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The Civil War (1861-1865) in the United States tested, among other phenomena, the role that slavery would play in the nation. During this tumultuous period, in 1863, Abraham Lincoln, at that time President of the United States, produced two documents that, from the then-tenuous federal government perspective, attempted to interweave the national practice with its rhetoric: the Emancipation Proclamation (effective date, January 1, 1863) and the Gettysburg Address (November 19, 1863). The importation of slaves had been abolished by the U.S. Congress in 1807, but slavery continued to thrive almost six decades’ later in southern states. The Proclamation stated explicitly that slaves, at least those within the 10 Confederate states that had seceded from the Union and that were still at war with the Union—would be “forever free”:

"That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom."
(http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/emancipation_proclamation/ )
As the Civil War continued its blood-filled course—ultimately claiming 620,000 lives (http://www.liu.edu/cwis/cwp/library/aaffsfl.htm#CIVIL)—President Lincoln, in his Gettysburg Address, again stressed the fundamental tripartite relationship of being free and equal, having a voice in government, and being American:

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure... we here highly resolve that ... this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom— and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
(http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/gettysburg.htm)

President Lincoln’s words of prospective inclusion were expressed less than a decade after the decision by U.S. Supreme Court justices ruled in the Dred Scott Case of 1854 that:

"Dred Scott could not bring suit in federal court because he was a Negro, not just a slave. No Negro whether slave or free, could ever be considered a citizen of the United States within the meaning of the Constitution."
(http://www.liu.edu/cwis/cwp/library/aaslavry.htm#dred)

On December 6, 1865, the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which officially abolished slavery in the U.S., was ratified by representatives in Congress from 27 of the then-existing 36 states of the union; four states rejected the Amendment, but later ratified it: New Jersey (1866), Delaware (1901), Kentucky (1976), (http://www.nps.gov/archive/malu/ documents/ amend13. htm) and Mississippi (1995). On July 28, 1868, the 14th Amendment was ratified by 28 of the 37 existing states, granting citizenship to former slaves and all people born or naturalized in the U.S., as well as guaranteeing all citizens protection under the law and due process with respect to it (http://www. historicaldocuments.com/14thAmendment.htm). The 15th Amendment, ratified on February 3, 1870, extended the right to vote to African American men (http://www.historicaldocuments.com/15thAmendment.htm).

It is imperative to point out that the voting rights of African Americans were curtailed for the following ninety-five years, particularly in the South, where the majority of African Americans lived, through racist policies and practices that included the infamous poll taxes and literacy tests, among other restrictive barriers to voting. The exclusionary behaviors were allowed to prevail under the rubric of states rights, but were actively challenged by blacks and whites alike during the early 1960s. Perhaps the galvanizing event that triggered the nation and its politicians to finally act was the murder of one African American and two white civil rights workers in Mississippi by members of the Ku Klux Klan in June 1964, although at least 19 known murders since 1955 had occurred, and 19 more would transpire by 1968 (see Southern Poverty Law Center, at http://www.splcenter.org/). Lyndon Baines Johnson, President of the United States, summarized the need for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was signed into law on August 6, 1965:

"Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote. Yet the harsh fact is that in many places in this country, men and women are kept from voting simply because they are Negroes. Every device of which human ingenuity is capable has been used to deny this right. The Negro citizen may go to register only to be told that the day is wrong, or the hour is late, or the official in charge is late, or the official in charge is absent. And if he persists and he manages to present himself to register, he may be disqualified because he did not spell out his middle name or because he abbreviated a word on his application. And if he manages to fill out an application he is given a test. The register is the sole judge of whether he passes his test. He may be asked to recite the entire constitution, or explain the most complex provisions of state laws. And even a college degree cannot be used to prove that he can read and write. For the fact is that the only way to pass these barriers is to show a white skin. This bill will strike down restrictions to voting in all elections - federal, State, and local - which have been used to deny Negroes the right to vote."

Thus, equal rights—particularly the fundamental principle of the right to vote, which is the core expression of U.S. citizenship, as it reflects direct engagement in contributing to how the democratic system will evolve—could wait for African Americans. In today’s U.S. culture, undocumented immigrant groups live within a similar scenario to that of the Civil War era: once succeeding in their perilous journey across borders—a journey that for many occurred one or two generations ago—they are invited to stealthily and meagerly partake of the economic buffet at society’s employment table—through the back door, hired and paid under the table, made scapegoats of and scorned by many national, state and local politicians (to include Presidential hopefuls), who pander to or incite their constituents with sensationalist verbal machinations comparable to the American publisher-driven yellow journalism of the Spanish American War of 1898. The “yellow” referred to the poor quality of the paper, whose color would change from white to yellow quickly—a metaphor for the words not being worth the paper they were printed on.

