jewel Theaters built by Percy H. James (the others were in Amarillo, Ardmore, and Wewoka). All of the theaters were named after James' daughter, Jewel, and served African-American communities during the oppressive days of segregation. Instead of going to white theaters, where they were looked upon with scorn and had to be tucked out of sight in dark balconies, theaters like the Jewel, located along then-bustling NE 4th Street in the heart of the Deep Deuce district, allowed African Americans to watch a movie in a much more comfortable and friendly environment.
The Jewel Theater in OKC was built in 1931 and was one of three movie houses in the Deep Deuce district. The first mention I find of the theater in the Daily Oklahoman archives is on March 26, 1937 (and it's referenced as the Jewel Negro Theater), when an inspector had to cut off the theater's heating system because it was practically identical to the one used at the New London, Texas, school that exploded the week before, killing over 400 teachers and children. The system was soon repaired or replaced, and the Jewel was back in business in no time.
I know that the theater thrived through the 1960's, but I find no mention of it in the archives after the 1980's. Although it is boarded up and in need of some serious repair, this Deep Deuce treasure was added to the National Register in 2009, and while efforts have been made to renovate the old theater since then, it remains in the same sad condition today.
As for Percy James, he was quite a figure in OKC's history. In the late 1910's, he worked for the Coca-Cola Bottling Plant in town and was befriended by the plant's manager, who told James that he should start his own plant because Coca-Cola was not allowed to serve the African-American community. So, around 1921, James opened the Afri-Kola Bottling Plant in NE OKC (Afri-Kola later became Jay-Kola), which produced a wide array of flavored carbonated drinks. In a 2012 interview featured in the The Oklahoman, Percy James' granddaughter, Jewel Jones, recalled that, "the Jay-Kola soda company was on 10th Street. It was really a garage in the back of their house. They had some of the most unique flavors. They had formulas for peach and strawberry and root beer. The cream soda, I think, was the favorite."
With the immediate success of this business, Percy James quickly became a prominent leader in the Deep Deuce community and added to his holdings when he built the four theaters and bought buildings along NE 2nd that housed a hotel, restaurant, pool hall, and dress shop. In the 40's, James even sponsored an Oklahoma City Negro baseball team, the Jay-Kola Giants.
Percy also owned a grand home behind the bottling plant that he shared with his first wife Hattie, and their daughter, Jewel. Hattie and Percy divorced in 1940, and he soon married Arvella.
James retired in 1963 due to illness. With no one to lead the company, Jay-Kola soon folded, and Percy James died in 1965. His home and the original bottling plant were torn down during urban renewal, and a housing development was built on the site in the 80's.
As for the Jewel Theater, Arthur Hurst bought the vacant building in the early 70's with dreams of restoring his favorite childhood movie house to its former glory, but one thing or another has prevented him from doing much more than restoring the awning about 10 years ago. That wasn't enough to stop the city from threatening to condemn and demolish the building in 2011, which prompted Hurst and his supporters to throw a big music benefit in 2012 to raise funds to restore the theater. Since then, all has been quiet, and the Jewel looks as sad and dilapidated as ever.
Rapid strata formation in soft sand (field evidence).
Photo of strata formation in soft sand on a beach, created by tidal action of the sea.
Formed in a single, tidal event of turbulent, high tide.
See many other examples of rapid stratification with geological features: www.flickr.com/photos/101536517@N06/sets/72157635944904973/
This natural example of rapid, simultaneous stratification refutes the Superposition Principle, the Principle of Original Horizontality and the Principle of Lateral Continuity.
Superposition only applies on a rare occasion of sedimentary deposits in perfectly, still water. Superposition is required for the long evolutionary timescale, but the evidence shows it is not the general rule, as was once believed. Most sediment is laid down in moving water, where particle segregation is the rule, resulting in the simultaneous deposition of strata/layers as shown in the photo.
Where the water movement is very turbulent, violent, or catastrophic, great depths of stratified sediment can be laid down in a short time. Certainly not the many millions of years assumed by evolutionists.
The composition of strata formed in any deposition event. is related to whatever materials are in the sediment mix. Whatever is in the mix will be automatically sorted into strata/layers. It could be sand, or material added from mud slides, erosion of chalk deposits, volcanic ash etc. Any organic material (potential fossils) will also be sorted and buried within the rapidly, formed strata.
Stratified, soft sand deposit. demonstrates the rapid, stratification principle.
Important, field evidence which supports the work of the eminent, sedimentologist Dr Guy Berthault.
(Dr Berthault's experiments (www.sedimentology.fr/)
And also the experimental work of Dr M.E. Clark (Professor Emeritus, U of Illinois @ Urbana), Andrew Rodenbeck and Dr. Henry Voss, (www.ianjuby.org/sedimentation/)
Location: Sandown beach, Isle of Wight. Formed 07/12/2017, This field evidence demonstrates that multiple strata in sedimentary deposits do not need millions of years to form and can be formed rapidly. This natural example confirms the principle demonstrated by the sedimentation experiments carried out by Dr Guy Berthault and other sedimentologists. It calls into question the standard, multi-million year dating of sedimentary rocks, and the dating of fossils by depth of burial or position in the strata.
Mulltiple strata/layers are evident in this example.
Dr Berthault's experiments (www.sedimentology.fr/) and other experiments (www.ianjuby.org/sedimentation/) and field studies of floods and volcanic action show that, rather than being formed by gradual, slow deposition of sucessive layers superimposed upon previous layers, with the strata or layers representing a particular timescale, particle segregation in moving water or airborne particles can form strata or layers very quickly, frequently, in a single event.
Such field studies confirm experiments which have shown that there is no longer any reason to conclude that strata/layers in sedimentary rocks relate to different geological eras and/or a multi-million year timescale. www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PVnBaqqQw8&feature=share&.... they also show that the relative position of fossils in rocks is not indicative of an order of evolutionary succession. Obviously, the uniformitarian principle, on which the geologic column is based, can no longer be considered valid. And the multi-million, year dating of sedimentary rocks and fossils needs to be reassessed. Rapid deposition of stratified sediments also explains the enigma of polystrate fossils, i.e. large fossils that intersect several strata. In some cases, tree trunk fossils are found which intersect the strata of sedimentary rock up to forty feet in depth. upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/08/Lycopsi... They must have been buried in stratified sediment in a short time (certainly not millions, thousands, or even hundreds of years), or they would have rotted away. youtu.be/vnzHU9VsliQ
In fact, the vast majority of fossils are found in good, intact condition, which is testament to their rapid burial. You don't get good fossils from gradual burial, because they would be damaged or destroyed by decay, predation or erosion. The existence of so many fossils in sedimentary rock on a global scale is stunning evidence for the rapid depostion of sedimentary rock as the general rule. It is obvious that all rock containing good intact fossils was formed from sediment laid down in a very short time, not millions, or even thousands of years.
See set of photos of other examples of rapid stratification: www.flickr.com/photos/101536517@N06/sets/72157635944904973/
Carbon dating of coal should not be possible if it is millions of years old, yet significant amounts of Carbon 14 have been detected in coal and other fossil material, which indicates that it is less than 50,000 years old. www.ldolphin.org/sewell/c14dating.html
www.grisda.org/origins/51006.htm
Evolutionists confidently cite multi-million year ages for rocks and fossils, but what most people don't realise is that no one actually knows the age of sedimentary rocks or the fossils found within them. So how are evolutionists so sure of the ages they so confidently quote? The astonishing thing is they aren't. Sedimentary rocks cannot be dated by radiometric methods*, and fossils can only be dated to less than 50,000 years with Carbon 14 dating. The method evolutionists use is based entirely on assumptions. Unbelievably, fossils are dated by the assumed age of rocks, and rocks are dated by the assumed age of fossils, that's right ... it is known as circular reasoning.
* Regarding the radiometric dating of igneous rocks, which is claimed to be relevant to the dating of sedimentary rocks, in an occasional instance there is an igneous intrusion associated with a sedimentary deposit -
Prof. Aubouin says in his Précis de Géologie: "Each radioactive element disintegrates in a characteristic and constant manner, which depends neither on the physical state (no variation with pressure or temperature or any other external constraint) nor on the chemical state (identical for an oxide or a phosphate)."
"Rocks form when magma crystallizes. Crystallisation depends on pressure and temperature, from which radioactivity is independent. So, there is no relationship between radioactivity and crystallisation.
Consequently, radioactivity doesn't date the formation of rocks. Moreover, daughter elements contained in rocks result mainly from radioactivity in magma where gravity separates the heavier parent element, from the lighter daughter element. Thus radiometric dating has no chronological signification." Dr. Guy Berthault www.sciencevsevolution.org/Berthault.htm
Visit the fossil museum:
www.flickr.com/photos/101536517@N06/sets/72157641367196613/
Just how good are peer reviews of scientific papers?
www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/60.full
www.examiner.com/article/want-to-publish-science-paper-ju...
The neo-Darwinian idea that the human genome consists entirely of an accumulation of billions of mutations is, quite obviously, completely bonkers. Nevertheless, it is compulsorily taught in schools and universities as 'science'.
While cardinal looking...A male appeared in the photo...it is amazing.....these birds will let anyone feed right beside them, even between their legs, unless it is another cardinal. The only cardinal they will let eat beside them without a fight is its mate. Bird watching is fun and informative
The Kolkata tram is a tram system in Kolkata, India, run by the Calcutta Tramways Company (CTC). It is currently the only operating tram network in India and the oldest operating electric tram in Asia, running since 1902.
An attempt was made in 1873 to run a 3.9 km tramway service between Sealdah and Armenian Ghat Street on 24 February. The service was not adequately patronised, and was discontinued on 20 Nov. In 1880, the Calcutta Tramway Co. Ltd was formed and registered in London on 22 December. Metre-gauge horse-drawn tram tracks were laid from Sealdah to Armenian Ghat via Bowbazar Street, Dalhousie Square and Strand Road. The route was inaugurated by the Viceroy, Lord Ripon, on 1 November. Steam locomotives were deployed experimentally in 1882 to haul tram cars. By the end of the nineteenth century the company owned 166 tram cars, 1000 horses, seven steam locomotives and 19 miles of tram tracks. During 1900, Electrification of the tramway, and reconstruction of tracks to 1,435 mm (standard gauge) began to happen. The first electric tramcar in Asia ran in 1902 from Esplanade to Kidderpore on 27 March, and on 14 June from Esplanade to Kalighat. The Kalighat line was extended during 1903 to Tollygunge, the Esplanade line to Belgachhia (via Bidhan Sarani, Shyambazar), and the Esplanade to Shialdaha route (via Binay Badal Dinesh Bag, Rajib Gandhi Sarani and [present] Mahatma Gandhi Road) opened.
Esplanade to Bagbazar route through College Street opened in 1904. During 1905, Howrah Station to Bandhaghat route was opened to trams in June. Electrification project completed. Bowbazar Junction to Binay Badal Dinesh Bag, Ahiritola Junction to Hatibagan Junction routes opened during 1906.[citation needed] Lines to Shibpur via G.T. Road were prepared in 1908. Esplanade to Shialdaha station via Moula Ali Junction, Moula Ali Junction to Nonapukur, Wattganj Junction to J.Das Park Junction (via Alipur), Mominpur Junction to Behala routes opened. Sealdah Station to Rajabazar route opened during 1910. Mirzapur Junction to Bowbazar Junction and Shialdaha Station to Lebutala Junction routes opened during 1915. In 1920 the Strand Road Junction to High Court route opened. S.C.Mallik Square Junction to Park Circus route (via Royd Street, Nonapukur) opened during 1923. The Barhabazar Junction to Nimtala route opened in 1925. During 1928, the Kalighat to Baliganj route opened. The Park Circus line extended to Garhiahat Junction in 1930. The Rajabazar line extended to Galiff Street during 1941. The Calcutta system was well connected during 1943 with the Howrah section through the new Howrah Bridge in February. With this extension, the total track length reached 67.59 km.
