By Tricia Lindsay, Esq. The People’s Advocate 148th Anniversary Lincoln Dinner recipient of the Medical Freedom award
I have always been a champion for justice and a voice for those who are often overlooked and ignored in our society. Ever since I can remember, I have always taken a stand against injustice in any form, no matter how slight, and have spoken up for the marginalized members of our society. This is evident in my life’s work as I have consistently worked in a position of service and advocacy, seeking to effectuate positive change in the lives of others, be it through my former career as an educator in the New York City and Yonkers school districts, or as a community advocate through work in my church and within the community of Harlem, New York, or during my time as the Chairperson of the Scribe’s Institute serving the children and families in Hartford, Connecticut and the surrounding communities. Service to others is how I believe one should live their lives and if you have been blessed with God given attributes which naturally lend themselves to this life work, then it is your duty, and my duty, to do just that, serve others. It is my obligation to do that which I have not only been called, but also chosen to do.
By: Bobbie Anne Flower Cox, Esq. Lincoln Dinner American Patriot of the Year Honoree
Imagine a land where the government has the shocking power to lock you up simply because the unelected bureaucrats in the Health Department think that you might, possibly have a communicable disease. They don’t have to prove you are sick or that you might pose a threat to others. They just need to think that, maybe, you were possibly exposed to a disease. And when I say “lock you up,” I mean lock you in your home, or force you from your home into a facility, detention center, camp (pick your noun) that they get to choose, and you must stay there for however long they want. No time limit; so it could be for days, weeks, months, years….
Barbara from Harlem, known as the “Godmother of Black Conservatives” was a Democrat by default, meaning if you’re Black, you’re considered a Democrat by default. Active in NAACP and Charlie Rangel Club, she walked away and is now telling the story of her awakening to the world through her book “Escaping the Racism of Low Expectations.”
By Philip Orenstein President, Queens Village Republican Club
Steve Bannon had Dan Schultz on a recent War Room podcast presenting a course on “personal political empowerment,” and exhorted all his subscribers to “pound into Dan Schultz’s information today.” His book “How to Get Into The Real Ball Game Of Politics Where You Live To Help President Donald Trump Make America Great Again” is available on Amazon, and his website is www.PrecinctStrategy.com. Get the book and check out the website today!
For more than a decade, Daniel Schultz has been pioneering the Precinct Strategy throughout America as a way for conservatives to take over the Republican Party, which has become the party of “fake Republicans,” or RINOs like Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney, Ronna Romney McDaniel, Karl Rove and all the rest. He has been urging conservatives to get involved, become active Republicans and to become the Republican Party. You do this simply by becoming Precinct Committeemen, or as it’s known in New York State, County Committee members, which he deems the most powerful political office in America, because they are closest to the voter.
Founded in 1877 in the county of Queens, Long Island by Cornelia Stewart in memory of her department store and railroad capitalist husband Alexander Turner Stewart, The Cathedral School of St. Mary educated young girls in Garden City, NY until 1991. This independent school is where I learned how to lead teams and clubs, play sports, stretch my skills while progressing in Math and Science. I did not want to attend this girls college preparatory school, but when I think now of all the girls in the 1800’s – regardless of race who were not given or allowed to have an independent education that allowed one to gain information, analyze and think outside the box, I become disappointed in how ungrateful I have become. Such a school Harriet Beecher Stowe and her sisters would relish to attend and run. The independence an education affords one, lasts a lifetime.
When I think of my black and white saddle shoes stepping in the same spot on the wooden steps worn out by 100 years of girls leading to the chapel in the Old Building – where for 50 years those girls could not vote, I remember how I felt then that I had an obligation to do better – to serve just like those girls before me who wore out the steps climbing to their futures. That notion of academic excellence and serving others is steeped in independent schools and those who are independent learners. My education was not so different from many who attended or formed female seminaries like Harriet Beecher Stowe. Charged with helping others, Harriet Beecher Stowe affected the Republican presidency of an unlikely office holder – Abraham Lincoln. Contemporaries, Abraham Lincoln and Harriet Beecher Stowe were examples of those who were not considered capable of education – one being poor and the other being female.
Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Republican Woman?
Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, impacted the presidency. One cannot say definitively that she was a member of the new Republican Party which was formed in 1854. Women were not allowed to vote during Stowe’s lifetime, but she petitioned Abraham Lincoln for an audience despite her disenfranchisement-and she got it.
