Monthly Archives: August 2017

August 22, 2017 12:52 PM By Christin Ayers

ALLENSWORTH, Tulare County (KPIX 5) California was once the promise land for a former slave who settled a town where his dreams of freedom would become a reality.

That place still exists. Its called Allensworth and if you didnt know it was here, you might never find it.

This blink-and-youll-miss-it former agricultural town, smack in the middle of California, four hours from San Francisco, three hours from Los Angeles, suspended in time looks just the way it did 100 years ago.

Today Allensworth has been preserved as a California state historic park.

But its not just any park.

This is the only California park that deals with black history, said park ranger Steven Ptomey. Its very unique in that.

In its heyday, Allensworth was not just any town.

This was the only endeavor, especially in California that was fully financed, governed, built and designed by African Americans solely, said Ptomey. There was no one else involved in that outside the black community.

Steven Ptomey knows Allensworth better than most anyone. Hes the resident park interpreter, an archaeologist by trade. He has spent years studying Allensworth and the man it is named for, Colonel Allen Allensworth.

He was born in 1842, born a slave, got his freedom during the civil war, served in the U.S. Navy, was a restaurateur, then got the call to go into the ministry, became an ordained Baptist minister, got his doctorate in theology from the same seminary as Booker T. Washington and then got an appointment as the Chaplin of the 24th Infantry Regiment one of four all-black regiments in 1884 where he served until 1906, said Ptomey. And upon his retirement he was the highest ranking African American officer in the U.S. Army. He was also only the second man in history at the time to receive the rank of Lt. Colonel as a Chaplin.

But Colonel Allensworth wasnt finished making history. In the early 20th centuy he decided his next venture would be wildly ambitious.

He had a vision for California.

Even though they were 50 years out of slavery, they were physically free but they were not economically free so his idea was to found a community where they could live apart and prove that they were worthy of everything that America had to offer by being businessmen and entrepreneurs and gentleman farmers if you would, said Ptomey.

It was a time in history when racism dictated where African Americans could live and where they could not. There were Jim Crow laws in the South and aggressive redlining throughout the country, including California.

They had doctrines and covenants on pieces of property where they would agree not to sell to a person of color, added Ptomey.

Allensworth was supposed to solve those problems as a utopian black community.

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Looking out from the library you could see the First Baptist Church. A brown building was the home of the Philips family. Off to the left is the Colonels home. There was a school house a hotel, a general store, and fertile land as far as the eye could see.

So what would a typical day in Allentown be like?

Overall this was a small town and this was a quiet, country life, said Ptomey. They never had any serious crime in Allensworth during the historic period. They had a town constable. He only investigated one robbery and the guy who got caught gave everything back.

At its peak, it was a town of some 250 people, families such as Alice and James Hackett. They took a chance and moved to Allensworth from Alameda. Their home looks like a page from history a piano, chandeliers, lace doilies filled with turn-of-the-century antiques.

There were some conveniences in Allensworth. The Santa Fe Pacific Railroad line cut right through town.

Col. Allensworth hoped residents could live off the land, growing crops thanks to the Tulare Lake bed. But that was a crucial miscalculation. About a decade after the town was established, the water would dry up.

The drought that happens in 1913-1914 The railheads moved from Allensworth to Alpaw, and right around that same time, the Colonel was killed in 1914. He was hit by a motorcyclist, said Ptomey.

His death ended one of the Colonels greatest dreams for Allentown.

They lost their bid to build a black college here, said Ptomey. They were going to build the Tuskegee of the West, a black polytechnical college. That was killed in the California legislature after the death of the Colonel because he was the guy with the political connections.

Ptomey believes had they built that college here, Allensworth probably would have survived into the 20th century as a more thriving community.

Nonetheless, Colonel Allensworths dream lasted several years. In 1915, the town was still thriving.

But as the 1920s approached, Allensworth declined. World War II dealt a final crushing blow to the town. After the war, its educated young people migrated to places like Richmond, California, abandoning farm work for factory jobs.

It wasnt until the 1970s, some 50 years after the demise of Allensworth, that it was named a state park. The town was restored back to its original glory and is now in the National Registry of Historic Places.

Tourists travel from far and wide to see Allensworth, like Don Billberry and Betty Lee from Stockton.

It was very interesting, said Billberry after touring with Ptomey. I learned a lot. I never heard of this place really.