During 1951, the government of West Bengal entered into an agreement with the Calcutta Tramways Company, and the Calcutta Tramways Act of 1951 was enacted. The government assumed all rights regarding the Tramways, and reserved the right to purchase the system (with two years' notice) on 1 January 1972 or any time thereafter. The Government of West Bengal passed the Calcutta Tramways Company (Taking Over of Management) Act and assumed management on 19 July 1967. On 8 November 1976 the Calcutta Tramways (Acquisition of Undertaking) ordinance was promulgated, under which the company (and its assets) united with the government. The Howrah sections were closed in October; the 1971/1973 Nimtala route was closed down in May 1973, and realignment of the Howrah Station terminus occurred. Total track length was now reduced to 61.2 km. Tram tracks on Bentinck Street and Ashutosh Mukhopadhyay Road closed during 1980 for construction of the Kolkata metro; following construction, these stretches were not reopened. Overhead wires were present until 1994 on Bentinck Street. Tracks on Jawaharlal Nehru Road remained after realignment, making a new terminus at Birla Planetarium; the Birla Planetarium route closed in 1991. An overpass was constructed on that road in 2006. The Sealdah Station terminus (along with the Sealdaha – Lebutala stretch on Bipin Bihari Gangopadhyay Street) closed for construction of an overpass in 1982. The site is now occupied by Sealdah Court and a bus terminal.[citation needed] On 17 April 1985, tracks were extended connecting Manicktola to Ultadanga via Manicktola Main road and C. I. T. Road 3.7 km. This was the first Tramways extension since 1947.
On 31 December 1986, further extension of tram tracks from Behala to Joka was completed. In 1993, the Howrah Station terminus closed and tram tracks removed on Howrah Bridge; the cantilever bridge proved too weak for trams. All routes terminated there were shortened to the Barhabazar (Howrah Bridge) terminus (formerly Barhabazar Junction). The High Court terminus closed for reconstruction of Strand Road in 1995. Rails and wires were removed from there and from Strand Road, Hare Street and Shahid Kshudiram Basu Road. The site is now occupied by the newest building of the Kolkata High Court. During 2004, the Garhiahat Depot – Garhiahat Junction link on Gariahat Road closed for construction of the Gariahat overpass. The Mominpur – Behala stretch on Diamond Harbour Road closed in 2006 for construction of an overpass at Taratala. Initially, there was a plan to route tracks on that overpass after its completion, but the road was later converted to a National Highway and the plan dismissed.
During 2007, the Wattgunge Junction – Mominpur Diamond Harbour Road, Mominpur – Jatin Das Park Judges Court Road, Jatin Das Park – Kalighat Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Road routes temporarily closed for reconstruction. The Galiff Street terminus was realigned during 2008. Irregular service from Bagbazar to Galiff Street converted to regular by Route 7/12. Rails and wires removed from part of Bidhan Sarani route (restored by end of year). The Tracks on R. G. Kar Road from Shyambazar five-point crossing to Belgatchia tram depot temporarily closed down for reconstruction during 2009. During 2011, the Joka-Behala stretch and Behala depot closed down for construction of the Joka-BBD Bag metro project while the Ballygunj-Kalighat stretch and Lalbazar-Mirjapur down line closed for reconstruction.[citation needed] On 10 October 2013, the Tollygunge-Esplanade tram route reopened after it was closed for seven years when the route was concretised.
FLEET
CTC owns 257 trams, of which 125 trams are running on the streets of Kolkata on a daily basis. The cars are single-deck articulated cars and can carry 200 passengers (60 seated).
The early horse-drawn cars were imported from England, as were the steel tram cars manufactured before 1952. Until then, most Kolkata tram cars were bought from the English Electric Company and Dick, Kerr & Co. After 1952, the cars were built in India.
ROLLING STOCK EXPERIMENTS
The introductory stock was single-coach, like other Indian cities (Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kanpur), because the new mode of transport was experimental. Since it gained popularity quickly, another coach was attached some years later (as in Mumbai), which is now standard. Double decker trams (like Mumbai's) have never yet been used in Kolkata. Triple-coach trams were unsuccessfully tried. Single-coach trams were used on the Shibpur line until its closure in 1970.
Earlier stock was of the SLT type. It was double-coach with three doors, four wheels under each coach and no wheels between coaches. SLT trams had no front iron net, but had a front-coach trolley pole. The both-end type had a front iron net and a rear-coach trolley pole. SLTs were the first double-coach trams, introduced only on the Kolkata side of the Hooghly River (not on the Howrah side). They were gradually replaced by articulated trams on all routes. The SLC type was introduced much later on the Bandhaghat line, and continued until its closure in 1971; after that, SLC trams began running on the G/H and T/G lines on the Kolkata side. Articulated trams were in use until 1989.
TYPES OF ROLLING STOCK
- Old SLC Type – The first double-coach tram with wheels between the coaches, manufactured at the Nonapukur workshop. It is sometimes called an 'elephant car' by the CTC; its cab and back side is narrow and slightly slanted forward, like the head of an elephant without the trunk. It was introduced as a higher-speed tram with an improved engine, designed to run on express routes such as Galiff Street, Baliganj, Tollyganj, Behala and Khidirpur. It was longer than an articulated tram, and was the first tram with a cab door. Although now fewer in number, SLC trams are still running (mainly on south Kolkata routes). One tram was modified with glass in front, and another with many lighted signs (making it resemble a moving billboard).
- SLC Type – This modified variation has a pivot, and is less stylish than articulated trams; it is also manufactured at Nonapukur. The only difference is that its front and back are straight, not slanted. It was also introduced as a higher-speed tram, with an improved engine, designed to run on express routes. Later, this type enjoyed more general use. "Modi-SLCs" are still in use, except on the Bidhannagar line due to its steep incline under the Kankurgatchi rail bridge. Three cars are still used as water cars.
- Articulated SLC Type – This is a slightly less-stylish variation of the articulated tram, also manufactured at Nonapukur. The only difference is that its front and back are overhanging, and narrow towards the ends. It also had an improved engine, but was suitable for local routes. Later, this type was also used on express routes. Some early cars were well-maintained, and these are also still in use.
- Renovated SLC Type – After many years of SLC and articulated trams a new type of rolling stock arrived in Kolkata, made by Burn Standard India Limited. It is stronger, heavier and faster than earlier designs. A result of the decision around 1982 to continue tram service, it changed the image of Kolkata trams. The improved stock began running throughout the city network on all routes. Some trams were partly modified with front glass; two were modified to resemble Melbourne's B-class trams, with fluorescent lights, back glass and double ends. These are the most common trams in Kolkata.
- New Cars – Before the introduction of the single-bogie tram in December 2012, this was the last new rolling stock, built by Jessop India Limited and a variation of the pivot type, introduced about 1984. Some trams were partly modified with front glass; one was modified with fluorescent lights, FM radio, digital advertising and route boards. These are the second-most-common tram in Kolkata. Three years after its introduction, the closure of Kolkata's trams was again considered by the government, so no more modern stock had been introduced.
- Single-Bogie Type – Currently this is the latest new rolling stock, one of which has been running since 24 December 2012. These trams are claimed to be faster and more maneuverable than the current double-bogie trams with the carriage being longer than the carriages in the double bogie trams. There are now plans to introduce more single-bogie trams across the city, including air-conditioned bogies, possibly replacing the double-bogie trams with the single-bogies and reopening some closed tram routes.
Recently, two trams were completely renovated to world-class standards with front and back glass, fluorescent lights, FM radio, digital display boards, slanted seats and a fibreglass ceiling. More renovated trams are planned; from 2008 to 2010 the Nonapukur workshop manufactured 19 new-look trams, of which four are in the final stages of completion. The rooftop is clear polycarbonate sheeting with a wide window space, comfortable seating and better visibility from inside and out. Nonapukur Workshop is now manufacturing new tram cars and renovating existing steel-body (BSCL) cars. Currently-manufactured tram cars in the CTC workshop now compare favorably with those of other developed countries.[citation needed] After plans for banquet/cafeteria trams and air-conditioned trams to attract commuters and foreign tourists as well as to increase revenue for the company, one single-bogie air-conditioned banquet tram has now been introduced and offers heritage tours to north Kolkata in the morning and south Kolkata in the evening. However, the AC tram received poor patronage when it was introduced, although there are plans for more AC trams in Kolkata. In addition to passenger cars, there are also rail-scrubber cars (which polish the tracks using jets of water), flat cars for goods transportation (some of which are modified from obsolete single-coach Howrah trams) and a tower-inspection car for checking wires.
FARE STRUCTURE
1st class – Rs. 5 & Rs. 6.00 (depending on distance)
(6-7 EURO-Cent)
TECHNICAL DETAILS
CARS
- Length: 19.5 m
- Width: 2.1 m
- Weight: 20 or 22 tons empty, depending on design
- Car manufacturer: England pre-1952; India post-1952. Burn Standard Company in Howrah manufactured numbers 207 to 299 from 1982. In 1986 some were manufactured by Jessop. 684 to 700 were operational, but only 170 operated before 2013. As of 2013, 257 trams are operational with 125 trams operating.
- Length: 17.5 m
- Seating: 60 per car
- Speed: 60 km/h (max); avg speed: 30 km/h
- Controller: Three types – Cam (manufactured in London), GEC (manufactured in England) and Fuji (manufactured in Japan). Fuji is the most modern.
- Traction motor: Four types: TDK, Mitsubishi, Fuji and Bhel. EE-made traction motors are still in use – for example, 133A and 309/1B.
- Propulsion: Traction motor pinion, directly coupled via pinion-and-gear mechanism with drive wheel
- Track gauge: Standard gauge 1,435 mm (4 ft 8 1⁄2 in)
- Brakes: Pneumatic type through air compressor (DC 550V)
- Voltage: 550 volts DC in overhead wires.
- No vestibule or door shutter
- Single-ended car
- Current drawn by trolley pole
DEPOTS & TERMINALS
There are seven tram depots – Belgachhia, Rajabazar, Park Circus, Gariahat, Tollygunge, Kalighat and Kidderpur; nine terminals – Shyambazar, Galiff Street, Bidhannagar, Ballygunge, Esplanade, B. B. D. Bagh, and Howrah Bridge; and one workshop at Nonapukur. Rajabazar and Tollygunge depots are the largest in terms of tracks and area, respectively. Kidderpur depot is the oldest, and Kalighat the smallest. The Esplanade terminus has the most tram routes.
ALIGNMENT & INTERCHANGES
- While almost all routes are on-street running, the tram runs on reserved track across the Maidan between Esplanade and Kidderpore.
- The tram passes over the railway bridge between Shyambazar and Belgachhia, near Tala.
- The tram passes under the railway bridge between Maniktala and Bidhannagar, near Kankurgachi (only under-level track), and between Kalighat and Tollygunge, near Rabindra Sarobar.
- The tram runs parallel over metro track from Shyambazar to Belgachhia, and from Jatin Das Park to Tollygunge.
- The tram track crosses metro track at Aurobinda Sarani, Mahatma Gandhi Road, Bipin Bihari Gangopadhyay Street and Lenin Sarani.
- The tram runs on both sides of the road on Lenin Sarani and Surya Sen Street, and on either the right or left side on part of Acharya Prafulla Chandra Roy Road, part of Acharya Jagadish Chandra Basu Road, Judges Court Road, Diamond Harbour Road, Karl Marx Sarani, Kidderpur Road, Dufferin Road, Casuarina Avenue, Elliot Road, Royd Street and Rabindra Sarani. On all other streets, tram runs in the middle of the road.
- The tram runs on overpass only at Sealdah.
- The tram passes under overpass at Barhabazar, Wattganj, Race Course and Garhiahat.
- The tram crosses canals between Shyambazar and Belgachhia near Shyambazar, between Maniktala and Bidhannagar near Maniktala, between Jatin Das Park and Mominpur near Alipur, and between Wattganj and Esplanade near Wattganj.
- There are interchanges with metro at Belgachhia, Shyambazar, Esplanade, Kalighat and Tollygunge. Shobhabazar, Mahatma Gandhi Road, Central, Jatin Das Park and Rabindra Sarobar metro stations also have tram accessibility.
- There are interchanges with train at Bagbazar, Bidhannagar, Park Circus, Ballygunge, Kidderpore, B.B.D Bagh and Tollygunge. Sealdah and Tala rail stations also have tram accessibility.
