Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris applauds as her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, speaks at Temple University’s Liacouras Center in Philadelphia on Tuesday.
Matthew Hatcher/AFP via Getty Images
On this day, August 7, 2024, I John Presco do declare Tim Walz an Honorary Citizen of Oakland! He spoke the coolest political message to fake Republicans….
“Mind your own damn Business!”
This dovetails nicely with my demand to the neo-Confederates who took over my kin’s party…
“Get out!” “Get out and mind your own damn business!”
What you saw yesterday, was a Black Woman picking a White Man as a Running Mate, after the White President became too invalid to run for a second term. Tim Walz showed all the leaders of the world, what a man with white hair – should be able to do! Walz – may become the President. Tim Walz resembles a Turnverein German. Were his ancestors Turnverein? How many dead German Athletes are cheering this most wondrous history? Their best ideals – have come true!
“We love ‘The Coach’ and Kamala!”
For a year after Trump and Pence took the White House, I began to put my life and history in order, and joined Oakland History, where I began to deposit my families photographs – for safe keeping. When I saw Ed’s posts, we became friends in 2017. I contributed what I could to his film cause, and was going to go attend a showing in Oakland where Ed made film about Ron Dellums. Say – what? How come Hillbilly Vance hasn’t jumped on Ron’s back?
When Kamala and Joe won, Ed and I celebrated. He joined Royal Rosamond Press on Facebook, and saw all my White Friends. He bid me to ask them to support his mission to gather and archive Black Oakland History. He made films. This is when I contacted the Belmont Historical Society and posted this photo of my ancestors in the Oakland Hills having a picnic. Hence I think this pic was taken at Twin Pines Park in Belmont. I know my kin are connected to the Turnverein who helped free slaves.
Some very cool people lived in Oakland, including Jackie Jensen who was raised by my grandmother, Melba Broderick, after Bobby and Jackie’s mother was committed for alcoholism. The man with the vest is William Janke, Melba’s grandfather. He ran the Janke Theme Park, the first in California.
I found this great pic of the rail that ran past out Catholic church we attended. The four children dressed in their Sunday best, descend from Carl Janke. A co-founder of the Belmont Historical Society REJECTED all of Kamala Harri’s history, but said he would TAKE the photo below and put it in the archives. The problem with that, Denny Lawhern did not take good care of the Janke-Stuttmeister history when he was alive! It took me three years to uncover THE SHOCKING DESTRUCTION! Denny was all for his British heritage! Did his ancestors help build the Alabama? Thousands of Turnverein put on the blue uniform of the Union – and went into the red states – and kicked ass! He knew Carl built two Turnverein Halls in San Francisco!
The ashtray is my families holy grail. Jack London worked in Belmont before he became a world famous author, and got a large area of OAKLAND named after him. My father had his produce company in Jack London Square. Did Victor Presco ever go to the Bow and Bell? He emulated Jack,
When the two members of the BHS conducted their dirty tricks in order to drive me off, they never dreamed Kamala had a very good chance of becoming the President of the United States. The messages I sent her are in our National Archive. These Foxy Trolls are making unreal history! You got to let them know, the real Republicans – sank the Alabama, and we real lovers of Freedom – will sink Plan 2025 From Outer-space! Have you had enough of Weird Traitors – in Confederate uniforms?
Get out! And form you own party!
John Presco
President: Royal Rosamond Press
“Days after Lincoln’s election, a Baltimore Turner hall was burned, causing members to flee the city — punishment by Southern sympathizers for refusing to exchange their Union flag, even as Maryland remained in the Union. With flags and drum rolls, those same Baltimore Turners joined the Washington group to form the “Bodyguard of Honor,” protecting Lincoln’s train upon arrival in Washington, DC, and accompanied the newly elected president in procession to his 1860 inauguration. That Turner regiment formed the first volunteer military unit, the 8th Battalion, and Turners often served as Lincoln’s public security.”
Pic 5: Ed Howard directing Ron Dellums Life Story film at DeFremery Park 1971
The Turners first dedicated their efforts to advancing the message of socialism in the United States while defending themselves against nativist thugs. They went on to advocate abolishing slavery, defend the Union, and even act as Abraham Lincoln’s personal security detail. Along the way, they drank a lot of beer and lifted a lot of barbells.
In Germans for a Free Missouri, Steven Rowan argues that the Forty-Eighters viewed the American Civil War as life-or-death episode in a revolutionary tradition, drawing on “a shared language and symbols going back at least to the era of the French Revolution and the wars of liberation against Napoleon I of 1812–1814.”
They quickly brought on the Marbles, who had recently metamorphosed into a band calling itself the Loading Zone
Bow and Bell was a club and restaurant in Jack London Square run by former Cal stars Jackie Jensen and “Boots” Erb.
CSS Alabama was a screw sloop-of-war built in 1862 for the Confederate States Navy. The vessel was built in Birkenhead on the River Mersey opposite Liverpool, England, by John Laird Sons and Company.[3] Launched as Enrica, she was fitted out as a cruiser and commissioned as CSS Alabama on August 24, 1862. Under Captain Raphael Semmes, Alabama served as a successful commerce raider, attacking, capturing, and burning Union merchant and naval ships in the North Atlantic, as well as intercepting American grain ships bound for Europe. The Alabama continued its wrath through the West Indies and further into the East Indies, destroying over seven ships before returning to Europe.
Socialist Gym Rats Fought to End Slavery in America
Veterans of the 1848 German revolution immigrated to America with three passions burning in their hearts: barbells, beer, and socialism.
When the moment for revolutionary action arrived in 1848, the Turners were ready. Because Turner societies offered shooting clubs, it was no major leap for them to form armed militias. They became known as the “Forty-Eighter” revolutionaries. They armed the barricades in support of a very basic idea: the people in charge shouldn’t think they are invested with special power by God (monarchs, popes) or by blood (the aristocracy).
I knew Ron from the time we were in elementary school. He and my brother, Ernest, were best friends and we all partied all over Oakland as young men. Also, Ron was working for us at Social Dynamics Consultant and Associates, Inc (SDI) when he declared he was running for the United States Congress. You could say we were his largest campaign contributors from Oakland.
After Ron Dellums became a Congressman from California all I did was to tell him I wanted to shoot a film about his life story coming from West Oakland and becoming a U.S. Congressman, all he said was “let me know when you are ready to start”.
I am giving you a feel for how we Black Elders worked together from our West Oakland childhood to adulthood
“Town & Country,” our focusing on rural politics, is out now. Subscribe to our print edition today.
Harris introduces her running mate, ‘Coach Walz,’ at an energetic Philly rally
August 6, 20246:51 PM ET
By
Vice President Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, arrive for a campaign rally in Philadelphia Tuesday.
Joe Lamberti/AP
For more on the 2024 race, head to the NPR Network’s elections updates page.
At an energetic rally in Philadelphia, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris introduced her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, ticking through his varied resume and often calling him “Coach Walz” because of his tenure as a successful high school football coach.
“In 91 days,” Harris said, “the nation will know Coach Walz by another name: vice president of the United States.”
