Article Link: Painting alludes to Pittsburgh’s working class

Here inPittsburgh you still run across steps like those in the painting and ”paper streets”, streets that only exist on paper accessible only by foot.  

 

Roy Hilton was new to town when he painted “Winter Day” in the late 1920s. As with many realist artists here, he was smitten with the rolling urban landscape even as it was transformed under a blanket of snow. “Winter Day” incorporates the traditional elements of a picturesque Pittsburgh scene: hillside houses, a bridge, a flight of city steps.

via Painting alludes to Pittsburgh’s working class.

Interesting painting of Industrial Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh, by Christian J. Walter, c. 1937

From Explore PA History

Article Link: How a Different America Responded to the Great Depression – Pew Research Center

Quite unlike today’s public, what Depression-era Americans wanted from their government was, on many counts, more not less. And despite their far more dire economic straits, they remained more optimistic than today’s public. Nor did average Americans then turn their ire upon their Groton-Harvard-educated president — this despite his failure, over his first term in office, to bring a swift end to their hardship. FDR had his detractors but these tended to be fellow members of the social and economic elite.

via How a Different America Responded to the Great Depression – Pew Research Center.

Article Link: Slavery as a Cause of the Civil War: Gone With the Myths – NYTimes.com

But a look through the declaration of causes written by South Carolina and four of the 10 states that followed it out of the Union — which, taken together, paint a kind of self-portrait of the Confederacy — reveals a different story. From Georgia to Texas, each state said the reason it was getting out was that the awful Northern states were threatening to do away with slavery.

via Gone With the Myths – NYTimes.com.

Very interesting history of a “company” coal mining town, McIntyre PA

This is a very interesting historical site about life in a “company” coal mining town, McIntyre, PA.

Article Link: In 1948, smog left deadly legacy in Donora Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Despite the efforts of industry to cast the tragedy as an “act of God,” the fatalities in Donora received national attention. That event changed the way air pollution was viewed, moving it rapidly from an aesthetic issue to a public health concern, and spurred local, state and federal officials to control toxic air pollution.

via In 1948, smog left deadly legacy in Donora.

Anti-slavery poem by William Cowper

“The Negro’s Complaint”

by William Cowper

Forced from home and all its pleasures,
Afric’s coast I left forlorn;
To increase a stranger’s treasures,
O’er the raging billows borne.
Men from England bought and sold me,
Paid my price in paltry gold;
But, though slave they have enroll’d me
Minds are never to be sold.

Still in thought as free as ever,
What are England’s rights, I ask,
Me from my delights to sever,
Me to torture, me to task?
Fleecy locks and black complexion
Cannot forfeit nature’s claim;
Skins may differ, but affection
Dwells in white and black the same.

Why did all-creating Nature
Make the plant for which we toil?
Sighs must fan it, tears must water,
Sweat of ours must dress the soil.
Think, ye masters iron-hearted,
Lolling at your jovial boards,
Think how many backs have smarted
For the sweets your cane affords.

Is there, as ye sometimes tell us,
Is there One who reigns on high?
Has he bid you buy and sell us,
Speaking from his throne, the sky?
Ask him, if your knotted scourges,
Matches, blood-extorting screws,
Are the means that duty urges
Agents of his will to use?

Hark! he answers—wild tornadoes,
Strewing yonder sea with wrecks;
Wasting towns, plantations, meadows,
Are the voice with which he speaks.
He, foreseeing what vexations
Afric’s sons should undergo,
Fix’d their tyrants’ habitations
Where his whirlwinds answer—no.

By our blood in Afric wasted,
Ere our necks received the chain;
By the miseries that we tasted,
Crossing in our barks the main;
By our sufferings, since ye brought us
To the man-degrading mart,
All sustain’d by patience, taught us
Only by a broken heart;

Deem our nation brutes no longer,
Till some reason ye shall find
Worthier of regard, and stronger
Than the colour of our kind.
Slaves of gold, whose sordid dealings
Tarnish all your boasted powers,
Prove that you have human feelings,
Ere you proudly question ours!

William Wilberforce

If I have a hero that is a famous person, I would have to say it is William Wilberforce. To me he embodies in many ways who a Christian should be.

