Eskimo Pie and Flavortown?

Credit...

The George Floyd Protests Continue

Since the coincidental viral sharing of the murder of George Floyd of May 25, 2020, and the History Channel's three-day telecast of Grant beginning on May 25, 2020, much has occurred.

The death of Fayetteville-born George Floyd exposed widespread police brutality in the US. Footage of the tear gassing of peaceful demonstrators in Lafayette Square were shared as hundreds of American cities were rocked by protests, uprisings, and demonstrations.

#BlackLivesMatter, in the wake of Floyd's "I Can't Breathe" killing, was re-born.

Trump's "plan" to hold his first rally in Tulsa was changed, and social change kept happening.

Corporate America, in the wake of their awakenings overnight from June 16 to June 17, 2020, said "Goodbye to Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, Cream of Wheat's Rastus," Mrs. Butterworth's, and more.

Citing the “horrific racist imagery associated with the phrase,” the University of Florida will no longer use the popular “Gator Bait” chant during athletic events, school president Kent Fuchs announced on Thursday, June 18, 2020. There are numerous references that have cited that African American babies were used as alligator bait.

And finally, on June 19, 2020, Dreyer's announced that it would change the "Eskimo Pie" brand name and marketing, saying the term is "derogatory." Eskimo pies were the brand name of a vanilla ice cream product dipped in chocolate. "Eskimo" has been criticized as a racist name for Arctic indigenous peoples such as the Inuit and Yupik.

Statues Topple Around the World

On Sunday, June 7, 2020, slave trader Edward Colston's statue in Bristol, England, was torn down and thrown into the harbor during a second day of anti-racism protests across the UK. Colston was a member of the Royal African Company, which transported about 80,000 men, women and children from Africa to the Americas. On his death in 1721, he bequeathed his wealth to charities and his legacy can still be seen on Bristol's streets, memorials and buildings, the British media noted.

A protester knelt on the neck of the Colston statue to mirror the Floyd murder.

Statues of Confederate generals and soldiers were removed officially or by crowds of activists, coast to coast. Then around the globe, demonstrators and protesters began to take down slavery suppliers, colonial figures, and other statues and monuments representing repression. 

A shift in the US from specifically just Confederate statues to others that stood for colonialism appeared to center on Juneteenth, June 19, 2020. The last most significant demonstration on Juneteenth, was the toppling and symbolic burning of the Albert Pike statue in Washington D.C. Although Pike was a Brigadier General in the Confederacy, and was the only outside statue in D.C. of a Confederate, that statue was not dedicated to his role in the Civil War. Pike as an influential figure in the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, was the reason for the statue. Pike strong ties in the Masonic tradition may have save the statue in the past, but the figure toppled in 15 minutes on Juneteenth 2020.

Running tallies of the "statues across the toppled..." are here, here, here, and here.

Statues fell, flags with Confederate symbols came down, portraits of house speakers who served in the Confederacy were removed from the U.S. Congress. Venerable brands, which have long used labels such as Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben’s, announced an end to faces on food boxes and bottles that were born in racist stereotypes. Longtime companies that worked with slavers and profited from them, such as Lloyds’ of London, apologized to the Black community and promised to make amends.
Are these moves, prompted by the nationwide protests over the police killing of George Floyd and so many others, just the leading edge of overdue changes in America and abroad? ~ National Geographic June 22, 2020.

Other statues beyond those of the Confederacy also were toppled.

San Francisco's Christopher Columbus stands near the Coit Tower.