The current vice president cited Walz’s time as a National Guardsman and teacher, and some of his progressive accomplishments as Minnesota governor, including expansive voting rights measures and gun safety laws. The two stressed their campaign theme of “freedom” and pushing toward the “future,” rather than going backward with Donald Trump.
It would be strange if today the Gold’s Gym franchise began training paramilitary units across the United States — and even stranger if they were fighting for the Left instead of the Right. But at the beginning of the Civil War, the German Turner gyms did precisely that.
The Turners were one of the most influential athletic organizations of the nineteenth century, “turn” being German for “gym” or “gymnastics.” The German immigrants who made up the Turners’ ranks were heavily influenced by the mid-nineteenth-century radicalism of the country that they fled. In the 1850s the Turners transformed their Turnverein, or gym halls, into armed community centers.
The Turners first dedicated their efforts to advancing the message of socialism in the United States while defending themselves against nativist thugs. They went on to advocate abolishing slavery, defend the Union, and even act as Abraham Lincoln’s personal security detail. Along the way, they drank a lot of beer and lifted a lot of barbells.
https://www.npr.org/2024/08/06/nx-s1-5065905/harris-tim-walz-rally
Gym Father John
In their home country, the Turners were founded out of spite. Back when Prussia was still a thing, Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, the “father of gymnastics,” was so disgusted with Napoleonic rule in the German states that he organized a new kind of community center based around the radical idea of lifting weights. Jahn originated the modern concept of getting swole, ripped, shredded, and peeled — all to inspire Germans to reject aristocratic rule.Jahn originated the modern concept of getting swole, ripped, shredded, and peeled — all to inspire Germans to reject aristocratic rule.
The curriculum Jahn prescribed was called Turnen, a paramilitary method of exercise invented to restore a dominated nation’s sense of worth, while transmitting a collective morality through the beneficial health effects. Turnvater Jahn (Gym Father John) was a retired German nationalist reformer who opposed the monarchical-church structure of a government shading from feudalism to early capitalism. He hoped to restore the German spirit and do his part to encourage revolution through exercise.
Jahn inaugurated the first open-air gymnasium, the Turnplatz, in Berlin in 1811. The motto, “Sound mind in a sound body,” was translated from the Roman poet Juvenal. Turnverein associations were designed for the young middle classes, particularly students and skilled artisans. Young Germans were taught to think of themselves as members of a guild whose goal was the emancipation of the fatherland from autocratic governance.
If that sounds a little Nazi — well, there’s definitely a connection, but the attribution is backward. The Nazis later appropriated Gym Father John’s strength-and-pride ethos, just like they disingenuously appropriated socialist May Day. The Nazi view of public health combined the Turners’ group-exercise mentality with eugenic extremism. The concept of a “Volksgemeinschaft” (German racial community) took the Turner community-building function and transformed it into a cause for fascist nationalism and genocide.
But back in the nineteenth century, it was the Left that was politicizing exercise. By the 1840s the Turner movement was the largest national organization in the German states — and politically, it had shifted to the left of Father Jahn himself. While Jahn supported a constitutional monarchy, the Turnvereins became a radicalized democratic movement, one cheered on by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels as editors of Neue Rheinische Zeitung.
When the moment for revolutionary action arrived in 1848, the Turners were ready. Because Turner societies offered shooting clubs, it was no major leap for them to form armed militias. They became known as the “Forty-Eighter” revolutionaries. They armed the barricades in support of a very basic idea: the people in charge shouldn’t think they are invested with special power by God (monarchs, popes) or by blood (the aristocracy).
Marx and Engels supported the revolution because democracy was a necessary step in the right direction, and because the radical egalitarianism at the root of the Forty-Eighters’ efforts was the same as that which animated socialism. For their part, many Forty-Eighters were further radicalized by their efforts to secure democracy, which were crushed mercilessly by belligerent elites.
Nurseries of Revolutionary Ideas
In the wake of the revolution’s failure, Germany of the twentieth century was born. Turner societies, especially in the Baden region of southern Germany where much of the action had happened, were surveilled by police or outright prohibited in the ’48 revolution’s aftermath. The coalition of communists and liberals had failed to decapitate the monarchy and bring democracy to the Rhineland. The real winner was the German aristocracy, who had won control of a dying feudal order — the peasants and artisans had lost, and the high cost of leaving the country started to seem pretty good.
After the revolution failed, massive numbers of Germans exported themselves and their beliefs across the world, many to the United States. Radical Germans believed that the United States, then still a young country, could be guided away from Europe’s reactionary tendencies. They believed that in America, their revolutionary dreams could flourish.
When they arrived on American soil, many post-’48 German immigrants brought with them a handful of possessions, their radical beliefs, and their love of the Turnverein. Turner gyms proved to be a fantastic resource for immigrants: a sort of secular church where German language and culture were celebrated, sport and exercise were pursued, and vast quantities of beer were consumed. American Turnvereins quickly became a vibrant part of a burgeoning middle-class club life in the nineteenth-century United States. As democratically organized neighborhood associations, the gyms were also capable of withstanding violent attempts to snuff out German culture.
In The American Turner Movement, Annette Hofmann writes that wherever Forty-Eighter immigrants settled they joined existing Turner societies, or set up new ones, which became “nurseries of revolutionary ideas.” Adopting a “proudly cosmopolitan” ideology, American Turners swore to “fight any restrictions of individual rights, including the practice of slavery, hostility toward foreigners, and other discrimination directed against the color of one’s skin, place of birth or gender.” In a tradition of rationalism and liberalism, they rejected any connection between church and state as well as Temperance and Sabbath Day laws — to them, beer was essentially sacred.
Pilsners and biergartens were nonnegotiables, linking the homeland to the new diaspora in Baltimore, Buffalo, Chicago, Cincinnati, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, and St Louis, where German-Americans would come to represent the largest immigrant groups by the end of the century.
Cincinnati, Milwaukee, and St Louis were known as strongholds for German immigrant culture, and Wisconsin became especially popular as industrialization north of the Mason-Dixon meant more and more urban opportunities. The South proved to have a bad climate, coupled with a moral issue: the Germans had a deep dislike for the aristocratic cotton plantation owners, and the institution of slavery overall.
As Robert Knight Barney details, the American Turner was “in general male, in his twenties, unmarried, in excellent physical condition through training in gymnastics, classically educated, politically enlightened and motivated, not without some economic means, and quite likely, disposed toward returning to Germany at a later time to support again the forces of revolution against the hated German princes and the influence of their corrupt power.”
The Turnvereins in America became a home for the “children of the revolution,” and represented a “sovereign people’s opposition” to the planter class that had allied with American nativists to maintain a chattel-slavery social order. The Turners saw the institution as pitting slaves against the working poor, both to the benefit of a murderous and exploitative aristocratic elite.
At their highest philosophical register, the Turners wanted to advance human society toward a goal of social justice. As Friedrich Hecker described it, the German-American Turner movement was a “true tree of a purposeful life, with aspirations that branches out into two boughs: one, intellectual and the other, physical — the freedom tree of mankind for its development and cultural progress.”