Here are some links about him:

William Wilberforce Wikipedia Article

U.S. House Resolution in Honor of Wilberforce

BBC William Wilberforce

Wilberforce House Image Gallery

The Age of Wilberforce

Gathered Leaves: Lessons from William Wilberforce

And what flowed from this? “Christianity without distinction,” Wilberforce wrote, “professes an equal regard for all human beings.” Abolition, public health initiatives, educational and prison reforms, working for better conditions in factories—all these and many more good works sprang from Wilberforce’s commitment to the golden rule.

A Spectacle More Glorious

Wilberforce Central

Amazing Movie

The Philanthropist

Who Was William Wilberforce?

How William Wilberforce Changed the World

William Wilberforce and His Circle of Friends

William Wilberforce Biography

Steadfast Companions: The Story of the Clapham Circle

Resource: Maps from Le Monde Diplomatique

Le Monde Diplomatique has an excellent series of maps available a number of which feature the DR Congo. The legends are in French.

The coveted riches of the Democratic Republic of Congo

France trapped in Rwanda

Millions of refugees in Africa

Africa’s coveted mineral resources

Power struggle in the Great Lakes region

Democratic Republic of Congo’s mineral resources

Africa in a state of flux

France and US’ eyes on Africa

Renewed foreign-power rivalry

The rising tide of refugees

How the burden of the world’s refugees falls on the South-2

How the burden of the world’s refugees falls on the South-1

How the burden of the world’s refugees falls on the South-3

How the burden of the world’s refugees falls on the South-4

The main conflicts of the 1990s

Many of these maps are from around 2000 but they are very well done and still useful in understanding the situation in the DRC.

Historical Book: The Congo for Christ: The Story of the Congo Mission

The Congo for Christ: The Story of the Congo Mission is a PDF scan of a book written around the turn of the century about the Baptist Mission Society in the Congo.

Some publication info is available here.

Resource: Mission Frontiers: William Wilberforce and Modern Slavery

These are 3 PDF articles from Mission Frontiers:

The Global Slave Trade: A Cause for Our Time

The Age of Wilberforce: Britain’s Great Change

The Wilberforce Legacy: Confronting Slavery in Today’s World

Congo History: William Sheppard

William Sheppard was a black Presbyterian missionary who spent 2 decades in the Congo and helped to publicize some of the atrocities being committed in the Congo under King Leopold II and the Belgians. Strangely he was sent out by the Southern Presbyterian Church omething very unusual for his day.

Here are some links to learn more about him.

“Black Livingstone” Blazed Trail in Dark Congo of 1800s by National Geographic

A ‘Black-White’ Missionary on the Imperial Stage:

William H. Sheppard and Middle-Class Black Manhood by The Journal of Southern Religion

Jewel of the Kingdom: William Sheppard by Mission Frontiers

William Sheppard by Wikipedia

Another Tribute to William Wilberforce

This is from a plaque in Westminster Abbey where he is buried.

In an age and country fertile in great and good men,
He was among the foremost of those who fixed the character of our times
because to high and various talents, to warm benevolence, and to universal candour.
He added the abiding eloquence of the Christian life.
Eminent as he was in every department of public labour
And a leader in every work of charity.

Whether to relive the temporal or the spiritual wants of his fellow men
His name will ever be specially identified with those exertions
Which, by the blessing of God, removed from England
The guilt of the African slave trade,
and prepared the way for the Abolition of Slavery
in every colony of the Empire.

William Cowper: Sonnet to William Wilberforce, Esq.

Thy country, Wilberforce, with just disdain,
Hears thee, by cruel men and impious, call’d
Fanatic, for thy zeal to loose th’ enthrall’d
From exile, public sale, and slav’ry’s chain.
Friend of the poor, the wrong’d, the fetter-gall’d,
Fear not lest labour such as thine be vain!
Thou hast achiev’d a part; hast gain’d the ear
Of Britain’s senate to thy glorious cause;
Hope smiles, joy springs, and tho’ cold caution pause
And weave delay, the better hour is near,
That shall remunerate thy toils severe
By peace for Afric, fenc’d with British laws.
Enjoy what thou hast won, esteem and love
From all the just on earth, and all the blest above!

The above is a tribute to William Wilberforce one of the first modern human rights campaigners and activists, who led the fight against slavery in the British Empire.