ADVANTAGES & CRITICISM
Electric trams were the sole public transport until 1920, when the public bus was introduced in Kolkata. However, tram service until the 1950s was quite smooth and comfortable (although most new lines and extensions were built in pre-independence India). In 1950 there were around 300 tram cars, which were regularly operated on many routes in Kolkata and Howrah. Single-car trams operated on the Shibpur line until its closure; all other lines had double cars. Due to the large number of tram cars, the trams ran frequently (about a 5- to 7-minute wait between trams on all routes). This was possible due to less motor traffic on the roads than today. Derailments were very rare because of careful maintenance. All checkups were done at night, the water car was used for track smoothing and the tower car for wire-checking. Each tram was washed in the depot daily. Breakdown vans and overhead-wire inspection vans were ready at many junctions for quick repairs. Regular inspection of tracks, wires and so forth was done carefully. Tracks and track-bed gravel were replaced periodically for smoother service.
Anti-tram sentiment began about 1955, and spread around the world. Many countries (both developed and developing) began closing their tram systems, and India was no exception. Tram service closed in Kanpur in 1933, Chennai in 1955, Delhi in 1962 and Mumbai in 1964. Kolkata's network survived, but in a truncated form. At the same time the automobile boom began, quickly spreading throughout India.
Many streets were narrow (which was acceptable for tram service), but now cars, buses and lorries also used those roads. The government considered closing the trams, as an alternative to controlling motor traffic. Some routes (Bandhaghat, Shibpur and Nimtala) were closed for that reason, although traffic jams have not been alleviated. Many streets in Kolkata which have no tram line experience daily gridlock.
Although most track beds have been converted from stone to concrete, earlier paving of Strand Road closed the High Court route. Construction of the subway line also destroyed an important north-south connection, from Lalbazar to Jatin Das Park via Esplanade and Birla Planetarium. The development of overpasses is another reason for the decline of Kolkata trams. The Sealdah, Gariahat and Taratala overpasses were the main cause for the closing of the Sealdah terminus, Gahriahat link and the Joka route (which also made way for a national highway). There were many closures between 1970 and 1980, and many thought that it was the beginning of the end for trams in Kolkata, but the situation changed after 1990. At that time, many cities around the world began reevaluating tram service. Greater numbers of automobiles increased air pollution. High prices of petrol and diesel fuel on the international market also made electric-powered street rail more attractive.
Trams have many advantages:
- Clean and green – enhances the environment; no emissions at street level
- Safe – less prone to accidents
- Speedy – short trip times
- Avoid traffic congestion – through segregation and priority of routes
- Smooth and comfortable
- Pedestrian-friendly
- Civilizing – a city transported by trams is a less lonely place
- Acceptable and accepted – only rail-borne modes of transport can actually get people out of cars
- Reassuring – tram lines give confidence in accessibility
- High capacity – only metro systems have higher carrying capacity
- Affordable – the cheapest form of comfortable mass transit
- Versatile – can run at high speeds on rights-of-way way and can reach inner-city historic centers
- Adaptable – can cope with steep grades and tight curves
- Inspiring – modern trams can be aesthetically pleasing
- Heritage – Tramcars are a part of history.
Some political leaders (and many environmentalists) favored tram service. As a result the Kolkata tram survived, but not as robustly as it did before 1970. Tramways in Kolkata are now suffering, due to motor traffic and the outdated business model of its operators (the CTC and the government of West Bengal), although there has been some conversion of trackbed from stone to concrete and renovation of rolling stock.
Trams were the brainchild of the then-Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon. His motives were to ensure better public transport for the native people, better passage of goods from ports and dockyards to their respective destinations, and rapid mobilisation of police contingents to sites of anti-British protests. Thus, trams were the first mode of police transportation in Kolkata since police cars, vans, buses, lorries and armoured cars were not been introduced until 1917. The trams of Kolkata had played a major role in stopping Hindu-Muslim riots during the pre-independence era; in contrast, many trams were also burned by local people as an act of protest against colonial rule, since the tram was viewed by many Indians as a "British" import. Even after independence, during the 1960s many trams were burned for raising fares by only one paise (1/100 Rupee).
The Kolkata tramway has many vintage features. It still uses a trolley pole and foot gong (after a failed experiment with electric horn during the late 1980s), which is rare among international tram systems (except heritage tramways and standard networks like Hong Kong and Toronto). It has tram cars with no front glass or destination board – instead, iron route-boards hang from the front iron net. The last new rolling stock was manufactured in 1987 by Jessop India Ltd, and many trams from 1939 are still running. The recent de-reservation of tram tracks flies in the face of international trends. Although trams are faster, and derailments rare, it is often impossible to get up or down from a moving tram on wide roads such as Acharya Prafulla Chandra Roy Road, Acharya Jagadish Chandra Basu Road, Acharya Satyendra Nath Basu Sarani, Satin Sen Sarani, Syed Amir Ali Avenue, Lila Roy Sarani, Rash Behari Avenue, Deshapran Birendra Shasmal Road or Shyama Prasad Mukhopadhyay Road. Only one new branch (Bidhannagar) and one extension (the short-lived Joka) were built after independence, and no extension of the network had been planned until 2002. With a mix of good and bad, however, the Kolkata tram is still running as Asia's oldest operating electric tram and the only tram in India.
ACCIDENTS
On 19 June, 2014 a freak accident was reported in which a ghost tram rammed into 10 cars. No fatalities or injuries were reported.
FUTURE
Plans have been proposed to refurbish stock and wires, extend the system to more areas or tunnel under the Hooghly River. but (apart from paving the trackbed and repairing wires and masts), little real improvement has been done; for unmaterialized future plans, see the "latest Kolkata tram map" above. However, there have been some proposals to replace the current double-bogie SLC type trams with the new single-bogie trams and extend the tram system to places like Rajarhat and Bantala and reopening some closed routes. There are also plans for a tram route across the riverfront of the Hooghly River while plans are continuing for a tram route to Salt Lake and Rajarhat.
WIKIPEDIA
Columbia, South Carolina
Listed 1/14/2021
Reference Number: 100006020
Leevy’s Funeral Home built in 1951, was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2020 for its significance in black history and the system of segregation in Columbia, South Carolina. The funeral home was part of a community effort by the city’s Black citizens, to create alternative spaces to gather and provide one another with essential services, including funerary services. The building’s significance expands beyond funeral services as it was also a site for politics as it assisted in African American voter registration and education. The funeral home was owned and operated by Isaac Samuel (I. S.) Leevy, a prominent local political activist and community leader. The funeral home was Leevy’s home, place of business, and the center of his political actions. Leevy was heavily involved in South Carolina politics as a registered Republican who advocated for the two-party system and voter registration. Black-owned funeral homes like Leevy’s that emerged in the early twentieth century did so out of both necessity and a desire for the African American dead to be afforded the same respect as whites. Around the turn of the twentieth century, few American communities had a Black-owned funeral home. African Americans who sought out mortuary services therefore had to seek the services of white undertakers. Some simply refused to serve African Americans altogether. Black funeral homes offered African Americans the full range of services associated with caring for the dead, including embalming, burial, and, in some cases, even casket manufacturing. Leevy’s itself was ultimately among the Black funeral homes that placed emphasis on the ambulance services they offered to the local community and the respectful services they deserved.
National Register of Historic Places Homepage
Edwin Bancroft Henderson, a 92-year-old long-time civil rights warrior and advocate of physical education for black children, is shown after his return to the D.C. area March 26, 1976 where he is to be honored in Falls Church.
When he moved to Alabama 11 years before, he was honored by the local NAACP. This time the list of sponsors was broader and including the Falls Church city council; The Falls Church manager, library and school board; the city’s Historical and Bicentennial commissions and Village Preservation and Improvement Society; and Howard University’s Moorland-Spingarn Research Center.
Henderson’s 70-plus years of trail blazing physical education advocacy and civil rights activism in the greater Washington, D.C. area were being honored.
Henderson had a long and colorful career as a civil rights activist--the man who established black basketball, led the building of the black 12th Street YMCA, led integration of the Uline Arena and AAU boxing, among many other achievements. He established an NAACP branch in what was then rural Falls Church and headed the Virginia state NAACP. He was not only a target of white supremacist legislators, but of the Ku Klux Klan.
The following is written by Dave Ungrady and appeared in the Washington Post September 8, 2013:
When E.B. Henderson stopped by the District's whites-only Central YMCA one night in 1907 to watch a basketball game, he was familiar with the sport. Henderson had studied basketball while attending Harvard's Dudley Sargent School of Physical Training, which was affiliated with the Springfield, Mass.,YMCA, site of the first basketball game in 1891.
After Henderson and a future brother-in-law, Benjamin Brownley, sat down, the athletic director asked them to leave. White members were concerned that allowing blacks could cause other white members to avoid the club. Henderson felt humiliated.
But that December, he staged the first known blacks-only basketball game in Washington. It was at True Reformers Hall on U Street - a team of high-schoolers beat Howard University 12-5. And then he started raising money for the District's first YMCA building for blacks.
The Rockefeller Foundation pledged $25,000 to the national YMCA if the black community could raise matching funds. Henderson chaired the committee and brought in the largest amount. He was awarded a $10 gold piece for his efforts.
In 1912, the 12th Street Branch of the Metropolitan YMCA opened in Northwest.
Henderson is being inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame on Sept. 8 for his vision to develop basketball for African Americans, who today command a presence in the sport unlike that of any other race.
"He took the approach that sports was extraordinarily important to African Americans," says David Wiggins, a sports historian and a professor at George Mason University. "Sports was one of the ways African Americans could prove themselves, to compete and achieve excellence. It gave them a great deal of satisfaction and respect."
Susan Rayl, associate professor of sports history at the State University of New York College at Cortland, says Henderson, more than anyone else, used basketball as an educational tool for blacks.
"Without E.B. Henderson you would have had a much slower introduction of basketball to African Americans," she says. "He was the catalyst. He was a root, and the tree sprang from the root in D.C. for African Americans. His induction into the Hall of Fame is not just a good thing; it's absolutely necessary if you want to tell the true history of the game."
Edwin Bancroft Henderson was born in 1883 in his grandmother's house in Southwest Washington. The family moved to Pittsburgh in 1888 so his father, William, could earn better wages as a day laborer. His mother, Louisa, taught him how to read at an early age, and he monetized the skill, earning a quarter from an elementary school teacher each time he read to her class.
Henderson's family returned to Washington in 1894. He attended the Bell School, near the Capitol, and enjoyed the access to books in the Library of Congress and to the galleries in the U.S. House and Senate. Henderson credited those books and the time spent watching Congress with teaching him what he called the "perplexing social, economic and political problems of the day."
Henderson was an honor roll student at M Street High School, a pitcher on the baseball team and an offensive lineman on the football team; he also ran track. He was the top-ranked graduate in 1904 from Washington’s Miner Normal School, which prepared students to teach in Washington's black public schools.
At Harvard he became the first black man certified to teach physical education in public schools in the United States. He borrowed money to pay the $50 tuition and transportation costs, and he worked as a waiter at his boarding house to pay for meals.
In 1904 Henderson also started teaching physical education at Bowen Elementary School in Washington and exercise classes twice a week at M Street High School and Armstrong Tech. At that time, Henderson believed that the more restricted space and a lack of leisure time associated with urban life prevented blacks from engaging in consistent exercise, making them more prone than whites to disease.
"It is unfortunately true that the vitality of the Negro youth is seriously undermined by the crowded city," he wrote in 1910. "Many young men leave our secondary schools and colleges to engage in strenuous work, amidst varying conditions with bodies unsound and but few, if any, hygienic habits formed for life. ... it is necessary that we build up a strong and virile youth."
Pushing for better exercise facilities for blacks became a mission for Henderson. He asked the District's superintendent of black schools to include a gymnasium as part of plans for an addition to Armstrong. He remembered the superintendent's laughing response. "My boy, they may build gymnasiums in your school in your lifetime, but not mine."