Christopher Columbus statues were beheaded in Boston on June 10.  On June 10, in Richmond, Virginia, a statue of Christopher Columbus was taken down and thrown into a nearby lake. Protesters in Miami vandalized the statues of Christopher Columbus and Juan Ponce de Leon on June 10, spray painting a hammer and sickle, Black Lives Matter fists and more. Miami Police arrested seven suspects. Also on June 10, protesters tore down a statue of Columbus outside the state Capitol in St. Paul, Minnesota. In Pittsburgh, a statue of Christopher Columbus was vandalized on June 12. It was reportedly vandalized multiple times before the recent protests. In Providence, Rhode Island, a school teacher and two others were arrested after they allegedly vandalized a statue of Columbus on June 13. California state lawmakers announced on June 17 that statues of Christopher Columbus and Queen Isabella would be removed from the Capitol rotunda.

The George Washington statue in Washington Park, Chicago, was found vandalized on June 14. The statue could be seen spray painted, and it had a white hood placed on its head.

In San Francisco's Golden Gate Park along the Pacific Ocean, protesters sprayed red paint and wrote "slave owner" on pedestals before using ropes to bring down the statues and drag them down grassy slopes amid cheers and applause.
The statues targeted included a bust of Ulysses Grant, who was the U.S. president after he was the general who finally beat the Confederates and ended the Civil War.
Protesters pointed out that Grant and his family owned slaves. He married into a slave-owning family, but he had no problem fighting to end slavery. [Left out is that Grant freed his "inherited" due to marriage slave and was raised in an abolition family who disapproved of slavery. Source: Grant History series.]
Also torn down in the San Francisco park was a statue of Francis Scott Key, who wrote the U.S. national anthem "Star Spangled Banner." Key owned slaves. Source.

Other developments

“The world does not need statues, relics of another age, that reflect neither the values of the person they intend to honor nor the values of equality and justice,” said Theodore Roosevelt IV, a great-grandson of the 26th president, said in a statement approving the removal of the Teddy Roosevelt statue in front of the American Museum of Natural History, New York City.

 According to the New York Times:

The bronze statue of Theodore Roosevelt, on horseback and flanked by a Native American man and an African man, which has presided over the entrance to the American Museum of Natural History in New York since 1940, is coming down.
The decision, proposed by the museum and agreed to by New York City, which owns the building and property, came after years of objections from activists and at a time when the killing of George Floyd has initiated an urgent nationwide conversation about racism.
For many, the equestrian statue at the museum’s Central Park West entrance has come to symbolize a painful legacy of colonial expansion and racial discrimination.

Columbus, Ohio's Columbus statue.

According to CNN:

The city of Columbus, Ohio, has already vowed to bring down its statue of Christopher Columbus. 

But thousands are hoping to erase the city's connection to Columbus' legacy even further by renaming it Flavortown in honor of Columbus native Guy Fieri.

This is not a joke.

Food Channel's Guy Fieri

The main proponent of these Columbus moves is 32-year-old Mayor Andrew J. Ginther.

Meanwhile, in the Pacific Northwest, while a Washington statue was pulled down in Portland, Seattle's Lenin statue remains. The Statue of Lenin in Seattle, a 16 ft tall bronze statue of Communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, by Bulgarian sculptor Emil Venkov, is the focus of questions about why it still stands.

June 19: Tulsa Danger

UPDATE:

President Trump bowed to pressure on Friday night and announced that he would delay his upcoming campaign rally in Tulsa, Okla., rather than hold it on the day that honors the end of slavery in the United States and is considered a major holiday by many Black Americans.
The rally was originally set for next Friday, or June 19, the date known as Juneteenth, which marks the day in 1865 when Union soldiers arrived in Texas and read the Emancipation Proclamation announcing that slaves had been freed, the last of the Confederate states to officially receive the news, reported The New York Times.

Trump's campaign said they would hold the Tulsa rally on Saturday, June 20, 2020.

While I predicted June 17th would be a date to watch, it is becoming clearer that more danger may exist ahead for June 19, 2020.

One early commenter (Ra1119bee) at my posting "Take Heel on June 17" mentioned, "Also The Law of the Three is in play as well. So if your target is 17 then: June 14, 15, 16, and June 18, 19, 20 are all possible dates with the same 'energy' as your Target Date."

The 19th is now in focus.