In 1854, the Republican Party was formed mainly in opposition to the Kansas Nebraska Act that required residents to vote whether the territories acquired as a result of the Mexican-American War (1846-48) would be free or slave. John C. Fremont lost the election of 1856, but the outcome was different in 1860. Lincoln was the second Republican to run for the presidency and the first to win. Harriet Stowe had a vested interest in one of his platforms – slavery. Stowe, a wife, author, mother, abolitionist, and descendent of a famous social activist religious family, became so upset when Lincoln fired Fremont, the first presidential Republican candidate when Fremont freed the slaves in territories captured by the Union. Perhaps she thought, “How could a Republican disrespect the first Republican presidential candidate whose platform was to end slavery?”
Why did Harriet Beecher Stowe Visit Lincoln
Harriet Beecher Stowe wanted to visit Abraham Lincoln to tell him to get on with it – free the slaves immediately. Stowe had been very critical of Lincoln because he stated that he neither had intention of saving or destroying slavery because his main obligation was to “…save the union…” (www.mr.lincolnswhitehouse.org). Besides that, Lincoln had dismissed John Fremont from his post and overruled his decision to free the slaves in territories captured by the Union. By September, 1861, Stowe was calling for immediate emancipation of the slaves. This was five months after the firing of cannons on Union ships at Sumter, South Carolina – an action which started the Civil War. Stowe believed that Lincoln was acting too slowly in the emancipation of slaves and she was determined to go quickly to “…Washington to offer him advice.” (www.mr.lincolnswhitehouse.org)
Another reason for her visit may be that she had become a vocal abolitionist once the Fugitive Slave Act had been passed in 1850. The Act obliged every citizen to return runaway slaves to their masters or face punishment. She had seen how whites in the 1830’s through 1840’s, especially the Irish, fought and killed freed black men in Ohio because the freedmen possessed an economic threat to all whites at the lower economic end.
What Qualifications Did Stowe Have to Visit the President?
This was a bold move on the part of a woman during the nineteenth century, but she was a known author-respected by most in the North for exposing the life of slaves and reviled by many in the South for her negative portrayal of slavery in her best selling book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The South saw her book as propaganda. She also was an anti-slavery activist since her days living in Ohio where she saw a slave auction. Her father, Rev. Lyman Beecher moved his large family from Connecticut to Ohio Lane Theology Seminary of which he presided in the 1830’s. Rev. Lyman Beecher was a Second Great Awakening Presbyterian evangelist who believed in the social activism and the rigorous education of his children-especially his girls.
At Lane Seminary, Stowe was able to attend debates on abolition and see firsthand the institution of slavery in action. The education she received in Connecticut at various seminaries allowed her to help her sister, East Hampton, New York born Catharine Beecher, run the Hartford Female Seminary before moving to Ohio. Once in Ohio, Stowe helped Catharine to open another school. The schools that these sisters attended or opened were not the usual dame schools for girls which taught etiquette, embroidery, music, but rather these Beecher girls learned the same subjects as the boys-math, natural sciences, rhetoric, and literature. Catharine was also noted for introducing physical education for the girls-a radical move during that time which believed that females were too frail for exercise.
Like Catharine, Harriet was a writer and lecturer. Stowe entered her compositions for publication while she was in seminary. After she married her husband in 1836, the Rev. Calvin E. Stowe, whom she met at the literary club at Lane Seminary, Stowe moved to Brunswick, Maine where her husband was teaching at Bowdoin. Her responsibilities as a mother of seven reduced her time for writing. While at Bowdoin, the Stowes were active participants in the Underground Railroad-hiding slaves in their homes. It was during a church service in Brunswick that she had a vision of a dying slave (https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Harriet_Beecher_Stowe). This vision and the death of her young child would eventually be the basis and motivation for writing Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
Why Would Lincoln Agree to Meet with Harriet Beecher Stowe?
Harriet Beecher Stowe was a well-educated woman. She had the equivalent of a college education; and by estimations Abraham Lincoln had a year’s worth of sporadic formal education by the time he was 12. Abraham Lincoln was born in 1809 to parents who had very little formal education. Lincoln’s family moved often and some places had no public schools. Any education that Lincoln and his siblings received were at subscription schools where their parents would have to pay the tuition. Lincoln was described by his stepmother, Sarah, as always reading something. As an adult Lincoln improved himself by studying English grammar and the works of Greek mathematician, Euclid. (Abraham Lincoln’s Education & Formal Schooling)
Lincoln had to work hard to educate himself in his late teens until he left home at 22. Lincoln was an avid reader-reading when he should have done his chores which caused Thomas Lincoln to regret paying for the schooling. His reading eventually became a problem for his father, Thomas Lincoln, who would hide or throw out the books. Thomas Lincoln believed that education would not help his son. According to TotallyHistory.com, Lincoln’s father “….was reported to have mockingly said that his son may still be deluding himself with education….He added that if his son would stop wasting his time on books, he might achieve something important.” (https://totallyhistory.com/abraham-lincolns-education/)
Despite his father’s attitude towards education, Lincoln’s appetite for education led him to become a lawyer-as was the custom back then at the knee of a practicing lawyer. Even though it took him longer than the usual 3 years to study and pass the bar, Lincoln became a lawyer which laid the groundwork for his political career which culminated in being elected to the Illinois state representative, Congress, and the presidency.
