Monthly Archives: June 2022

Tension choked the air when a ten-foot-tall cross, wrapped in gasoline-soaked rags, burned wildly, as if to set the night on fire. The cross burned in the fall of 1980, on Jefferson Avenue, which runs through several Black neighborhoods that constitute the East Side of Buffalo, New York, and it punctuated a wave of terror in and around the city. A month earlier, on September 22nd, a Black fourteen-year-old boy had been shot in the head three times. Over the next two days, three other Black men were shot and killed. After ballistics testing, the police concluded that all four had been killed by the same weapon. Then, in early October, the bodies of two more Black men were found, beaten and stabbed to death. Both men had had their hearts cut out of their chests.

Several days after that, the cross was lit ablaze. The following day, on October 10th, a nurse walked in on a white man trying to strangle a Black man who was lying prone in a hospital bed. He survived, but the attack left him incapacitated and in need of surgery. In the course of those weeks, six African American males had been viciously murdered. The streak of deaths overlapped with a series of bewildering disappearances of Black children in Atlanta, which came to be known as the Atlanta child murders, heightening the terror.

In Black neighborhoods across Buffalo, rumors swirled that the killings were the work of the Ku Klux Klan. During one of the funerals, the Associated Press reported, two carloads of whites drove by with a mannequin with grotesque, red painted head wounds, and threw red paint on the hearse. City officials scoffed at the idea that organized racists were involved in the killings, and a state N.A.A.C.P. official allowed that the attacks may have been committed by a single killer. However, it is the climate of racism and conservatism in this country that is responsible, she said. A Black resident named Lattice Alexander told the Times, Some white people think blacks are getting ahead of them, even though thats not totally true. With the legal rulings over the last few years and all this unemployment they think they may be losing something because of us.

After the killings, city officials dealt with rising fear and anger on the East Side of Buffalo. Three years earlier, Arthur O. Eve, a state representative in the New York legislature, had stood on the cusp of being the first Black mayor of Buffalo, after he shockingly beat James Griffin, a former state senator, in the mayoral primary. But Griffin, a high-school dropout based in South Buffalo, a mostly white area, resurfaced in the general election on the Conservative Party line, running on white-grievance politics: he opposed welfare, championed law and order, and supported the death penalty. Eve had made a name for himself by heading a solidarity committee that negotiated on behalf of prisoners in Attica state prison in the aftermath of the Attica rebellion. Griffin painted Eve as soft on crime. But, in the wake of the killings, Griffin lowered city flags and called for calm. Black youth had been pelting cars driven by whites with rocks. Jesse Jackson came to the city to plead for peace. Griffin, in a public plea, said, We cant let mean and vicious crimes like these separate us. . . . Buffalo is the City of Good Neighbors.

Local leaders have often invoked the citys invented good neighbors moniker to promote an ethos of gritty unity in Buffalo. In the aftermath of a racially motivated mass shooting at a Tops grocery store, which left ten African Americans dead, the current mayor of Buffalo, Byron Brown, made the familiar plea, saying, Were standing strong as a community and working to not let this horrible act of hate detract from us being a loving, warm, welcoming community. Buffalo is known as the City of Good Neighbors, nationally and internationally. When New Yorks governor, Kathy Hochul, joined President Joe Biden to speak in the city to express condolences and present her plan to prevent these kinds of attacks in the future, she made similar gestures. She compared Buffalo to Scranton, Pennsylvania, where Biden hails from. Hochul said, Buffalos a little bit like Scranton, little bigger version of Scranton. You know, Scranton. You live a long time and you love your community, but you get knocked down a little bit and dont quite get the respect sometimes as other parts of your state do. She went on to say that, as a result, theres something called Buffalove. Its a combination of the words Buffalo and love. We call it Buffalove.

The effort to console and empathize can just as easily distort and conceal. Buffalo is not like Scranton, which has never had a population that was more than eight per cent African American. It is more akin to Philadelphia or Newark, with a large Black population constituting more than a third of the city. As in those cities, there is severe residential segregation, which keeps Black and white residents living in different social, economic, and political realities. In 1993, a writer in the local daily, the Buffalo News, compared Main Street, the central dividing line of the city, to the Berlin Wall, dividing rich from poor, the haves from the have-nots. Buffalo is one of the poorest cities in the country, and nearly half of children living in the city are poor. But the hardship that defines the city is not evenly shared. A disproportionate number of the have-nots live on the East Side of Buffalo, where more than three-quarters of the citys African American residents live.

