Journalist @baltimoresun writer artist runner #amwriting Chaplain PIO #partylikeajournalist

Journalist @baltimoresun writer artist runner #amwriting Chaplain PIO #partylikeajournalist
Journalist @baltimoresun writer artist runner #amwriting Md Troopers Assoc #20 & Westminster Md Fire Dept Chaplain PIO #partylikeajournalist
Showing posts with label History African-American. Show all posts
Showing posts with label History African-American. Show all posts

Friday, November 10, 2006

20061110 Happy Birthday USMC

Happy Birthday USMC

See also:

20061110 Today of the birthday of the United States Marine Corps

November 10th, 2006 by Kevin Dayhoff (909 words)

November 10th is the birthday for the United States Marine Corp.

Yes the Marine Corps was born in a bar. It was on November 10, 1775, that the Continental Congress commissioned Samuel Nicholas to raise several Battalions of Marines. Nicholas established a recruiting station at “Tun Tavern” in Philadelphia.

Carroll County has a role in Marine Corps history. It was on June 11, 1898, according to local historian Jay Graybeal, that United States Marine Sgt. Charles Hampton. Smith from Smallwood was killed during the capture of Guantánamo Bay in the Spanish-American War.

In a 1996 published account, Mr. Graybeal wrote that Sgt. Smith was born near Smallwood, Carroll County on January 15, 1867. He had left the county and joined the Marine Corps in 1893 after a brief stint with a Baltimore insurance firm.

Dr. Milton D. Norris, who maintained a medical practice in Eldersburg for so many years, also served as “Acting Assistant Surgeon, U.S. Volunteers, during the Spanish-American War. Another “Acting Assistant Surgeon,” John Blair Gibbs was killed on June 11, the same night that Sgt. Smith was killed. Marine Privates William Dumphy and James McColgan, along with Sgt. Smith were the some of the first U. S. casualties of the war.

Another Carroll Countian, Harry Huber, “dubbed “Westminster’s Sailor Boy,” by the Democratic Advocate, according to Jay Graybeal, participated in the Spanish-American War. On May 14, 1898, the paper published two letters detailing his participation in naval engagements at the beginning of the war.

The Marines refer to a portion of the military actions to capture Guantánamo Bay as the “Battle for Cuzco Well,” and the battle is commemorated every year to this day at the sprawling American Guantánamo Bay military base in Cuba

On the base at McCalla Hill, there is a monument dedicated to the Marines that died, including Carroll Countian Sgt. Smith. The accompanying picture was taken from the June 16, 2006 Guantánamo Bay Gazette which covered this year’s observances. Mr. Graybeal has reported that the “monument consists of a captured bronze cannon and a bronze plaque bearing the names of the five Marines and the Navy surgeon killed in action.”

It was in April 1898 that the tension between the United States and Spain over the fate of Cuba erupted into the Spanish-American War. A revolution had broken out on the island of Cuba in 1895 and President William McKinley was under great pressure to defend the 50 million dollars' worth of American investment in Cuba, primarily in the sugar, tobacco, and iron industries. A very young Winston Churchill traveled to Cuba in 1895 to observe the fighting.

Originally President McKinley (R) was against the war. He was supported by the Speaker of the House, Thomas Reed (R.) But in March of 1898, Democrats, religious and business groups joined forces with a changing mood in Congress and demanded action on humanitarian grounds, which at the time, was a unique departure for countries to go to war.

In an April 19, 1998 article in the Carroll County Times, Jay Graybeal wrote that in Carroll County, “local reformer” Mary B. Shellman, Georgia Buckingham and Denton Gehr promoted the cause of “Free Cuba” in 1898 “in a play at the Westminster Odd Fellows Hall.”

The very first ground military action occurred on June 10, 1898 as Marines were sent in to establish a base at Guantánamo Bay. It was on the second day of military operations that Carroll Countian Sgt. Charles H. Smith was killed. Total combat casualties for the United States were 379 troops lost however, over 5,000 American military personnel dies from disease.

The Spanish-American War is often referred to as the first “media war.” Newspapers owned by Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst had agitated for war for quite sometime in an effort referred to by history as “yellow journalism.”

