Freaknik Lawyer: A Memoir On the Craft of Resistance by Harold Michael Harvey

I am a beacon of light in this world--Silent Unity

"He had in his soul all that went to make a fanatic,
a knight errant. Ready to sacrifice himself, fearing
nobody and nothing, strong in body, study in
commitment, full of unending belief."
--W. E. B. Du Bois

Harold Michael Harvey is an American novelist and essayist. Harvey, author of Paper Puzzle and Justice in the Round, is an award- winning journalist and political pundit.He has a B.S. and a JD degree. He is a Contributor at The Hill, SCLC National Magazine, Southern Changes Magazine, Medium, and Black College Nines. Contact him at hmharvey@haroldmichaelharvey.com.

Any book that has the title Freaknik Lawyer deserves some immediate attention for potential readers. For me, the title represents recognition and honor given to the author for handling nearly 200 individual pro bono cases for students who were unexpectedly caught up in what was considered spring break for Black students in surrounding areas of Atlanta.Working your head off free...Now that's what I mean by getting your freak on! Respect and thanks goes to Harvey when he stands by his promise, even when nobody else followed through as planned! You are one cool Dude!

Reading the third book by Michael Harvey, for me, was an honor and privilege. It was the sub-title, A Memoir on the Craft of Resistance, that literally shocked me... We are about the same age, but what I learned about Harvey's early life, in no way related to mine, I was poor white and my mother worked "all the time" to keep four children fed and clothed. But my life was fairly normal for us...

There was no way for me to know up north that a young Black boy was, at the same time,  experiencing so much pain--just to get an education. My opinion and respect for Michael Harvey increased about 100% through reading this latest book, Freaknik Lawyer. Mr. Harvey is known to me only through his books and his online presence. But, after all he has gone through, he still has the character and respect to write in my copy, "I hope you find this memoir worthy of some of your reading time."

When I consider the divide in America right now, it is knowing the author and his books, which helps me have hope that this administration will never be able to incite those of different races that can share lives together, learn from them, and realize while we are different, we are so very much alike in our basic moral character.

Michael Harvey attended segregated schools in his early life.

In this age of social media intimidation and bullying, name-calling is at a new level. At the beginning of the 2020 Presidential Election cycle, I wrote a piece pushing back on people who debated whether Senator Kamala Haris was Black enough to be a Black candidate for President...Damn, a life dedicated to serving others at great sacrifice to myself and my family, and after three scores and nearly ten, I come down to "Acting White...bastardized by Black Right-Wing shills, for White Likes." This description from a young Black woman who was not born when I committed my first act of resistance against tyranny and injustice...(this) caused me to reflect on a life dedicated toward the abuse of American democracy in the affairs of my community. And Freaknik Lawyer was born...

Readers will read and learn about Plessy and Brown, perhaps like you've never read about it. The life that was affected by both is one that must be told from one who first broke through into a segregated school, but also was faced with and learned how to begin to deal with the Craft of Resistance.

Imagine, if you will, that the law has been changed and children were allowed to pick what school they could attend. Harvey was one of the few who chose a better white school, in order to ensure he would learn all that he can... And was bullied and tortured by white students every day...

Education was important to the family and choices were made upon that desire to do what was needed to obtain as much as needed to handle what your goals in life were. It was in the late 1800s when Paul Calvin Coley graduated by Meharry Medical College. Part of the graduation ceremony included: "If the prejudice of the whites against the negro was not dead, it was dying. You should meet prejudice in a Christian spirit. The future depends not upon the color of your skin, but upon the force of your brain, your capacity to toil and the comprehension you have of your profession... And one of the surprising factors that stunned the community was that the top scorer was a "colored man" named Paul Coley...yet prejudice and discrimination also affected this brilliant young man.

For Harvey, in 1964, an event impacted his life was when the students were first given the choice to decide whether to go to an integrated school. The white power structure had a hard time dealing with this change, even to the extent of trying to imply in the news,  what Negroes should do: "Self-respecting Negroes Don't Want Integration"... Michael found that he was then caught in the middle...shunned by the white students...and ridiculed by the Black students. Making it through high school in a integrated school was enough, he moved on to college in Black schools... Michael's one reason for trying different schools was his desire to be a professional ball player...no, he never made it...

The struggles of Harold Michael Harvey may have run parallel with other Black individuals who chose to resist...For me, a white reader, I have to say it was a stunning, perplexing time that I knew little about. Only one Black girl was in my junior and senior high and we became friends...Many whites have never known what was done to humiliate and denigrate those who were seeking education in the south.

Even as the book ends, Michael still wonders why he chose to act as he did and where did he find the courage to have met each trial as it was presented.

