Although relatively unknown today, Theodore Parker, who lived in the turbulent decades leading up to the Civil War, was an American whose life exerted a tremendous influence upon his own times, and whose thought and actions still reverberate at the very heart of modern day issues. In one speech, Parker used the phrase, “A democracy […]
James Hilgendorf is a writer, speaker, poet, and filmmaker. His books cover a wide range of subjects – religion, politics, economics, science, social issues, the future of America. A highly-acclaimed filmmaker, his travel films and documentaries have been seen around the world. He is a long-time member of the SGI, or Soka Gakkai International, the […]
I wrote before about one of the great, though perhaps not so well known, heroines from our American past – Abby Kelley Foster . She was a great fighter for civil rights and an end to slavery, and for women’s voting rights, during the Civil War period and beyond. What she is most remembered for […]
In 1851, Harriet Beecher Stowe was living with her husband on the campus of Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, when she began writing “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, the book that would become instrumental in galvanizing public opinion around the slavery issue just prior to the outbreak of the Civil War. She wrote: “Up to this year, […]
James Hilgendorf is a filmmaker, speaker, poet, and the author of ten non-fiction books.
James Hilgendorf is a filmmaker, speaker, poet, and the author of ten non-fiction books.
I grew up my first eighteen years in a small town in Indiana, and cherish my experience there – so much so that in my early fifties I spent a year at my own expense traveling all around the State, talking to people and producing a one-hour film on Indiana that was subsequently written up […]
Greed fosters pestilence. The diseased heart breeds the virus. Trump is the virus. Those who champion division and chaos and the desecration of the ‘other’ – this is the virus. Those who tout racial superiority, build walls against outsiders, tear down any man or woman who exhibits true greatness, compassion, or selflessness; who fracture the […]
Chances are you have never heard of someone named Hubert Harrison. Until recently, I know I never had. I’d like to introduce you to a truly remarkable person in our own American history. I came across him in a strange way. Somehow I clicked onto a page on Google that was about a black man […]
Racism and religious bigotry are two of the viruses that need to be rooted out once and for all from the American psyche. We are confronting both at this crucial juncture in our nation’s history. In his pamphlet, “Common Sense”, one of our great Founding Fathers, Thomas Paine, called out to his compatriots for help […]