Additionally, it was in 1898 that the very first use of film as propaganda was used. A ninety second film was produced in 1898. Entitled, “Tearing Down the Spanish Flag;” it was a rudimentary propagandist film developed for the purpose of inspiring patriotism and hatred for the Spanish.

The Spanish-American War is also significant as it marked the arrival of the United States as world power. Spain, which had been in economic chaos before the war, never recovered and after three centuries of world influence, the war ended its role as a super-power. The 1898 war helped avert a civil war in Spain at the time, only to see the country deteriorate into a disastrous civil war in the 1930s.

For the Americans, most of the combatants were sons of northern and Confederate soldiers of the American Civil War. The 1898 war helped with a difficult reconciliation process that had only begun to take place in the early 1890s.

Not often reported is the fact that 33 African-American seaman died in the destruction of the USS Maine on February 15, 1898. In the subsequent military actions, African-Americans gained a great deal of respect among military elite, for their conduct and valor during the war.

Since 1775, Marines have been involved in every armed conflict in American history. There are many Marines in Carroll County and of course we understand that, as was the case in the Spanish-American War, the Marine Corps was established to always faithfully be available to show the way and pull the Army and Navy’s behind out of the fire.

Happy Birthday Marines. For Corps and Country, Semper Fidelis.

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Monday, November 06, 2006

20061105 The 1898 Wilmington North Carolina Race Riots


The 1898 Wilmington North Carolina Race Riots

Elections, Race Riots, A Coup d’Etat, Murder and Mayhem in the old south of 1898

The November 5th, 2006 edition of Editor and Publisher is carrying an Associated Press story about The News & Observer of Raleigh and The Charlotte Observer doing a special report on the 1898 Wilmington North Carolina race riot. Both papers are owned by The McClatchy Company

Thirty-five years ago, while attending Elon College and playing a very minor role in civil rights activism, the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot – “which unfolded in the days after Election Day on Nov. 8, 1898” - was primarily the stuff of oral folklore.

I will be very interested in reading more about this very dark episode in America’s past. It is a story that has everything to fascinate and horrify a political scientist; race relations in the old south, the role of newspapers during an era in which many were openly very biased and agenda-driven, government – or rather, the overthrow of a government, Republicans and Democrats, murder and mayhem.

According to a PowerPoint Presentation by LeRae S. Umfleet: “The Wilmington Race Riot was the result of the 1898 white supremacy campaign instituted by the Democratic Party. Democrats fueled racial hatred and promised violence to win the election. Although Election Day was peaceful as Democrats regained control of the General Assembly and New Hanover County government, violence broke out two days later in the state’s most progressive city.”

The Associated Press story begins:

2 North Carolina Papers Team on Special Report on 1898 Race Riot

Published: November 05, 2006 5:00 PM ET

RALEIGH North Carolina's two largest daily newspapers have produced a 16-page special section on the 1898 race riot and state-labled "coup d'etat" that drove hundreds of Wilmington's black residents from the coastal city, and are offering the section to newspapers statewide.

Tim Tyson, a professor at the University of Wisconsin and author of a book on the Wilmington riot, is the lead writer for the section produced by The News & Observer of Raleigh with help from The Charlotte Observer.

The section, to be published in the two papers as a tabloid on Nov. 17, will include photos, graphics and an examination of newspapers' role in fanning white discontent in advance of the 1898 elections.

The full section and a one-page summary designed for smaller papers are being offered to all members of the North Carolina Press Association for same-day publication. The material may be downloaded beginning Thursday; users must pay only their own printing costs.

"Our goal is to get as many people as possible to know this story," said News & Observer executive editor Melanie Sill.

The Wilmington Star-News and several smaller papers have said they will run the section, she said. Its release is timed to coincide roughly with the 108th anniversary of the riots, which unfolded in the days after Election Day on Nov. 8, 1898.

Sill and News & Observer publisher Orage Quarles III began discussing the idea this summer as a state-appointed commission prepared a report on the violence that claimed as many as 60 lives, drove out the city's Republican government and sparked an exodus of 2,100 black residents.

Read the rest here.

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