What we can never forget is the fact, we first came in chains."

--Muhammad Ali

The book closes with a "Prayer for Relief." I think about the realization that it is only in the last three years that I have seen such incitement of division, prejudice and disrespect for one another. And that, in fact, the Black race is still fighting something that has existed since they were freed from being slaves. I add my prayer statement to that ending of the book by Michael...Therefore, "Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for the Lord is with you wherever you go"...Joshua 1:9. 

May it be in our lifetime that there is no more division based upon the color of our skin...

A Must-Read recommendation from me...


GABixlerReviews

Freaknik Lawyer Is Up for Prestigious 
Lawrence W. Levine Award

Book Launch at Historic Douglass Theatre in Macon

Freaknik Lawyer is only available online on the blog and at

Squareup.com/store/harold-michael-harvey

Adolfo Caso Dedicates Poem, The Empty Nest, For Me -- Cool!

Glenda, I am dedicating the attached poem to you, because you have been a wonderful friend throughout my life. No poet has enjoyed a solidarity that you have given me

THE EMPTY NEST

 (Dedicated to Glenda)

Guided by its own internal clock,
The brown finch

Silently and covertly

Flies by different routes

With grass blades in beak

Into the thickest branch

Of my evergreen arborvitae,

Looming strong and impenetrable

In the corner of my backyard

As though it were holding up

The house walls on each side

And protecting against

Would-be intruders or predators

From the outside.

Through my kitchen window 
I follow each flight of the finch,

From many directions,

Carrying its precious cargo into the tree

To build its nest.

And I feel miserable

Not knowing

Whether it is only the mother finch

Building that nest

Or with the father too

As I wished it would be,

With my other wish.

For her to pause And,

To sing me A love-song.

(Adolfo doesn't see him but This is the male finch singing to his female)

II

The nest completed,

Evidence for a successful clutch

Was in the reduced number of flights

Into the arborvitae,

Now a surrogate

For new life-forms in the making.

I moved to my deck chair

Inconspicuously,

My back to the tree

To avoid perceived threats

To the emerging brood,

My heart in full wonderment

To see the fledglings--

As when I first saw

The beautiful face of each

Newly-born chick

And all the grandchildren

Together with

An indescribable expectation

Of the great-grandchildren

Yet to come;

My emotions are overwhelming

Over this deeply-felt

Non-duplicative joy!

III

Suddenly,

A tumultuous crowing

With abrupt churning in the branches

Brought me to the outside;

Two crows dove down,

Obstreperously,

From the edge of the roof

Into the branch containing the nest.

Before I could take any action,

They flew away with as much clamor,

My mouth wide open

As my eyes caught sight of the finch

In the nearby tree,

Going from one branch to another

Desperately waiting

For destiny

To reveal itself.

My eyes glaring

Between the finch

And the branch,

I ran to the tree.

In bringing the twigs down gently,

I saw the empty nest,

Its destiny fulfilled

To my consternation

Knowing that no amount of despair

Could mitigate my affliction

And the loss to the finch,

Already poised to depart

Without

Perhaps

Knowing

The ramifications of the crows’ action,

Except for me,

A member of my species

With eyes

To see more,

And ears

To hear more,

And a heart

To pump more blood

Through these weather-beaten veins,

Needing only

A small amount of brain

To perceive the pain

Of the mother finch

And to feel that pain

Deep inside my heart.

IV

With little comfort in knowing

That neither crow nor finch

Acted with the conscience of humans,

I am left alone in my solitary thoughts

To contemplate

That no action is without consequence,

That there is little

Counterintuitive

In the existentialism of Jean Paul Sartre

Except the utter nonsense of concluding

That after having done something,

What remains is nothing,

He being an avowed Marxist

A non-party affiliate,

Whose Soviet purges

Both within the party

And through its Gulags

Pitilessly

Executed countless people

And even used each victim’s soul

To define its wanton nihilism

Within the scope of their programmed nothingness.

After having killed the body

And wiped out the God

Of more than 100 million people--

Their souls turned to nothing

According to Jean-Paul’s existentialism--

Now emboldened by the collaboration 

Of Bertrand Russell--

English patriot,

Who demonstrated against an easy America

Not to side with England

Against Hitler’s World War II--

A champion of anti-Americanism

Bertrand also excoriated America

Over the victims of the Vietnam War

While saying nothing,

Not one word

Against the perpetrators

Of the on-going Pol Pot genocides

Within

The various sects of his United Nations’ body

And without one word of protest

From the followers

Of Confucius, or Mohammad,

Gandhi or Buddha.