Individuals who reached a balance of body and mind would possess “resilience and courage, steadfastness and stamina, trust in self, well-thought-out action in face of danger and difficulty, defeat of a threatening force, true bravery in war and peace, moral courage and stability through life’s storms,” which made paying monthly thirty-cent dues seem like a bargain.
Getting in Shape, Antebellum Style
There were only two sports organizations in the colonies: fishing and a jockey club in Charles Town. Organized sport was forbidden by the Puritans, since entertaining competition or attending to one’s body would surely distract from more pious pursuits. Thus sledding and something called “football” (which was not NFL-style football) were outlawed in Boston from 1675 to 1786.
Up to the mid-nineteenth century, the American sports scene involved a lot of cock fights, horse races, and foot races. But as immigrant communities continued to settle in the New World, they brought their fun-time runaround activities. For their part, the Germans liked lifting barbells, forming human pyramids, shooting rifles, and drinking beer.
Also in the nineteenth century, something new was happening in cities: middle-class Americans were living on top of their working-class counterparts. They began to notice something they hadn’t before, when workers were mostly toiling in the fields: people who are exploited at work all day in unsanitary conditions and live in slums without the money for basic necessities are often lacking in hygiene and health. Mid-nineteenth-century bourgeois urbanites, startled by this revelation, developed a new ideology of health and cleanliness, which dovetailed well with their assiduous Protestant morality. Only the lean and clean shall be saved.
The Turners were right there promising to fix all that with a vaulting horse, and some non-Germans began to take interest in them. Soon a far more acceptable version came on the scene: “Muscular Christianity,” which became the basis of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). It was similar to the Turnen in the link between physical fitness of mind and body, but without all the immigrants and beer.
Between the YMCA and the Turnvereins, physical education became a hot commodity. The Turners’s new submotto — “Fresh, free, strong, and true” — came with a snazzy new white uniform. In addition to fencing, gymnastics, wrestling, pyramid building, climbing, swimming, and track and field, the Turnvereins became known for their coordination in military exercises and accuracy in target practice.
Some members critiqued Turners from the inside, making fun of the pseudomilitary games as well as the Turner affinity for participating in pageants and parades rather than the intellectual “exercises of the mind.” Others thought that the club wasted too much money on beer and indulged in “culturally static Germanness.”
But the main critique came from outside the organization and the German community. If you’re going to do rifle drills, you’ll have to purchase some guns. American nativists and slavery advocates didn’t like that. Not only were the Turners immigrants, but by now it was also well-known that they were abolitionists. Such people could pose a real problem if armed.Not only were the Turners immigrants, but by now it was also well-known that they were abolitionists. Such people could pose a real problem if armed.
As tensions mounted leading up to the Civil War, gymnastics displays called Turnfests and other Turner ceremonies became targets for right-wing attacks. In Wallabout, Long Island, a rumble broke out at a consecration after a Catholic priest accused the Turners of conspiring to destroy all religion.
In 1855 Cincinnati, six thousand nativists from the Know Nothing party rioted for several days trying to keep Irish and Germans from voting. “The fact that the Germans owned a cannon led to several days of siege,” Hofmann notes. The German area was separated from the rest of Cincinnati by the Miami Canal, colloquially known as the Rhine. Meanwhile, the Cincinnati Irish were ready to smash “rowdie” faces, “burning with enthusiasm for a battle because they had been sworn enemies of the Know Nothings for a long time.” Two were killed and a few injured. The surrender of the German cannon to a neutral third party ended the siege.
Amid the wave of anti-immigrant violence that rocked Philadelphia, Columbus, Louisville, and Covington, the Turners were determined to protect themselves. In 1852, famed Forty-Eighter Franz Sigel published “Drill Regulations” as a training guide for Turners. The Socialist Turner Union recommended every society acquire weapons, and not just for rifle practice.
Civil War St Louis
On the eve of the Civil War, German papers observed that America was influenced by “stupid boys,” by which they meant the English. Slavery, the church (a “state within a state”), and outrageous levels of materialism seemed to make the basic functioning of a democratic government impossible. Consequently, writes Hofmann, “Many Turners saw it as their duty in their new homeland to continue fighting for democracy, liberty and fraternity as they had done in Germany.”
At this time, what we now know as the Civil War was a nameless set of heightening tensions and sharpening contradictions. To many Germans, with their worldview shaped by the ’48 revolution, the Confederacy meant church and planter rule over a racial caste system. It would resemble feudal Europe, but this time, exploitative industrial capitalism would poison the air, bind huge populations to machine toil, turn artisans into button pushers, and mangle children’s limbs in textile machines.To many Germans, with their worldview shaped by the ’48 revolution, the Confederacy meant church and planter rule over a racial caste system.
Immigrant children would be first-generation Americans if the Union won. If the nativists had their way, the next generation would be a permanent factory underclass.
In Germans for a Free Missouri, Steven Rowan argues that the Forty-Eighters viewed the American Civil War as life-or-death episode in a revolutionary tradition, drawing on “a shared language and symbols going back at least to the era of the French Revolution and the wars of liberation against Napoleon I of 1812–1814.”
The Socialistische Turnerbund von Nordamerika, the Socialistic Turner Union of North America, swore to fight any attempt to limit “freedom of conscience.” The group opposed slavery, nativism, and temperance constraints as part of the same struggle to create a dignified working class. The Socialistic Turner Union guidebook stated the end goal: A “democratic-republican constitution, prosperity guaranteed for ‘all,’ the best-possible free education according to the ability of each one, the elimination of hierarchical and privileged powers.”
Days after Lincoln’s election, a Baltimore Turner hall was burned, causing members to flee the city — punishment by Southern sympathizers for refusing to exchange their Union flag, even as Maryland remained in the Union. With flags and drum rolls, those same Baltimore Turners joined the Washington group to form the “Bodyguard of Honor,” protecting Lincoln’s train upon arrival in Washington, DC, and accompanied the newly elected president in procession to his 1860 inauguration. That Turner regiment formed the first volunteer military unit, the 8th Battalion, and Turners often served as Lincoln’s public security.
The attack on Fort Sumter set off the first call for volunteers, but the Turners had already been busy establishing their own marksmen companies, doing gun drills, and practicing fencing. The “Turner Sisters” sewed uniforms and flags. One of the best-known Turner regiments was the 17th Missouri Volunteers, which prevented St Louis — and by extension, much of the Mississippi River Valley — from falling into Confederate control. Ulysses S. Grant speculated:
If St. Louis had been captured by the rebels it would have made a vast difference . . . it would have been a terrible task to recapture St. Louis, one of the most difficult that could have been given to any military man. Instead of a campaign before Vicksburg it would have been a campaign before St. Louis.
In May, 1861, Captain Lyons assembled his professional Union soldiers, backed up by a huge company led by the “Damned Dutchman” Franz Sigel. They marched on Camp Jackson (a Confederate massing area west of the city), and as the volunteers passed the Turner hall, reserve troops inside cheered and wept for joy. The editor of the Westliche Post, Theodor Olshausen, wrote that it was the Paris uprisings of 1848 again, it was the Baden Revolution again, “one of those splendid moments when emotions glowing deep in the heart of the masses suddenly breaks into wild flames.”One of the best-known Turner regiments was the 17th Missouri Volunteers, which prevented St Louis — and by extension, much of the Mississippi River Valley — from falling into Confederate control.
