An Unlikely Patron of Civil Rights Jurisprudence

Although I generally like Chris Rock as a comedian, one of his jokes has always rubbed me the wrong way. Rock told the joke back in 1999 as part of the Kennedy Center’s program honoring Richard Pryor as the first recipient of its first Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. According to the Chicago Tribune’s account: Chris Rock wondered what would have happened if Mark Twain had ever met Richard […]

An Amazing Job: Frederick Douglass, Mark Twain, & President…Garfield

In marking the beginning of Black History Month the other day, President Donald Trump commended Frederick Douglass as “an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I notice.” Quibbles over the President’s use of the present tense aside, most would agree that Douglass did in fact accomplish something amazing in escaping slavery to become a leading abolitionist and visionary social reformer/statesman during […]