I recently uncovered a trove of documents relating to the Madison Family at the Levi Watkins Learning Center Digital Library Madison Park Collection and the Trenholm State Technical College Madison Family Collection.
Both collections focus on the life of Elijah Madison, the Patriarch of Madison Park, Alabama. Eli Madison was born a slave in Alabama in 1839. At the end of the Civil War (1865), Eli and his wife Frances, along with half-brother Killis Marshall and Gadson Draw and their wives, and his friend Frank Felder, migrated to Hunter Station in Montgomery County, Alabama. After a short stretch in Hunter Station, the families moved to the King Hill Community to be closer to town. After a few years, the families, especially the Madisons, had accumulated enough capital to buy a plantation. King Hill offered only small to medium plots of land. The families were ready to move on.
The Flatbush Community, Northeast of King Hill going towards the city of Wetumpka, had several plantations for sale. The families pooled their resources and bought the May’s Plantation in 1880. In 1882, Eli paid $2,380.00 for 560 acres of land in northest Montgomery County. He named the community Madison Park. He and Frances Madison had 10 children and built a church, Union A.M.E Zion Chapel, a school and a community center. The plantation also included a gin house, grist mill, saw mill, shingle mill, a park and a store. The family home where the children were born still stands. Eli imbued in all of his children that there were a part of W. E. B. DuBois’ "talented tenth." Education was key, not for self, but as a tool to pass knowledge onto subsequent generations of the family and in the community as a whole. However, the teaching profession was not the only career he stressed. He told his children, "We need doctors, lawyers, scientists, teachers, bishops and every other profession that will uplift the race."
Elijah Madison (Note: Some people say I look a lot like him.)
On March 29, 1960, the New York Times carried an advertisement titled "Heed Their Rising Voices" which solicited funds to defend Martin Luther King, Jr. against an Alabama perjury indictment. The advertisement described actions against civil rights protesters. This resulted in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan in which the then Montgomery Public Safety commissioner, L. B. Sullivan sued four black ministers mentioned in the ad including my grandfather Rev. S.S. Seay, Sr. The case established the actual malice standard which has to be met before press reports about public officials or public figures can be considered to be defamation and libel.
Jinny was at it again and found this mugshot of Rosa Parks taken at the same time (February 21, 1956 during the Montgomery Bus Boycott). The picture is also from the Montgomery County (Alabama) Sheriff's Department and was posted on the Smoking Gun.
he autobiography of my uncle Atty. Solomon S. Seay, Jr. has been released. It is a chronology of his life as a leading civil rights lawyer in the South. It is available from Amazon --> here.
Above: My Uncle Solomon Seay, Jr.
Uncle Solomon is the son of my grandfather the Reverend Solomon S. Seay. His autobiography (There By the Grace of God) is also available on Amazon --> here. I previously wrote about the connection between my family and the Manic Street Preachers on my blog. Interestingly, you can still pick up the album "Forever Delayed" by the Manic Street Preachers including "There By the Grace of God" on Amazon --> here.
Above. Forever Delayed including "There By the Grace of God".
e went skiing this past weekend at Blue Mountain on the escarpment in Collingwood, Ontario. Jinny tried snowboarding for the first time.
hile in San Francisco on a business trip recently I was able to hookup with old friends at Ozumo (161 Steuart Street, San Francisco, CA 94105 T: 415.882.1333), a rather hip sushi establishment downtown. The food was excellent and the music eclectic.
Above (from left-to-right): Me, Matt, Jackie, Wes and Reg. Matthew Haavisto is taking the picture.
This being San Francisco, I decided to take in Milk (2008) starring Sean Penn as Harvey Milk, the San Francisco supervisor who was assassinated along with the San Francisco Mayor George Moscone on November 27, 1978. The film was a moving portrayal of Milk's life rising from obscurity as a camera store owner to be the first openly gay elected public office in the US. Directed by Gus Van Sant with compelling performances by Penn, Emile Hirsch, Josh Brolin and James Franco; the film, while uplifting, in many ways also left me feeling somehow inadequate and unrealized--that somehow I just gave up the "good fight" and moved away. I suppose I did.
ast week Jinny and I traveled to Caracas, Venezuela. It was only a 5-hour direct flight from Toronto so we arrived in good shape around midnight local time. Caracas has the odd distinction of being eastern time plus 30 minutes.
The office had emailed a picture of my driver so I was a bit relieved since all of the travel websites suggested that riding in one of the many unmarked taxis from the airport was a sure fire way to get yourself robbed at gun point.
The long drive up the side of the mountain into Caracas was spectacular at night with the glimmer of all the lights in the favelas decorating the hillside like christmas ornaments. We arrived at the Intercontinental Tamanaco in Las Mercedes, the trendiest shopping and entertainment district in Caracas. The lobby was full of soldiers from the national guard as well as Russian news crews. It turns out that both Dmitry Medvedev (the president of Russia) and Daniel Ortega (the president of Nicaragua) were in town along with the still floating bits of the Russian Navy to pay homage to his bombastic holiness Hugo Chavez, el President de Venezuela. (1)
Above: Jinny by the Tamanaco pool.
I spent the next two days working leaving Jinny behind to peruse the hotel. There's a decent breakfast buffet, a swimming pool, a brick oven pizzeria and even a casino but the property is definitely a bit dated. You must be very careful when leaving the hotel grounds--only use marked taxis or drivers arranged by the hotel. Tourists are frequently mugged even in Las Mercedes. Also, I never found a single operational ATM anywhere in Caracas even at the airport. You must bring at least twice the amount of cash you think you will need in US dollars. The offical exchange rate is something like 2 Bolivars to 1 US dollar but you can readily get 4:1 from the locals, shops and restaurants. Also make sure you have enough cash leftover for the airport departure tax. We had to pay an extra 161 VEF (officially USD80) each just to leave!
I was free on Saturday and we hung out at the pool since it was too cloudy to justify taking the Teleferico (cable car) at Avila Magica. The ride takes about 15 minutes and promises spectacular views of Caracas and the mountains on a clear day. The swimming pool at the Tamanaco is a meeting place for a colorful cast of characters all with apparently large amounts of money and no obvious reason to be in Venezuela. We quickly meet a Greek-Australian-Trinidadian starlet who ordered us an endless stream of champagne, whisky and brick oven pizza to while away the afternoon.
We also discovered an incredible Las Mercedes steak house called the Maute Grille (+58 212 991 0892), Avenida Río de Janeiro, entre Calles New York y Trinidad, Caracas 1060. If you love steak you will have an orgasm at the Maute Grille. However, please make sure you let them arrange transportation for you back to the hotel.
Above: British photographer Tim Hetherington has won this year’s prestigious World Press Photo Contest. His photograph of a US soldier in the Korengal Valley in the Eastern province of Afghanistan beat more than 80,000 other images submitted this year.
Above: First prize in the contemporary issues singles category was won by South African photographer Brent Stirton. While working for Newsweek he pictured the evacuation of dead Mountain Gorillas at Virunga National Park, Eastern Congo.