Camp Jackson surrendered, and the German Volunteer regiments went on to prevent the capture of the St Louis arsenal — the largest stockpile of weapons west of the Mississippi.
Forgetting the Turners
AUnion victory did not prevent a toiling immigrant underclass from developing in the United States. The German Forty-Eighters would go on to battle the Gilded Age railroad barons, with a Turner hall playing a big role in the Haymarket Riot. The “Sewer Socialists” of Milwaukee were the product of radicalized German politics. In St Louis, German labor militancy was on full display during the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. Nestled into the southwest side of St Louis’s Forest Park, a forty-one-foot-long statue displays the Moses-bearded originator of the Turners, Father Jahn.Combining the athletic club, community center, and veteran’s hall, they acquired bowling alleys, built showers and gymnasiums, and ran multiple bars — one for members, the other for the beer-loving public.
The Turnvereins continued to flourish after the Civil War. Combining the athletic club, community center, and veteran’s hall, they acquired bowling alleys, built showers and gymnasiums, and ran multiple bars — one for members, the other for the beer-loving public. At their peak in 1894, there were more than three hundred Turnvereins with approximately forty thousand members.
But the rise in anti-German sentiment during World War I, and then again in World War II, erased much of the Midwest’s German identity. Berlin Avenues were renamed, and German was no longer taught in schools. Between McCarthyism and the Red Scare, the German socialists who built cities like St Louis, Cincinnati, and Milwaukee were written out of official US history. Only the statues remain, though few members of the general public understand their meaning.
The most influential remnant of the Turners is pedagogical. The Turnen curriculum was adopted into gym class. The nineteenth-century introduction of physical education in American public schools was largely due to German Turner influence, which later developed into the Presidential Fitness Tests.
Today Americans spend millions on private exercise classes, exclusive dietary equipment, cosmetic surgeries, megatons of supplements, gallons of steroids injected into all manner of asses — all in order to exude the ideal bodily expression of health. But this superficial vision of health is a far cry from that of the Turners, for whom physical fitness was intimately tied to both making revolution and making merry.
The Turners believed that health meant becoming a well-rounded person — and one can’t truly achieve well-roundedness without conviction and camaraderie. They believed that fitness does not have to be expensive and exclusive, that everyone deserves a place to engage in good-natured competition and invigorating exercise. And finally, they believed that a good amount of beer can give anyone the courage to overthrow the monarchy.
The Jealous Historical Society
Posted on February 28, 2021 by Royal Rosamond Press
Dear Mr. Mayor;
Someone on the Belmont Historical Society suggested I have violated their copyright, by posting an image of William Janke, who may be in a family photograph this is posted on their facebook page. About twelve of my posts have been removed, which alarms me, because I offer NEW family information – that could be used without my permission! Being related this famous family does not rate with this clic who are described as “we”. To be invited by an origination connected with the City of Belmont, to contribute your family history, then be treated like you are a outsider and parasite – is outrageous! This goes against the tradition of other Historical Societies – who encourage descendant of famous people to contribute – because there is no telling what they have, or, if they are going to put that Society in their will. I demand a full investigation. I would like to see your bi-laws.
Someone on the Belmont Historical Society suggested I have violated their copyright, by posting an image of William Janke, who may be in a family photograph this is posted on their facebook page. About twelve of my posts have been removed, which alarms me, because I offer NEW family information – that could be used without my permission! Being related this famous does not rate with this clic who are described as “we”. To be invited by an origination connected with the City of Belmont, to contribute your family history, then be treated like you are a outsider and parasite – is outrageous! This goes against the tradition of other Historical societies – who encourage descendant of famous people to contribute – because there is not telling what they have, or if they are going to put that Society in their will. I demand a full investigation. I would like to see your bi-laws.
John Presco
President: Royal Rosamond Press
braskewitz@yahoo.com
“The Belmont Historical Society Facebook page features posts and information pertaining to Belmont, San Mateo County, California and its history. Everyone is encouraged to send us messages. We will review the content for its interest to our followers.”
Yesterday I discovered one of my great grandfathers founded a Turnverein Hall on Bush Street in San Francisco. This hall was a place one could go hear music and practice gymnastics. The Seamens Friendly Union met here, and the Vigilance Committee. Plays were performed, and debates held. This is the radical root of San Francisco that I have traced to the Longshoreman’s Hall and the first Acid Tests. The Turner hall offered music and other entertainment as an alternative to gambling and prostitution. My father was a Merchant Marine and would be pleased to know the first institution for furthering sailor rights met in the Bush hall.
“All seamen are invited to attend at the Turn Verein Hall on Bush Street between Stockton and Powell Streets on Thursday Evening, January 11 at 7 1/2 o’clock to form a Seamens Society for the Pacific Coast.”
The Vigilance Committee combatted corruption and violence. These were idealists that lay the groundwork for a city famous for it cultural revolutions.
“Flaunting their rebellious spirit, the gymnasts of Vormärz wore their hair long and sported large black hats decorated with a rooster feather”
Above are my grandparents having picnic in the Oakland Hills. There is a sharpshooters rifle hanging in the tree. Janke had marksman contests Belmont Park. Many Turnverein were Socialists and Marxists.
Jon Presco
Israeli National-Socialists
Posted onSeptember 18, 2011by Royal Rosamond Press
Israel was founded by Socialists who got a foothold in Palestine via the Maccabi Sports Clubs that sprang from the German Turnverein, or, Turn Verein, Turner Societies, founded by Freiderich Jahn a Prussian, who is considered by some to be the Father of National-Socialisms, or, the Nazis. I suspect my kin, Carl Janke, was a Turnverein and established a Turner Society in Belmont that later merged with the Oddfellows. William Ralston, whose home was in Belmont, provided the funds to spread the Oddfellows throughout Europe, beginning in Germany, where Jews and Gentiles met in Turnverien clubs, worked out together, talked business, and promoted the idea that their children should marry. Then the Germans wanted the Jews out, and they formed their own Turnverein clubs that became the Maccabi gymnasts who began to colonize Palastine.
After world war one there was a prejudice against Germans, and Turnverein was changed to Tanforan, the alleged kin of a Mexican Spaniard.
The Zionist Socialists of Israel would have you believe, great Rabbis and Jewish Prophets, founded the nation of Israel, for the sake of the evangelical prophets from Ireland. Worng! This is pure Nationalism – without God!
Jon Presco
Copyright 2011
http://art.famsf.org/wa-janke-founded-belmont-picnic-grounds-and-first-turn-verein-bush-street-39933
“W.A. Janke, founded the Belmont Picnic Grounds, and the first Turn Verein on Bush Street.”
Yesterday I received information from Shirley Schwoerer of the Redwood City Library, that said my ancestor, Carl August Janke, was instrumental in establishing a Turnverien in Belmont, and the Bay Area. Was it the first?
“He erected the old amusement hall of the Turnverein, and managed this for several years.”
Janke may be the first real estate developer in the San Francisco bay area.
