Tuesday with MorrieTuesday with MorrieHow to give a summary of such a powerful book seems to me to be beyond comprehension. The book has left me so full of life, so committed to changing the way I behave, the way I think, the way I feel about life, death, how I treat others, and how I spend the hours of everyday. The book has left me with thousands of zooming thoughts in my head, like moths circling a light bulb, just trying to feel the soothing heat being radiated from it’s ember glow. The way I feel after reading this book, must be how an immigrant felt when taking those first steps onto American soil. Extremely overwhelmed yet so filled with anticipation for the new life they can lead, if only they make the right choices for themselves, and not fall into the pitfalls of society’s culture, but make a culture of their own. “ Invest in the human family. Invest in people. Build a community of those you love and who love you”
The Best of Kelli E. Brown, who is writing a book on American slavery, writes: “…and one would be able to understand, for better or worse, that there are more Americans than Africans.
“Yet as a social scientist I am concerned with the number and prevalence of such myths. I believe that the American Civil War’s social history is a classic example of how the American slaveholding mind—under the direct rule of King William III—has had an enormous influence over the minds and actions of the average American. As such, “history’s real heroes” include a history of slavery, a history of ‘human nature,’ and a history of racial discrimination.” (http://www.humanismandreligion.org/bio/1d/c1d.htm)
The book explores the importance of the relationship between black, white, and colonial white in American slavery. It discusses the need, in my opinion, for racial reconciliation, including the formation of a state based on a white man and system based on an African-American, to achieve true equality; and it explores how the American Civil War could be characterized by the removal of the “slave master” (i.e., John Turner), an African-American, from colonial slavery and the emergence of a legal “civil-rights movement” based on his blackness. (http://www.americanhistory.com/articles/article.cfm?id=54375)
Brown uses numerous works, from Thomas Jefferson to John Brown (both from Washington, D.C.), to the essay, “Why The Civil War Made A Good Deal of Difference,” The Roots of Black Liberation by Robert B. McNeil, “The Civil Rights Movement and the Civil Rights Movement in the Nineteenth Century,” by Michael E. Brown, and “The End of Slavery,” by Robert F. Smith (which are some of my favorites, in the way Brown speaks of the rise of the Ku Klux Klan before the Civil War).
Brown also focuses on the historical context of slavery in the South, especially its role at the intersection with political oppression today. He offers a number of theories of his own, including one that is “anecdotalist” but which I believe is more appropriate. He describes the black/white race within America and how one can understand it in order not to see through any of this. The term “classical” also has a term he chose to use; a term many people have rejected in order to not feel the impact that such a word represents.
The author’s research focuses in part on the historical and theological perspective of slavery, particularly its historical context. He talks extensively about the role black men played in securing the existence and success of black abolitionists, and discusses their contributions to emancipation and other struggles over the last several decades.
Brown has a strong following among abolitionists. Many of their beliefs are rooted in their experience of slavery, which they view as the cause of the war and its ending of slavery for good; while some of the books he recommends are written from different backgrounds, and most have historically been written without reservation by such authors, his books are not always as well known and he has a number of essays, both academic and historical, which he has written but which he says have failed to convince his American listeners. As an educator and historian, Brown is an excellent speaker, and my best read is his essay on the Civil Rights movement in the late ’90s, a subject that he did quite well in.
The main character of the book is a College professor at Brandeis University in the city of Waltham, Massachusetts. His name is Morrie Schwartz. One of his students (who he hasn’t seen in sixteen years) has just heard the news of his favorite professors, battle with
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ASL), Lou Gehrig’s disease, a brutal, unforgiving illness of the neurological system with no known cure.The student, Mitch Albom, (also the author) decides to fulfill the promise he had made to Morrie after graduation, of keeping in contact. He catches a flight to Massachusetts on a Tuesday and does this for the next several Tuesdays till the death of Morrie. On those Tuesdays, classes were being held, not in the all too familiar classrooms of the college, but in the intimate setting of Morrie’s home. They would write their final thesis paper on “The Meaning of Life.” The paper was to include but not be limited to the following topics: Death, Fear, Aging, Greed, Marriage, Family, Society, Forgiveness, and A Meaningful Life. Every Tuesday when Mitch would arrive he could see the brutal deterring of Morrie’s small disease infested body. Yet the spirit of this small dying man was bigger than life itself. This confused Mitch, but as the story progresses Mitch begins to comprehend why this man with only months to live is still so filled with life. Morrie points