Last fall, the University at Buffalos Center for Urban Studies released a report titled The Harder We Run: The State of Black Buffalo in 1990 and the Present. The report was a follow-up to a similar one that my father, Henry Louis Taylor, Jr., had produced nearly thirty-one years earlier. The key findings were stunning in their similarity. In 1990, Black unemployment stood at eighteen per cent and the average household income was thirty-nine thousand dollars a year. Thirty-eight per cent of Blacks lived under the poverty line; there were more African Americans who had dropped out of high school than who held a college degree; and less than thirty-five per cent of African Americans owned their own homes. By last year, Black unemployment was eleven per cent; the average income was forty-two thousand dollars a year; some thirty-five per cent of African Americans lived under the poverty line; and only thirty-two per cent owned their homes. There continue to be more Black dropouts than Black college graduates. For most ordinary Black people, time has stood still. As the report concluded, Everything has changed, but everything has remained the same.

When these conditions exist for decades, they come to be seen as the natural order of things. In the largely white West Side of the city, there are brick homes, grocery stores, shops, and gorgeous parks designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. On the East Side sit ninety-four per cent of the citys vacant lots. In 2014, Evans Bank in Buffalo was sued by the state attorney general for engaging in modern-day redlining, excluding the entire East Side of Buffalo from its mortgage lending. (Bank officials denied that racism was a factor.) Money is being poured into a new stadium for the Buffalo Bills, and the restoration of the citys Art Deco-style Central Terminal. Meanwhile, on the East Side, residents struggle with busted sidewalks, most of which, according to the Center for Urban Studies, do not even have curb ramps and pedestrian crossings.

When Joe Biden travelled to Buffalo to console the city, he spoke passionately about white supremacy, saying, Its been allowed to grow and fester right before our eyes. . . . No more, no more. We need to say as clearly and as forcefully as we can that the ideology of white supremacy has no place in America. But racial segregation and poverty were among the conditions that left Black Buffalonians vulnerable to a white-supremacist attack. (The shooter searched the Internet by Zip Code, looking for a location with a high density of Black residents.) Calls for reforms on these issues have largely been ignored.

Continue reading here:

Hiding Buffalos History of Racism Behind a Cloak of Unity - The New Yorker

Later this month, barring a trade, the Knicks will pick 11th in the NBA Draft. Theres been much speculation over who they could or should select. Entirely too much speculation, really, given what history has already taught us concerning the Knicks history picking 11th, as well as the rest of the league the past 20 years. The first lesson we learn: the Knicks have been awful picking at #11.

To be fair, its been a while since the Knicks picked 11. The last time was 1969, a nice draft that landed them John Warren. Warren played fewer minutes his lone year in New York than Quentin Grimes did last year. Other Knicks picked 11th: Don Buddy Ackerman, Kelly King Coleman, Henry Akin and John The Reckless Russian Rudometkin. Only Rudometkin, a Knick for parts of three seasons, lasted beyond his rookie year in New York.

And yet this is not a case of LOL Knicks. The leagues come a loooong way since 50+ years ago. When Ackerman went 11th in 1953, that was a second-round pick. Coleman was selected in 1960, a draft now famous for three Hall of Famers going top-seven (Oscar Robertson, Jerry West, Lenny Wilkens) while seven of the first 16 selected played one year or none in the pros.

Youd think by the 21st century and its Jetsonian advances in domestic and international scouting, teams would fare better with the 11th pick. You thunk wrong. Over the past 20 drafts, guess how many 11th picks went on the become All-Stars. You dont have to guess. Ill tell you. Its two. Just two: Klay Thompson and Damontas Sabonis. Know how many players taken after 11 became All-Stars? Ill give you a hint: its the Knicks GOATs number.

So to refresh: of the last 20 players taken 11, two became All-Stars; of the nearly 1000 taken later, 33 did (Al Jefferson was never an All-Star, but was named to an All-NBA team). The math tells us two things we probably already knew: the odds are much better to land an All-Star at 11 (1 out of 10) then all the picks after (1 out of 30), and the odds to land an All-Star at 11 stink.

