CADIPS PRESS Selected Illustration from the National Park Service (NPS) Photo of George Washington Carver in his laboratory. Responsible for over 300 agricultural discoveries using the peanut, Carver gained a professorship at Tuskeegee Institute by the invitation of Booker T. Washington. The discoveries of this former slave economically saved the South.Folks, If you want a glimpse into the mind of this discoverer, you need only read what he says about his approach to life and how his worldview stems from his constant acknowledgment of God. In the words of Carver, "My Prayers seem to be more of an attitude than anything else. I indulge in very little lip service, but ask the Great Creator silently daily, and often many times per day to permit me to speak to him through the three great Kingdoms of the world, which he has created, viz.-- the Animal, Mineral, and Vegetable Kingdoms; their relations to each other, to us, our relations to them and the Great God who made all of us. I ask him daily and often momently to give me wisdom, understanding and bodily strength to do His will, hence I am asking and receiving all the time."
Let's hear about the attributes that yield fortitude and invention in our day and times. Here is the latest entry from our brother, J. Michael Sharman, Contributing Writer. This piece is entitled, "Great Necessitties Call Out Great Virtues."
J. Michael! You've done it again!!! You have given us a better understanding of the times in which we live.With much appreciation for the insight you impart, we say, Thank You!
Your Sis,
--Livvy McDonald :) <><
*******************"Great Necessities Call Out Great Virtues"*******************
by J. Michael Sharman, Contributing Writer
Without it being “seasonally adjusted”, the overall unemployment rate for January 2009 is 8.5%.
There are, though, a few bright spots within that grim statistic, and some historic reminders that grim economic times can create positive changes.
The three states that have the lowest unemployment rates are Wyoming, South Dakota, and North Dakota.
A century or so ago, when opportunities were closed to European immigrants in the East, many went West to plow the Dakota prairies and work the Wyoming forests and mines.
Even with hope pulling them and desperation driving them, it was a tough, tough life back then, and not all of them succeeded. It still takes a special kind of person to thrive in those windswept states.
Surprisingly, the city with the nation’s lowest unemployment is Morgantown, West Virginia, with a very low unemployment rate of 2.7%.
Historically, West Virginians had to leave their state in order to find good jobs. Many people whose early years were shaped by the grinding poverty of Appalachia came out of those hills to reach for the possibilities that their time and place had been denying them.
Now, folks are traveling into West Virginia in search of the good jobs there.
Sometimes, our social position more than our geographic location determines our economic success.
Throughout most of her history, Virginia has been a fruitful and prosperous place – but not if you were a person of color.
The Madden family has been in the Piedmont region of Virginia since at least 1758 when Irish immigrant Mary Madden gave birth to a bi-racial child, Sarah. One of her descendents, T.O. Madden, Jr., wrote a family history titled, “We Were Always Free”. Even though as free blacks the Maddens were much better off than the slaves, most of their history was a saga to find an opportunity in which there might be a possibility for success.
Sarah Madden found a measure of it as a seamtress and laundress. Despite the legal and cultural barriers imposed upon her son, Willis Madden, he purchased land and created a web of interwoven enterprises on the road between Fredericksburg and Culpeper which became collectively known as Madden’s Tavern.
His great-grandson wrote of the cause of his success: “He conducted himself with a sense of quiet dignity and competence… As with his mother, Willis’s skills, dignity, support of his family, and honesty had already led many of the local people to accept him – to a far greater extent than was usually given a free Negro – simply as he wanted to be accepted: as another human being, as a man.”
But after the marauding troops of the Civil War took his property, and the post-war Jim Crow laws took his freedoms, his family was faced with another era of economic crisis.
Opportunity opened up with the written word.
Willis’ son, T.O. Madden, Sr., learned to read from a British tutor hired by his illiterate parents to teach his brothers and he. Building on that skill, in 1889 he went to the Summer Institute for Teachers, a six-week course held in Culpeper to train and certify “Colored” teachers.
T.O. Sr. met his wife there and the two teachers went on to have twelve children. One became a World War I army officer, some got college degrees, and others became successful entrepreneurs, teachers, and government workers.
Those are areas of opportunity even today. Government workers have the lowest unemployment rate, 3.0%, and Education and Health Services workers are in the second lowest category, with a 3.8% unemployment rate.
As Abigail Adams wrote to her son John Quincy Adams, “It is not in the still calm of life, or in the repose of a pacific station, that great challenges are formed. … Great necessities call out great virtues.”
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