Happy Father’s Day Daddy. I know you would hate for me to post this picture of you without a good and proper explanation and to try to make a point of something good.
So I will try to.
This is a picture of Jim Shirley Jr. my namesake and father, taken about 1951 when he was a football player at Clemson, which was then a military academy.
It’s not just interesting because of the confederate flag, which was common, but also because of my father’s journey in life.
My dad’s ‘Hall of Fame’ wall of photographs consisted of large portraits of Nelson Mandela, MLK, Muhammad Ali and Jim Brown.
My father was not just part of what is wrong in America he is also still a part of what has gotten better here since he was born.
Yes he hated Trump and Hannity and Limbaugh. My dad threatened to try to assassinate Trump when he was drunk! But that was the same whitey white kid who in 1951 was holding that nasty flag.
Daddy told me that during this time when he was first dating my mother, June Eddins, they would go to music shows in Black segregated theaters and the White people sat in the balcony...which was the norm at the time forcing Black people into balconies of theaters in White neighborhoods.
My father and mother helped work through so much hard progress.
That White guy in the white suit on the Right, moved to the Left as he left this world… we are all moving 'Left' if that means giving everybody equal rights. God bless
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