But were not here to talk about what we already know. Using a rhetorically advanced analysis tool, Ive been able to deduce who the Knicks will take in this years draft. Apologies to Bennedict Mathurin, Shaedon Sharpe, Jeremy Sochan and Malaki Branham, but history says none of them make the cut. Every 11th pick the Knicks have ever drafted had one or two syllables in their first names, then two or three in their last. The quartet above fail that litmus test.

That leaves us with Jalen Duren, A.J. Griffin, Dyson Daniels, Johnny Davis. Of the Knicks prior #11 picks, none were 7-footers; the 6-foot-11 Duren, still only 18, figures to grow another inch, so lets rule him out. Daniels was born overseas, which none of the old-school 11s were, so hes gone. That leaves Griffin and Davis.

The Knicks have never had a player with the last name of Griffin. Theyve had a handful of Davises: Antonio, Baron, Ben, Hubert, Mel and Mike. Ergo, the Knicks will select Johnny Davis. Its scientific.

Excerpt from:

History tells us who the Knicks will draft 11th - Posting and Toasting

Its a statement that just makes sense, John Denney is one of the most underrated players in Miami Dolphins history.

When you look back at the greatest players in Miami Dolphins history, the names like Dan Marino, Bob Griese, Larry Csonka, Jason Taylor, Zach Thomas, and Cameron Wake immediately come to mind. When you think a little further, you could come up with names like Patrick Surtain, Sam Madison, Mark Duper, Mark Clayton, and maybe even throw in a little Ricky Williams for insurance.

I believe that we are missing one name, however, on those lists. That name is John Denney.

Denney was the long snapper for the Miami Dolphins from 2005 until he was cut in September of 2019 when he was at the ripe old age of 40 years old (he still is technically considered a free agent!). During his 13-year career in Miami, he made it to two Pro-Bowls and endeared himself to fans with the energy and heart that he brought to the position.

If you look back at special teams tape over his career (like we all do on Sunday afternoons during the offseason), you will see that he is consistently one of the first people around the opposing returner, outhustling some of the faster guys on the rest of the unit. He played with heart, toughness, and exceptional focus that made him one of the more consistent and overall better special teams players in the league.

Obviously, special teams players tend to get ignored when it comes to their play on the field and their overall impact on the teams success. I believe, however, that if you were to mention John Denneys name to true Dolphins fans, it would bring back fond memories of a hard-working player who everyone generally loved.

Continue reading here:

John Denney: One of the most unsung Dolphins players in history - Phin Phanitic

FARMVILLE, N.C. (WNCT) A new art trail in Farmville is combining creative expression with history while highlighting local artists and giving visitors a taste of this rich small town.

Created in partnership with the Farmville Public Library, the Community Arts Council, the Farmville Chamber of Commerce and The Farmville Group, the installation was created to emphasize the arts. The 1.2-mile art trail begins and ends at the Farmville Public Library, weaving throughout downtown Farmville with 20 marked locations along the way. It features murals, ghost signs, sculptures, local galleries and more scattered throughout downtown.

It started out as just a small idea that we would continue to emphasize the arts. We partnered with East Carolina University and some of the East Carolina graduate students came over and painted murals like this one [H.B. Sugg Celebration Mural] and many throughout town. And that small change really kind of kicked things off, got things going.

Drake says once they realized they had all these different pieces of art, they wanted to build on that, and figure out a way to combine these pieces with the history and tourism the town gets. Drake said in Farmville, they like to say they are located at the corner of creativity and commerce.

QR codes posted at each stop on the trail feature audio recordings from local artists and local experts further explaining the significance and the meaning behind each art piece.

Drake says it creates a great opportunity to just take a breather and explore all the town has to offer.

It kind of meanders through downtown so the nice thing is if you want you can stop and get a bite to eat or get some ice cream on the way if its a really hot day, Drake said.

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Farmville Art Trail combines history, local artists, and creativity - WNCT

New research has identified several genetic and environmental risk factors for age-related macular degeneration (AMD), including family history and cardiovascular disease.

A team, led by Priscila H. H. Rim, Department of Ophthalmology, School of Medical Sciences, University of Campinas (UNICAMP), identified the association between AMD and genetic and environmental risk factors in a cohort of patients from Brazil.

Some major risk factors for AMD include genetics, demography, nutrition, lifestyle, other environmental factors, and ocular factors. However, age is the strongest risk factor for AMD.