Given his love for independent education, it was an honor for Abraham Lincoln to welcome an educated woman and published writer. Lincoln’s Christian foundation propelled him to respect such a request of the daughter of one of the leaders of the Second Great Awakening as his country faced a political and economic Awakening.
The White House Visit
Although it was reported that he “received her gravely; after all he had been harassed by many evangels,” (www.mr.lincolnswhitehouse.org), the visit started slowly, but ended with a great deal of humor. The visit started with an introduction to a room where the fire was burning. Mr. Seward introduced Mrs. Stowe to President Lincoln. He arose from his chair and is renowned for saying “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war.” After being seated, Stowe then asked Lincoln about his views on emancipation. As noted in their letters and diaries, Stowe and her children serving as escorts recounted what a humorous time they had at the White House. Stowe however got a new perspective about Lincoln. She learned that he had strength, but of a different kind-seldom seen in higher leadership. “Harriet Beecher Stowe herself wrote: “Lincoln was a strong man, but his strength was of a peculiar kind; it was not aggressive …it was like the strength not so much of a stone buttress as of a wire cable.” ( (www.mr.lincolnswhitehouse.org).
After the Visit
After the audience, Stowe became “…a Lincoln admirer…” (Notable Visitors: Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) – Mr. Lincoln’s White House). But based on her writings following Abraham Lincoln’s death, Stowe wrote of a man who wrestled with his ideals and what was best for the industrializing country. Stowe states in her memoir that Lincoln “‘Probably no ruler ever made a more profoundly and peculiarly Christian impression on the mind of the world than Lincoln. In his religious faith two leading ideas were prominent from the first to last-man’s helplessness, both as to strength and wisdom, and God’s helpfulness in both.’” (Notable Visitors: Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) – Mr. Lincoln’s White House)
It seems that both were changed by the visit. Just over a month later, Lincoln permitted his executive order called the Emancipation Proclamation to go into effect on January 1, 1863-even with the absence of complete emancipation in the Union occupied states like Maryland which were permitted to continue practicing slavery. Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe observed that the person she thought was weak, in person Lincoln was tenaciously and inflexibly tied to carry the mission to its termination by compromising here and there until slavery was ended. The ending of slavery was the moral action that was needed to save the United States of America; and it was the guidance of Lincoln upon which many depended to re-unite the country.
April 15, 1865-The Aftermath
Because of his assassination shortly after the surrender of the confederacy in 1865, the path that Lincoln had envisioned for the country – forgiveness, enfranchisement, and unity, did not manifest in the nineteenth century. In the years following the Civil War, Stowe continued to write books, plays, and edit magazines. She also became a suffragette. Stowe died July 1, 1896. Like Lincoln, Stowe died before the completion of her desire – voting in an election. The dreams of Lincoln and Stowe would materialize in the 20th century to a great extent and helped to lay the foundation for a better United States for men and women of all races and economic status.
Without the education they received or brought about through grit and grace, Abraham Lincoln and Harriet Beecher Stowe may not have done as much with their lives. They served others and fought for freedom and civil rights-Harriet Beecher Stowe using her pen; and Abraham Lincoln using his oration, humor, and presidential authority. Their education took them far…all the way to the White House.
Maureen Grey is a lifelong teacher, neighborhood historian and preservationist, who led the fight to landmark St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church and other historic buildings.
Killing the restaurant industry is one more nail that the Democrats have hammered into the coffin of the middle class. This is the war on the middle class that Democrats have been waging for 50 years.
The February 2nd 2023 meeting of the Queens Village Republican Club was the scene of a packed house of energized patriots as Joe Pinion and other Republican Rock Stars as well as NY City Council candidates fired up the crowd. There was a club pinning ceremony for new members, a committee report, and a special announcement of our newly formed Mom’s for Liberty Chapter in Queens.
Joe Pinion, Rising Star in the Republican Party of New York
Joe Pinion was the Republican and Conservative party candidate for US Senate in 2022. If you recall, he DESTROYED Sen. Chuck Schumer in the NY-1 debate. Total knockout! A Political News Commentator on Newsmax and other media, he is a rising star and the future of the Republican Party in New York.
Chris Wright: Conservative Activist in NYC
Chris Wright is host of the Christopher Wright Show on YouTube and founder of the Conservative Republican Alliance of New York and has regular meetings in Manhattan at the Metropolitan Republican Club headquarters.