White athletes dominated then, mostly in baseball, but a number of black athletes had gained prominence in football, track and field and especially boxing. Peter Jackson, at 6-1 and 212 pounds, was considered the best heavyweight boxer in the late 1800s and was known as the "Black Prince." Jack Johnson was the first African American to win a heavyweight title, in 1908.
But blacks were behind whites in developing fitness programs. Of the 1,749 YMCAs in the United States in 1904, 32 were for blacks but had significantly fewer resources.
Washington's thriving black middle class, with its strong school system and vibrant social club scene, framed a prime area to develop an equally dynamic sports environment for the black community. All it needed was someone to spearhead the movement.
Henderson formed the D.C.-based Basket Ball League, which started play in January 1908 with eight teams. It played games through early May on Saturday nights at True Reformers in a room that was also used as a concert hall.
The games were far from elegant. A balcony surrounded three-quarters of the court, which was set up inside a metal cage on a floor that featured four narrow pillars planted near the corners. Teams relied on prolonged periods of passing that could last several minutes. Jump balls took place after each score. And players' skills were far from refined. Bob Kuska, author of the book "Hot Potato: How Washington and New York Gave Birth to Black Basketball and Changed America's Game Forever," writes that "defenders spared no pain in halting [a player's] path to the basket."
The next year Henderson formed and was captain of the 12th Street YMCA team, which won all its games. By then Henderson was considered a top talent. New York Age Magazine called Henderson, the team's 5-foot, 10-inch center (centers were considered playmakers then), the best center in black basketball.
In 1910 Henderson made an agreement with Spalding Sporting Goods to write the "Inter-Scholastic Athletic Association of the Mid-Atlantic States," a manual about his athletic work with African Americans in the District. It included articles on training tips and sports ethics, as well as results for track and field meets. He consulted black coaches and directors in the South and published records and pictures from Southern schools. The book sold for 10 cents a copy and is considered the first written by an African American that documented black athletics in black schools.
That same year, intercity matches between black basketball clubs grew more common. Henderson played his last organized basketball game with the team at 27, on Christmas Day 1910, in a tournament against the Alpha Club at the Manhattan Casino in New York. The previous day, he had married Mary Ellen Meriwether, who asked her husband to stop playing competitive games out of concern for his safety.
With his playing career over, Henderson concentrated on coaching, promoting fitness and athletics for blacks, and sports administration. He formed the Public Schools Athletic League to establish competition in track and field, soccer, basketball and baseball among black schools in the District. It was the first public school league for blacks in the country. "I believe that Washington will be the greatest competing center for athletics among Negroes," Henderson said in 1914.
To help league coaches learn basketball, Henderson wrote a weekly bulletin offering tips on training, sportsmanship and diet. The league assigned players from Howard University's basketball team to teach the game to elementary school players and coaches, stressing teamwork and aggressive defense.
Henderson also worked as an official and founded the Eastern Board of Officials, the first organization to train black officials. For more than two decades Henderson worked as an official for football, basketball and track and field and served as the group's first president. But he struggled to recruit and keep officials, due in part to blacks being paid less than whites. Sometimes black officials worked games for no money or, on occasions, two free game tickets.
In 1912 Henderson had moved to Falls Church, where the challenges facing blacks were even greater than in the District. When he asked a white superintendent to help black children, he was told the concerns of white children had to be met first. "The implication was that the colored children were ours to provide the buses for and buy land for schools, but that only the white children belonged to the county and were to be provided for by tax money," he said.
In 1915, Falls Church's all-white town council ordered all blacks to live within a restricted area. Henderson was among the blacks who owned property outside the area, and he helped form the Colored Citizens Protection League to fight the order. They filed a suit preventing enforcement, and the Town Council rescinded the order after a court ruled it was unconstitutional.
Henderson formed the first rural branch of the NAACP, there in Falls Church, in 1918. But Henderson's actions also brought unwanted attention. In the 1920s, he received a letter signed by the Ku Klux Klan that referred to blacks as "baboons" and threatened that he would be "borne to a tree nearby, tied stripped and given thirty lashes. ..."
In 1938, Dr. Carter Woodson, who was Harvard-educated and had founded the District-based Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in 1915, asked Henderson to write a book about athletic history for blacks. Henderson's research for "The Negro in Sports" took him back to the Library of Congress, where he'd first discovered his passion for the written word.
Shirley Povich, a Washington Post sports columnist, addressed in 1950 the book's social impact: "Henderson resists what might have been the high temptation to gloat at the sensational successes of the Negro boys when finally they got their chance to play in big leagues. Instead, he pays tribute to the American sportsmanship that sufficed, finally, to provide equal opportunity."
After Miguel Uline opened the Uline arena in the District, he banned blacks from attending Ice Capades events, Henderson claimed, because Uline opposed blacks viewing entertainers in revealing attire in a social environment. In the 1940s, Henderson started a picketing campaign, prompting Uline to lift the ban.
At Henderson's urging, Washington Post president Eugene Meyer helped prompt the District to integrate professional boxing. The local branch of boxing's governing body at the time, the Amateur Athletic Union, declared that promoters would be denied permits and athletes would be suspended if they allowed mixed boxing. Meyer threatened to withdraw support of boxing tournaments that excluded blacks, and Henderson organized protests and helped file a lawsuit in 1945. The AAU agreed to lift the sanctions in exchange for withdrawing the suit.
"These results made it possible for our boys to measure their abilities against any and all, and did a lot to raise the level of respect of all citizens in our community," Henderson told Leon Coursey, who wrote his dissertation on Henderson.
While fighting against unequal treatment of blacks, Henderson commuted daily to his job teaching physical education in Washington. His afternoons were more idle, though, and he passed the time writing sports articles, including some for the Washington Star about football games he worked as a referee. Henderson had begun his sports writing career before high school, compiling results of games in which he participated. "I walked a couple of miles to the office of the Washington Star to have it published for one penny a line," he told Coursey.
Henderson practiced advocacy journalism in remarkable volumes, claiming to have published 3,000 letters to editors in more than a dozen newspapers. In those letters he tried to discredit discrimination and promote a sense of awareness and dignity for African Americans. In a letter published in The Post on June 26, 1951, Henderson refers to a lawsuit seeking a ban on segregated schools:
"The current suits ... are causing turmoil in the minds of politicians, racial bigots, whites and Negroes who profit by or exploit segregation. ... In those social areas where sudden elimination of segregation has come about, almost nowhere have any of the fears materialized. For example, Negroes who have for a long time been conditioned to accept second-class citizenship and denied free access to public offerings, do not rush in when the gates open. Some are so thoroughly indoctrinated with inferior status that they will never seek to be where formerly unwanted."
Henderson drew the admiration of Robert F. Kennedy, who invited Henderson and his wife to the Kennedy house in McLean. Henderson told Coursey that Kennedy said he wished "more Negroes would answer the people in opposition to our views." Henderson's advocacy came at a price early on, though. For safety, the D.C. police commissioner encouraged him to carry a gun, and his phone number went unlisted for 50 years.
A Washington Star clipping from October 1965 shows an op-ed recognizing Henderson's strong civic spirit as he planned to move to Tennessee, at 82, to live with his son. The story, headlined "Citizen Henderson," said: "E.B. has been a good citizen in the pure sense of the term. This community will miss him."
Despite a lifetime devoted to exercise and a healthful diet, Henderson developed colon cancer and prostate cancer late in life and died in 1977 at 93.
The festivities for the Naismith Hall of Fame induction began in April, at the NCAA Men's Basketball Final Four in Atlanta. Broadcaster Jim Nantz announced the 2013 inductees. Then he handed to Edwin Henderson II, E.B.'s grandson who lives in the Falls Church home E.B. built, a basketball jersey emblazoned with "Henderson" on the back and "Hall of Fame" on the front. It was Edwin and his wife, Nikki, who had begun the campaign to get E.B. inducted, in 2005. Edwin called Nikki "the point guard who distributed the ball" in the effort to earn E.B. the induction.
"When I learned who he was," Nikki said, "I thought, 'Gee, he should be in the basketball hall of fame.' I thought, 'Gee, we should just write a letter.' "
Like E.B. Henderson himself, they both understood the power of a letter.
For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHsmJoDRBw
The photographer is unknown. The image is courtesy of the D.C. Public Library Washington Star Collection © Washington Post.
A young black woman, soaked by a fireman's hose as an anti-segregation march is broken up by police, in Birmingham, Alabama, on May 8, 1963. In the background is a police riot wagon.
AP Photo
These are some glimpses of the world in 1963. In these days after the shocking election of 2016, I have wondered if America will go back to these awful times.
Exposition : The color line
Du mardi 04 octobre 2016 au dimanche 15 janvier 2017
Quel rôle a joué l’art dans la quête d’égalité et d’affirmation de l’identité noire dans l’Amérique de la Ségrégation ? L'exposition rend hommage aux artistes et penseurs africains-américains qui ont contribué, durant près d’un siècle et demi de luttes, à estomper cette "ligne de couleur" discriminatoire.
—————
« Le problème du 20e siècle est le problème de la ligne de partage des couleurs ».
Si la fin de la Guerre de Sécession en 1865 a bien sonné l’abolition de l'esclavage, la ligne de démarcation raciale va encore marquer durablement la société américaine, comme le pressent le militant W.E.B. Du Bois en 1903 dans The Soul of Black Folks. L’exposition The Color Line revient sur cette période sombre des États-Unis à travers l’histoire culturelle de ses artistes noirs, premières cibles de ces discriminations.
Des thématiques racistes du vaudeville américain et des spectacles de Minstrels du 19e siècle à l’effervescence culturelle et littéraire de la Harlem Renaissance du début du 20e siècle, des pionniers de l’activisme noir (Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington) au réquisitoire de la chanteuse Billie Holiday (Strange Fruit), ce sont près de 150 ans de production artistique – peinture, sculpture, photographie, cinéma, musique, littérature… – qui témoignent de la richesse créative de la contestation noire.
Oakland Tribune, 19 Oct 1909, Page 28 (via Newspapers dot com)
“Rock Ridge Park will be conveyed to purchaser by deeds containing the most stringent building restrictions ever placed on any property in Northern California.”
Those restrictions are further detailed in the other ads contained in this album.
I live in Rockridge. Our neighborhood (like so many others in the US) must remember the blatant racism and state-sponsored segregation that is part of its birth story. We can’t ignore this reality and its continuing effects. It should inform every housing decision we make and every local cause for which we advocate.
Recommended Reading:
More about Laymance and Rock Ridge Park (now Rockridge) →
Sky House II -- One of two I.M. Pei buildings at 4th and M Streets SW in Washington, D.C., being gutted. The building to the left is "The View at Waterfront" -- an apartment building.
In the early 1950s, the southwest quadrant of D.C. consisted primarily of residential homes built in the early 1800s. Most of them had fallen into severe decay. Southwest D.C. had become home to a mostly African American population, and segregation and racism left them improverished and uneducated. Few homes had running water, and almost none had sewage hookups. People used latrines, which often were right next to drinking water wells. Most D.C. neighborhoods were built with immense alleys. Once, stables for horses existed in these alleys. In Southwest D.C. by the early 1950s, these stables were now "alley dwellings" -- homes for tens of thousands of black people. Two-, three-, and four-story additions were cobbled together from scrap lumber to add to these alley dwellings, and they were often unsafe and firetraps.
In 1946, the Congress passed the District of Columbia Redevelopment Act, which established the District of Columbia Redevelopment Land Agency (RLA) and provided legal authority to clear land and funds to spur redevelopment in the capital. Between 1952 and 1960, almost every single home, church, business, office building, and playground in Southwest D.C. was razed to the ground.
New York City real estate developer William Zeckendorff outbid a wide range of other developers to win the right to redevelop nearly all of Southwest D.C. In 1955, Zeckendorff proposed building a "Waterfront Town Center" on the north side of M Street SW (straddling 4th Street SW). The idea was to create an inward-looking mixed-use development: A one-story, small strip mall would contain a grocery story, retail shops,and a restaurant. 4th Street SW would be blocked off between M and K streets, and a plaza and small park created on the north side of the mall. To the east and west of the mall, 11-story high-rise identical office buildings would provide employment in the area. Scattered around the "town center" would be a series of low-rise and high-rise apartment and condo complexes (Tiber River, Carroll Square, Delaware Avenue, Capitol Towers, etc.) to provide housing for middle-income and wealthy families (e.g., whites). Each would be focused inward around a leafy courtyard (some of them with pools and fountains).