Russell and Sartre:

Two Marxist would-be warriors

Joined together

On behalf of peace

Conditioned by their ideology

At the expense of millions

Of innocent victims

To grease the wheels of their un-feeling

Human-made killing machines.

But,

Luckily,

The survivors continue to seek salvation

Through their religion

And a God

That can be temporarily denied but not suppressed,

Like the souls of men!

This kind of philosophy

Has always given me pause--

A bewilderment deepened

By my inability to understand

The behavior of the crow and of the finch

Let alone that of my fellow men

Bent on manipulating everything

Including our dreams

Be they a presage of happiness or anguish

Life or death

Or whether dreams are generated

Biologically or chemically

Without answering the basic question

Of why we dream in the first place!

V

Oh, Freud, such a misguided prophet

Using Eros and Thanatos to explain man-made wars

Or repressed sexual drives to explain our dreams

Or drugging his patients and self

In search of convenient man-made personal truths

Not found in nature

Without the scrutiny

Into his self-inflicted enslavement

And to that of his patients

Without ever a word on Hitler’s ultimate solutions

Or of Stalin’s raging the land,

Or of Mao’s ubiquitous purges,

Or on Einstein making decisions against Hitler--

No!

Not one word

To preserve his people and fellow man!

Dying from self-administered drugs

Freud never knew he was discovering the means

To assure his and his patients’ bondage,

And not knowing, when he should have known,

He was void of either Eros or Thanatos.

He was sexually barren!

What am I to think and feel about a philosophy of life

That misses the point on every crucial issue

Of human behavior and solidarity?

Is it not possible that dreaming

Is a physiological necessity that keeps us alive

Each dream reflecting a phase

Of our physiological evolvement

As biological and social entities?

We respond to the stimuli

Of our pre-existing floating formulae,

As did all three men

Coming from the same area,

From the same people,

And from the same time:

Why did Hitler inherit his irreversible DNA?

And Einstein a different one?

And Freud still another?

Why mine!

Why your DNA?

Why the crow’s!

A perfect example of Sartre’s existentialism

Is in Freud’s irreversible behavior of self-destruction:

Which,

Neither ended in nothing

Nor filled the nothingness of phenomenology

Nor alleviated the suicidal pain

From life-afflicting drugs

Administered as wonder drugs

From Eros to Thanatos

As though life-forms could be explained
Through convenient formulae

As in Sartre’s existentialism.

Dreaming and dreaming are two different things,

The one,

A desire of what should be and is not

The other,

A chemical reaction

Of endless single or morphing frames

Without relevance to each other,

But interpreted

By Freud’s self-imposing personal relevance.

VI

I sit in a triangle on my deck

Directly opposite the house

Whose walls enclose the arborvitae.

I look into my own mental images

Of  waves smashing ashore

Scattering untold and countless drops of water

In every direction and just as quickly disappearing.

Which drops are carrying the DNA for new life-forms?

Which drops are destined to enhance those now living?

Which drops are rushing back

To recycle the remnants

Of those of us who have just died?

In my dreaming,

I see the Spring of next year,

The branches greener, more full and vibrant

And as an ever-inviting tree

Waiting for the finch

To make its first pass

To renovate and renew its nest,

To bring its hatchling to their first flight

And to perch on the extreme end

Of an undulating branch,

To sing the love song

Of my life.

Wow! Extraordinary poem which include the greatest twist of all! Life then Death!

We are all so involved as we grow older with how long...will it be... And, yet, that is not something that normally would be on my mind. For the first time, physical problems have affected my daily life...and yet, it is something that shall pass, I believe... The stark movement from watching birth happen almost immediately followed by death is more real than most of us want to see or even contemplate. Yet it happens.

Death has become a predominant issue in today's world, as so much is happening at the government level that forces us to contemplate whether death shall come naturally, as intended, or because of the maddening issues that arise almost daily, sometimes hourly. I have no answers... Just as, perhaps, others are facing the same feelings. Questions seem to become larger, more important when chaos occurs. 

Yet, for many of us, there is a certainty of life after death, when we shall all meet again... Until then, my friend, Adolfo, thank you for dedicating your thoughts, your hopes, your internal, endless questioning... That we two do share...

And then I shall give you a love song... Agape, philia...the greatest loves of all!

Glenda

Readers' Guide to Those Who Dwell Upon The Earth by James D. Sanderson

After I first read the book, People Who Dwell Upon the Earth, I was going to ask the author to write an article to tell us why he had written the book. After I had looked through the Reader's Guide, I asked if I could just share the entire chapter, "A Novel of Social Protest." For me, this answered the question of "Why?"