The metaphor transfers easily and holds true in the case of politicians and media mouthpieces who arrogantly, blithely and erroneously chastise undocumented immigrants, while ignoring their contributions or circumstance. Metaphors have life and have the flexibility to transcend their immediate context. Yellow journalism is an unfortunate but accurate metaphor for the official transgenerational perpetuation of group exploitation accompanied by denial of civil and human rights to that same group. Metaphors such as these critically wound as they bleed generationally across the country. More importantly, they do not reflect the popular sentiment of the people, as most Americans favor legal work status and a path toward citizenship for those immigrants already here in the U.S., regardless of their documentation status ((http://pewresearch.org/pubs/20/attitudes-toward-immigration-in-the-pulpit-and-the-pew).

CONFERENCE FOR THE ASSOCIATION FOR EDUCATIONAL EXCELLENCE AND EQUITY

The Annual Fall Conference for the Association for Educational Excellence and Equity will be held at the Congress Plaza Hotel & Convention Center in Chicago, IL from October 25 – 27, 2007. This conference will address a range of critically important themes relating to education today. Main speakers will include some of the world's leading thinkers in the field of education, such as Dr. Michael Apple, Dr. Joe Kincheloe, and Dr. Shirley Steinberg. Numerous paper, colloquium and workshop presentations by researchers and practitioners will also be featured during the conference. For more information access our webpage at www.excellenceandequity.com.

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ONLINE CONVERSATIONS

Please join us in the online conversations at: http://ijl.cgpublisher.com/diary. We encourage entries from a range of topics. Perhaps there is a special topic of interest to you and your colleagues in academia, the public schools or the like. Recent entries address a range of topics from educational leadership to ethics in research. Your comments are welcomed as well.

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Learning Community comments on the above and news items to Allison Witt (allison.witt@commongroundpublishing.com) are strongly encouraged. Since the newsletter is scheduled to be completed by the final week of each month, early entries are suggested. However, every effort will be made to include those timely news items that arrive anytime before the final week of the month. Common Ground and the Learning Community Newsletter staff look forward to hearing from you.

Best regards,

Ernie O'Neil
Newsletter Editor (through October 2007)
Learning Community

http://www.Learning-Conference.com

The Fifteenth International Conference on Learning
Venue: University of Illinois, Chicago, USA
Date: 3-6 June 2008

The link to the 2008 Learning Conference site is:http://l08.cgpublisher.com/.

In addition, further details will soon be available online at: http://learningconference.com/

www.Learning-Journal.com

LEARNING JOURNAL Volume 15 (2008)

Paper submissions are open for Volume 15 of the Journal.

Submission guidelines can be found at http://l08.cgpublisher.com/publish.html. You will first need to submit a conference proposal, please see details at http://l08.cgpublisher.com/proposal_entry_intro.

Once you receive notification that your proposal has been accepted, you will be able to upload your full paper for refereeing.

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LEARNING JOURNAL Volume 14 (2007)

Paper submissions are now closed for Volume 14 of the Journal.

All submitted papers have been assigned to referees. Authors are notified when their paper has been assigned to referees. If you are requested to referee, please submit your report by the requested due date. We appreciate the participation of all requested referees.

If you would like to referee papers, please email cg-support@commongroundpublishing.com and provide a short resume and research interests. If we have any appropriate papers, we will contact you. Referees will be credited as Associate Editors for the volume of the Journal in which they have contributed (although, of course, the particular papers they refereed will not be identified).

There are two published journals available at www.Learning-Journal.com or select individual issues or volumes to peruse at http://ijl.cgpublisher.com/product/pub.30/prod.1267

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Learning Symposium 2007

For those attending the upcoming e-Learning Symposium to be held 9-11 December 2007, paper submissions are open.

The deadline for double-blind pre-conference refereeing paper submission is now passed.

You can still submit your paper up until the final deadline for submissions, 11 January 2008. Submission guidelines can be found at http://ls7.cgpublisher.com/publish.html. You will first need to submit a conference proposal, please see details at http://ls7.cgpublisher.com/proposal_entry_intro.

Once you receive notification that your proposal has been accepted, you will be able to upload your full paper for refereeing.

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