A lot of past research has also focused on family history as a major risk factor.

In the cross-sectional study, the investigators collected data from 236 patients at least 50 years of age, 141 of which were diagnosed with AMD and the remaining 95 participants as part of the control group. Of the patients with AMD, 70% (n = 99) had advanced AMD in at least 1 eye (57% neovascular AMD and 13% geographic atrophy), and 30% (n = 42) had not-advanced AMD.

The mean age of all participants was 73.67.9 years, but the mean age of the AMD group was 74.48.1 years, compared to72.247.4 years for the control group (OR, 1.51; 95% CI, 0.882.58).

The investigators obtained data on the patients using a questionnaire, which included information on demographics, ocular and medical history, family history of AMD, lifestyle, and smoking and drinking habits.

They also conducted genetic evaluations including direct sequencing for theLOC387715 (rs10490924)variant, as well as PCR and enzymatic digestion for theCFH Y402H (rs1061170)andHTRA1 (rs11200638)variants.

The investigators also performed a risk assessment of environmental risk factors and genetic variants linked to AMD and used multiple linear regression analysis to determine correlations between AMD and the data.

The investigators found family history of AMD (OR, 6.58; 95% CI, 1.9422.31), presence of cardiovascular disease (OR, 2.39; 95% CI, 1.085.28), low physical activity level (OR, 1.39; 95% CI, 0.822.37), and high serum cholesterol (OR, 1.49; 95% CI, 0.842.65) were linked to an increased risk of disease.

They also observed a significant association between cardiovascular disease and the incidence of advanced AMD(OR, 2.29; 95% CI, 0.816.44).

They also found an odds ratio of 2.21 (95% CI, 1.47-3.35) for the risk allele of theLOC387715gene, while the OR for theCFHgene was 2.27 (95% CI, 1.52-3.37) and the OR for the HTRA1gene was 2.76 (95% CI, 1.89-4.03).

Using a stepwise multiple linear regression analyses, theHTRA1andCFHrisk alleles, family history of AMD, theLOC387715risk allele, and cardiovascular disease were all linked to an increased risk of AMD for a total of 25.6% contribution to the AMD phenotype.

The analysis correlating environmental and genetic risk factors such as family history of AMD, and CVD and the variants ofHTRA1,CFH, andLOC387715genes showed an expressive contribution for the development of AMD among this admixed population, the authors wrote.

The study, Correlation between genetic and environmental risk factors for age-related macular degeneration in Brazilian patients, was published online in PLOS One.

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Family History, Cardiovascular Disease Linked to Risk of Age-Related Macular Degeneration - MD Magazine

In the late eighteenth century, many American Protestants saw the War for Independence and the freedoms delineated in the Declaration and Constitution as part of a global revolution that would inaugurate worldwide freedom. In the years since, many middle- and upper-class Anglo-American evangelicals have embraced triumphalist social causesor what evangelical intellectual David Bebbington has broadly termed activismin the name of moral reform and bringing about the kingdom of God. However noble this impulse might be, it has at times led evangelicals to embrace revolutionary and utopian movements with harmful effects. Evangelical support for such causes in the name of moral and social progress has often proved to be influenced less by Christian morality than by Whiggish idealism.

Whig history is an unsound historiographic method that sees history as a predestined progression toward greater democracy and egalitarianism. According to James R. Rogers, Whig idealism sees history as always progressing toward the abolition of arbitrary differences between people: between lord and commoner, free man and slave, man and woman, the propertied and the property-less, black and white, rich and poor, etc. Americans have been taught that Americas Founding is a singularly powerful unfolding of the Whig narrative, and with it the Whig narrative jumps into hyperdrive.

American evangelicals have drunk deeply from the well of Whig history. Rogers rightly notes that Whiggery and Christianity walked in tandem in the U.S. for centuries. Evangelical sermons in pre-revolutionary and revolutionary America glided all too easily between the political freedom promised in and by the revolution and the spiritual freedom promised in and by Jesus Christ. Many of these evangelicals lionized Thomas Jefferson. They shared his loathing of state churches and other aspects of the conservative social order, like primogeniture and entail. They saw limitless potential for human liberty in a society shorn of medieval and early modern religious and social commitments. Christianity and humanity alike, they believed, could finally flourish in the free American republic. By the middle of the nineteenth century, a Pittsburgh Presbyterian minister would announce boldly to his congregation that God would accomplish his purposes of redemption and make Americans freedom as citizens of the great republic the precursor to all of humanity achieving the freedom by which Christ makes his people free as citizens of the kingdom of God.

