{"id":19231,"date":"2013-10-16T13:29:30","date_gmt":"2013-10-16T13:29:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/?p=19231"},"modified":"2013-10-16T13:29:30","modified_gmt":"2013-10-16T13:29:30","slug":"the-year-of-ransom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/?p=19231","title":{"rendered":"The Year Of Ransom"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href='http:\/\/www.suntimes.com\/23168076-761\/chicago-man-to-harvard-pay-me-more-for-rare-documents-or-ill-burn-them.html'>Hidden in a dusty trunk<\/a> in an abandoned and looted Englewood home, the papers of Harvard\u2019s first black graduate, Richard T. Greener, had long been thought lost to history.<\/p>\n<p>So when the Sun-Times reported last year that 52-year-old contractor Rufus McDonald found them while clearing out an attic near 75th and Sangamon, he was praised as a hero who\u2019d unearthed forgotten details of a pioneering African-American intellectual\u2019s life.<\/p>\n<p>Several museums and Harvard University itself expressed a keen interest in the historically significant 140-year-old Greener documents. An excited Gates, who leads Harvard\u2019s W.E.B. DuBois Institute for African-American Research, even said the discovery gave him \u201cgooseflesh.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But now McDonald says the irreplaceable collection could go up in flames \u2014 literally.<\/p>\n<p>McDonald \u2014 who recently sold just two of the documents for $52,000 to the University of South Carolina, where Greener also studied and taught \u2014 is threatening to torch the rest unless Harvard offers him more cash.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ll roast and burn them,\u201d an angry McDonald said Tuesday, saying Harvard offered an \u201cinsulting\u201d $7,500 for a collection that includes Greener\u2019s 1870 Harvard diploma and was appraised at $65,000.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The article does not say how many tea party rallies the man has attended in the past.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hidden in a dusty trunk in an abandoned and looted Englewood home, the papers of Harvard\u2019s first black graduate, Richard T. Greener, had long been thought lost to history. So when the Sun-Times reported last year that 52-year-old contractor Rufus McDonald found them while clearing out an attic near 75th and Sangamon, he was praised [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19231"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19232,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19231\/revisions\/19232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}