NCRA celebrated its 100th anniversary by placing the "Who Am I?" essay in the history section of the NCRA website.

To view the poem go to http://ncraonline.org/NCRA/pressroom/History/ and scroll down.

The "Who Am I?" poem uses a made-up story to connect court reporters to an avowed racist, Justice Taney, with the following sentence contained in the essay:

"I (court reporter) wrote the Dred Scott Decision for Justice Taney."

Today the Dred Scot decision is viewed as the worst decision ever rendered by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Why would NCRA members as court reporters want to connect themselves to Justice Taney?????

In March of 1857, the United States Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, declared that all blacks -- slaves as well as free -- were not and could never become citizens of the United States. The court also declared the 1820 Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, thus permitting slavery in all of the country's territories.

The framers of the Constitution, Justice Taney wrote, believed that blacks "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever profit could be made by it."

Referring to the language in the Declaration of Independence that includes the phrase, "all men are created equal," Taney reasoned that "it is too clear for dispute, that the enslaved African race were not intended to be included, and formed no part of the people who framed and adopted this declaration. . . ."

Should NCRA members request that a made-up connection of court reporters to an avowed racist Supreme Court justice be deleted from the NCRA website?

Topic #2

Also the "Who Am I?" essay has the following sentence regarding Free Masonry:

"I (the court reporter) was with King Solomon while building the Temple and recorded the origins of Masonry."

The above sentence is a made-up fictitious sentence that the roots of Free Masonry went back to King Solomon's Temple and were recorded by a court reporter.

Should NCRA members request the references to Free Masonry be removed from the "Who Am I?" essay celebrating NCRA's 100 year anniversary at the NCRA website?

The statement that court reporters were with King Solomon during the building of the temple is nonsense and Masonic folklore.

Should NCRA members ask why court reporters have to be connected to and represented by an essay promoting Free Masonry nonsense saying the Masons go back to the time of King Solomon with court reporters recording that history?

Also, Pope Benedict wrote this of Free Masonry at the following website http://www.tldm.org/news6/masons1.htm :

"The faithful who enroll in Masonic associations are in a state of grave sin and may not receive Holy Communion.... Consequently, neither the excommunication nor the other penalties envisaged have been abrogated." -Cardinal Ratzinger, Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, November 26, 1983.

Also in his article "Racism in Freemasonry," W. Bro. Fred Milliken writes as follows:

"First one must admit that there is racism in Freemasonry. For many that is going to be hard. Racism in Freemasonry occurs in pockets around the country but rarely in a whole jurisdiction. While some local Lodges are barring Black African-Americans others are welcoming them. If you haven't witnessed racism in the Craft then you are apt to deny that it exists.

One measure of racial attitude is the recognition of Prince Hall by American Grand Lodges. Today all but thirteen states recognize Prince Hall.

The ones who do not are the original eleven states of the Confederacy minus Virginia plus Kentucky, West Virginia and Delaware.

After a Lodge has blackballed every Black candidate that has ever applied for admission in the last fifty years, it sure does have a track record of exclusion.

We have made the best case we can make. But how did this come all about? Historically didn't Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King with help from Federal Troops and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 erase separate but equal and institute integration civilly years ago? What happened with Freemasonry? Why are we having this battle 40 years later?

The hypothesis that keeps coming back is that after the Ku Klux Klan lost its mass appeal in the 1930's, it went underground and infiltrated and mated with Freemasonry. The Klan was very emphatic that it was a Christian organization, hence the burning cross. Its white hooded robes were said to imitate the Knights Templars, its secret handshakes and oaths - Freemasonry. It was also billed as a fraternal organization, one which advocated white supremacy, opposed gay rights and was anti Semitic, anti Catholic and anti immigrant. So the KKK was Christian and fraternal and used to secrecy.

A devout Catholic woman wrote me the following: "Bill, the Free Masons are a big no-no in the Catholic Church!"

Should NCRA members question why a fictitious connection of court reporters to Free Masonry is allowed to be published in the "Who Am I?" essay in at the NCRA website in an article celebrating the 100th anniversary of NCRA?

Bill Parsons