Grandson of slaves: Obama is our Moses

CNN ^ | January 12, 2009 | Wayne Drash

[rightwingintelligentsia]

Editor's note: The n-word appears in this piece because CNN feels the context in which it is used is pertinent to the story of James "Little Man" Presley.

SLEDGE, Mississippi (CNN) -- James Presley stands amid chopped cotton, the thick Mississippi mud caked on his well-worn boots. A smile spreads across his face when he talks about voting for Barack Obama and what that might mean for generations to come. His voice picks up a notch. He holds his head up a bit higher.

"There's a heap of pride in voting for a black man," he says.

At 78, Presley is a legend of the past living in the present and now hopeful for the future. A grandson of slaves, he's one of the few men left in America so closely tied to his slave past, still farming cotton on the same land as his ancestors. He's picked cotton since he was just 6 years old.

He and his wife of 57 years, Eva May, raised 13 children and six grandchildren in a cypress-sided house in the middle of cotton fields in northwestern Mississippi. He was a sharecropper most his life, but rarely qualified for food stamps.

--snip--

He's lived a raw-knuckled life where hope moved at a molasses-slow pace. The last time he had hope for a better future was four decades ago -- first with President John F. Kennedy and then with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Obama has changed everything to the poor in these parts.

[ETL]

Louis Farrakhan, at the annual Saviours' Day celebration in Chicago, Feb. 25, 2008: "This young man is the hope of the entire world that America will change and be made better"..."If you look at Barack Obama's audiences and look at the effect of his words, those people are being transformed."
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23333598/

Video of Farrakhan's Obama endorsement at the above 'annual Saviours' Day celebration in Chicago, Feb. 25, 2008'. Hear him call Obama "The Messiah" And speak of "universal change":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OowxMcVTjTE

[ETL]

[DAVEY CROCKETT]

A grandson of slaves time line dont work.

This guy is 78 born in 1930, so if his father was say 20 when he was born his father was born in 1910 and his grandfather if the father was 20 at birth of grand father was 1890, slavery was well over for 40 years.

Add 10 years all around still doesn't work.

[MEGoody]

The last time he had hope for a better future was four decades ago -- first with President John F. Kennedy and then with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Mr. Presley, I hope you know that by taking pride in 'voting for a black man' you violated every goal that MLK, Jr. had. He wanted people judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.

Shame on you, Mr. Presley.

[chris_bdba]

I’m afraid that they are going to be deeply dissappointed in his Presidency and that be electing the first being a compltely unqualifed person to assume the position that it will be a very long time until the 2nd is elected.

[50sDad]

The n-word appears in this piece because CNN completely endorses the idea that when a black person says it, it's "cool".

[chris_bdba]

be=by

[Palladin]

Come on, everyone. Let’s enjoy this moment in history without being bitter or racist.

The honeymoon will be over soon enough.

[RKV]

So a black man is president. Well there goes the rationale for affirmative action. Time to repeal that nonsense.

[Iron Munro]

A grandson of slaves time line don't work.

Unless his grandfather was a slave in Africa where black on black slavery was practiced well into the last century (and probably still exists today).

[Augustinian monk]

That’s a joke right? It doesn’t matter how poorly he performs he will still get their votes. eg- all the failing cities and their mayors.

[Maceman]

The National Black Republican Association has issued a petition to Barack Hussein Obama, the leader of the Democratic Party, requesting that Obama issue a formal proclamation of apology for the Democratic Party's 150-year history of racism.

OBAMA, CAN YOU SPARE BLACKS A PROCLAMATION?

[rollo tomasi]

[lonestar]

Phoney baloney.

[ArrogantBustard]

"There's a heap of pride in voting for a black man," he says.

That's racist. If these racist jackasses would just admit being racist, and quit hectoring other about supposed racism where none exists, I wouldn't really mind.

The hypocrisy, though, is nauseating.

[RipSawyer]

He worked the fields when he was 6, the age of a typical kindergartner these days. “I was making 50 cents a day, from sunup to sundown.”

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This sounds suspicious. “Little Man” would have been 6 in 1936 and I can’t imagine someone paying him fifty cents a day at age 6. My father used to speak of working all day for fifty cents back then and he was a strong, healthy 6 foot 2 inch white man of 23 years who could read and write, measure land accurately, run a farm and do carpentry. I expect a 6 year old would have been lucky to get fifteen cents.

[Wolfstar]

A grandson of slaves time line dont work.

The father died in 1935. If, in the article, they gave his age at time of death, I missed it. The former slave grandfather died before the now 78-year-old grandson's birth in 1930. Again, no details are given as to grandfather's date of death and age at the time of death.

In any case, the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1862. If the grandfather was a child at the time, and if he was in his late 30's or early 40's when his son (who became the father of the subject man in this article) was born, then the timeline would work.

Say the slave grandfather was 5 in 1862. He would have turned 40 in 1897. If his son was born that year, he would have been 33 when the grandson (now 78) was born in 1930.

So it is possible that this man was the grandson of man who was born into slavery. The grandfather could even have been 10 or 12 years old in 1862, and the timeline would still work. However, the grandfather would have lived the majority of his life as a free man.

[RipSawyer]

Wow, I think Obama should abolish slavery and set this old man free.
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Yeah, they make it sound as though he is STILL picking cotton and some damnfool yankee will be ignorant enough to believe it.

[laterldf]

Sledge Miss.?

I’m surprised that the CNN article failed to mention another son of a poor Sledge sharecropper—the great C&W and Grand Ole Opry star performer Charley Pride. He even wrote and sang about A Cottonpicking Mississippi Delta Town.

They would have been featuring an inspirational and talented person who achieved great success no matter where he was born, what color he was, or that he was bipolar.
Lew, in Kansas (a Charley Pride fan)

[CodeToad]

Obama has no family of slave lineage. He is also only about 10% black. I do believe Obama is more white than he is black.