More Buses for Northeast Tacoma

5 comments

• T talus July 23, 2015

  I'd like to see Tacoma join King County's bus system -- we'd likely get much better service than we do tied into the horribly underfunded Pierce Transit system. In fact, I wouldn't mind it if Tacoma was annexed by King County completely...

  • R RHTCCComedyfan July 23, 2015

    I would not want to live in (now ML) King County at all. I prefer (Franklin) Pierce County even if was named after a anti abolishionist fugitive slave act enforcing drunkard former President.

    • J JDHasty July 27, 2015

      [quote]I would not want to live in (now ML) King County at all. I prefer (Franklin) Pierce County even if was named after a anti abolitionist fugitive slave act enforcing drunkard former President.[/quote] So how do you feel about hundreds of Tacoma's black teenagers who wish to attend high-school in the neighborhood they live in having the no choice but entering a building named after, and in honor of, the most virulent racist and segregationist to occupy the White House in the last hundred-fifty years? Here is the text of just one of the emails I have sent to Tacoma City Council members, Pierce County Council members, the Mayor, the County Exec, and the Tacoma School Board and Superintendent. ********************* Wilson High School in Tacoma, which is attended by hundreds of African American teenagers, is named after a virulent racist and segregationist. Tacoma Public Schools would do well by by stripping the name Woodrow Wilson off of this institution and the City should be out front on this issue. Woodrow Wilson's racial bias was on display long before he was elected to the White House. When Wilson was president of Princeton University, a student from a Baptist college in his home state of Virginia applied there. Wilson answered "that it is altogether inadvisable for a colored man to enter Princeton." For me," biographer Scott Berg said, "the worst thing Woodrow Wilson did as president was what he didn't do. That was in 1919 when the soldiers came home from the war. Many of them were African-Americans. They came home thinking: 'This is our moment. We've lost brothers, we have shed blood, this is the time we have shown we are full-blooded Americans.' But he said nothing... Based on a novel, "The Clansman" by Wilson's good friend Thomas Dixon, the book and movie rewrote Southern history with a false account of Reconstruction. It presented "noble" whites as dominated by barbaric freed black men tried to sexually force themselves on white women. Like Wilson, Dixon and Griffith were children of Confederate parents. C-SPAN recently showed the whole three hours of "The Birth," which remains in circulation because Griffith pioneered nearly two dozen film making techniques, including some still used today and taught in film schools despite its racist message. Griffith invented the use of an original musical score written for an orchestra, night photography (using magnesium flares), the use of outdoor natural landscapes as backgrounds and introduced fancy title cards. He added a card one that quoted Wilson's praise after the White House viewing. Wilson was quoted as saying, "It is like writing history with lightning, and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true." "The Birth of a Nation," boosted KKK recruitment, but it made black Americans cry, and in some Northern cities resort to rioting. The newly created NAACP tried and failed to get it banned. The black press went to war against it print. But Griffith, who later regretted his negative racial portrayals, prevailed in theaters and in the minds of bigots.

• J JDHasty July 27, 2015

  Hmmmm......... so no one, save myself, is the least bit concerned about this? Well, if you are ignorant of history and too shiftless to do a little research on your own, let me introduce you to someone you have probably never heard of Mr Monroe Trotter. http://www.blackpast.org/aah/trotter-william-monroe-1872-1934 Mr Trotter, among other notable civil rights leaders form the Wilsonian era, took exception to the degradation being heaped on his fellow black Americans, and went straight to the White House with his concerns. Mr. Monroe Trotter - Mr. President, we are here to renew our protest against the segregation of colored employees in the departments of our National Government. We [had] appealed to you to undo this race segregation in accord with your duty as President and with your pre-election pledges to colored American voters. We stated that such segregation was a public humiliation and degradation, and entirely unmerited and far-reaching in its injurious effects. . . . President Woodrow Wilson - The white people of the country, as well as I, wish to see the colored people progress, and admire the progress they have already made, and want to see them continue along independent lines. There is, however, a great prejudice against colored people. . . . It will take one hundred years to eradicate this prejudice, and we must deal with it as practical men. Segregation is not humiliating, but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen. If your organization goes out and tells the colored people of the country that it is a humiliation, they will so regard it, but if you do not tell them so, and regard it rather as a benefit, they will regard it the same. The only harm that will come will be if you cause them to think it is a humiliation. Mr. Monroe Trotter - It is not in accord with the known facts to claim that the segregation was started because of race friction of white and colored [federal] clerks. The indisputable facts of the situation will not permit of the claim that the segregation is due to the friction. It is untenable, in view of the established facts, to maintain that the segregation is simply to avoid race friction, for the simple reason that for fifty years white and colored clerks have been working together in peace and harmony and friendliness, doing so even through two [President Grover Cleveland] Democratic administrations. Soon after your inauguration began, segregation was drastically introduced in the Treasury and Postal departments by your appointees. President Woodrow Wilson - If this organization is ever to have another hearing before me it must have another spokesman. Your manner offends me. . . . Your tone, with its background of passion. Mr. Monroe Trotter - But I have no passion in me, Mr. President, you are entirely mistaken; you misinterpret my earnestness for passion.

  • J JDHasty July 27, 2015

    Just in case you are not able to get your mind around what Woodrow Wilson was saying re: Monroe Trotter... let me help you out here. "If this organization is ever to have another hearing before me it must have another spokesman. Your manner offends me. . . . Your tone, with its background of passion." Basically, what Woodrow Wilson was saying was: Get this uppity N**** out of my sight and don't ever let him confront me with the facts of what my Administration has been up to with regard to re segregating the federal Civil Service and the US Military. Both of which had been desegregated for the previous fifty-years. Both the federal Civil Service and the US Military had been providing black Americans a chance at a better life, Woodrow Wilson's Administration slammed the door to those opportunities in the face of blacks as well as other minorities, such as Catholics and immigrants form southern Europe. But it was against blacks that his policies had the most far reaching and lasting effects.