George Fox and The Society of Friends – Part II

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Lead: By rebelling against political and religious authority, the followers of George Fox , secured for themselves an intense level of persecution from all parts of the ideological spectrum.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: George Fox, founder of the Society of Friends or Quakerism, he did not set out to establish a new religious denomination. His movement was founded on the idea that all individuals were equal and could have communion with God’s spirit without formal creeds or intervention by religious authorities. This idea attracted many was an attractive one, particularly in the lower classes, and for it Fox and his followers were persecuted. It is estimated that 3,000 of the so-called Friends were jailed in England during the second half of the seventeenth century. One judge laughingly called Fox and his followers “Quakers” after Fox warned the judge to “tremble at the word of the Lord.” The name stuck.

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George Fox and The Society of Friends – Part I

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Lead: The year 1643, England was in the second year of civil war and  nineteen year old George Fox, who believed he was directed by divine call, left home and began a spiritual quest that would lead to the birth of the Quakers.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: Fox, was born the son of a weaver of puritan sympathies in Leicestershire, England, in 1624. Although he had little formal education, he read extensively and began early to question traditional religion and ways of worship. He was a shoemaker’s apprentice when he began his religious quest. At the age of 23, Fox began receiving revelations he believed were inspired by God. He shared this inspiration as an itinerant preacher, formulating the doctrine of the “inner light,” the idea that a person through communion with God’s spirit can comprehend divine ways without the church, religious authority or customs.

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Pilgrims in Holland II

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Lead: In 1609 a group of English dissenters, later known as pilgrims, made their way to the Dutch town of Leyden. For eleven years they worked and practiced their religion, but their vision led them to another shore.   

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: Originially from the Nottinham village of Scrooby, these dissenters wished relief from worship in the Anglican church. Seeing little hope for that, they sought to escape to the relatively free atmosphere of the protestant Netherlands. After several attempts, they finally arrived in Amsterdam, making their way further to the town of Leyden. English authorities were incensed, but the Dutch allowed them to stay.

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Pilgrims in Holland I

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Lead: When the Pilgrims arrived on the shores of Massachusetts in December 1620, they had completed a long journey in pursuit of religious freedom and maintaining their Englishness.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: Hopes were high when the new King James I arrived in London in 1604. Grumpy old Queen Elizabeth had died and made way for her Scottish cousin. A new broom sweeps clean and many in the Kingdom were anxious for change. Members of Parliament hoped the King would allow a more open debate over national issues. Catholics hoped that the new King would give them relief from laws that circumscribed their worship. A minority of the Church of England known as puritans hoped the King would help them purify the church of all vestiges of Catholicism and reform the church structure. James dashed those hopes. He never quite understood the people he had come to lead. For their own reasons Catholics, puritans, members of Parliament and other critics of the government as the years passed became more and more disenchanted with life in England.

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British Supporters of the American Revolution – II

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Lead: During the American Revolution there was substantial and ever increasing opposition to the Crown’s efforts to bring the colonials to heel. Important leaders in that resistance were Wilkes, Rockingham and Burke.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: Antagonism to the war effort tended to follow fault lines already present in British politics. On the far left, radical politician John Wilkes had for two decades sought an expansion of the rights of ordinary citizens. A MP from Aylesbury and later Middlesex, in a long career he was on occasion, forced into exile, imprisoned for libel, and condemned by Parliament, but continued to enjoy wide-spread popular support. Elected Lord Mayor of London in 1774, he used that position and membership in Parliament to advocate complete religious toleration and support for the American colonial cause.

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British Supporters of the American Revolution – I

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Lead: Most Americans forget that the colonies were seriously divided over the Revolution. As a matter of fact, so was Great Britain.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: Some scholars have rightly called the American Revolution the second English Civil War.  While there were large British and Continental armies campaigning up and down the eastern seaboard of North America, the most intense and sometimes brutal conflict during the war years was between partisan groups. Tories and Patriots, operating out in the countryside, burned and pillaged their neighbors’ homes and farms if they were closely identified with or insufficiently supportive of one side or another. Only about half the colonists vigorously backed the cause of independence. The rest were ambivalent about the Revolution or bitterly opposed.

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George Washington Carver Part II

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Lead: In 1896 agricultural scientist George Washington Carver received a unique invitation. It came from American educator Booker T. Washington.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: At this time George Washington Carver had just been appointed to the faculty of Iowa State College – the school’s first African American faculty member. Carver already had a national reputation in the field of agricultural research. Washington asked Carver to come to Alabama to create the agriculture program at Tuskegee Institute. “I cannot offer you money, position or fame. The first two you have… These… I ask you to give up. I offer you in their place: work—hard, hard work, the task of bringing a people from degradation, poverty, and waste…. Your department exits only on paper and your laboratory will have to be in your head.” Carver spent the rest of his life at Tuskegee.

 

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George Washington Carver Part I

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Lead: George Washington Carver, a child born into slavery in 1864, would become one of the most renowned and successful of the world’s agricultural scientists.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: George Washington Carver was born to slave parents during the Civil War in Diamond Grove, a small town in southwest Missouri. His birthplace boiled throughout the war in a running conflict between free soil advocates and slaveholders. Carver’s father died accidentally shortly before his birth. Cast adrift and vulnerable, the boy and his mother were kidnapped by slave raiders. Carver was sick with whooping cough and was ransomed by his owners for a horse valued at three hundred dollars. Carver’s mother was never seen again. After emancipation, the orphaned Carver and his brother were taken in by their former owners, Moses and Susan Carver, a kind, childless German couple, who raised them as their own.

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