Lee believes Allensworth holds an important place in history.

You cant know where youre going until you know where youve been, she said. History is really important for us, and especially black history.

The town is a testament to true grit. They had to be really strong people to be out here in the middle of nowhere not really knowing what your future held, and to keep going anyway, said Lee. Its a whole lot of drive, determination and just the will to say we can make a difference in this world.

Its still standing after 100 years. Can you imagine? Its still standing, says Lee.

As short-lived as its life span was, Allentown made its mark and left a legacy for generations to come.

The Colonel Allensworth State Historic Parks Visitor Center and campgrounds are open daily. There are Juneteenth celebrations and other events all year round.For more information, directions and events, go to the Colonel Allensworth State Historic Park web page.

Christin Ayers is a general assignment reporter for KPIX 5 News.Ayers is excited to return to Northern California, where she was born and raised. Ayers grew up in Sacramento and trained to be a journalist in the Bay Area.She received her bachelors...

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Former Slave's Dream Of Freedom Lives On In Central California Town - CBS San Francisco Bay Area

Uber is adding more features to its app that are designed to benefit its drivers. Now drivers will be able to set their arrival times and trip preferences, get notifications if a trip is going to take 45 minutes or longer, and set more preferred destinations.

Prior to this update, drivers could set two destinations a day, allowing them to make a trip only in a preferred area, which is supposed to make commuting to and from home more convenient. Uber has now increased the limit to six destinations.

Setting trip preferences means that Uber drivers can switch to making deliveries for UberEats, the companys food delivery service, when car riding requests are slow. By getting a notification if a trip is going to take 45 minutes or longer, drivers will be better informed to decide whether they want to turn down the trip request. And most notably, Uber has made declining a trip less impactful to a drivers account standing.

Its part of the companys PR effort to court drivers after a disastrous couple of scandal-ridden months, which resulted in the companys CEO Travis Kalanick and other top-ranking executives stepping down. The effort, called 180 Days of Change, was announced back in June. As part of the initiative, Uber added tipping for drivers as an option back for Seattle, Minneapolis, and Houston in June. Every month, Uber plans to announce more changes as part of the effort.

Setting an arrival time.

Long trip notification warns driver if a trip will take 45 minutes or more.

Uber increased the driver destination limit from two trips to six.

Drivers can now become UberEats deliverers during slow hours.

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Uber's new app features give its drivers more freedom to decline ... - The Verge

Achieving financial freedom doesn't necessarily mean becoming filthy rich -- not that that hurts.

In this video, Entrepreneur Network partner Brian Tracy explains the seven steps you need to take to achieve financial freedom. Now, financial freedom doesn't mean becoming filthy rich -- lottery winners go bankrupt all the time. Instead, financial freedom is about becoming disciplined and using your money in a way that ensures you can live the sort of life you want both now and in the future.

That's why the first step isn't about getting a lot of money. Instead, it's about teaching yourself to think positivelyaboutmoney. That way, you'll be in the right mindset to move forward.

Click play to learn more.

Related:Brian Tracy's Best Advice for Young People: It's Never Too Early to Find Your Purpose

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7 Steps to Achieve Financial Freedom - Entrepreneur

Freedom is the song of the human heart. Our forefathers crossed the sea to find freedom on these shores. They forged the U.S. Constitution to protect this freedom from governmental tyranny. And they shed their blood on every continent to defend human freedom from the armed assaults of evil governments.

From Francis Scott Keys, the land of the free, to Sammy Davis Jr.s Ive Got to Be Me, to Lady Gagas Born This Way, freedoms song still rings out in every generation. Thats the good news.

We still have common ground. We all yearn to be free. We all have the same indomitable desire to be the person that we are, to be true to ourselves. This desire for liberty strikes such a deep chord in us that it is unarguable. It is common ground. It binds us together as human beings.

So why is it that this solid common ground does not seem to be holding us together anymore, but tearing us apart? In times past, Freedom! was a rallying cry that united us in a common struggle against every oppressor. Today, Freedom! is more often a cry that divides us into a million individuals competing against one another for power to make others bend to my will.

In times past, fighting for freedom meant fighting both Nazis and Communists, totalitarians of all sorts who would undermine or destroy the constitution of the United States. Today so-called freedom-fighters may openly oppose the constitution and believe that it is a hindrance to their true freedom.