Walter Mejia: President and Founder of New York Republican Latinos
Walter Mejia is President and Founder of New York Republican Latinos, to increase Conservative Latino representation in gov’t by training and creating the next generation of Latino leaders.
Kristina Raevsky: Lincoln Dinner Young American Patriot of the Year Honoree
Kristina Raevsky will be the recipient of the Young American Patriot of the Year award at the Lincoln Dinner on March 19th, and is a young accomplished author of two published books and essays on America. Her latest book, “A Sheep’s Tale, A Young Patriot’s Guide to Saving America” available on Amazon, is a fictional narrative of a family who flees Soviet communism to come to America to find us headed in the same dangerous direction, and how to fight to save our country and restore our values and God-given rights.
Daniella May: Medical Freedom and Republican candidate for NY City Council in CD-31
Daniella May is the Medical Freedom and Republican candidate running for NY City Council in CD-31. She is a nurse who worked in plastic surgery for most of her career. She is Vice Chairwoman NYYRC Black caucus and the Secretary to the NYYRC women’s caucus.
Scott Harney: Medical Freedom and Republican candidate for NY City Council in CD-23
Scott Harney spoke about his candidacy for NY City Council in CD-23. He is a former journalist and also a retired federal officer with the US government. He served in numerous overseas diplomatic postings, including war zone deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan and other conflict zones.
The January 5th Club meeting was our New Year’s Kickoff Meeting with guest speaker Curtis Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels and former Republican candidate for NYC Mayor. He’s on the radio weekdays from 12 noon to 1pm and other time slots with talk shows on WABC, “Always Broadcasting Curtis.” He’s one of the greatest New Yorkers there ever was, someone who has given his life for our city many times over, Curtis Sliwa!
Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) was one of those historic figures who was always on the list of people to study for Negro History Week. Every American Black child knows or is supposed to know by second grade, especially if one attends a majority Black* student or faculty populated school. Douglass seemed to be current looking – his hair was natural and long – which was in vogue. Some of his suits looked like the one in Ebony magazine. His features were fiercely chiseled – which intimidated me as a child, but they expressed his passion to fight the establishment to gain equality – something that was a part of the 1960’s and 1970’s America my family had to learn about when we came to America. So much was studied about him during those school days, but no one mentioned that he was a Republican – just like our President, Richard M. Nixon. Today, five Black Republicans have taken new seats in Congress. This is just a sign of a rebounding Republican Party.
*Although African-American is more politically correct, I prefer to use Black as my racial nomenclature. That was the term of my upbringing and most of my adulthood; and serves as a common descriptor for my two African diasporic cultures.
When I first came to this country from Jamaica W.I, Douglass’ picture would often be placed next to Lincoln’s on the school bulletin boards highlighting Negro History Week – that is what the commemoration of Black historical figures was called. I still recall the bulletin board outside my first-grade classroom at St. Joseph’s Parish Day School in Queens Village, NY (Demolished, 2022). I recognized Martin Luther King, Jr., because he had just been killed, but the others I did not recognize. Those were all the American heroes. I was hoping to see the great Jamaican hero, Marcus Garvey, but he was not there. In second grade, we took days to cut silhouettes of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington from black construction paper so as to commemorate their February birthdays. We placed the silhouettes around the room and on the classroom bulletin board. Sometimes, we cut silhouettes for Frederick Douglass, but those were put on the Negro History Week bulletin board in the hallway. Over the years, we all learned that he was a runaway slave who became an eloquent orator for the emancipation of slaves despite not having a formal education. After writing several books such as the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, he was able to purchase his freedom from the proceeds. Ever promoting abolition of slavery, Douglass encouraged several northern abolitionist groups to pressure Congress to end slavery. Prior to and during the Civil War, Douglass persuaded Lincoln to allow the enlistment of Blacks to fight in the Civil War. We also learned that Douglass was President Lincoln’s friend. But that was mostly all that was emphasized. No one mentioned that he was a New York Republican.
America, land of the free and home of the brave. Our country was founded on inalienable principles that we still cherish today – freedom, democracy, and capitalism. America is unlike any country in the world, and it is crucial that people understand and appreciate all the things that make America so special. America’s founding fathers were willing to achieve independence at any cost. The stakes could not be higher, yet heroes like George Washington and John Adams stood up to Great Britain and showed the true embodiment of patriotism. Like many patriots before me, I love our country. America is the land of opportunity, a place where if you work hard, you can accomplish anything, and a beacon of hope for millions of people around the world. My parents’ success story is the result of hard work and perseverance, but most importantly, the great American Dream. They each came to America with nothing, but because America is the land of opportunity, they were able to make it in this world, and become successful professionals who provided an excellent foundation for me to succeed as well.