The office buildings (Town Center Plaza Towers) were designed by I.M. Pei, then a young Chinese-American architect just beginning his career. The office buildings were in the Brutalist (raw concrete) style, made of pinkish concrete with repetitive square window frames.
Waterfront Town Center failed miserably. The shopping mall never attracted good tenants, and pretty soon became home to discount stores, off-brand clothing shops, and no-name fast food joints. The closed 4th Street SW created a dead zone throughout southwest D.C. The plaza was sizzling hot in summer, and useless in winter, and contributed to drug dealing and crime in the area. The office buildings never attracted good tenants, either, and nearly all the workers in them came from Maryland or Virgina rather than local people from D.C. Meanwhile, the nearby residential complexes became insular and disconnected from the neighborhoods around them.
In 2007, the city provided redevelopment funds as part of its Anacostia Waterfront Initiative to have the mall demolished and 4th Street restored. Developers built eight-story Modernist office buildings (Waterfront Station) with uneven facades to the east and west of 4th Street. Each building had ground-floor retail (grocery store, drug store, restaurants, coffee shops) catering to upper-middle-class people (whites). An athletic field was created north of the west building, and a new park north of the east building. The entrance to the Waterfront Metro station was also radically redeveloped, with a new park, fountains, canopy, and meadow.
In 2012, the two I.M. Pei-designed office buildings had their facades totally removed and their insides completely gutted. Known as "Sky House I" and "Sky House II", they should be open in 2013.
Sky House I -- One of two I.M. Pei buildings at 4th and M Streets SW in Washington, D.C., being gutted. The building to the left is one of the two office buildings that make up Waterfront Station.
In the early 1950s, the southwest quadrant of D.C. consisted primarily of residential homes built in the early 1800s. Most of them had fallen into severe decay. Southwest D.C. had become home to a mostly African American population, and segregation and racism left them improverished and uneducated. Few homes had running water, and almost none had sewage hookups. People used latrines, which often were right next to drinking water wells. Most D.C. neighborhoods were built with immense alleys. Once, stables for horses existed in these alleys. In Southwest D.C. by the early 1950s, these stables were now "alley dwellings" -- homes for tens of thousands of black people. Two-, three-, and four-story additions were cobbled together from scrap lumber to add to these alley dwellings, and they were often unsafe and firetraps.
In 1946, the Congress passed the District of Columbia Redevelopment Act, which established the District of Columbia Redevelopment Land Agency (RLA) and provided legal authority to clear land and funds to spur redevelopment in the capital. Between 1952 and 1960, almost every single home, church, business, office building, and playground in Southwest D.C. was razed to the ground.
New York City real estate developer William Zeckendorff outbid a wide range of other developers to win the right to redevelop nearly all of Southwest D.C. In 1955, Zeckendorff proposed building a "Waterfront Town Center" on the north side of M Street SW (straddling 4th Street SW). The idea was to create an inward-looking mixed-use development: A one-story, small strip mall would contain a grocery story, retail shops,and a restaurant. 4th Street SW would be blocked off between M and K streets, and a plaza and small park created on the north side of the mall. To the east and west of the mall, 11-story high-rise identical office buildings would provide employment in the area. Scattered around the "town center" would be a series of low-rise and high-rise apartment and condo complexes (Tiber River, Carroll Square, Delaware Avenue, Capitol Towers, etc.) to provide housing for middle-income and wealthy families (e.g., whites). Each would be focused inward around a leafy courtyard (some of them with pools and fountains).
The office buildings (Town Center Plaza Towers) were designed by I.M. Pei, then a young Chinese-American architect just beginning his career. The office buildings were in the Brutalist (raw concrete) style, made of pinkish concrete with repetitive square window frames.
Waterfront Town Center failed miserably. The shopping mall never attracted good tenants, and pretty soon became home to discount stores, off-brand clothing shops, and no-name fast food joints. The closed 4th Street SW created a dead zone throughout southwest D.C. The plaza was sizzling hot in summer, and useless in winter, and contributed to drug dealing and crime in the area. The office buildings never attracted good tenants, either, and nearly all the workers in them came from Maryland or Virgina rather than local people from D.C. Meanwhile, the nearby residential complexes became insular and disconnected from the neighborhoods around them.
In 2007, the city provided redevelopment funds as part of its Anacostia Waterfront Initiative to have the mall demolished and 4th Street restored. Developers built eight-story Modernist office buildings (Waterfront Station) with uneven facades to the east and west of 4th Street. Each building had ground-floor retail (grocery store, drug store, restaurants, coffee shops) catering to upper-middle-class people (whites). An athletic field was created north of the west building, and a new park north of the east building. The entrance to the Waterfront Metro station was also radically redeveloped, with a new park, fountains, canopy, and meadow.
In 2012, the two I.M. Pei-designed office buildings had their facades totally removed and their insides completely gutted. Known as "Sky House I" and "Sky House II", they should be open in 2013.
Just to the east of Sky House I, another new development is going in. Currently, a parking lot fronts M Street. North of that is a run-down condo building (Waterfront Tower), and then more parking lots and empty fields to K Street SW. The Bernstein Companies is going to build an 11-story, 142-unit condo building known as South Tower on the M Street parking lot. A narrow, plaza (open to the east and west) will exist between South Tower and Waterfront Condos. On the east side of the middle of this area, a four-story, 19-unit condo structure known as Center Building will be aligned north-south along 3rd Street SW. A small park and minimal parking will exist to its west. Framing this park to the north will be a 128-condo structure known as "North Building" which will be aligned east-west and appear identical to Waterfront Condos. To the north, fronting K Street SW, will be another 190-unit condo building known as North Tower. Between the North Building and North Tower will be a park identical to that between South Tower and Waterfront Condos. A skyway will connect the North Buidling and North Tower. All four infill buildings are being designed by Maurice Walters.
Exposition : The color line
Du mardi 04 octobre 2016 au dimanche 15 janvier 2017
Quel rôle a joué l’art dans la quête d’égalité et d’affirmation de l’identité noire dans l’Amérique de la Ségrégation ? L'exposition rend hommage aux artistes et penseurs africains-américains qui ont contribué, durant près d’un siècle et demi de luttes, à estomper cette "ligne de couleur" discriminatoire.
—————
« Le problème du 20e siècle est le problème de la ligne de partage des couleurs ».
Si la fin de la Guerre de Sécession en 1865 a bien sonné l’abolition de l'esclavage, la ligne de démarcation raciale va encore marquer durablement la société américaine, comme le pressent le militant W.E.B. Du Bois en 1903 dans The Soul of Black Folks. L’exposition The Color Line revient sur cette période sombre des États-Unis à travers l’histoire culturelle de ses artistes noirs, premières cibles de ces discriminations.
Des thématiques racistes du vaudeville américain et des spectacles de Minstrels du 19e siècle à l’effervescence culturelle et littéraire de la Harlem Renaissance du début du 20e siècle, des pionniers de l’activisme noir (Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington) au réquisitoire de la chanteuse Billie Holiday (Strange Fruit), ce sont près de 150 ans de production artistique – peinture, sculpture, photographie, cinéma, musique, littérature… – qui témoignent de la richesse créative de la contestation noire.
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.
We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.
We cannot turn back.
There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: "For Whites Only." We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."¹
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest -- quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."2
This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.
With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:
My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,
From every mountainside, let freedom ring!
And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.
And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.
But not only that:
Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.
From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
I have a dream - Martin Luther King jr.
8/28/1963, Lincoln Memorial, Washington DC
Segregation was required in the green states, permitted in the blue states, prohibited in the red states and there was no specific legislation either way in the white states. Sorry about the flash in the middle....
West Palm Beach is a city in and the county seat of Palm Beach County, Florida, United States. It is located immediately to the west of the adjacent Palm Beach, which is situated on a barrier island across the Lake Worth Lagoon. The population was 117,415 at the 2020 census. West Palm Beach is a principal city of the Miami metropolitan area, which was home to 6,138,333 people in 2020. It is the oldest incorporated municipality in the South Florida area, incorporated as a city two years before Miami in November 1894. West Palm Beach is located approximately 68 miles (109 km) north of Downtown Miami.
The history of West Palm Beach, Florida, began more than 5,000 years ago with the arrival of the first aboriginal natives. Native American tribes such as the Jaegas inhabited the area. Though control of Florida changed among Spain, England, the United States, and the Confederate States of America, the area remained largely undeveloped until the 20th century. By the 1870s and 1880s, non-Native American settlers had inhabited areas in the vicinity of West Palm Beach and referred to the settlement as "Lake Worth Country". However, the population remained very small until the arrival of Henry Flagler in the 1890s. Flagler constructed hotels and resorts in Palm Beach to create a travel destination for affluent tourists, who could travel there via his railroad beginning in 1894.
Flagler originally intended for West Palm Beach to serve as a residential area for the workers at his hotels in Palm Beach. In 1893, George W. Potter surveyed and platted the original 48 blocks of the city. West Palm Beach would be incorporated as a town on November 5, 1894, before becoming a city in 1903. Upon the establishment of Palm Beach County in 1909, West Palm Beach received the designation of county seat. The city developed much more rapidly during the 1920s land boom, which saw a nearly four-fold increase in population between 1920 and 1927 and the construction of many of the city's historical buildings and neighborhoods. However, the 1928 hurricane – which devastated the city – and end of the land boom ushered the area into an era of economic decline just prior to the onset of the Great Depression.
West Palm Beach experienced an economic rebound in the post-World War II years, as veterans who trained at Morrison Field vacationed or relocated to the area. The city also markedly expanded westward in the 1950s and 1960s, with thousands of acres of wetlands drained and filled. In the latter decade, a municipal stadium, auditorium, and mall were built on the newly drained and filled land. Commercial development west of the original city boundaries led to urban decay in downtown by the 1980s. However, the beautification of Clematis Street beginning in the early 1990s, and the opening of CityPlace in 2000 led to a revitalized downtown area. In 2018, the United States Census Bureau estimated that the city had a population of 111,398.
Archaeological evidence suggests that the Jaegas settled in modern-day Palm Beach County as many as 5,000 years ago. The first contact between Native Americans in the area and Europeans occurred in 1513 upon Juan Ponce de León's landfall at the Jupiter Inlet. Europeans encountered a thriving native population, the Mayaimi in the Lake Okeechobee Basin, while the Jaegas and Ais resided east of Lake Okeechobee and along the east coast north of the Tequestas. When the Spanish arrived, there were perhaps about 20,000 Native Americans in South Florida. The native peoples had all but been wiped out through war, enslavement, or European diseases, by the time the English gained control of Florida in 1763. Other native people from Alabama and Georgia moved into Florida in the early 18th century. They were of varied ancestry, but Europeans called them all Creeks. In Florida, they were known as the Seminole and Miccosukee Indians. American settlers and Seminoles fought against each other due to land and escaped slaves, who were granted protection by the Seminoles. They resisted the government's efforts to move them to the Indian Territory west of the Mississippi. The Seminoles and the United States government fought with each other in three wars between 1818 and 1858. By the end of the third war, very few Seminoles remained in Florida.
The area that was to become West Palm Beach was settled in the late 1870s and 1880s by a few hundred settlers who called the vicinity "Lake Worth Country". These settlers were a diverse community from different parts of the United States and the world. They included founding families such as the Potters and the Lainharts, who would go on to become leading members of the business community in the fledgling city. Irving R. Henry filed the first homestead claim in 1880, claiming 131 acres (53 ha). Henry would later sell the land to Captain O. S. Porter. The first non-Native American settlers in Palm Beach County resided around Lake Worth, – an enclosed freshwater lake at the time – named after Colonel William Jenkins Worth, who served in the Second Seminole War in 1842. Reverend Elbridge Gale and his son are believed to have constructed the first log cabin on the western shore of Lake Worth, located near where the intersection of 29th Street and Poinsettia Avenue stands today. Most settlers engaged in the growing of tropical fruits and vegetables for shipment to the north via Lake Worth and the Indian River.