The President of the United States appears to be creating a situation of theater of his own design. The choices for his proposed event is full of twilight language.

On Wednesday, June 10, 2020, the White House announced that President Donald Trump will host his first rally in months on Friday, June 19, 2020, in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

CNN observed: "The decision to hold a rally in Tulsa, a city with a checkered racial history, on June 19, or Juneteenth -- the day that marks the end of slavery in the United States -- is especially striking as the nation undergoes a conversation about racism in the wake of George Floyd's killing at the hands of police officers."

Juneteenth (a portmanteau of "June" and "nineteenth"), also known as Freedom Day, Jubilee Day, and Cel-Liberation Day, is an American holiday celebrated on June 19. On June 19, 1865, the Emancipation Proclamation (signed by President Abraham Lincoln) — which had been issued on January 1, 1863 — was read to enslaved African Americans in Texas by Gordon Granger. Texas was the last Confederate State to have the proclamation announced, after the end of the American Civil War in April of that year. Texas was the most remote of the slave states, and minimal fighting meant there were few Union troops present to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation until after the war ended.

The holiday is considered the "longest running African-American holiday" and has been called "America's second Independence Day," notes the media and the Encyclopedia of African American Popular Culture (2011).

Andy Thomas' The Republican Club, with Trump, Abraham Lincoln (sitting as he was when assassinated), Ronald Reagan (a target of an assassination attempt), and others, with Kamala Harris (?) coming forth in the background. It was featured on 60 Minutes in 2018. This painting was installed in the White House by Trump. See here.

Sen. Kamala Harris, a California Democrat who is widely viewed as a top contender to be Joe Biden's vice presidential pick, blasted Trump's decision to hold the rally there on Juneteenth.

"This isn't just a wink to white supremacists—he's throwing them a welcome home party," Harris tweeted Thursday [June 11, 2020]." 

Picking Tulsa seems like tossing dynamite on a fire, for another reason too, CNN wrote:

"In 1921, Tulsa was the site of a massacre of hundreds of African Americans during racial unrest in the historic section of the city known as 'Black Wall Street.'" 

The Tulsa race massacre (also called the Tulsa race riot, the Greenwood Massacre, or the Black Wall Street Massacre) of 1921 took place on May 31 and June 1, 1921, when mobs of white residents attacked black residents and businesses of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It has been called "the single worst incident of racial violence in American history." The attack, carried out on the ground and from private aircraft, destroyed more than 35 square blocks of the district—at that time the wealthiest black community in the United States, known as "Black Wall Street". More than 800 people were admitted to hospitals and as many as 6,000 black residents were interned at large facilities, many for several days. Source.

White America suffered from universal amnesia until HBO broadcast a new television series in 2019. Watchmen (2019), the acclaimed TV series on HBO, was based on the characters of the graphic novel of the same name. The series' producer, Damon Lindelof, was inspired to open the pilot episode with depictions of the white riots of the black massacre, and based the series on racial tensions after reading a 2014 Atlantic article by writer Ta-Nehesi Coates. Many aspects of the series' plot, centers on the legacy of the graphic novel and the massacre in an alternate timeline in the present day in Tulsa, where racial conflict remains high. The popularity of Watchmen was considered to be the first exposure to the Tulsa race massacre via the entertainment industry as its history was generally not widely discussed and had not been depicted in that form before.

This graphic from HBO's series Watchmen appears to broadcast the number 19.

HBO brought the Tulsa massacre alive, in a time when face masks were worn. It was an extremely prophetic series.

