By William “Duke” Smither (Backstreet Djeli Blog Reprint from Memorial Day 2014) “I am the Unknown Soldier And maybe I died in vain, But if I were alive and my country called, I’d do it all over again.” (From “The Unknown Soldier,” by Billy Rose) The first thing one notices when visiting the […]
Category: “Footnotes”
by William “Duke” Smither “My grandfather had a dream that his four little children will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream that enough is enough…” Nine-Year-Old Yolanda Renee King (Eldest granddaughter of Martin Luther King Jr. during “March of Our Lives” […]
works “Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread.” Richard Wright (1908-1960; Mississippi-born Writer, Novelist, Poet) The journey in writing “Backroads to ‘Bethlehem’: Odysseys of the Maroon Warrior” has been so much longer than the writing process itself– perhaps, as far back […]
By William “Duke” Smither “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time […]
by William “Duke” Smither “Excellence is the best deterrent to racism or sexism…” Oprah Winfrey The way I see it, racism AND sexism happens to be America’s 5th dimension of bigotry- more like pawns- on the ‘sociopolitical chessboards of life’, like the bane of barefaced bigotry against women, especially African-American women. Yet, on the flipside of this sociopolitical […]
by William “Duke” Smither “I wish I could say that racism and prejudice were only distant memories. We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred and the mistrust…We must dissent because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do […]
By William “Duke” Smither “Rivers, lakes, ponds, streams, oceans all have different names, but they all contain water. So do religions have different names, and they all contain truth, expressed in different ways forms and times. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Muslim, a Christian, or a Jew. When you believe in God, you should […]