In 1890, the United States Census counted over 200 people settled along Lake Worth in the vicinity of what would become West Palm Beach. The area at this time also boasted a hotel, the "Cocoanut House", a church, and a post office. Henry Flagler, who was instrumental to Palm Beach County's development in the late 19th century and early 20th century, first visited in 1892, describing the area as a "veritable paradise". The first newspaper in the area, The Gazetteer, began publication in 1893, but the paper ceased printing issues after burning in a downtown fire in 1896. Additionally, West Palm Beach's first business, Lainhart and Potter Lumber Company, and the first bank, Dade County State Bank, were both established in 1893. That year, Flagler began planning a city to house the employees working in the two grand hotels on the neighboring island of Palm Beach.
Flagler paid two area settlers, Porter and Louie Hillhouse, a combined sum of $45,000 for the original town site. Flagler hired George W. Potter, Dade County's first surveyor, to set aside 48 blocks for development stretching from Clear Lake to Lake Worth, an area that would later become West Palm Beach. The east-to-west oriented streets were named alphabetically from north to south – Althea, Banyan, Clematis, Datura, Evernia, Fern – while some of the north-to-south roads were called Lantana, Narcissus, Olive, Poinsettia, Rosemary, and Tamarind. Most of these names are still used today. Over in Palm Beach, construction began on the Royal Poinciana Hotel on May 1, 1893. The lots in West Palm Beach were auctioned off in the ballroom of the Royal Poinciana on February 4, 1894, one week before the hotel opened for business. In late March, Flagler's Florida East Coast Railway reached West Palm Beach.
On November 5, 1894, residents met at the "Calaboose", which served as the first jail and police station. The building formerly stood at Clematis Street and Poinsettia, now Dixie Highway. The 78 people there voted on a motion to incorporate, with 77 in favor and 1 against. They also decided to name the municipality "West Palm Beach", originally a town. This made West Palm Beach the first incorporated municipality in the county and in Southeast Florida. On the following day, 78 people also met to vote on the new town officers. Voters elected John S. Earman as the first mayor, while Henry J. Burkhardt, E. H. Dimick, J. M. Garland, H. T. Grant, J. F. Lamond, and George Zapf became the town's first aldermen. Eli Sims and W. L. Tolbert were chosen to be town clerk and town marshal, respectively. Later in November 1894, the Flagler Alerts, an all-volunteer fire department, was established as the first fire department in the city.
Although Flagler intended for the West Palm Beach area to be the southern terminus of his railroad, the track was extended farther southward to Miami after two severe freezes in the winter of 1894–95. The Weather Bureau office, then located in Jupiter, recorded temperatures of 24 and 27 °F (−4 and −3 °C) on December 29, 1894, and February 9, 1895, respectively. Though the railroad continued southward to Miami and eventually to Key West, Flagler and his workers continued building structures in the early years of Palm Beach and West Palm Beach. Completion of a railroad bridge across Lake Worth in 1895 allowed passengers to directly reach Palm Beach from West Palm Beach. A census conducted that year reported a population of 1,192 people. However, the town's population decreased by more than half during the second half of the 1890s due to damage to the citrus industry caused by the aforementioned freezes, a brief cessation in construction activity, and national recessions.
At the V-shaped split at the east end of Clematis Street, "City Park" (later known as Flagler Park) was constructed, which contained a bandstand, a field for impromptu baseball games, and by 1896, a free "reading room". Two large fires devastated downtown West Palm Beach in early 1896. On January 2, an overheated stove at Midway Plaisance Saloon and Restaurant resulted in a fire that spread across all of Banyan Street. The next fire occurred on February 20, ignited after a man accidentally knocked over an oil lamp. Much of Narcissus Street burned, including the building housing The Gazetteer, which never resumed publication. The fire led to stricter building codes, with structures required to be made of bricks. Wilmon Whilldin, who served as mayor from 1898 to 1899, led a transition away from tents and shanty homes. He also emphasized the importance of more dwellings, parks, shade trees, and sanitation.
By the turn of the century, West Palm Beach had electrical and telephone service, a library, a sewer system, a pumping station, and paved roads. The 1900 Census indicated a population of 564. The library was established that year. Charles John Clarke, owner of the Palm Beach Yacht Club, donated the two-story building to be used as the library. Other donations allowed the building to be transported across the Lake Worth Lagoon via barge. The building replaced the reading room at City Park. By 1903, the town council submitted a city charter to the Florida Legislature, which was approved on July 21.
In September, a hurricane made landfall near Fort Lauderdale. As inclement weather conditions began arriving in West Palm Beach, businesses suspended their normal operations and people boarded up buildings, even as strong winds arrived. Many buildings lost their roofs, and much debris, including roofing materials, branches, paper, and driftwood, littered the streets. As northeast winds reached their peak late on September 11 and early on September 12, parts of buildings blew away. In the African-American section of the city, several buildings were destroyed. Just one of the four churches stood after the hurricane. Despite the hurricane, the city continued to grow, with newer businesses and more people arriving.
Banyan Street, originally the only location where alcohol was sold, gained an infamous reputation for its brothels, gambling halls, and saloons, which included an incident in 1895 in which Mayor Earman was arrested and charged with public intoxication while accompanying a prostitute. He was acquitted of the charges. By 1904, some local women called Carrie Nation, a radical temperance movement member notorious for attacking alcohol-serving establishments with a hatchet. However, there is no indication of her ravaging the saloons on Banyan Street. During the following years, the road's continuously poor reputation resulted in it being renamed First Street in 1925, which was reverted to Banyan Street in 1989.[26] The city's first fire department building and city hall opened in 1905 at the northeast corner of Datura Street and Poinsetta Street (modern day U.S. Route 1, also known as Dixie Highway). In 1909, Palm Beach County was formed by the Florida State Legislature, carved out of the northern portion of Dade County. West Palm Beach became the county seat. That same year, the West Palm Beach Telephone Company, the area's first telephone service, was incorporated with 65 customers.
According to the 1910 United States Census, the population of West Palm Beach was 1,743. Prior to the 1910s, many African Americans in the area lived in a segregated section of Palm Beach called the "Styx", with an estimated population of 2,000 at its peak. However, between 1910 and 1912, African Americans were evicted from the Styx. Urban legend states that the Styx was burned down by Flager's white laborers, as the shanty town was viewed as an eyesore. However, there is much evidence to refute this theory. Most of the displaced residents relocated to the northern end of West Palm Beach, in neighborhoods today known as Northwest, Pleasant City, and Freshwater.
After the passage of the Dick Act in 1903, Florida became the first state to establish its own National Guard. In 1914, a unit was established in West Palm Beach. Personnel from this unit were deployed to the Mexico–United States border from July 1916 to March 1917 and for service in Europe in October 1917.
In 1916, a neo-classical county courthouse was opened. Prior to the opening of the courthouse, county business was conducted at a school building located at Clematis Avenue and Poinsettia Street. The building underwent renovations in the 1950s and 1960s. It was used as the county courthouse until a new courthouse opened in 1995. The Board of County Commissioners agreed in 2002 to return the historic courthouse to its original design. Restoration was completed in March 2008 at a cost of just over $18 million. Today, the original courthouse houses the Historical Society of Palm Beach County and the Richard and Pat Johnson Palm Beach County History Museum.
The Palm Beach Post became a daily newspaper in January 1916, after publishing weekly editions since its founding in 1909. Based in West Palm Beach, the paper is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the county. As of November 2017, The Palm Beach Post ranked as the fifth largest newspaper by circulation in the state of Florida, behind only the Miami Herald, Sun-Sentinel, Orlando Sentinel, and Tampa Bay Times.
The West Palm Beach Canal opened in 1917. The canal stretched from the Lake Worth Lagoon westward to Twenty Mile Bend and then northwestward to Canal Point, where it enters Lake Okeechobee. The canal lowered Lake Okeechobee and allowed land to be drained for agriculture, while also allowing easier transportation of crops to the coast. The city capitalized on this development and built a new canal branch and dock facilities, boat slips, a turning basin, and warehouses. West Palm Beach soon became the county's shopping center for pineapple, sugar cane, and winter vegetables.
By the 1910s, a movement to transition to a council–manager government gained enough momentum to allow a vote in 1919. Under the proposal, the citizens would elect members of the city council, who would in turn select the mayor. On August 29, 1919, voters approved the proposal by 201–82. The proposal also called for a primary for the election of city commissioners to be held within three weeks. The rules for the primary stated the top three vote-getters were elected to the city council. David F. Dunkle became the first mayor under this system, with his inauguration occurring on September 22, 1919.
Although construction slowed dramatically during World War I, West Palm Beach and the state of Florida, unlike most of the nation, was not hit as hard by the Post–World War I recession, as the completion of major roadways such as Dixie Highway and the milder climate attracted middle-class tourists. Investors and realtors heavily promoted living and vacationing in Florida. The city grew rapidly in the 1920s as part of the Florida land boom. The population of West Palm Beach quadrupled from 1920 to 1927, coupled with significant growth in businesses and public services. Property values also rose significantly, from $13.6 million in 1920 to $61 million in 1925.
All areas of West Palm Beach east of Australian Avenue had been platted by 1927, although sections north of 36th Street and south of Southern Boulevard remained mostly undeveloped. Many of the city's landmark structures and preserved neighborhoods were constructed in the 1920s. For example, during this time, the Harvey and Clarke architectural firm – formed by Henry Stephen Harvey (the Mayor of West Palm Beach from 1924 to 1926) and L. Philips Clarke in 1921 – designed several structures listed on the National Register of Historic Places, including the Alfred J. Comeau House, American National Bank Building, Comeau Building, Dixie Court Hotel (demolished in 1990), Guaranty Building and Pine Ridge Hospital. Several waterfront hotels were built in the 1920s, including the Royal Palm, El Verano, and Pennsylvania. Other notable projects constructed during this era included Good Samaritan Hospital and the Seaboard Airline Railroad Station. Additionally, the city opened its first permanent library on January 26, 1924, named the Memorial Library in honor of those who died during World War I.
See also: Effects of the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane in Florida
The 1928 Okeechobee hurricane devastated West Palm Beach. The city observed at least 10 in (250 mm) of rainfall. Among the buildings destroyed included a furniture store, pharmacy, warehouse, hotel, school, an ironworks, and the fire station. All of the theaters in the city suffered severe damage or destruction. Generally, wood-frame buildings fared poorly and many other structures lost their roofs, while the few concrete-built structures remained standing. Skylights at the county courthouse and city hall shattered, damaging documents and records. Only one business on Clematis Street escaped serious damage, while two buildings remained standing on the north side of Banyan Boulevard (then known as First Street) between Dixie Highway and Olive Avenue, owing to the frail construction of the business buildings in that section of the city. The latter, considered the auto row of West Palm Beach, was reduced to "a mass of debris", according to The New York Times. Partially destruction of the hospital led to a temporary hospital being set up in the Pennsylvania Hotel, which itself suffered damage after the chimney crashed through 14 floors. At the city library, more than half of the books were destroyed and the floor was covered with about 2 ft (0.61 m) of water and mud. Waves washed up mounds of sand and debris across Banyan Boulevard, Clematis Street, and Datura Street, to Olive Avenue.
The buildings used by The Palm Beach Post and the Palm Beach Times suffered severe damage, though both companies continued to publish newspapers with little interruption. The Central Farmers Trust Company, the city's only bank, was deroofed and flooded. Prior to the storm, the American Legion building was designated as the headquarters for the Red Cross, but the building was severely damaged, forcing the Red Cross to relocate its relief post to another building. At Palm Beach High School, then located where the Dreyfoos School of the Arts stands today, the clock tower collapsed. The storm deroofed most buildings at Saint Ann's Catholic Church, while Bradley Hall Towers suffered total destruction. At Flamingo Park, one of the worst hit areas of the city, many homes suffered damage, while a shopping center on Lake Avenue experienced near complete destruction. In contrast, the El Cid and Northwood neighborhoods generally experienced only superficial impact. Fallen pine trees blocked many streets in Vedado. At Bacon Park, the area west of Parker Avenue was desolate.
