BIO
Besides being a Facilitator of Race Relations, my most prestigious achievement 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 the book simultaneously bleeds a patriotic sense and brings the public into the fold.
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. In 1955 Emmett Louis Till was lynched in Mississippi. I was eleven. It gave me nightmares.
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.
By the '80s', there was still this reluctant acceptance, 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.
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.
