Passing the Ancestral Torch: the Life, Times, Struggles, and Legacy of Theodore Roosevelt Spikes

By Dr. Rufus O. Jimerson

This book starts with Theodore Roosevelt Spikes being raised as an African-American male in the Jim Crow south. It looks at the hostility, intimidation and terrorism he faced along with his family and every Africa-American in the apartheid south. As a result of the climate of fear, hatred, lynching, and mob rule, Roosevelt and his family joined other African-Americans in the Great Migration to northern cities. He got involved in the Afro-centric cultural renaissance of the 1920s; the New Deal, and community service Pre- and Post World War II as Lodge Secretary of the Prince Hall Masons.
The book also looks at the history of the Prince Hall Masons as the conveyors of off-world African civilizations, innovations, and secrets of the missing link. This secret legacy is passed on through the deeds of their emulating Star Children who ascend to Renaissance Men and Women.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 26, 2011
• ISBN: 9781469116792

Dr. Rufus O. Jimerson

I am currently an Area Coordinator for the National Association of African American Studies, National Association of Native Americans Studies, National Association of Hispanic and Latino Studies, and International Association of Asian Studies. I served as an Assistant Professor of Education at Lindsey Wilson College, Lincoln University, and Associate Professor of Education at Lock Haven University. Earlier, I taught courses at Pensacola State College for over a decade. My academic credentials include a Doctor of Education, Masters of School Business Administration, Educational Administration and Supervision, and Teaching American History.

Book preview

Passing The Ancestral Torch

The Life, Times, Struggles, and Legacy

of Theodore Roosevelt Spikes

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Dr. Rufus O. Jimerson

Copyright © 2011 by Dr. Rufus O. Jimerson.

First Edition

All rights reserved. This publication may not be reproduced or transmitted, even partially, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Contents

Preface

Chapter 1

Raised in the Racial Reign of Terror

Chapter 2

In Search of the Promised Land

Chapter 3

The Impact of the Great Depression

and the War on Fascism

Chapter 4

Defiance and Secrecy versus Docility

Chapter 5

Secrecy and the Mystery of the Off-World Legacy

Chapter 6

The Rise and Fall of African Civilizations

and It’s People in Diaspora

Chapter 7

Overcoming the Anglo-Americans’ Legacy

of Monopolizing Intergenerational

Wealth and Privilege

Chapter 8

Redefining and Personalizing Our True History

Chapter 9

Living Legacy and Star Children to Emulate

References

Dedication

To Grandfather, Theodore Roosevelt Spikes, who for nearly three decades before his passing, encouraged me to achieve honor and excellence sing the pen to articulate ones dreams and visions. He was a Secretary to the Prince Hall Masons for 35 years scripting their secrets like the priest of ancient Egypt. My grandfather took great pride in my academic accomplishments and helped me find the funding needed to realize these achievements.

To Grandma, Bertha Spikes, who provided moral and spiritual support, as well as the good tasting meals essential to my ascendency through the wonder years and early adulthood. She partnered with my grandfather to keep me on the straight and narrow using tender love and care.

To Mom, Mary Estelle Jimerson, who predicted for 5 years before her passing that my writings would surpass 30 years of teachings as a value to society. She was an Eastern Star and an enthusiastic and engaged reader.

To my Sisters, Cynthia and Joyce, who have arouse from being Star Children to become Renaissance Queens. Cynthia has given the most to Star Children and the future of humanity as a committed educator and foster parent.

To my Son, Jamal Christopher Jimerson, who has picked up the torch passed down from his father, to achieve the academic excellence needed to win the fight for the future of African-Americans and all of mankind. He has used the power of the pen to achieve one master’s of communication and is working on another in social work. Jamal as a Radio program host uses hip-hop messages to free the minds of his audience from the vestiges of slavery and racism. In his adolescence, he predicted that he would achieve more advance degrees and make a greater impact on change than his father. I am proud that I served as an inspirational role-model in his endeavor to uplift his people and all of humanity.

To My Granddaughter, Leila Jimerson, may you be prepared to lead in the footsteps of your father, grandfather, the change agents of the Spikes and Jimerson family, and intellectual giants like W. E. B. Du Bois, Manning Marable, Melissa Harris-Perry, Mae Jemison (astronaut & science educator), Shirley Ann Jackson (President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute), Carter G. Woodson, among others.

Preface

This book was inspired by the life, times, struggles, and legacy left his grandson, this author. The legacy passed on to his grandson came from contact, encouragement, mentorship, guidance and paternalism during this author’s childhood through adult life. The Spikes’ legacy was reinforced by the special love and attention shown to this author by Bertha Mae Spikes, my grandmother, and Mary E. Spikes, my mother. The legacy is alive among this and proceeding generations of the Edmond-Spikes family which holds a bi-annual reunion. My son, Jamal Christopher Jimerson, and infant granddaugh-ter, Leila Jimerson is ascending through life’s chal-lenges while defining the legacy in the 21st century. This book is designed to provide my descendants and those of all humanity with a blueprint to ex-amine and emulate the successes of family members who rose against the odds.

The book first examines Roosevelt’s early life and struggles against a hostile, terroristic, and apartheid society in the south. Born and raised in rural Georgia, my grandfather experienced dire poverty, racial degradation, and discrimination. He, his family and the black community were trauma-tized by mob violence and lynchings. His aspiration was crushed by the larger community’s imposition of Jim Crow Laws and demeaning treatment. In this climate, implosion driven by self-hatred and inferiority complex thrived.