Many homes also experienced damage in the African-American section of the city, where most dwellings were built of discarded material. On one street, only two houses did not lose either their walls or roof. Strong winds tossed cars and walls down the streets. During the storm, about 100 people ran to a trash incinerator, a concrete-reinforced building. Local Black churches suffered significant damage. Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church lost many bricks on its front facade, much of the metal grillwork around the entrances, and its roof.. The storm destroyed Payne Chapel AME Church, while St. Patrick's Catholic Church received about $40,000 in damage. According to county coroner T. M. Rickards, the streets were "shoulder-deep in debris. The suffering throughout was beyond words." Throughout the city, the storm destroyed 1,711 homes and damaged 6,369 others, leaving about 2,100 families homeless. Additionally, the hurricane demolished 268 businesses and impacted 490 others. In all, damage totaled approximately $13.8 million and 11 deaths occurred.
Farther inland, the hurricane is believed to have killed at least 2,500 people in cities just southeast of Lake Okeechobee, particularly in Bean City, Belle Glade, Chosen, Pahokee, and South Bay. After the storm, at least 743 bodies were brought to West Palm Beach for burial. Due to racial segregation, all but eight of the victims that received a proper burial at Woodlawn Cemetery were white. The remaining 674 bodies who were black or of an unidentifiable race were mass buried at a site near the junction of 25th Street and Tamarind Avenue, which was the city's paupers cemetery. After the burials were complete, Mayor Vincent Oaksmith proclaimed an hour of mourning on October 1 for those who died during the storm. At the pauper's cemetery, a funeral service was hosted by several local clergymen and attended by about 3,000 people, including educator Mary McLeod Bethune. A memorial was placed at Woodlawn Cemetery on behalf of the victims of the storm, but no such marker was placed at the paupers cemetery mass burial site until 2003, around the 75th anniversary of the storm.
The economic decline and the storm combined caused further skepticism among potential investors and buyers of land in the area. As a result, property values plummeted. During the end of the 1920s, several banks and hotels throughout the county declared bankruptcy or were sold to new owners, Palm Beach Bank and Trust. In October 1929, the Wall Street Crash of 1929 occurred, initiating the Great Depression. Real estate costs in West Palm Beach dropped 53 percent to $41.6 million between 1929 and 1930 and further to only $18.2 million by 1935. Twelve banks failed in Palm Beach County by 1930. However, houses continued to be constructed by the private sector. Also in despite of the economic turmoil, the population continued to increase, albeit at a far slower rate than the previous decades. Between 1920 and 1930, the city's population went from 8,659 to 26,610, a 207.3% increase. However, from 1930 to 1940, the population of the city increased from 26,610 to 33,693, or 26.6%.
In 1933, Palm Beach Junior College (PBJC) was established in West Palm Beach at Palm Beach High School, which is now Dreyfoos School of the Arts, becoming the first junior college in Florida. County school superintendent Joe Youngblood and Palm Beach High School principal Howell Watkins were instrumental in founding the college. Watkins was selected to be the college's first dean. Initially, the college's goal was to provide additional training to local high school graduates who were unable to find jobs during the Great Depression. The college would move out of its original building in 1948 and later to its current main campus in Lake Worth in 1956. PBJC eventually expanded to five campuses – Belle Glade (1972), Boca Raton (1983), Loxahatchee Groves (2017), and Palm Beach Gardens (1980). The college was renamed Palm Beach Community College in 1988 and then Palm Beach State College in 2010.[61]
After learning to fly an airplane in 1932, Grace Morrison began an effort to gain support for a public airport in Palm Beach County. Construction began in the mid-1930s and costed about $180,000 to build. Morrison died in a car accident in Titusville a few months before the airport opened in 1936. In its early years, the airport was called Morrison Field in her honor. The inaugural flight from Morrison Field was piloted by Dick Merrill. Due to poor weather conditions in Pennsylvania, the plane had to crash land near Matamoras. Also in 1936, WJNO-AM 1290 (then WJNO - 1230 AM) signed on, becoming West Palm Beach's first radio station.
During World War II, Florida's long coastline became vulnerable to attack. German U-boats sank dozens of merchant ships and oil tankers just off the coast of Palm Beach, which was under black out conditions to minimize night visibility to German U-boats. The U.S. Army Air Corps (a forerunner of the United States Air Force) established an Air Transport Command post at Morrison Field. The army constructed barracks, hangars, and other buildings to support about 3,000 soldiers. Throughout the course of the war, over 45,000 pilots trained or flew out of the command post, many in preparation for the Normandy landings. The 313th Material Squadron was moved from Miami Municipal Airport to Morrison Field in April 1942, with approximately 1,000 men working around the clock in order to repair and test aircraft before they were put into service. In 1947, Morrison Field was deactivated and returned to the possession of Palm Beach County.[66] Morrison Field was renamed Palm Beach International Airport (PBIA) later that year.
Late on August 26, 1949, a Category 4 hurricane made landfall in Lake Worth. In West Palm Beach, the hurricane produced sustained winds of 120 mph (190 km/h) and gusts up to 130 mph (210 km/h) at PBIA. The airport itself suffered about $1 million in damage, with several hangars destroyed and 16 planes ruined and 5 others affected. Additionally, 15 C-46s suffered damage. Throughout West Palm Beach, about 2,000 homes out of about 7,000 in the city were damaged. It was estimated that the hurricane caused more than $4 million in damage in West Palm Beach.
As a result of the Korean War, PBIA again became a military post in 1951. Temporarily renamed Palm Beach Air Force Base, nearly 23,000 Air Force personnel trained at the base during the Korean War. The federal government proposed keeping Palm Beach Air Force Base as a permanent military facility, but ultimately decided to return it to Palm Beach County control in 1959, and the name was reverted to Palm Beach International Airport.
The 1950s saw another boom in population, partly due to the return of many soldiers and airmen who had served or trained in the area during World War II. Also, the advent of air conditioning encouraged growth, as year-round living in a tropical climate became more acceptable to northerners. West Palm Beach became the nation's fourth fastest growing metropolitan areas during the 1950s; the city's borders spread west of Military Trail and south to Lake Clarke Shores. Between 1949 and 1962, property values rose from $72 million to $147.5 million, while the population in 1950 was 43,612 and increased about 30% by 1960. In 1955, using a $18 million bond issue, the City of West Palm Beach upgraded its sewer system and purchased the water treatment plant (then owned by Henry Flagler's estate) and land to the west of the city's boundaries, including 20 sq mi (52 km2) of wetlands (from Flagler Water Systems) and an additional 17,000 acres (6,900 ha) of land previously owned by Flagler's Model Land Company.
About two year later, the city sold about 5,500 acres (2,200 ha) of that land for $4.35 million to Perini Corporation of Massachusetts president Louis R. Perini, Sr. In order to transform the wetlands into dry land, Perini hired Gee and Jensen Engineers, who used approximately 30,000,000 cubic yards (23,000,000 m3) of fill to complete the task. Perini constructed the Roosevelt Estates neighborhood for middle class African-Americans. Additionally, Perini changed the name of 12th Street to Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard and extended it westward. The road was curved southwestward to eventually connect with Okeechobee Boulevard. Perini would also construct the first section of Interstate 95 in Palm Beach County in 1966, from Okeechobee Boulevard to 45th Street.
In the 1960s, Perini sold much of the land back to the city of West Palm Beach. The city, in turn, built West Palm Beach Municipal Stadium in 1963, the West Palm Beach Auditorium in 1965, and the Palm Beach Mall in 1967. On October 26, 1967, the Palm Beach Mall opened along Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard between Interstate 95 and Congress Avenue. The opening ceremony included a ribbon-cutting by Governor Claude Kirk, Mayor Reid Moore Jr., and Miss USA 1967 winner Cheryl Patton. About 40,000 visited the mall on its opening day. Upon opening, the mall contained 87 stores over a 1,000,000 sq ft (93,000 m2) area. The mall gradually began to draw businesses and patrons away from downtown, especially when Burdines left downtown in 1979.
The 1950s and 1960s also saw the opening of the Palm Beach Zoo (then known as the Dreher Park Zoo) in 1957 and the South Florida Science Center and Aquarium in 1961. The first shopping plaza in Palm Beach County, the Palm Coast Plaza, opened in 1959 along Dixie Highway near the city's southern boundary. At the time, it was considered "the largest and most complete shopping center between Miami and Jacksonville". The city of West Palm Beach opened a new library at the east end of Clematis Street on April 30, 1962, to replace the Memorial Library. In 1968, Palm Beach Atlantic University (PBA), an accredited, private Christian university, began at a downtown local church, before opening a campus in the 1980s.
On January 19, 1977, West Palm Beach recorded its first ever snowfall event, as part of a cold wave episode. Snow fell between 6:10 a.m. and 8:40 a.m., but hardly any accumulation was measured, as the snow almost immediately melted or was blown away after touchdown. PBIA also recorded temperatures as low as 27 °F (−3 °C).
By the 1980s, downtown West Palm Beach had become notorious for crime, poverty, and vacant and dilapidated businesses and houses. Then-United States Senator Lawton Chiles referred to the area as a "war zone" during his visit in September 1987, while local politicians were not optimistic about the future of downtown. The city had the highest crime rate for a city of its size in the late 1980s. Crack USA: County Under Siege, a 1989 documentary film about the crack epidemic, was filmed in West Palm Beach.
In 1986, private investors David C. Paladino and Henry J. Rolfs presented a 20-year, $433 million project to revitalize the western side of downtown. The proposal included plans 3,700,000 sq ft (340,000 m2) for offices, 1,900,000 sq ft (180,000 m2) for retail stores, 800 hotel rooms, and 700 housing units. Paladino and Rolfs purchased and razed properties across 77 acres (31 ha) of land – more than 300 properties – adjacent to Okeechobee Boulevard for about $40 million, with the exception of First United Methodist Church, which later became the Harriet Himmel Theater. The duo donated 5 acres (2.0 ha) of land for development of the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts, which opened in 1992. However, by the early 1990s, the project was discontinued after Rolfs exhausted his personal fortune and due to defaulted loans, foreclosures, lawsuits, and a recession.
After several decades under the Council–manager government, public opinion shifted in favor of electing a strong mayor and having a mayor–council government by the early 1990s. Under one proposal, the mayor would be elected to a four-year term and be eligible for re-election once, the city manager and mayor would share administrative duties, and the mayor would receive the power to veto commission votes, which could be overridden by a 4–1 vote. Additionally, the mayor would be authorized to line-item veto the budget, initiate investigations, and supervise contracts and purchases involving more than $5,000. After a successful petition drive, this proposal would be listed on the ballot as Question 2. In response, the city commission submitted Question 1, which effectively added a weak mayor. In this proposal, the difference versus Question 2 is that the city manager would retain administrative authority, the mayor would vote with city commissioners only in the event of a tie, and the mayor could not veto votes by the city commission. In the referendum for mayor, voters were required to vote yes or no on Question 1 and Question 2. If both received a majority of yes votes, the question with more votes passed. The election was held on March 12, 1991. Both propositions received a majority of the votes. Question 1 received 2,944 yes votes versus 2,665 no votes, a margin of 52.6%–47.4%. Question 2 passed by a margin of 65.7%–34.3% and a vote total of 3,779–1,972. Therefore, Question 2 prevailed, allowing citizens of West Palm Beach to directly elect a strong mayor.
The first general election for Mayor of West Palm Beach since the late 1910s occurred on November 5, 1991. Candidates included attorney and former state representative Joel T. Daves III, city senior planner Jim Exline, Nancy M. Graham, Josephine Stenson Grund, property management company owner Michael D. Hyman, and former Palm Beach County commissioner Bill Medlen. Graham and Hyman received 34.3% and 24.9% of the vote, respectively, allowing them to advance to a run-off election held on November 19. Graham defeated Hyman by a margin of 55.8%–44.2%. She was sworn in as the city's first strong mayor on November 21.
During the campaign, Graham vowed for improvements to downtown. Much of the renovations in downtown began after a $18.2 million bond was issued to the city in October 1992, with $4 million allotted to the waterfront. Among the first projects was a beautification of Clematis Street, which was complete in December 1993. Over the previous six months, benches, sidewalks, and trees were replaced. The project resulted in several businesses moving to Clematis Street. Architect Dan Kiley was hired for several of the waterfront projects, including building an amphitheater, remodeling the library, and designing an interactive water fountain at Flagler Park.