What happened? The answer is fairly straightforward. While the definition of freedom has remained the same, the definition of who we are, has been turned on its head. Freedom remains the ability to be who I am; to think, speak and act according to my true humanity. All of us still agree on this. But we have become divided on the more foundational question: What IS my true humanity?

Who ARE you? Who AM I? Are we the same, or are we utterly different? And if we are the same, how are we the same and what unites us?

This is the root problem in public discourse today. Everybody is yelling out freedom. Everyone wants to be free to be who you are. But there are two wildly different accountings of who we are.

One accounting says that we are creatures, first and foremost. The Declaration of Independence says, all men are created equal. Our equality is firmly grounded in a common Creator: They are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. Human rights are not given by governments but by our Creator.

Because there is a common Creator above us all, our individual human rights cannot be in conflict, but must be in perfect harmony with everyone elses rights. And governments, because they neither created us nor gave us our rights, are duty-bound to recognize and protect the God-given rights of every individual.

This accounting of human nature was the bedrock of our US constitution. It is also found embedded within the constitution of every state. All 50 states in our union have reference to God or the divine in their constitution.

The other accounting of human nature denies a common Creator. This denial comes in so many shapes and sizes that it is impossible to enumerate them all here. For the moment, it is enough to say that a common Creator is denied either explicitly or implicitly.

But without a common creator, it is practically impossible to account for human rights. If there is no common Creator above us, are there multiple creators so that we are divided one from another and fundamentally different? Or is there no creator at all, so that each person is his or her own creator?

Either way, rights come into conflict. Interests cannot be harmonized. People are pitted against each other. We are tribalized, or atomized into a million competing individuals with no real hope of harmony. This world-view raises some serious questions both about human rights and about the nature of government.

If I am not endowed with full human rights by virtue of my conception as a human, just exactly how and when do humans get any rights at all? We see these confusions at work in everything from embryonic ethics to assisted suicide debates. For these unfortunate people, right to life and liberty is not absolute, but depends entirely upon what other people think about them.

If there is not a God who transcends every human being and every human institution, just exactly who are we responsible to? What principle limits government?

America was not born in a vacuum. The founding fathers did not simply assume a Creator because they didnt have the imagination to think any other way. At the writing of the Declaration of Independence, there were already philosophers and ways of thinking that discounted God, and posited that human beings alone were the source and measure of all things.

Those philosophies led France to a completely different kind of revolution than America experienced. The history of the French Revolution is bloody and hellish. Those who seized power from the crown were not humble and restrained like the authors of the U.S. Constitution.

Heads rolled. A lot of them. The guillotine first killed the royalty. Then, it turned on the people. Without accountability to a Creator, the revolutionary government became a god unto itself.

We saw the same thing happen in Hitlers Germany with its extermination of 10 million, and in Stalins Russia which liquidated 50 million of its own citizens, and in Maos China, which is still killing and imprisoning its own people and the list goes on and on.

Each of these places tried to replace the common Creator with a different basis for unity. Each made the sovereign individual the basis of freedom, and wound up denying rights to millions of those same individuals.

So back to the question at hand. What is true freedom? I am thankful that we have such a solid common ground. That we all want to be free to live true to ourselves provides us with a huge potential for unity around this idea.

But whether or not we achieve that unity, depends entirely upon how we answer the prior question: Who are we?

Are we fundamentally creatures, accountable to a Creator? If so, the path to true freedom lies in knowing who I am through His eyes, through His revelation. And seeing myself through Gods eyes, I can have every confidence that my freedom serves my neighbor and does not impinge on the freedoms of those created by the same God.

But if we are fundamentally independent and sovereign beings, with no Creator, we have a challenge before us that no country has ever yet figured out how to live with. If my true freedom depends only on actualizing self-will, how can I ever be confident that my freedom serves my neighbor and is not in direct competition with everyone around me?

Each person must wrestle with these questions for himself or herself. My only purpose here is to point out the necessity of thinking this through. I know where I stand. I hope you will stand with me. But either way, the more thought we give to these questions, the better chance we have to understand ourselves and one another.

Jonathan Lange has a heart for our state and community. Locally, he has raised his family and served as pastor of Our Saviour Lutheran Church in Evanston and St. Pauls in Kemmerer for two decades. Statewide, he leads the Wyoming Pastors Network in advocating for the traditional church in the public square.

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What is true freedom? - Uinta County Herald