By Guy Trammell Jr.
The Mvskoke Creek Nation, or simply the Nation, located across what are now Alabama and Georgia, was a true confederation, absorbing any tribal people who came against them. The Nation included members of the Catawba, Iroquois, Shawnee and even Cherokee. In addition to speaking the Mvskoke language, they spoke Hitchiti, Coushatta and Alibamo, from which the State got its name. Working as a united people, with no central government, they had foreign and domestic policy.
Each town had its own matrilineal government. There were White towns, dealing with agriculture and business or bartering, and Red towns, focusing on disputes with other tribes, security and warfare. Town representatives were sent to Central Council when issues arose affecting the Nation as a whole. For security issues, Red towns took the lead. For food shortages, White towns took the lead. They met in a circle, because everyone had a say in the decision.
Even in their annual Pow Wows, like the Green Corn Festival, they danced in a circle, with everyone equal. This unity of purpose and action was powerful enough to repel the Spanish from their territory. Spain’s gold-seeking explorer Hernando de Soto came with iron armor and weapons, along with gun powder. However, the ingrained unity of the Nation, armed with wooden and stone weapons, sent de Soto to an early grave on the western shore of the Mississippi River.
A similar unity occurred when Lewis Adams, a Tuskegee business owner and former slave, brought together George Washington Campbell, a bank owner, businessman and former slave owner, and Butler Chapel A.M.E. Church to create a school for colored teachers. This union included Col. Wilber F. Foster, a state senator and attorney; Arthur L. Brooks, a state representative and newspaper editor; Booker T. Washington, a teacher, college graduate and former slave; and the white and colored people of Macon County, Ala.
Foster and Brooks provided the legislation to get a teacher’s salary. Booker T. Washington provided the instruction and leadership. Butler Chapel provided the meeting location. Campbell provided local support and influence with the local white community. And the people of Macon County provided students, meals, housing for the students and faculty, and initial support to pay off a loan to purchase land to build a campus and the first post-slavery, all Black middle class community.
Booker T. Washington initiated the plan to educate colored children across the Southern states, using unity in a similar manner to Lewis Adams. Julius Rosenwald, the owner of Sears put up one-third of the funding for each school. The State of Alabama had to put up one-third, and the local Blacks and whites in the community had to come up with the final third.
The Blacks assisted in building the schools, which were designed by Robert R. Taylor, Tuskegee Institute’s head architect. George Washington Carver wrote the curriculum and designed the landscapes, including the layout for installing the wells away from the outhouses. Carver also made the paints for the walls and stains for the floors. This was all coordinated by Tuskegee Institute’s C.J. Calloway. As a result of this unified effort, over 5,000 schools and education buildings were constructed.
Today, we must utilize unity to address the Covid19 pandemic because only by mobilizing the resources and people that God has provided will we be able to save lives.
By Amy Miller
I was told this morning by a neighbor down the road that three more people in my Maine town have tested positive.
Suddenly the virus feels different from how it felt yesterday, closer to home. According to the state of Maine’s health website, by Aug. 5, 33 cases had been reported in our town of 7,365 people. Yesterday I felt relatively safe because I mostly stay at home on my acre in Maine, where the rates are among the lowest in the nation. Today I wonder what is lurking around the corner.
My friends and I have joked about, well, half-joked about, becoming xenophobic. What are these people from Massachusetts, Rhode Island and even FLORIDA!!! doing at our beaches. Why are so many cars from out of state parked at the local, known-only-to-those-in-the-know beach lots?!
Even my sister and niece from Massachusetts are suspect when they visit me in my yard for a few hours. I am a little standoff-ish and she is a little sheepish. Perhaps she shouldn’t be dirtying our state with her germs is the nagging backdrop to our first visit in four months, try as we both did to push it aside.
Each week in Maine, we wait for the other shoe to drop, a bit haughty in our knowledge that we have so far avoided the worst of it. When will the arrival of tourists, whose cars still pack I-95 every weekend and whose wallets help us stay afloat, augment the start of our deadly uptick? So far the numbers have held rather steady, closer to a (somewhat erratic) heart beat with ups and downs than to Everest. It appears there are between 20 and 60 new cases a day in Maine. We have had a total of 3,997 reported cases and 124 deaths.
Just about everyone I know wears a mask inside stores. The chimney cleaner and refrigerator repair man arrive at my house already in their masks. They do this despite the fact that the numbers are low in Maine and probably neither of us has the virus. My friends raise their masks when we pass someone on a mountain trail. They do this despite the discovery over the last five months that short-term outdoor exposure is unlikely to enable transmission.
Perhaps this is why as of Aug. 3, Maine ranks third lowest in the nation in the rate of positive cases. That and a governor who has required visitors from most states to quarantine on arrival; who limited gatherings to fewer than 10 people initially and 50 people now; and who emphasizes over and over the importance of face coverings.
But now that three more people in South Berwick tested positive, I am more edgy. I know, it’s just three people. But I keep remembering that this all started with one person a continent, an ocean and 7,300 miles away. So three people within 10 miles of my house is not nothing. But really, one person across the world was not nothing either. We are all, every human being alive on earth today, facing the same enemy, and this adversary does not cares a whit about our politics, our state, or our nationality.
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