Tulsa has a history that is generally ignored. Coates wrote in the Atlantic article: "Terrorism carried the day. Federal troops withdrew from the South in 1877. The dream of Reconstruction died. For the next century, political violence was visited upon blacks wantonly, with special treatment meted out toward black people of ambition. Black schools and churches were burned to the ground. Black voters and the political candidates who attempted to rally them were intimidated, and some were murdered. At the end of World War I, black veterans returning to their homes were assaulted for daring to wear the American uniform. The demobilization of soldiers after the war, which put white and black veterans into competition for scarce jobs, produced the Red Summer of 1919: a succession of racist pogroms against dozens of cities ranging from Longview, Texas, to Chicago to Washington, D.C. Organized white violence against blacks continued into the 1920s—in 1921 a white mob leveled Tulsa’s “Black Wall Street,” and in 1923 another one razed the black town of Rosewood, Florida—and virtually no one was punished."

My research on adjusting the awareness from the 17th to the 19th was reinforced by such incoming comments, as by JDM: "I would look at June 19th. The MAGA rally in Tulsa is likely to be a flashpoint. See also tons of predictive programming from last fall's Watchmen television adaptation, which begins with the Black Wall Street [white] riots [and black massacre] and is set in Tulsa."

In the spring of 1921, a white mob leveled “Black Wall Street” in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Here, wounded prisoners ride in an Army truck during the martial law imposed by the Oklahoma governor in response to the race riot. (Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis)

City of Tulsa leaders and other dignitaries dedicated the John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park at 415 North Detroit, Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 2010. Reconciliation Park features elements that tell the story of the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. The park is named for Franklin, the son of a race riot survivor. He became a leading scholar on black history. He died in 2009, shortly after the groundbreaking on the park.

Meanwhile, syncs from the George Floyd killing remain to be explored. See, for example, this video here.

Consider the counterfeit twenty dollar ($20) bill for which George Floyd reportedly was taken into custody. An Andrew Jackson bill. I am a bit shocked by the non-comments on the coincidence of it being a Jackson bill.

Jackson was a brutal slave owner who owned 300+ individuals in his lifetime, and he was known to pay extra rewards for the extensive whipping of his captured runaway slaves.

Also, as President Jackson, he was responsible for the Indian Removal Act.

A mounted Andrew Jackson statue is situated significantly in Lafayette Park, the location which had to be cleared of peaceful demonstrators for Trump's photo opportunity on May 31, 2020. The Fayette Factor again.

NASCAR issued a short statement on June 10, 2020 at 4:45 PM:

“The presence of the confederate flag at NASCAR events runs contrary to our commitment to providing a welcoming and inclusive environment for all fans, our competitors and our industry. Bringing people together around a love for racing and the community that it creates is what makes our fans and sport special. The display of the confederate flag will be prohibited from all NASCAR events and properties.”

Meanwhile, more statues were toppled:

Columbus statue in Boston was beheaded.

Confederate President Jefferson Davis statue was towed away in Richmond, Virginia.

The BBC reported, in part, this summary:

Statues of Confederate leaders and the explorer Christopher Columbus have been torn down in the US, as pressure grows on authorities to remove monuments connected to slavery and colonialism.
A statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis was toppled in Richmond, Virginia, on Wednesday night.
Statues of Columbus in Boston, Miami and Virginia have been vandalised.
***
A number of Confederate statues on Monument Avenue in Richmond have been marked with graffiti during the protests.
Richmond also saw a statue of Italian explorer Columbus pulled down, set alight and thrown into a lake earlier this week,.
A three-metre tall (10ft) bronze statue of Columbus was toppled in Saint Paul, Minnesota, on Wednesday.
The Columbus statue in Boston, which stands on a plinth at the heart of town, was beheaded.
Many people in the US celebrate the memory of Columbus, who in school textbooks is credited with discovering "the New World", the Americas, in the 15th Century.
But Native American activists have long objected to honouring Columbus, saying that his expeditions to the Americas led to the colonisation and genocide of their ancestors.
***
Many cities and organisations have taken steps to remove Confederate symbols, which have long stirred controversy because of their association with racism.
Last week, for example, Virginia's Governor Ralph Northam announced that a statue of Confederate General Robert E Lee would be removed from Richmond.
However, a judge has since granted a temporary injunction stopping the removal.
Stock-car racing organisers Nascar announced on Wednesday it was banning Confederate flags, frequently seen at races.
US President Donald Trump has meanwhile rejected calls to rename military bases named after Confederate generals, saying they remain part of America's heritage.
He tweeted: "The United States of America trained and deployed our HEROES on these Hallowed Grounds, and won two World Wars. Therefore, my Administration will not even consider the renaming of these Magnificent and Fabled Military Installations."
* * *
On Thursday, Bristol City Council said it had retrieved the statue, which will be taken to a secure location before becoming a museum exhibit.
Earlier this week, a statue of noted slaveholder Robert Milligan was removed from outside the Museum of London Docklands.
And, during a Black Lives Matter protest in London last weekend, a statue of Sir Winston Churchill in Parliament Square was sprayed with graffiti. Source.

