The daughter of the man named Brown in the famous Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court case decided in 1954 when she was 4 years old came to Madison, Wisconsin this week.  She spoke in Anderson Auditorium at the same Edgewood where I earned my High School Diploma and much later my Doctorate in Educational Leadership.  On her power point were two other epic events of the long civil rights struggle.  The first desegregation case was in 1849 vs. City of Boston.  Then came the famous "Separate but Equal" decision of Plessey vs. Ferguson in 1896.  Putting these all together with the election of the first Black President in 2008, you have four Kondratiev Wave points in a row.  The perfect 54 year cycle points would be 1846, 1900, 1954, and 2008.  The first two are three years late and four years early.  The last two are perfect fits, 1954 and 2008.

    The Progressive Era cycle also fits this pattern of the 54 year cycle, also coming at the height of the economic growth cycle and around the secondary wars cycle that also occurs around peak economic growth.  The Abolition of Slavery era begins with the publication of the book Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1852.  54 years later in the turn of the century Progressive Era, in 1906 the State of Oregon adopts a comprehensive set of reforms including direct election of United States Senators, citizen ballot measure initiatives, and citizen approval of excessive local government budget increases.  54 years later in 1960 in the midst of the civil rights struggle a progressive Democrat is elected in part appealing to black voters.  President Kennedy challenged the Military Industrial Complex, avoided nuclear war in the Cuban Missile Crisis, upstaged the Federal Reserve with silver certificates, started the moon landing race, the Peace Corps, and introduced civil rights and medicare legislation passed after his death.  Fifty four years later in 2014 we are fighting the anti-civil rights movement of the Tea Party election four years ago with the Uprising in Wisconsin, Occupy Wall Street, and Moral Mondays in North Carolina.  Nationally we have passed historic health care for all legislation.

    Here in Wisconsin, about half a million protestors over four weeks objected to Governor Scott Walker's public union busting measure that came out the day Mubarak abdicated in Egypt over protests, February 11, 2011.  This 2011 action corresponds to the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1957 exactly 54 years before.  Then the effort was to make the South more like the North, now the effort is to make the North more like the South.  Civil Rights then, anti-rights now.  Then in Wisconsin we had the infamous Senator Joe McCarthy branding everyone a communist with his Army McCarthy hearings of 1953, 58 years before Scott Walker.  This time scale closely simulates that in the first paragraph of this press release.  So indeed Civil Rights history repeats itself again with the national attempt to use any means necessary by Republicans to destroy the Democratic Party, minority rights to vote, unions right to exist, and the first black President.  Wisconsin's Paul Ryan spoke eloquently in favor of a $700 billion economic recovery package on February 14, 2002, but denies such bipartisan relief to all Americans because the President is a Democrat now.

    Definition of Treason:  the crime of betraying one's country, esp. by attempting to kill the sovereign or overthrow the government.  Synonyms:  treachery, disloyalty, betrayal, faithlessness.  Does this fit the odd circumstances of these times and this congress?

Here's a link to 56 events of the 54 Year Cycle:

https://www.academia.edu/4101856/EVENTS