“In 1849 the family came around the Horn on an old Clipper ship, and Mr. Janke brought with him on the trip the material for six portable houses. He set up these houses, and at once engaged in a successful business, as a building contractor.”
This information confirms my theory that the Tanforan cottages in the Mission, are the Turnverein cottages that Janke brought around the Cape in order to establish a German community of Freethinkers in the New Western Land of the Free -free of church rule! The Jüdischen Turnverein was established for the same reason. For awhile Jews and Germans shared the same Turnverien in Berlin, and were seen as Liberal-Socialists. San Francisco is considered the most Liberal and ethnically diverse city in the world where folks from the old world can practice their traditions of total freedom. Hitler banned and persecuted the Freethinkers, and outlawed the Turnverein.
The membership of the new clubs was more inclusive, as the cor of students and academics which had made up the rank and file of the Turnverein in its early years was joined by a large contingent of craft workers, along with many Jewish members, often in positions of leadership. These gymnastic clubs were often closely aligned with workers’ organizations and democratic clubs with whom they shared a desire for reform and a rejection of traditional hierarchies.
They even imparted a new spirit to their gymnastic program by initiating training sessions for children and, far more radical in light of the times, for women as well. Flaunting their rebellious spirit, the gymnasts of Vormärz wore their hair long and sported large black hats decorated with a rooster feather instead of the more formal attire of the Biedermeier period.
Given the radicalization of the movement in the 1840s, it is not surprising that the German gymnasts were directly involved in the 1848 revolutions. Turnverein leaders won renown for their leading roles in local uprisings,
The Turnverein as an organization was most closely associated with the uprisings in Baden, the center of the radical sentiment in southwest Germany
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turners
http://patch.com/california/sanrafael/history-street-name-the-only-remnant-of-sharp-shooter
The first organization of seamen in the United States occurred in January of 1866 when the following notice appeared in a San Francisco paper:
Fremont’s Foreign Fighters
Posted onAugust 21, 2015by Royal Rosamond Press
The Fremont family spent much time in Europe. I believe Elizabeth Fremont burned the reason why. John and Jessie had a bodyguard made up of foreigners. They feared a foreign invasion, and Lincoln was aware of this;
“President knew we were on the eve of England, France and Spain recognizing the South: they were anxious for a pretext to do so; England on account of her cotton interests, and France because the Emperor dislikes us.”
Above is a photo of Germans reenacting Civil War battles. This is because 200,000 Germans fought in this bloody war. Many of them were Turners. My Prussian and German ancestors were Turners in the Bay Area and had to know what role they would play before my kindred in South Carolina went to war with the Union.
I suspect Carl Janke was part of an effort to make California a colony of the German Unification, if not the Liberal Prussian Capital of a revolt that was taking place throughout Europe led by the Forty-Eighters who made up the Radical Republicans, who nominated John Fremont as their first candidate for office of President of the United States. Lincoln could not have become President without the Germans who must have backed the Fourteenth Amendment so their children could be recognized Citizens of the U.S.A.
In Sunshine magazine, Jessie Fremont says Britain was getting ready to import (deport) thousands of pesky Irish Catholics to California, who could be made into an army to fight for the Confederacy. If the Union fell, I suspect Fremont was prepared to declare a Nation of the West, and launch a European front to defeat the foreign allies of Slave Masters Consider ISIS Slave Masters recruiting Europeans to come take young girls slaves, and rape them. Mary Confederate Generals raped young black slaves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Americans_in_the_American_Civil_War
When Janke brought six portable house around the Cape and erected them in Belmont, it is said he did so to provide housing for gold miners who struck it rich. But gold had not been discovered. I believe these homes were made for leaders of the Prussian Unification and founding of the Prussian State of California and a United West, that was not a part of the Union. I suspect John Fremont gave much of his gold to this Nation Building.
Seamens Friendly Union Society
All seamen are invited to attend at the Turn Verein Hall on Bush Street between Stockton and Powell Streets on Thursday Evening, January 11 at 7 1/2 o’clock to form a Seamens Society for the Pacific Coast.
This meeting resulted in organization of the Seamens Friendly Union and Protective Society. Alfred Enquist was elected president and George McAlpine, secretary. It was the first organization of seamen in this country, perhaps the first in the world. In 1875, the United Seamen’s Association was formed in the port of New York, and it sent a delegation to Congress to petition for laws to protect seamen. The delegation, according to a news report in The New York Times of January 21, was “graciously received by the President.”
No more was heard of this organization.
The Seamen’s Friendly Union and Protective Society in San Francisco did not last long, and the next organization to come along was the Seamen’s Protective Union formed in San Francisco in 1878 with 800 members. It, too, had a short life.
http://www.ohio.edu/chastain/rz/turnvere.htm
Seamens Friendly Union Society
All seamen are invited to attend at the Turn Verein Hall on Bush Street between Stockton and Powell Streets on Thursday Evening, January 11 at 7 1/2 o’clock to form a Seamens Society for the Pacific Coast.
This meeting resulted in organization of the Seamens Friendly Union and Protective Society. Alfred Enquist was elected president and George McAlpine, secretary. It was the first organization of seamen in this country, perhaps the first in the world. In 1875, the United Seamen’s Association was formed in the port of New York, and it sent a delegation to Congress to petition for laws to protect seamen. The delegation, according to a news report in The New York Times of January 21, was “graciously received by the President.”
http://www.digthatcrazyfarout.com/trips/trips_festival_history.html
| In practice the event engulfed the two shows. Both America Needs Indians and the Open Theater’s cabaret theater were mournfully out of place in the rackety, echoing space of Longshoremen’s Hall. America Needs Indians was just a little tepee and some slides, so far as most people could tell. But there were things to do. Mikes and speakers and electrical gadgets strewn around. A light show with strobe. A booth selling books on psychedelic subjects, and another selling books about insects. There were Trips Festival T-shirts for sale. And a shopping bag full of Owsley’s latest LSD was making the rounds of the hall. But mostly it was unparalleled chaos in a crowded hall pulsing with undirected energy. A young woman jumped up on stage, stripped to the waist and danced until Brand got her off. This clinched it for the Open Theater, which was supposed to go on at ten__they weren’t going to attempt their nude “Revelations” in this wild energy. They read their sermons and got about halfway through the God Box skits when it became obvious that the crowd wanted rock and roll. They quickly brought on the Marbles, who had recently metamorphosed into a band calling itself the Loading Zone. On Saturday night the Tape Center was going on with films by the Canyon Cinema Group in something called “Options and Contracts at the Present Time.” The Ann Halprin Dancers, films by Bruce Baillie and Anthony Martin and a Vortex Light Box were going to be the visuals. Sound would come from a synthesizer invented by Donald Buchla, which would perform on its own and also modulate the rock and roll sounds of Big Brother and the Holding Company in freakish and avant-garde ways. The Acid Test would follow at 10:00 P.M. “Can you die to your corpses? Can you metamorphose? Can you pass the twentieth century? “What is total dance?” |
Go Form Your Own Party
Posted on January 25, 2021 by Royal Rosamond Press
Traitor-Trump is talking about forming his own party and winning back the White House. I am a true prophet who predicted all this was coming. The proof in in this blog that reads like the books of H.G.Wells.
