Coach Bill / Dad, Entrepreneur Special Educator, American Political Scientist, Writer, Musician.

“What I have said respecting and against religion, I mean strictly to apply to the slaveholding religion of this land, and with no possible reference to Christianity proper; for, between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference— so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one, is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ.” Frederick Douglass ‘A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave,’ 1845 I find it not robbery to call this man of black skin color, a great-grandfather of the American spirit, as it is one nation under God. I find it not robbery to call him a spiritual brother. Having passed away in 1895, Frederick Douglass’s legacy is only now beginning to surface from beneath the historical record piling; surfacing unscathe...

On my father’s side my family fought against each other in the American Civil War. Protecting ideals, a way of life, family and one’s community was on the forefront of their minds and hearts. With such a burgeoning nation, Americans were beginning to live far from the original thirteen colonies. Their was expansion to the west towards the Missouri and Mississippi rivers and south towards the Floridian panhandle. Life was quite differentiated across different swaths of the United States. In the north, the yankees were focused on growing trade and communication with the world, expanding the military and  beginning to more seriously address the sin of slavery. Slavery was a topic of discussion gaining popular ground. In the south, life was much more tranquil. Plantation owners controlled huge parcels of farm land and developed their crops for sale in America and beyond its shores. Their farm lands were worked by human beings who were owned and directed to work for their masters...

Every so often, perhaps once every hundred years, a certain dynamic of attributes rests on the shoulders of a human. They become driven to go beyond the norm and their grip on treasuring their own life is placed second to the yearning of doing all they can to bring balance to their environment. Born as a material possession to a slave owner, Mrs. Harriet Tubman was repeatedly whipped and beaten as a child; her life meaning less than nothing to her slave masters. Her parents, being slaves also, were powerless to protect their daughter. Harriet's life was fixed. Her unpaid, unrewarded toil under the sun is all that she was expected to know and do as a slave. Their was no expectation for her other than to do as she was told and to then die. That was not enough for Harriet "Minty" Tubman. She decided that she would not go down silently to her grave and resolved to pray to the Lord for her liberty. First she prayed that her slave owner change his heart regarding s...

Professor Le Februe was not at all liked by the rowdy 8th grade middle school Social Studies class. He was mild-mannered, in his mid-forties and would be teased by the bully's in the class he taught. There were at least thirty students in each of his classes. Mine was no different. One day he brought in a movie to class to compliment the readings we were doing on slavery in America. It was a series of films following the fictionalized account of a slave, Kunta Kinte, and his family from the time he was kidnapped in Africa to the time forty acres and a mule were given as a token of freedom to his descendants generations later. Kunta Kinte entered my life with each whiplash he received and his constant goal-directed persistence to be free at last. His heart was untamable. His spirit would not break, bend as it did. For me, watching the series of movies called, 'Roots,' brought my eyes and mind to see first hand the cruelty of enslaving humanity for profit and how this...

When I was thirteen years old, my sailor uncle and aunt (a 2nd set of parents) took me sailing with throughout the British and U.S. Virgin Islands. I recall him scuba diving fifty feet below me around the area known as "The Baths" of Virgin Gorda. They were called "The Baths" because that is were the slave ships would stop and unload African slaves to get cleaned up before heading out to the east coast of the United States. "The Baths" are mammoth inclosed rock structures that seem to have been flung together by giants. There are natural pools inside straight out of your most colorful dream. Those who were fortunate to make it across the Atlantic ocean were unshackled for a brief time as they were put into these 'natural holding cells' to clean up from the horrible conditions experienced being tied down inside the ships hold. As many know, hundreds of people were shackled in rows with no bathroom respite and extremely limited mobility given ...