Yes, it is Nashville, Tennessee. There are many ways to enjoy country music in this city. Tourist usually start with history in Country Music Hall of Fame Museum and Jonny Cash Museum. As they walk in the streets of Nashville, they may meet Elvis Presley’s statue at Legends Corner, buy souvenirs from numerous vinyl shops, and have a beer in a club with a local band performing live. Evenings normally finish at Grand Ole Opry concert hall where visitors are entertained by a variety of country singers and groups who represent different periods and styles.
However, Nashville provides opportunities for the tourists beyond country music. The only full size replica of the Parthenon outside Greece is located here, and this is the reason it is called “Athens of the American South”. Also, Nashville is the home of the 7th American president Andrew Jackson who lived and died in his Hermitage Estate just outside the city.
“Pants on the ground
Pants on the ground
Lookin’ like a fool with yo pants on the ground.”
You probably remember the rapper and Civil Rights activist who sang this song on the ninth season of American Idol, the TV singing competition. “General” Larry Plat was 62 years old at the time, making him ineligible to compete in the show due to their 28-year old age limit. However, his song became a viral hit with almost 11 million views. He again was invited to perform his original song “Pants on the Ground” for the series finale in 2016 and received wide media coverage by the The LA Times, Billboard, USA Today, and Enquirer.
However, Larry Platt doesn’t seem satisfied with this brief fame. “My story ain’t never been told…No books have been wrote on me,” he tells me during our conversation at the Auburn Public Library, a place he visits quite often. His Southern accent is quite strong and representative of his character. He wears sunglasses, jeans, and black jacket. Different badges commemorating various campaign he took part in are attached to his clothes. A hat with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. sign on it is on his head.
One of the hundreds unknown heroes of the Civil Right Movement, he feels ignored and forgotten by American society despite his brave, courageous, and fearless past. Together with legends of the movement like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, and Hosea Williams, Platt participated in many Civil Rights actions. Among them were the Bloody Sunday March from Selma to Montgomery, the March for Jobs and Freedom in Washington DC, sit-ins to desegregate places like Grady Hospital, Rich’s Department Store, and many restaurants and hotels in Atlanta.
His personal answer is “Yes”. He did change the world, and made it more tolerant, more diverse, and a more inclusive place. However, he knows that there is a price for daring to challenge the status-quo because he has paid it. Several decades ago, Charles Person, an 18-year-old black student from Morehouse College, was surrounded by a white mob in Birmingham, Alabama, angry at him because he was fighting segregation in the public transportation system in the USA.
When he was attacked by the mob, he was merely sitting in a white-only waiting room at a bus station. They quickly surrounded him. Two Klansmen were holding him while a third one was punching him in the jaw, another one was kicking him in the stomach, and another one was hitting his head with an iron stick. A photographer attracted the attention (and the anger) of the mob, and saved his life.
Charles Person was one of the original 13 Freedom Riders, a group of black and white men, and a white woman, who had the courage to go to the deep South in the 60s and confront its racist and segregationist way of life. They were bitten and burned; however, their fight succeeded. Due to their (and many others’) bravery and heroism, this shameful page of American History was closed for good.
Today, Charles Person is one of the hundreds of forgotten heroes of the Civil Rights Movement, retired and disabled because, during his service in Vietnam, one of his legs was burned by Agent Orange, a special chemical used by the US Army to destroy jungle vegetation. I met him in his cozy house in a middle-class neighborhood in Atlanta and recorded his story. Here it is:
Continue reading “If You Could Change the World – Would You?”
The story goes back to the times when Buckhead, now a very high profile financial and residential district of Atlanta, was still known as Irbyville. Around the 1840s, Henry Irby, a rich white man, the owner of Irbyville, and a passionate hunter, killed a large buck deer and placed his head on the crossroad between Peachtree Street and Piedmont Road. As there was almost nothing remarkable in the great area of Irbyville, people started calling it Buckhead.
Continue reading “The Last Evidence of the African American Heritage in Buckhead”
“Why am I as I am? To understand that of any person, his whole life, from
Birth must be reviewed. All of our experiences fuse into our personality. Everything that ever happened to us is an ingredient,” Malcolm X said once. Many of his contemporaries and his researchers, including me, have accused him of his extreme racial views, calls for radical actions, and sharp criticism of other African-American leaders. However, studying his life could provide at least a clue, if not an excuse, for his highly controversial personality.
Bahamas are a paradise on Earth. The islands offer nice weather most of the year, long sandy beaches, clear sky, turquoise ocean, and friendly people. In this Caribbean country, tourists enjoy delicious local cuisine, several labels of world quality rum and cigars, and variety of absolutely irresistible rum cakes. To learn more about history, traditions and culture in the Bahamas, click here.
Progress cannot be stopped. However, history teaches us that it can be delayed, and in some cases by many decades. Segregation in the US was officially legalized at the Federal level in 1896 with the Supreme Court decision in the Plessy vs Ferguson case, and ended legally in 1954 with the Supreme Court decision in the Brown vs Board of Education of Topeka case. For 58 years, the doctrine “separate but equal” was the legal framework for racial injustice, oppression, and humiliation to the detriment of African-American people.
Continue reading “The Legal Context Behind “Separate but Equal” Doctrine”
Maria S. Topalova Blog 