I just sent this to former Senator, Claire McCaskill, of Missouri.
I am the Benton family historian. I am trying to find out the fate of Senator Thomas Hart Benton’s statue that was located in the Capitol rotunda. It was going to be replaced by a statue of President Truman, but, the Benton muralist got in the mix by mistake. The statue of Blair does not belong. He opposed John Fremont the co-founder of the Republican Party and first abolitionist candidate who made an agreement with Lincoln to curb the Blair family influence. I suspect there is a neo-Confederate influence at hand. https://rosamondpress.com/2021/01/25/go-form-your-own-party/
Let us not forget the Pig War that Benton oversaw, he keen in keeping much of Oregon out of British hands. We Oregonians will not forgive, or forget, any further desecration of the Benton name as we saw in the travesty of Ed Ray giving into Afta-like demonstrators – who refused to give their names.
I am going to petition for a annual Pig and Potato roast to celebrate Oregon’s victory over the British Empire. There will be a grand tug-of-war with huge rope. Indeed, I will have my Bond characters attend the first – fictional event!
John Presco
(5) World’s Biggest Tug of War – Okinawa, Japan – YouTube
My Letter to Ed Ray | Rosamond Press
During the so-called Pig War, both nations agreed to a joint military occupation of the islands. Kaiser Wilhelm I of the German Empire was selected as an arbitrator to end the dispute, with a three-man commission ruling in favor of the United States in 1872.
Following this reply, Cutlar believed he should not have to pay for the pig because the pig had been trespassing on his land. One likely apocryphal account has Cutlar saying to Griffin, “It was eating my potatoes”; and Griffin replying, “It is up to you to keep your potatoes out of my pig.”[10] When British authorities threatened to arrest Cutlar, American settlers called for military protection.
Oregon boundary dispute – Wikipedia
Donald Trump Adviser Warns Republicans About Patriot Party Ahead of Senate Trial (msn.com)
The former commander-in-chief’s aide shared reports that Trump was preparing to create a third party and challenge Republican lawmakers who clashed with him, claiming there were was nothing “actively” planned, but leaving the door open to a threat to the GOP on the right.
“The President has made clear his goal is to win back the House and Senate for Republicans in 2022,” Miller tweeted. “There’s nothing that’s actively being planned regarding an effort outside of that, but it’s completely up to Republican Senators if this is something that becomes more serious.”
Radical Democracy Party
Posted on July 16, 2020 by Royal Rosamond Press
I belong to a Black Panther group, and in response to a gentleman who said no white man would put down the KKK, I googled the Radical Republicans who specifically targeted the KKK, as did President Grant. Then I found the missing link I have been looking for for twelve years, or more. My kin, John Fremont, became a second Presidential Candidate when the Radical Democracy Party was formed – with the sole purpose of getting Lincoln to drop out of the race!
WHAT!?
The Radical Republicans hated Lincoln who betrayed their ideals on all men being free. Many of these Radicals were Turners, members of the German Turnverein. immigrants who fled to America after they lost their Revolution in Europe. Three of my grandfathers appear to have been Turners. It also looks like the New York Turner Rifles – were sabotaged! They were given smooth bore rifles and allegedly rifled rifles “later on”. I don’t buy it! They were ordered into open fields where they had an extreme disadvantage, The Traitors were able to shoot them at twice the range. Cannon fire waited for them in one field, and they are described as cowards – who ran! They were arrested for not following orders. Their service was up and they were due back in New York – for the elections. Montgomery Blair claims he lost to “foreigners”. How many others would lost thanks to the Germans?
I believe the Blair family set the Turner Rifles up for failure – so other Turners all over America would not join the War Against Slavery. Fremont was the first Presidential Candidate for the Republican, and lost. I have read articles that said Lincoln did not want to defeat the Confederacy. He believed they would come back into the Union if a show of force occurred. However, because the Radicals cited the Monroe Act, I suspect the Blairs and Lincoln were waiting for the French and British to enter the war on the side of the Confederacy. He would surrender, and the Turners would be destroyed – along with Fremont!
The Speaker of the House has a suspicion Trump will not leave office if her loses. He has stabbed Vindman in the back. I believe neo-Confederates put Trump in office. I would like to see the formation of the New Turner Rifles that will be located in Oakland California and St. Louis. Sone have suggested statues of Lincoln should be hauled down.
John Presco
President: Royal Rosamond Press
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_Democracy_Party_(United_States)
The National Security Council sent a list of allegations about Lt. Col. Alex Vindman to the Pentagon after he testified before the House in impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump, according to one person who has seen the document and two others briefed on it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20th_New_York_Volunteer_Infantry_Regiment
Many of the new party’s supporters did not necessarily want it to stand in the election. Rather, the hope was that the formation of a new party would cause Lincoln not to gain the Republican nomination.[10] Although this did not occur, Frémont maintained over the course of his campaign that he would drop out if Lincoln did likewise, in favor of a candidate whose platform more closely matched the ideals of the Radical Republicans.[11]
Frémont gained the support of a number of prominent abolitionists. However, the majority of Radical Republicans continued to support Lincoln as it was felt that Frémont could not win and that supporting him would split the abolitionist vote in favor of the Democrat candidate George McClellan.[12] Additionally, many were less than enthusiastic about the party platform with its compromises aiming to attract Democrats.[13] Frémont continued these overtures during his campaign.[14] As the campaign failed to gain momentum, many abolitionists urged Frémont to withdraw his nomination. No major newspaper supported Frémont.[15] However, some Democrat supporting newspapers such as the New York World did talk up Frémont’s credentials in order to disunite Republicans.[16] Confederates as well as Democrats took a close interest in Frémont’s campaign, hoping it could help McClellan win in November.[17]
Withdrawal[edit]
Frémont and Cochrane dropped out of the race on September 21, 1864. In a letter to The New York Times, Frémont wrote that it had become increasingly clear that the Democrats could not be trusted on the issues of union or abolition. As such, he did not want to act as a spoiler against Lincoln.[18] At the same time, Frémont remained critical of Lincoln, writing that “his Administration has been politically, militarily and financially, a failure, and that its necessary continuance is a cause of regret for the country”.[19] In another letter to the same paper written one week previously, but published in the same edition, he wrote that the ideas of the Radical Democracy Party would nevertheless be pursued.[20] It has been speculated that Frémont’s withdrawal may have been part of a deal with Lincoln whereby the more conservative Postmaster General Montgomery Blair was removed from his post.[21]
Most Radical Democracy Party supporters went on to support Lincoln in the general election,[22] though there were some exceptions to this, notably Wendell Philips.[23] The party itself was finished, having only formed to run a candidate in the 1864 election.
