BIO
Besides being a facilitator of race relations, my most prestigious achievement was being promoted to Chief Navy Counselor, now retired. However, my most precious title is Dad/Granddad, commanding my reason for writing "Guidance Against the Odds," as my book simultaneously bleeds a patriotic sense while omitting the overflow of hatred encountered as the glass ceiling prevailed, not only with women but minorities in general. One man's first 39 years of life struggle through intentional strife upon the soul.
Although born during the period known euphemistically as Jim Crow, I was shielded from the existence of hate through the Grace of God by two loving parents. However, the '1950s' was the decade of transitioning. from the passive, imaginative stage of adolescents into a cesspool of hate. My first grip on reality was "THE NEGRO MOTORIST GREEN BOOK." It was a guide to where Black travelers could safely eat, gas up, and lodge and other needed services where they would be welcomed. It gave me a grasp on reality. Why we always My love of reading, my nemesis, gave me nightmares. The main course was the newspapers. In 1955, Emmett Louis Till was lynched in Mississippi. I was eleven—the Little Rock Nine in 1957, not to mention the local denigration of African Americans.
The '60s', after "Bloody Sunday," and through the love of reading, I came upon the untold horrors inflicted for hundreds of years by the proactive minefields through the ideology of supremacy, a dominance reinforced by brutality and brainwashing. "Brainwashed" Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority, by Tom Burrell, read in 2010, seeded the title of my book.
In the '70s', to survive, I learned to navigate those impetuous minefields, the institutional standards built with glass ceilings. Ceilings that turned a blind eye while glaring down upon the blatant injustices that systematically marinated upon a people. A glass ceiling that could not negate the wording of the Uniform Code of military justice, and by Divine Light, in 1973, I was choosing to become a Racial Awareness Facilitator. It was not a theophany, but God had to be near when an invite was received unexpectedly to join a Masonic Lodge.
By the '80s', there was this robust acceptance to the realization that racism was progressive and a cancer to America's soul. Like an unwanted tattoo— even if removed, the scare would be everlasting. Reality became embedded. My blackness was a license for the propensity for evil to bestowed upon me.
In the '90s' my fears were exacerbated by Rodney King's image and swirling nightsticks. The act of driving, the epitome of being black, and even then, the sincerity in his words for America to hear. 'Can't we all just get along?' A teachable moment!
Because of the 2020 election, the minefields are more active than ever. Indicative of January 6th, 2021. Commanding the need to share thoughts from the "Seat of My Soul", to the "Better Angels of our Nature" through https://bookmystorydomain.blog/
and http://www.bookmystory.net as an antidote to fake news and the circumventing of critical race theory has become priority one for me.
Each night I pray and by morning God has given me another brick to lay.
Henry L Faulkner
Chief Navy Counselor
United States Navy Ret.
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Long ago, while at sea...
There was this hand that reached out to me.
It had a glow bright with spree...
and then it proclaimed me
Henry Lee....
I did not hide…nor did I dart, as it warmed the cockles of my heart.
Of a speaking hand, it was scripture, I did not flee, as I knew --- it was clearly ... God and Me.
