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We have come a long way From “Whites Only”
And “Blacks to the back; from “Colored Day”
At the County Fair to “Negro History Week”
In poorly equipped segregated schools.
And from there to the now-famous Black
History Month; yes, it’s been a long sojourn
From a Jackie Robinson dugout to an Obama
Elected Two-term residence in the White house.
Yet, when you consider the history of a year
In ourstory, a day merely became a week
And a week merely became a month.
Consider the simple math of it all:
The ratio of 28 days out of 365!
Thus is this preamble to the
Following repost to us
That the days of February become fueling days
For each of the 200 plus days that are yet to come;
Let us be proud of how far we have come on the way:
A SAGA OF EBONY REFLECTIONS ON OURSTORY
(Apropos Of Black History Month: Year Round Awareness)
Another Black History month has come
and gone with a pseudo-focused apology
on 400 years of slavery. But gracefully
continue to ignore things like decades
of Moorish democratic rule in Euro-Spain.
And how early African explorers had traveled
and settled in various parts of ancient Asia,
Europe and the Americas (i.e. Mexico!) long
before the coming of American slavery.
It remains ironic that we have come from
celebrating Negro History Week to presently
celebrating Black History Month—with focus
on slavery, abolition, emancipation, civil rights,
snail-paced growth in education, voting rights,
employment and election to high political
office—there is yet that sneaking implication that
leads us and our extended-family children thinking
that Black Lives here had their beginning with slavery.
While praises must forever be due to the tenacity
of those ancestors here who paved the way during
and after slavery, we must make it abundantly
clear to the present and future generations, that our
roots did not begin here in this stolen land that God
had already given to an anchored people of color.
While it is evident that the beginning of humankind
on this planet had its origin on the African continent,
the illusion is yet written and taught that human origin
and civilization was probably more of a Mesopotamian
European-like cocooning!
But let us not despair; the crushed and buried
truth by the dirt of his-story will not be denied
her assured resurrection. No, we must teach
our children that their treasured—mattering—
worldly origin and the growth of our great being
did not begin with American slavery; rather, the
Edenic Garden of God’s creation for all humanity
was—and remains—the blessed womb of Africa!
Indeed, there is much throughout the year that
we must tell our children of our glorious origin
and the conquering sojourning of our evolution
on Earth—created in God’s peace and love—
Now gone astray in the Clorox-like human-hate
phasing of a racist pigmentation ideology.
We must make our children aware of the great
ancient African civilizations and their Kingdoms
and Empires that existed long before the blank
caving of primitive others who stole our African
greatness and claimed it as Greco-Roman genius;
all of which today—though still veiled—remains
that well known crime of the white man’s burden.
We must make the children aware that it was in
the North, South, East, and West of the African
continent where Black Africans became the first
of agricultural, hunter-gatherer humans to evolve
into settlers of extended family-like societies where
the earliest technology took root and led to African
ancestors being the forerunners of the growth and
development of early civilization.
For our children, we must dispel the evil untruths
of his/story, racist archeologists, racist cartoonist,
racist writers like Victor Hugo—who audaciously
insinuated Europe as “ultimate civilization” while
deeming Africa, “utter barbarism”—as well as
dispelling the racist poetic penning of Rudyard Kipling’s
poem; which he mendacious titled, The White Man’s
Burden; insinuating it to be the white man’s supreme
moral duty to conquer and enslave the people of Africa.
We of the pen and voice must make our children
and theirs aware that their treasured ancestors
were not Illiterate savages living in straw and mud
huts with only Stone Age technology; rather, we must
make them aware that our ancient ancestors were
intelligent people of Africa who in ancient times
developed agricultural skills, technology to fashion iron
tools and weapons, minted coins, and built great cities
and colossal monuments which still remain some of
great wonders of the world.
Indeed, we, today’s penning griots—repositories
of ourstory—must assure for coming generations
that the echoing sounds of Nok, Djenne, Bantu,
Aksum, Timbuktu, Kuba, Swahili, Kush, Ghana, Mali,
Songhai and Meroe, and indeed Egypt and Ethiopia,
become igniters of storytelling keloid memories of
Ourstory’s cherished beginnings.
Indeed, fellow Griots of today, we must assure
that coming generations of African Americans
will always be aware that their history—ourstory—
has its beginning with the glorious history of ancient
Africa, rather than with American slavery; and that
they must be well aware that their ancestors—aborted
from the womb of Mother Africa—were not randomly
chosen but were explicitly chosen from African regions
where Black Africans had attained great ingenuity in
agriculture, animal husbandry, masonry, metallurgy,
architecture and various other technical skills needed
in the building of new world exploited colonized nations.
Indeed, enslavement was a well investigated and
thought-out plan for the white man’s burden of
Europe and her bastard prodigal child, America,
in their not going quietly into the night in their
establishing of colonialism and the so called
strange institution of slavery. And we’re well
aware of the past and post-neo-his/story and
the ramifications of the manifest destinies.
But the God of the oppressed has always
resurrected the living truth! So let us in our
own cultural revival, forever remember whose
and who we were before being aborted from
our homeland and packed down like sardines
in the belly bowels of Middle Passage ships.
Thus, in the coming celebrations of ourstory here,
let us begin at the beginning; review Middle
Passage slavery interruption; highlight how far
we have come and then turn our attentions
towards solving our own Black-on-Black crimes;
followed by calling Brothers and Sisters together
to get us back to being the great builders of
liberated self-sustaining faithful Black family
communities once again--becoming molders of
the new matter of black lives living lovingly in
the peace and love of our Savior!
P.S.: Remember, Ourstory begins with great
civilizations of Ancient Africa; not with
slavery in America! How can Blacks ever
begin a celebration with slavery?!
bastardizing our black bravery!
N.B.: 2022 Awareness:
Pandemic times have always been those
Of yours and mine as we sojourn the race line;
So much we’ve survived and left far behind:-
Though we may not be where we ought to be
Nor where we were in getting to where we
Going to be, there’s still more work to be
For you and me to help the children to see
That only we determine our inevitable destiny:
Aware I won’t be there with you but I know you
Will do what it is that you and yours must do
With divine wisdom and guidance from above;
To God be the glory, glory, glory—peace and love.