The plan for building the amphitheater would require the city to spend about $1 million for construction, as well as $171,400 for the demolition of a Holiday Inn. The building was chosen because it had remained vacant and gutted since 1986, while plans for reselling or remodeling the building for a different use fell through. A nearby bank agreed to finance most of the cost of purchasing the building, allowing the city to acquire the hotel for only $1,000. Controlled Demolition, Inc. was hired for the demolition, which was scheduled for December 31, 1993, about 10 seconds before midnight. More than 20,000 people attended the explosion event, which was triggered by about 300 sticks of dynamite. Graham sold $25 tickets for a close-up view of the explosion. Revenue from tickets and donations totaled almost $1 million.
Among the most ambitious efforts to rejuvenate economic activity in downtown West Palm Beach was CityPlace. After the city reacquired the land formerly proposed for the Downtown/Uptown project by eminent domain and a multi-million dollar loan in 1995, the city began appealing to large architectural firms to develop the site Of the three proposed bid, the city commission chose CityPlace by a vote of 5–1 on October 9, 1996.[100] The $375 million project called for an 18 to 24 screen movie theater and a number of restaurants, upscale stores, apartments, and office buildings, all centered around the historical First United Methodist Church, which later became the Harriet Himmel Theatre. Overall, about 2,000,000 sq ft (190,000 m2) of land development was approved. In return, the city agreed to invest $75 million for construction of streets, parking garages, and plazas, with $20 million already borrowed for purchasing land. Construction began in 1998, with stores expected to open in November 1999, though CityPlace would actually open in October 2000.
CityPlace opened to the public on October 27, 2000, with 31 stores and 1 restaurant opening during the first weekend. Barnes & Noble, Macy's, and a Muvico Parisian 20 and IMAX theater served as the original anchors. The initial focus of CityPlace involved attracting many high-end stores as tenants, though emphasis shifted to home furnishings during the housing bubble. By the Great Recession, the scope turned heavily toward dining and entertainment establishments becoming tenants. Related Companies re-branded CityPlace as "Rosemary Square" in April 2019. The company intends to transform Rosemary Square from a lifestyle center to a more urban-like environment, using $550 million to construct new restaurants, a new mixed-use luxury residential tower, a new hotel, and an office tower containing 300,000 sq ft (28,000 m2) of space. Some asphalt roads were replaced with gray and white pavers and converted to create more pedestrian-walking space. The shopping center would later be re-named The Square. In 2023, the movie theater was demolished; Related Companies intends to construct two office towers in its place and add a 455-seat IMAX theater.
As the county seat of Palm Beach County, West Palm Beach entered the national spotlight during the 2000 presidential election. According to the results officially certified by Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, George W. Bush very narrowly carried the state of Florida over Al Gore – by 537 votes. Both candidates needed to win the state of Florida in order to secure at least 270 electoral votes, and thereby prevail in the presidential election. The close results and Palm Beach County's controversial butterfly ballot led to a notorious recount. Among those serving on the canvassing board included former West Palm Beach mayor Carol Roberts. Ultimately, the United States Supreme Court decided in Bush v. Gore on December 12, 2000, that Harris's tally would stand, awarding Bush the 25 electoral votes of Florida and the presidential election.
In 2004 and 2005, several tropical cyclones impacted Palm Beach County, including hurricanes Frances, Jeanne, and Wilma. West Palm Beach was affected most by Hurricane Wilma in October 2005, with the eye passing directly over the city at Category 2 intensity. Wilma produced hurricane-force winds and gusts up to 101 mph (163 km/h) at the Palm Beach International Airport. Throughout the city, 1,194 businesses suffered minor damage and 105 others experienced severe impact, while one was destroyed. A total of 6,036 homes received some degree of damage from the storm, while 16 were completely demolished. Additionally, 20 city government buildings were damaged. Overall, damage in West Palm Beach totaled approximately $425.8 million, with $267.4 million in damage to businesses, $153.1 million to residences, and $5.3 million to public property.
In the spring of 2009, City Center opened for business at the corner of Clematis Street and Dixie Highway. Constructed at a cost of approximately $154 million, the complex included a new library and city hall, while several city departments relocated to the complex. The city opened the Mandel Public Library of West Palm Beach on April 13, 2009 at City Center, replacing the original library at the east end of Clematis Street. The original library was demolished later that year for construction of a waterfront park and pavilion, which opened to the public in February 2010. The Mandel Public Library is approximately 2.5 times larger than the former library. The library currently circulates more than 800,000 items and has over 100,000 registered card holders.
The 2010 United States Census counted a population of 99,919 people in West Palm Beach. With the number being just 81 short of 100,000, then-outgoing mayor Lois Frankel indicated the potential for challenging the tally, as having a population of at least 100,000 would entitle the city to additional grants. Additionally, the United States Census Bureau estimated that the city had a population of 100,665 people on April 1, 2010. However, the city government apparently did not challenge the 99,919 population figure, as it remains in the official census records.
Although CityPlace revitalized downtown, it also contributed to the demise of the Palm Beach Mall. After a significant decline in foot traffic and tenants, as well as failed attempts to lure big box stores such as Bass Pro and IKEA to the mall, it was demolished in 2013. Palm Beach Outlets, designed and operated by New England Development, opened in February 2014 at the same location. The 460,000 sq ft (43,000 m2) outlet mall, comprising more than 100 stores, is anchored by Saks Fifth Avenue.
With the closure of the municipal stadium in 1997 (and its subsequent demolition in 2002), West Palm Beach had lost its ability to host spring training for a Major League Baseball. However, with the opening of the FITTEAM Ballpark of the Palm Beaches in 2017, spring training returned to the city after a 20-year hiatus. The 6,500 seat stadium hosts the spring training events for the Houston Astros and Washington Nationals. In its inaugural year, 55,881 people attended Astros training games. However, in 2018, attendance increased to 67,931 people as a result of the Astros' 2017 World Series championship.
The high-speed train Brightline opened its first two stations in Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach in January 2018, with a Miami station opened in May of that year.[127] Brightline extended its service to Orlando in 2023.
Rapid strata formation in soft sand (field evidence).
Photos of strata formation in soft sand on a beach, created by tidal action of the sea.
Formed in a single, tidal event of turbulent, high tide.
See many other examples of rapid stratification, field evidence.: www.flickr.com/photos/101536517@N06/sets/72157635944904973/
This natural example of rapid, simultaneous stratification refutes the Superposition Principle and the Principle of Lateral Continuity.
Superposition only applies on a rare occasion of sedimentary deposits in perfectly, still water. Superposition is required for the long evolutionary timescale, but the evidence shows it is not the general rule, as was once believed. Most sediment is laid down in moving water, where particle segregation is the rule, resulting in the simultaneous deposition of strata/layers as shown in the photo.
Where the water movement is very turbulent, violent, or catastrophic, great depths of stratified sediment can be laid down in a short time. Certainly not the many millions of years assumed by evolutionists.
The composition of strata formed in any deposition event. is related to whatever materials are in the sediment mix. Whatever is in the mix will be automatically sorted into strata/layers. It could be sand, or material added from mud slides, erosion of chalk deposits, volcanic ash etc. Any organic material (potential fossils) will also be sorted and buried within the rapidly, formed strata.
Stratified, soft sand deposit. demonstrates the rapid, stratification principle.
Supporting, field evidence for the scientific work of eminent sedimentologist Dr Guy Berthault.
(Dr Berthault's experiments (www.sedimentology.fr/) and other experiments (www.ianjuby.org/sedimentation/)
Location: Sandown beach, Isle of Wight. Formed 07/12/2017, This field evidence demonstrates that multiple strata in sedimentary deposits do not need millions of years to form and can be formed rapidly. This natural example confirms the principle demonstrated by the sedimentation experiments carried out by Dr Guy Berthault and other sedimentologists. It calls into question the standard, multi-million year dating of sedimentary rocks, and the dating of fossils by depth of burial or position in the strata.
Strata lines/layers and folding and faulting are clearly visible in these photos.
Dr Berthault's experiments (www.sedimentology.fr/) and other experiments (www.ianjuby.org/sedimentation/) and field studies of floods and volcanic action show that, rather than being formed by gradual, slow deposition of sucessive layers superimposed upon previous layers, with the strata or layers representing a timescale or even a particular, environmental epoch, particle segregation in moving water or airborne particles can form strata or layers very quickly, frequently, in a single event. Such field studies and the experiments show that there is no longer any reason to conclude that strata in sedimentary rocks relate to different geological eras and/or a multi-million year timescale. www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PVnBaqqQw8&feature=share&.... It also shows that the relative position of fossils in rocks is not indicative of an order of evolutionary succession. Obviously, the uniformitarian principle, on which the geologic column is based, can no longer be considered valid. And the multi-million, year dating of sedimentary rocks and fossils needs to be reassessed. Rapid deposition of stratified sediments also explains the enigma of polystrate fossils, i.e. large fossils that intersect several strata. In some cases, tree trunk fossils are found which intersect the strata of sedimentary rock up to forty feet in depth. upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/08/Lycopsi... They must have been buried in stratified sediment in a short time (certainly not millions or even thousands of years), or they would have rotted away. youtu.be/vnzHU9VsliQ
In fact, the vast majority of fossils are found in good, intact condition, which is testament to their rapid burial. You don't get good fossils from gradual burial, because they would be damaged or destroyed by decay, predation or erosion. The existence of so many fossils in sedimentary rock on a global scale is stunning evidence for the rapid depostion of sedimentary rock as the general rule. It is obvious that all rock containing good intact fossils was formed from sediment laid down in a very short time, not millions, or even thousands of years.
See set of photos of other examples of rapid stratification: www.flickr.com/photos/101536517@N06/sets/72157635944904973/
Carbon dating of coal should not be possible if it is millions of years old, yet significant amounts of Carbon 14 have been detected in coal and other fossil material, which indicates that it is less than 50,000 years old. www.ldolphin.org/sewell/c14dating.html
www.grisda.org/origins/51006.htm
Evolutionists confidently cite multi-million year ages for rocks and fossils, but what most people don't realise is that no one actually knows the age of sedimentary rocks or the fossils found within them. So how are evolutionists so sure of the ages they so confidently quote? The astonishing thing is they aren't. Sedimentary rocks cannot be dated by radiometric methods*, and fossils can only be dated to less than 50,000 years with Carbon 14 dating. The method evolutionists use is based entirely on assumptions. Unbelievably, fossils are dated by the assumed age of rocks, and rocks are dated by the assumed age of fossils, that's right ... it is known as circular reasoning.
* Regarding the radiometric dating of igneous rocks, which is claimed to be relevant to the dating of sedimentary rocks, in an occasional instance there is an igneous intrusion associated with a sedimentary deposit -
Prof. Aubouin says in his Précis de Géologie: "Each radioactive element disintegrates in a characteristic and constant manner, which depends neither on the physical state (no variation with pressure or temperature or any other external constraint) nor on the chemical state (identical for an oxide or a phosphate)."
"Rocks form when magma crystallizes. Crystallisation depends on pressure and temperature, from which radioactivity is independent. So, there is no relationship between radioactivity and crystallisation.
Consequently, radioactivity doesn't date the formation of rocks. Moreover, daughter elements contained in rocks result mainly from radioactivity in magma where gravity separates the heavier parent element, from the lighter daughter element. Thus radiometric dating has no chronological signification." Dr. Guy Berthault www.sciencevsevolution.org/Berthault.htm
Visit the fossil museum:
www.flickr.com/photos/101536517@N06/sets/72157641367196613/
Just how good are peer reviews of scientific papers?
www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/60.full
www.examiner.com/article/want-to-publish-science-paper-ju...
The neo-Darwinian idea that the human genome consists entirely of an accumulation of billions of mutations is, quite obviously, completely bonkers. Nevertheless, it is compulsorily taught in schools and universities as 'science'.
www.flickr.com/photos/truth-in-science/35505679183