The upcoming November, 1862 Congressional elections influenced President Lincoln’s handling of military operations in the Western Theatre. Lincoln was not so much concerned with a major victory in the Trans-Mississippi Theatre as he was with avoiding the loss of political supporters for the Union Cause in the western border states like Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee. He instructed his commanders to respect the private property rights of supporters and rebels alike unless military necessity required otherwise. This admonition even extended to interfering with slavery in those states. Lincoln had ordered Gen. Fremont to revoke his proclamation of August 30, 1861 which imposed military control over the government of Missouri, authorized the confiscation of rebel private property and freed slaves owned by Confederate supporters. When Fremont attempted to stir up opposition to the President’s order, Lincoln had him removed in spite of strong pressure from the German-American community in St. Louis. Lincoln gained support for his moderate policies by telling his Abolitionist supporters about the Union company composed of Kentucky recruits that had gone home upon learning of Fremont’s proclamation.
Some military commanders including Gen. Steele took notice of the abolitionist zeal on the part of the German-American troops. In a letter to General Halleck on November 1, 1861 Steele reported that, ” The German Regiments of my command are to be kept here [Helena] until after the election –Osterhaus’ Division. They are Abolitionists and are probably to vote for Blow rather than Blair. This was told to me by an unsophisticated German officer.” Although Steele allowed state election commissioners to come into his camps to count the votes cast by his German-American units, he would not allow them to return home to vote. As expected, most of the men of the German Brigade cast their votes for Blow, the Radical Republican Congressional candidate from St. Louis. Steele professed to be unconcerned with the radical Republican views of his German-American units, but since taking command of Osterhaus’ troops, he had favored his moderate Republican and Democratic friends from Iowa with commands and promotions over the German -American officers from St. Louis. Later Blair would contest the election results claiming that many non-citizens voted in the election.
Mr. Lincoln seemed to be equally driven by his loyalty to the Blairs and his concerns for executive privilege. After the 1864 Republican National Convention in Baltimore, Congressman Thaddeus Stevens and former Secretary of War Simon Cameron visited President Lincoln. Stevens demanded: ‘In order that we may be able in our State to go to work with a good will I want you to make us one promise…that you will reorganize your cabinet, and leave Montgomery Blair out of it.”30 The two hour meeting was tense and intense. Colonel R. M. Hoe related the President finally gave his answer, in substance as follows, towering up to his full height, and delivering his words with emphatic gestures, and intense earnestness of speech:
“Mr. Stevens, I am sorry to be compelled to deny your request to make such a promise. If I were even myself inclined to make it, I have no right to do so. What right have I to promise you to remove Mr. Blair, and not make a similar promise to any other gentleman of influence to removed any other member of my cabinet whom he does not happen to like? The Republican party, wisely or unwisely had made me their nominee for President, without asking any such pledge at my hands. Is it proper that you should demand it, representing only a portion of that great party? Has it come to this that the voters of this country are asked to elect a man to be President – to be the Executive – to administer the government, and yet that this man is to have no will or discretion of his own. Am I to be the mere puppet of power – to have my constitutional advisers selected for me beforehand, to my manhood to consent to any such bargain – I was about to say it is equally degrading to your manhood to ask it.”
Historian Allan Nevins wrote: “The Radicals who hated Montgomery Blair were quite as numerous as the Moderates who hated Chase, and their detestation was quite as fervent. The judicious [William P.] Fessenden had fairly well represented the idea of party harmony. Could Lincoln find a replacement for Blair who would equally typify restraint and unity? The President felt liking and respect for Blair, just as he felt respect (though not liking) for Chase, but he did not approve the man’s quarrelsome and malignant streak. Once when Blair was denouncing the Radicals as selfish and vindictive, Lincoln rebuked him. ‘It is much better not to be led from the region of reason into that of hot blood, by imputing to public men motives which they do not avow.’”31
In the spring of 1864 a fringe group of radical abolitionists nominated General John C. Frémont as their candidate for President. Although Frémont and supporters did not campaign actively, they threatened to siphon votes from the Republican-Union tickets. Historian Allan Nevins noted that by the summer, “Montgomery was now disliked in every quarter. He had been barred from the Union League; a radical committee including George S. Boutwell and John Covode had lately demanded his dismissal; Henry Wilson wrote Lincoln that his retention would cost tens of thousands of votes. Men spoke of the Blairs as ‘a nest of Maryland serpents.’ On September 22nd, [Zachariah] Chandler, accompanied by David H. Jerome, later governor of Michigan, had a private interview with Lincoln. He announced the complete success of his labors; he had gotten Fremont out of the race, though not by the means he had expected.”32 Frémont had dropped out without conditions; the conditions were imposed by the Radical Republicans like Michigan Senator Chandler with whom he was negotiating.
Although there appears to have been no quid pro quo on Frémont’s part that he would drop out of the race if Montgomery Blair dropped out of the cabinet, it was clearly the goal of Chandler that Blair must go if Frémont quit. According to biographer Benjamin Thomas, the evidence suggest that Chandler “obtained Lincoln’s assent to such a bargain; for in a letter to his wife he wrote: “The President was most reluctant to come to terms but came.” Chandler’s subsequent negotiations with Frémont have never been completely clarified, but Frémont apparently would have no part of the bargain. On September 22 he renounced his candidacy, however, and Lincoln accepted Blair’s resignation the next day.” Blair told Navy Secretary Gideon Welles and Attorney General Edward Bates as they were leaving the President’s office: “I suppose you are both aware that my head is decapitated – that I am no longer a member of the Cabinet.’”33
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_Blair
The influence of Blair’s critics was considerable. Criticism of Blair escalated in the autumn of 1863 after Blair made a speech in which he damned Radical Republicans. Journalist Noah Brooks wrote: “The speech, which was an elaborate defense of the alleged conservative policy of the President, was also a bitter arraignment of prominent members of the Cabinet, Senators, and Representatives. The speech was subsequently issued in pamphlet form and created considerable stir in Washington, and among the President’s real friends in Maryland
http://www.mrlincolnandfriends.org/the-cabinet/montgomery-blair/embed/#?secret=C7CmrjHP4f
Ed Howard’s Place In Oakland History
Posted on May 12, 2017 by Royal Rosamond Press
One of the biggest mistakes of my life was to not walk thru that tunnel to the Oakland Coliseum in 1961 to see Bobby Blue Bland. Bobby was my man. I had made plans to see Ed Howard’s film, but, I got stuck in the middle of ‘The Tunnel of Fear’ and had nothing nice to say about Oakland. I didn’t go. I and my friends feared for my life. I did not mean to tempt fate, but, there it was, lurking in the dark, waiting for me.
Ed said he snuck into the Oakland and Paramount theatres. Was it to see that strange introduction of the movie ‘House of Usher’? I believe Roger Coreman appeared on stage to warn us we might suffer heart attacks. They had a cable coming down from the balcony on which slid a skeleton. This film is of historic significance.
So, here is the Tunnel of Racial Fear. If a white boy went down in there, a black boy would cut you ear to ear with a razor. The whole design was a set-up. Blacks didn’t go down there unless they scare a white, who will freak out – and go crazy on them! After encircling the Oakland Coliseum with fast roads, they stuck that tunnel in so you could leave the beautiful safe shore of Lake Merritt, and go to thy doom. Of course me and my best friend, Bill Arnold, found many good reasons to go down in that tunnel – late at night.
“As artists, we are obligated to go where normal people fear to go!”