CNN carried a tally of Confederate statues removed since George Floyd's death here. See also the Wikipedia lists, here and here.

Example: In Tampa, Florida, Memoria In Aeterna ("Eternal Memory"), monument is comprised of two Confederate soldiers: one facing north, in a fresh uniform, upright and heading to battle, and the other facing south, his clothes tattered as he heads home humbled by war. Between them is a 32-foot-tall obelisk with the image of a Confederate flag chiseled into it. It was first erected in 1911 at Franklin and Lafayette Streets, and was moved on September 5, 2017, to the Brandon Family Cemetery.

Pearl Harbor Shooting

The Pearl Harbor attack of December 7, 1941, happened 77 years ago. Saturday, December 7, 2019, will mark 78 years.

2:30

At 2:30 pm local Hawaiian time, on December 4, 2019, a male U.S. Navy sailor shot three people, then killed himself at Pearl Harbor on Wednesday, four days before the anniversary. The shootings happened near Dry Dock 2 and 3.

Of the three victims, two people died almost immediately and one was hospitalized in stable condition, officials at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam said.

Notice the numbers 2 and 3 crop up often in this shooting. A total of 2300 American-aligned individuals died at Pearl Harbor, on December 7, 1941.

Columbia

The names of the victims, all Department of Defense civilian workers, will be released after their families are notified.

Officials identified the gunman as an active duty sailor assigned to the USS Columbia. (Please refer to my essay on the meanings associated with Columbia, Columbus, and Columbine here.) The submarine was being repaired at the dry dock.

Victim identified: Vincent Kapoi Jr.

Pearl Harbor shooter identified as Petty Officer Gabriel Romero. One of the victims who was killed has been identified as 32 year old Vincent Kapoi Jr. Shooter used his M4 service rifle to kill the victims, and then turned the gun on himself, using his M9 service pistol.

USS Columbia (SSN-771), is the 60th flight II Improved Los Angeles-class attack submarine, and is the eighth vessel of the United States Navy to bear that name. The earlier Columbia's were given their names for differing reasons; SSN-771 was specifically named in honor of Columbia, South Carolina, Columbia, Missouri, and Columbia, Illinois.

It was unclear what type of gun was used or whether the attack was targeted.

A Synchromystical Place

Located on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, the naval shipyard is across the harbor from the Pearl Harbor National Memorial. Japanese imperialists bombed the harbor on December 7, 1941, killing more than 2,300 Americans. Survivors from the attack had already begun arriving in Honolulu for commemoration events, the base tweeted.

As I noted in "Pearl Harbor: A Synchromystical Place?" (December 7, 2013), the location was associated with hauntings and folklore long before the Japanese attack there in 1941. 

Narwhal

In the wake of December 7, 1941...

A view of the Navy Yard as seen from the Submarine Base in Southeast Loch. Honolulu, St. Louis, San Fransisco, and New Orleans are visible in the center distance. The submarine Narwhal is in the left foreground, while smoke in distance is from burning vessels in Dry Dock No. 1, YFD-2, and Battleship Row to the right.