clair055

When you stop for a moment and consider Franklin Delano Roosevelt you have to be amazed and filled with awe that a man who had suffered through such a tremendous physical tragedy as he did during the summer of 1921 was able to rise to the highest office in the land given prevailing opinions concerning the disabled at that time. FDR contracted polio…or what was thought to be polio while on vacation and even though various cures never worked to restore his legs he also never accepted the fact his paralysis was permanent and constantly felt he was getting better.   Many state today his paralysis might have been from the effects of Guillain-Barre Syndrome and not Polio, but no matter the cause FDR was what our society deems as handicapped. Yet, at the time of his death in 1945 and for years afterward very few Americans knew the full extent of FDR’s physical limitations. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt....one of three public photos showing him in his wheel chair Once he entered...

The song I’ve posted below isn’t as popular as Marvin Gaye’s hit “What’s Going On?”, but it is from the same album….the first of its kind for Motown…a concept album. Gaye wrote the songs during a time of great depression when he isolated himself from the outside world.  This site explains.... Through television news broadcasts, Gaye saw the racial, political, and social problems that were plaguing the world, manifestations from the explosion of political and social activism that took place during the late ‘60s. As he wallowed in his seclusion, Gaye read letters from his brother Frankie serving in the Vietnam War. They described the confusion and frustration he and other soldiers felt fighting in a war that had no just cause. Many black soldiers at the time felt doubly conflicted, drafted to fight and die for a country that refused to accept them because of the color of their skin. These observations, along with the loss of Tammi Terrell, motivated Gaye to question his role in the w...