And, there it is, the ‘Oakland Bohemian Motto’. Were there such a thing as a Black Bohemians? Ed said he was one of the first Oakland Lowriders. But, he became a designer, an artist of sorts. In this photograph you see the tunnel, and the apartment where the Black Panthers lived in a penthouse. Huey knew about the Beats. He studied history. Being innovative was a big part of the New Oakland Cool. We crossed lines. We crashed through barriers. Our history is one of the most culturally interesting experiences the world has ever seen. The Black Panther exhibit at the Oakland Museum was the most viewed show, ever, and was held over for – an encore!
http://www.ktvu.com/news/black-history-month/233427712-story
In building courage to go see Bobby, I put on his music and pictured myself going thru that tunnel, with my head held high. I was fifteen. I closed my eyes and made a movie of me emerging from the tunnel, I go down a path of trees to the entrance. Against the wall, hundreds of black folks are lined up to buy a ticket. As one, they see this young white boy walking towards them. I can hear the discussion. The whispers of acceptance go up and down the line. How cool is this guy?
“Did he walk thru the tunnel of fear to get here? Or, did his mommy drop him off?”
“He came to hear Bobby. Leave him alone!”
“How cool is that?”
And, I take my place in the Great Endeavor, the New pertinence. A year later I do a painting of the tunnel, with me walking into it. I render a painting titled ‘The Wall’. I am walking towards a group of young people standing at the base of a wall. We got to live, to dream! There was some amazing dialogue born of our collective fear. I hope we get the crux of it down, before we pass on, because, we told it like it…….is!
I just got off the phone with Christine. In 1967, we lived in a big Victorian on 13th. Street and Webster. She was Peter Shapiro’s lover, the lead guitarist for ‘The Loading Zone’ who mingled with members of The Tower of Power. I asked Chris if she knew Lenny Williams. She was not sure. But she knew Lenny Pickett who directed the Saturday Night Live band. She told me about Malcom and Willy, and Steve Kupka dropping off his cats to live with us. Chris was a good friend of Bill Graham whom I am writing a blog about.
The Judge who heard our case against the Boston Mafia, got the drop on two prisoners lowering themselves down from the Oakland Courthouse jail that you see at the end of Scary Tunnel. Real shit happened in Oakland. Real people did real things.
I was the Artist in residence. My studio was next to the sound room. One Sunday afternoon, as I am applying colors to my seascape, I hear Linda Tillery’s audition. Old blues guys begin dropping by for a jam.
Jon Presco
http://kakakiki.blogspot.com/2006/
A fixture of the nightclub scene rides off into the sunset. Will there be an encore?
Lee Hildebrand, Special to The Chronicle
Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, July 24, 2007
As Jay Payton scurried around Bates Hall Sunday evening, conversing with old friends and making sure the show was running smoothly, much as he had in Bay Area nightclubs for the past half-century, he paused briefly to cut a few steps alongside couples line dancing the electric slide to the throbbing grooves of Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up.” Hip problems may have forced Payton, who launched a career as a tap dancer at Harlem’s Apollo Theater in 1947, to drop hoofing from his act some years back, but the spirits were simply too high for his feet to fail him at that moment.
Dressed in their clubgoing finest, some 200 fellow entertainers, former club owners, friends, family and fans gathered at the East Oakland banquet hall for a dinner/dance that doubled as a celebration of Payton’s 60th anniversary in show business and his retirement party. Health concerns, however, did not cause Payton, who remains lean and limber at 81, to decide to throw in the towel. Economics were the key issue. For the first time since his 1954 arrival in the Bay Area, the Asheville, N.C.-born entertainer can find no steady work as an emcee and comedian.
“We haven’t got one decent black club in the whole Bay Area,” Payton said prior to the event. The presence Sunday of four of his former employers – Esther Mabry of Esther’s Orbit Room, Ruthie Labee of Ruthie’s Inn, Ed Howard of Ed Howard’s Place and Irvin “Dusty” Williams of Jimmie’s Entertainment Complex – drove his point home. None remain in the club business, with the exception of Mabry, who still runs her restaurant and bar on Seventh Street in West Oakland. She presented major R&B attractions such as Lowell Fulson, Charles Brown and Al Green in the 1960s and early ’70s, before her former property became a post office parking lot, but her present location is too small for live entertainment.
Also among those assembled were vocalists Lenny Williams, Terrible Tom, Camille LaVah and the Hartfield Brothers, guitarist Marvin Holmes and comedian Finney Mo – remnants of a Bay Area African American club scene that thrived before disco began putting a damper on live R&B, and hip-hop finally buried what was left of it.
Latest entertainment videos
Payton was the Godfather of Bay Area R&B, the glue that held the scene together, particularly during the 29 years (1968-97) that he produced an annual event called the Top Star Awards at Bimbo’s 365 Club, the Claremont Hotel and other venues. It served as a counterbalance to the better-known Bay Area Music Awards, or Bammies, which in its formative years largely ignored R&B.
ED HOWARD’S LIFE STORY PART (8)
PRODUCED CONGRESSMAN RON DELLUMS (R.I.P.) LIFE STORY FILM 1970.
My third venture in producing my own productions was to, write, direct, and produce the film I called the “Life Story of Congressman Ron Dellums” (R.I.P.).
I knew Ron from the time we were in elementary school. He and my brother, Ernest, were best friends and we all partied all over Oakland as young men. Also, Ron was working for us at Social Dynamics Consultant and Associates, Inc (SDI) when he declared he was running for the United States Congress. You could say we were his largest campaign contributors from Oakland.
After Ron Dellums became a Congressman from California all I did was to tell him I wanted to shoot a film about his life story coming from West Oakland and becoming a U.S. Congressman, all he said was “let me know when you are ready to start”.
I am giving you a feel for how we Black Elders worked together from our West Oakland childhood to adulthood
Friends, I hope you enjoyed the first seven posts in our series detailing the life of Oakland original pioneer, film maker, engineer, TV host, night club owner–just to name a few titles–Mr. Ed Howard.
Be sure check out the West Oakland Stories short historical film, as well as the brief documentary “Between Black & White” detailing the historical alliances between Greek & Black communities. Both videos are not to be missed! Among one another, let’s put the No Negative Speak movement into practice.
Apollo Papafrangou
In our eighth segment, Mr. Howard details his venture as a filmmaker in writing, directing, and producing a film about the life of congressman Ron Dellums.
Follow Ed Howard’s story! Click the link for episodes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6A, 6B, and 7: www.westoaklandstories.org
Copyright © 2020, West Oakland Stories Positive Feeling Movement Organization
Pic 3: Ed Howard leaning on his ragtop Cadillac with Ron D. campaign poster on his door 1970
Pic 5: Ed Howard directing Ron Dellums Life Story film at DeFremery Park 1971
Pic 7: Ed Howard directing Ron Dellums Life Story film at DeFremery Park 1971
Post navigation
PreviousPrevious post:ED HOWARD LIFE STORY PART 7
NextNext post:ED HOWARD’S LIFE STORY – PART 9
© 2019. West Oakland Stories Positive Feeling Movement Inc.
Rosamond Press 
Leave a comment