The oppressing whites used their short-comings as excuses to blame African-Americans and commit acts of wanton violence against them. Under the cloak of authority they fulfilled their blood lust on blacks who tried to achieve their aspirations and exercise their civil and human rights. They also seized their property to improve their holdings. Property, the source of wealth, was often the motive to commit racial violence and drive blacks from their homes and businesses. The scorched earth policy of burning down properties owned by blacks was often used to ensure that the property owner would not have anything to return to or claim.

Miseducation imposed on school-age children also victimized Roosevelt, the Spikes and other southern black families. The underfinanced, inferior, segregated schools were overcrowded and dilapidated. Many classroom lacked space, proper ventilation, chairs and desks. Teachers were often paid half or less than their white counterpart in white-only schools. Appropriate facilities and equipment were scarce and often dysfunctional. Students received dated, second-hand, books. As a result, Roosevelt and his future wife, Bertha Mae dropped out of these inferior schools by the end of the second grade. Prior to New Deal’s Child Labor Laws, he found work as a day laborer and porter’s assistant to support his family. For the same rea-sons, my grandmother found work as a maid.

My grandparents overcame the inferior education inflicted on them in the Jim Crow south through self-education which included literacy de-velopment. As an adult, Roosevelt’s literacy gained the attention of the Prince Hall Masons. He became their Lodge Secretary for over 30 years. In this ca-pacity, Roosevelt took the minutes of the meetings, recorded rituals, and stored documents needed to fulfill their mission.

Self-education and development arose leav-ing the confines of the apartheid south and becom-ing residents in multiethnic communities of New Jersey. Roosevelt, a multitalented person took his teenage wife and escaped the Racial Reign of Terror they experienced in Georgia and found an apartment in an Italian-American community in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Mary Estelle Spikes, my mother, was born in 1927 and spent her pre-adolescent years in this less restrictive northern community. My grandfather who was continually unemployed during the late 1920s and 1930s found work in the underground economy as an afterhour’s pianist. Unfortunately, the vice of illegal alcohol, vulgar language, etc., affected his relationship with his wife and daughter.

With the end of Probation and the New Deal, Roosevelt found honest and clean day labor in construction, etc. He was free to pursue lodge ac-tivities that were beneficial to the segregated black migrant community of Newark, New Jersey. The family moved to the largest city in that state in the late 1930s. Mary Estelle attended South Side High School. In the 1940s, she met and married a World War II veteran, Rufus Sr. Their first child, Rufus Jr., who Mary later nicknamed Space Man, is this author.

Mt grandfather, Roosevelt, and grand-mother, Bertha Mae, would play an integral role in my up bring. They provided much of the maternal and paternal support for this Star Child who would ascend into a Renaissance Man with a mission to uplift humanity. Roosevelt’s descen-dants, including my sisters, son, and grandchild have been handed a legacy of excellence, self-determination, and service from the Spikes and Jimerson families.

I would like to thank the ascended angels that have inspired and guided this work. Thanks are also given to those professors who believed that the only one who could prevent me from getting the most advanced degree and education is me. Once again, I would like to thank my ascended grand-father, Roosevelt, who provided the information, inspiration, and instruction on how I could finance three masters and doctorate degrees in educational leadership.

Dr. Rufus O. Jimerson, Ed. D.

[e-mail]

West Palm Beach, Florida

July 29, 2011

Chapter 1

Raised in the Racial Reign of Terror

Up from Poverty, Racial Degradation,

Discrimination and Victimization

My late grandfather, Theodore Roosevelt Spikes (1904-1978) was born in Washington County, Georgia. His parents were Sam Spikes and Malinda Cummings. Roosevelt was the youngest of twelve children. He was raised in the heart of racial apartheid and poverty in the South. The anguish and pain of his dire experience created the rage similarly witnessed by the nation on television from Clarence Thomas, the only African-American Justice of the Supreme Court, during his confirmation hearing. These two natives of Georgia also shared being black in one of the most hostile states in the South. My grandfather channeled his rage into effective support of the aspirations of his grandson and promoting the values and community service of the Prince Hall Masons. My grandfather, like Justice Thomas, struggled with the pain and anguish of poverty and racism in the South but during an older generation when racial apartheid and injustice was more entrenched. He faced the racial hostility at its peak and the justice while the conservative affirmative action selectee was raised during the Civil Rights Movement where Jim Crow restriction was no longer the law of the land. These Georgians also shared an addiction. They were heavy drinkers who through an alcohol induced state temporarily escaped from the harsh reality experienced personally and vicariously as members of an oppressed racial minority.

Lynchings

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FROM

http://www2.liu.edu/cwis/cwp/library/african/2000/lynching.htm

My grandfather, affectionately called Roosevelt (his middle name) by friends and love ones during the revival of the Ku Klux Klan during its national lynching surge, other mob led-violence and intimidation intended to segregate, degrade and disfranchise African-Americans. When Roosevelt was one years old, eight blacks were lynched in Georgia. On the seventh year of his life, a mob lynched three blacks, burned three black lodges, two churches and a school. The following year, 1912, two black women were among the thirteen Georgia blacks lynched. That year, Georgia had more than a quarter of the nation’s lynchings. During this year of racial atrocities, another black, Henry Etheridge was lynched for trying to recruit blacks to return to Africa (Grant, 1993).

When Roosevelt