Last Updated on July 2, 2024 by BVN
Hardy Brown, Sr.
As I watched the debate between President Biden and the former “lying” president, I thought of the conversation Moses had with God in Exodus 4:10-17. Moses tried to make excuses not to lead the Israelites out of bondage, and I was reminded of this when President Biden had moments of struggling with his speaking.
I’m sharing this story my way, but read it for yourself. Moses said to God, “I don’t talk well; I stutter and stammer when I speak sometimes.” God would not let Moses off the hook with those excuses and said, “Moses, who do you think made the mouth on people? I did. I made some people mute, some deaf, some sighted, and some blind. I want you to go because you have the character and values of decency, integrity, passion, compassion, empathy, wisdom, and most of all, the personal experience of working in Pharaoh’s house and government. Plus, if you need someone to speak on your behalf when you have a stutter episode, take your sidekick brother Aaron with you; he’s good with words.” Now, that would not have helped the President on Thursday. Mr. President, let me suggest you organize an “Aaron for Biden-Harris Speakers Club” and keep going.
In your case, Joe, you have a lot of Aarons who can speak on your behalf, beginning with Vice President Kamala Harris. I first met Kamala in my office at the Black Voice News in San Bernardino when she was thinking about running for Attorney General of California. I endorsed her then and I endorse her now, even though some non-Black Democrats do not believe women should be in leadership positions, I am glad President Biden does not believe or behave in a racially and gender-discriminatory manner.
I thought a lot about how important it is to have the right people speaking for you, when I listened to Black Republican Congressman Byron Donalds of Florida speak as one who represents the MAGA school of thought in the current RNC.
Rep. Donalds’ uninformed remarks about life for Blacks under the Jim Crow Era of our nation’s history reflect racist beliefs that life was better for us under policies and laws of unequal segregation and racial terror. I was born under the “Separate but Equal” Jim Crow laws. As a reminder, these laws were put into legal operation in May 1896, when the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 7-1 decision against Homer Plessy, a mixed-race man in Louisiana, who wanted to ride a whites-only public train.
After I let Congressman Donalds’ words sink in for a few minutes, I thought, Hardy, you had better write about your own personal experience under Jim Crow because this Black Republican MAGA is drinking the Kool-Aid of this 34-time felony-convicted, bleached-orange-hair, lying man named Trump. With Black people like Senator Tim Scott, U.S. Representative Donalds being in Congress, and Clarence Thomas being on the Supreme Court, these guys will lead us back to the days of slavery. Representative Donalds is hoping he will be selected to be a servant in the Big House while his people suffer in the fields and streets because he sees Justice Clarence Thomas hanging around with billionaires and receiving millions in gifts.
Rep. Donalds’ uninformed remarks about life for Blacks under the Jim Crow Era of our nation’s history reflect racist beliefs that life was better for us under policies and laws of unequal segregation and racial terror.
It was 46 years after Jim Crow laws were legalized that I was born in the township of Trenton, in Jones County, North Carolina, in December 1942. Likewise, President Joe Biden, you were born 19 days before me in November 1942, in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where there was de facto segregation of the races. My introduction to Mr. Jim Crow South was just 17 days after I was born when they dragged my uncle Isaac Strayhorn from the white-owned Brock Family Mill Pond, weighted down with cinder blocks around his dead, swollen body. This was described in a news article in 2021 by his son Clemmie Strayhorn, who was 8 when it happened. This was the first time I had heard how he died because the sheriff at that time told my Aunt Betty, Isaac’s wife, to take him home and bury him and be glad we found him and called you. This was told to me by my cousin Dr. Sam Barber in 2021.
Uncle Isaac’s Death Certificate listed his cause of death as drowning without a boat. It was dated 12/24/1942 and signed by Dr. Thomas Vassey. I knew Dr. Vassey as a child because he was the only doctor in town and provided care to everyone in town. Of course, whenever Blacks came to him for service, he would take out his revolver pistol to let us know he had it and instill fear in us. His wife was always nice to Blacks and even gave me the polio vaccination.
I went to segregated schools with hand-me-down books after white children had used them. I just found out in 2013 that the wooden elementary school I attended across the dirt street from my house was paid for and built by the Black community, while the white children went to a brick school built with taxpayers’ money and had central heating.
When I left home after graduating from high school in 1960, I had to sit in the back of the Greyhound bus until I transferred buses in Washington, D.C., on my way to New York City. While things were a little better in New York, I ran into some blatant discrimination in California and am still fighting the good fight.
Now to a disability that makes me feel for you so strongly. I have ALS, and after 22 years (the 5% living over 20 years club with ALS) of not giving up, my speech is gone, but I still write my comments down, and my wife, Cheryl, reads them at local city council, school board, and water board meetings.
So stay the course and let it be your decision to bow out. And if you come to that conclusion, let me suggest you give a one-week lead notice and resign and let the Vice President take your place. Then Harris can appoint Dr. Jill Biden as her VP, and the Harris-Biden campaign can go forward without a break of motion. They know the Biden-Harris accomplishments, and they will energize the women, Black, Latino, Asian, Muslim, LGBTQ agenda. VP Harris can handle the former president, and you will still be a part of the cabinet, which will bring comfort to our international friends. I think the voter turnout will go through the roof.
Whatever you decide, I am with you and your family and VP Harris all the way.