A NOVEL OF SOCIAL PROTEST

There is really no understanding the poor, the homeless, the disenfranchised of American life. On the one hand there would seem to be enough for everyone – enough opportunity for all – we would only need to divvy it up properly. Because of this, there is a great distance between the wealthy, who believe everyone should work hard and pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and those who ‘are’ working hard, often two or three jobs between a husband and

wife, and yet who are unable to ever pull themselves up. Medical bills wipe out their meager savings. The car breaks down. They get stopped without insurance because they cannot afford insurance this month. They have to choose between light, heat, rent, food and a hundred other things that are getting more expensive all the time.

The distance – the lack of understanding - exists on the other side too. On the side of the working poor. They can’t see how they will ever get ahead. They know the game is rigged against them but they can’t figure out how. When the rent is due they are just as likely to buy a pack of cigarettes, a bottle of wine, or a big old birthday cake for their precious six-year old daughter. Their frustration with ‘the system’ grows until it erupts in anger – often directed at

each other – or ends in defeat and despair.

No one should have to live this way – too rich or too poor, because either extreme is bad for the soul. Yet a point seems to have been reached that leads to greater control of markets by corporations, by wealthy investors, by government cronies. By the capital class. While the working class is squeezed more and more and is in jeopardy of being crushed out of existence.

When the developers and speculators can reap obscene profits, while the butcher at the local grocery store cannot pay his bills, something has gone terribly wrong.

No one seems to know what to do.

‘Those Who Dwell Upon The Earth’ is a novel of social protest much like John Steinbeck’s ‘The Grapes of Wrath’. One of the primary criticisms of ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ was that it presented a philosophy of communism. 

It is that same criticism that is likely to be leveled against ‘Those Who Dwell Upon The Earth’. When, in the extreme case of corruption, violence,

and oppression in a government, the common people are forced to rise up and take control of the mechanisms of power, some form of communism may be the result.

There are several differences between a communist state and a church community. First and foremost is belief in God and the Bible, and a commitment to following the prompting of the Holy Spirit. There is a huge difference between a totalitarian police state and a loving and benevolent Father God.

The second difference is found in the voluntary nature of giving and sharing in the Christian community as found in Acts 2:42-48, and other places, and the mandatory ‘sharing’ that is found in a communist system. Being forced to contribute does not lead to loving care for one another. It leads to deceit and fear and anger.

The third difference between a communist state and a Christian community is the general sense of wanting to comply with God’s will, as opposed to being forced to comply with a central committee or power, or a single dictator. There are many other differences as well.

‘Those Who Dwell Upon The Earth’ anticipates what it would look like for a small Christian disciple group to act and lead in a world that has suffered the great agony of financial collapse, nuclear bombardment, and another world war. How would their way be different from the way of the world?

What we see in this novel is not a turn toward communism, but a way for people to move forward in the loving embrace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This is truly a different kind of Christian fiction. It is literary, intelligent, action-packed – being thrust forward by a sense of

community movement – and very important for today’s Christian trying to ‘make it’ in the real world.

~~~

A Readers Guide - a Study Guide means that you wish to spend more time with understanding about the book, Those Who Dwell Upon the Earth, by James D. Sanderson. And this guide is one of the best I've seen.

Not only does it contain a synopsis, but it reviews each and every chapter telling you what is covered during that part of the story. Reading the study guide, I realized just how much is covered in the book. Of course, just too much to mention in my review, but it is also a simple way of searching for and finding a specific chapter which you might want to review or share with others.

For instance, I realized that I had not one mention about a most significant thrust of the book--that of nonviolence. For someone who totally agrees with the need to move in that direction, I was gratified to see and read how to deal with the elimination of guns in today's world. Even in the book, it was not successful in action scenes. But was quickly reviewed and taught further in the church, classes, and more

Research of related books were reviewed to illustrate the difference between other similar books. Utopia versus Dystopia, noting that this book was written with a utopia futuristic life. While, at the same time, providing a little about each of the references so that further discussion can happen.

Yes, the guide is for both individual as well as group discussion. I suggest the latter since there is so much to explore and think about...what you might want to do to start living a nonviolent life and one that follows the teachings of Christ. Particularly the Sermon on the Mount.

One of the questions covered is one that haunts us these days. Can we, as Christians, really follow the words of Jesus?

There is also a list of ten questions for discussion or further individual study. Style of writing and format is also discussed so that the book itself can be understood from all angles.

Whether you use the Readers Guide is your choice... You may decide to read the novel and allow it to speak to you, which is wonderful. But if you are a member of a book club, or enjoy further study of the scripture behind a book, then I highly recommend this one for your consideration!


GABixlerReviews

May This Book, and Guide, Fill you with Peace and Faith...