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I remember how I was when I left Virginia for England in 1960, not knowing that I didn’t have a clue about the world outside the segregated south, and like most black people, did not know I was more conservative than liberal. Poor as we were, I complained about national assistance taking care of those who were below the poverty line in England, without realizing that the Air Force was like a welfare program, for me, having entered weighing 148 pounds at almost six feet tall. The Air Force fed me, clothed me, allowed me to take a GED, enroll in college courses on base, and matched a stipend that helped my family back home. I had three hots, and a cot, things I did not have before I entered. I remember a British gentleman responding: “Do you know how many people we killed in two world wars?” Of course I had no clue, but I learned in three years that the British often knew the answer before they asked the question. He continued: “Don’t you think we should spend as much to save people as we do killing them?”, and Europe has been saving me since those years.

Everything we know as US Citizens, or citizens of the Americas, is based on Europe; some of it good, some not so good, but if we want to survive problems we need to look at our beginnings. When some talked about investing my social security in the stock market, I notice that England had tried that and failed miserably. Many whose ancestors fought to leave Europe came to the Americas and did far worse things to Africans and Native Americans than was perpetrated against them in Europe, while my European Tour taught me that Europeans learned hundreds of years earlier that such things were not going to be beneficial to posterity. Europe is not just history, it is the cause and effect of everything the United States is and will become, so we must save Europe, if only to understand how we got ourselves into this mess, but also how to survive.

A few years back I read From Fire to Freud by Peter Watson of Oxford University, which solved some very serious internal conflicts for me. When I read Albert Churchward and Gerald Massey they did likewise. The answers to our survival is in Europe, so as Europe declines, so will these United States.

I sympathize with Herman Cain, because back in the 80s I was charged with sexual harassment by a white female while working with U.S. Sprint in Denver, Colorado. As I was being interviewed by the EEO Specialist I couldn’t, for the life of me figure out who they were talking about, but when I finally did all I could say was: “Yuck!” As I left the EEO office I was advised not to tell anyone what had happened, but I went straight to work area and told every African American Female I could. One of the ladies told me she charged a gay male, months earlier and he was so embarrassed he moved to Dallas. I was fortunate to be born in an era when black males understood that we were guilty until proved guilty by a court of law. When they couldn’t get O.J. the way they wanted they gave him 30 plus years for stealing his own stuff, and every black police officer in the United States knows: “The punishment didn’t fit the crime and he was entrapped!”

I was arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct in 1960 and I didn’t matter that everyone who knew me was aware that I didn’t drink, and here is where I offer advice to black men:

“Judge not the Black Man, by the heights he
attains, but by depths from which he came!”

On August 20th 2011 I attended my cousin's 50^th wedding anniversary in Roanoke, Virginia, and recalled how it was when I left in 1960 for my tour of duty in England with the air force. Four hours after I arrived home from 18 weeks of basic training, and 10 weeks military police school at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio Texas, I was arrested for drunk, disorderly conduct and harassing white women, which supposedly had gone on for the previous 5 months. A white police officer knew I was from a family of non drinkers and went to the recruiting office with my mother to get a copy of my military orders. I still don’t drink except maybe a wine cooler every once in a while, and in looking at hotels for my brief visit, I recognized a modified Hotel Roanoke, remembering that blacks could not stay there when I lived in Roanoke. A guy who sold weapons to the San Francisco P D told me he had to climb down the drainage pipes in the 40s because someone told a manager of the hotel he was a Jew.

The south was a hotbed of racial prejudice in the 40s, and 50s but Roanoke was better thanks to the likes of NAACP Attorney Reuben E. Lawson, black teachers, mentors and parents who guided us with pride and dignity in spite of the times. I read about a sign on Peach Tree Street in Atlanta which read: "No niggers, no Catholics, no Jews, and no dogs!" Racist politicians had names like 'Axe Handle' Maddox, and 'Bull' Connor, schools were segregated, the KKK met regularly in churches, and police stations, George Wallace, Orval Faubus, and dixiecrats (Southern Christian Democrats) ruled the workplace, we were told: "We don't use colored people” when we applied for jobs, had to enter local businesses through rear doors, white, and colored fountains, and bathrooms were the norm. I served in the military, police department, as an educator, and now write truths to encourage understanding that national problems did not start when we elected the first African American President.

Bill Cosby, and I were good friends, He warned me:
“You go social, and you go broke!” I went social and I went broke.
Dick Gregory

I spent two days speaking with Lewis Dodd of Commercial Energies in Colorado and Attorney Greg Scott of Ivy Tech in Indiana and was reminded of the good old days when we had leaders like Lou, Greg, Doc Fletcher, Bob Brown, Stan Scott, Sam Cornelius,… and the list goes on. At Doc Fletcher’s Services in 2005 the honorary pallbearers list was of who’s who among black leaders both republican, and democrat.

We who knew Doc are reminded how he lost his job with the governor’s office in Kansas when Brown vs. The Board passed, and though he had a PhD, he washed dishes to survive in San Francisco, because like most of us he was fighting for the future of our people and would not quit.

We think things have changed since the election of Obama, but I suggest that he is nothing more than a product.

“Religion, Race and Politics” is first, and foremost a love story. It is about love of my people, of our historical ideals, religious mysteries, and of a phenomenal woman.

On February 4, 2007, The Super Bowl of the National Football League featured two African American Coaches, was played in “Miami Gardens” a city that is 80 percent African American, and managed by an African-American Female Mayor. Twenty years earlier white coworkers, at US Sprint, in Denver, assured me that no black quarterback was capable of leading an NFL Team to a super bowl; that weekend Doug Williams broke records and sent John Elway home with a loss.

Articles posted on ViewsHound. Viewshound.com is no longer in existence

Much of who I am today is because of a 3 year tour of duty in Europe

I believe answers to our rise or decline lie in our understand of the European Union. What Europe has become is what the Americas must become.