One example of the effects of Whiggish history on evangelical protestants can be seen in evangelical responses to revolutions. Many evangelicals celebrated the French Revolution without regard to whether that upheaval displaced or harmed older Christian communities. Democracy in France trumped the attacks on the Roman Catholic and Protestant hierarchy. In 1791, Presbyterian William Linn, the former chaplain of the United States House of Representatives, delivered a sermon extolling the French Revolution as a vehicle for human progress that would free all the peoples on earth from unjust governments. Linn told his listeners that because of the events in France, they could indulge the pleasing thought, that the time is not far distant, when tyranny everywhere shall be destroyed; when mankind shall be the slaves of monsters and idiots no more, but recover the true dignity of their nature! By 1791, attacks on French Catholics and Protestants were occurring regularly, but because American evangelicals believed traditional France was benighted, and that a cleansing of French society was necessary, the fate of French Christians was of secondary importance to them.

Evangelicals like Linn particularly denounced Edmund Burke, whose rebuke of Thomas Paines Rights of Man made the British statesman anathema to Americans who saw the French Revolution as a confirmation of the United States own struggle for independence. Burkes Reflections on the Revolution in France, according to Linn, was a performance containing abuse, misrepresentation, a specious rather than true eloquence, and sentiments unfavorable to liberty. Burkes book awakened and called forth the real friends of liberty, particularly the celebrated Mr. PAINE, whose writings have been of so much service to mankind.

Evangelicals dispositions regarding church, state, and liberty mirrored Paines revolutionary commitments, so it is unsurprising that Linn was a partisan of Paine rather than the famous British parliamentarian. Burke, according to Linn, sublimely raved, but in vain. Burkes cautions concerning the French Revolution, said Linn, only hastened the downfall of his wretched cause, traditional society. The revolution in France, exclaimed Linn, is greatis astonishingis glorious. It is, perhaps, not just to say, that the flame was kindled by us, but certainly we contributed to blow and increase it, as France will in other nations; until blaze joining blaze, shall illumine the darkest and remotest corners of the earth.

In the twenty-first century, some evangelicals still draw upon the same Whiggish reading of history as their eighteenth-century forebears. In the early 2000s, the cause of democracy and regime-change in Iraq trumped the historic stability of Iraqi Christiansmuch as the cause of progress and revolution in 1780s France trumped the stability of French Christians. Whiggish optimism typified the views of George W. Bushs evangelical speechwriter Michael Gerson, who proposed unambiguously that the unity of our country depends on idealism at home. Attacks on America and American values, he argued, should be countered with restless reform, idealism, and moral conviction. Evangelical Whigs confidently know history ends in their eschatological victory through cycles of constant socio-ecclesiastic re-creation.

Gerson echoed Linns image of the French Revolution as an uncontrollable blaze of liberty. Only this time, the source of the revolutionary blaze was not Revolutionary France, but George W. Bushs United States. Gerson helped write Bushs second inaugural address, which justified the Iraq War in idealistic terms. Because the United States invaded Iraq in the great liberating tradition of this nation, tens of millions have achieved their freedom. And as hope kindles hope, millions more will find it. The United States, according to Gerson, lit a fire as wella fire in the minds of men. It warms those who feel its power, it burns those who fight its progress, and one day this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of our world. Revolutionary France and Bushs United States both, with evangelical support, marched the fires of liberty to Earths supposedly darkest corners at the cost of the lives of many French and Arab Christians.

Today, we need less untrammeled evangelical Whiggery and more latter-day Burkes. We can celebrate liberal freedom, but it must be decisively bounded by historic Western and Christian social precepts. This is not Christian nationalism, but simply a plea for caution and an awareness that our choices matter and have consequences. As Christians, we know that freedom is not inevitable, social change is not always good, and civilization is fragile. As Burke rightly noted, time is required to produce that union of minds which alone can produce all the good we aim at. Our patience will achieve more than our force.

Miles Smithis visiting assistant professor of history at Hillsdale College.

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Evangelicals and Whig History | Miles Smith - First Things