The night is beautiful, So the faces of my people. The stars are beautiful, So the eyes of my people. Beautiful, also, is the sun. Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people
- Poet Langston Hughes
This is not the first time we have faced adversity.
Many of us came through the Civil Rights Movement and had many crosses to bear. As a black child growing in the South and North, there were many situations where I had to “put on the full armour of God.”
From standing at 4 years old in the segregated train station with my grandmother in Birmingham, and being confronted by a little white girl; or riding in the back of the Seaboard Railroad train in the ‘colored only” car to North Carolina; or having the sidewalk swept behind me, as an owner of a restaurant I had entered in North Carolina tried to sweep the "Nigra out". That's not to mention the "colored-only" bathrooms, waiting rooms and water fountains, or the ultra segregated, gerrymandered neighborhoods of Cleveland, or the small college town near Cincinnati, which was very much segregated. In those instances, the words of Malcolm X rang out -- “ The Mason-Dixon Line is anything below Canada.”
We have had our battles and will continue to do so. But I will keep the words of our precious angels sent to us to guide us on Earth:
- Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays, president, Morehouse College: Whatever you do strive to do it so well that no man living, and no man dead and no man yet to be born can do it any better.
- Frederick Douglass: If there is no struggle, there is no progress
- Malcolm X: If you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything
- Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.: The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
We must press on; we will not be daunted. Ours is a rich heritage to our country and the world. We helped build this nation. We must form alliances and work with our brothers and sisters fighting on their own land to preserve precious water/land so essential to our lives and our children’s lives. We are stronger together.
Perhaps it was supposed to happen this way. Many people have become complacent — some even feel racism does not exist anymore -- or they ask, "why should I vote; it won’t count? Well, the canker sore has been opened for the pus to be removed from the open sore. Thanks to Mr. Donald Trump, he has shown the World who he represents and who now represents the United States of America. Racism is real, it is here, it is America.
God help the United States of America.
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