America's Hidden Secret

In my novel, “Just a Season” titled for the religious knowledge referring to a period of time characterized by a particular circumstance, suitable to an indefinite period of time associated with a divine phenomenon called life.

During this passage through time I have come to realize that there are milestones, mountains, and valleys that we must encounter. This speaks loudly to the challenges of a proud people - African Americans. So as I continue the twenty nine days of Black History this writing is about the rise and fall of a great legacy.

Let me tell you about one of America’s best kept secrets - “Black Wall Street”. This story is will inspire, enlighten, empower, and make you aware of the history of a people at a time when the odds were against all odds. It was during a time called segregation, when Jim Crow ruled and “separate but equal” was the law of the land. Because of this de facto Apartheid like system African American were forced to live in communities dependent upon each other in order to survive, and survive they did. Every town had such a place to which I will share the rich history of several of these communities. I like to call the places “Brownsville”.

Let me introduce you to the most infamous of them all that was located in Tulsa Oklahoma that came to be known as “Black Wall Street”. The name was fittingly given to the most affluent all-black community in America. This community was the epitome of success proving that African Americans had a successful infrastructure known as the golden door of the Black community during the early 1900’s. Although, it was in an unusual location Black Wall Street was a prime example of the typical Black community in America that did business far beyond expectations.

The state of Oklahoma was set aside to be a Black and Indian state that included over 28 Black townships. Another point worth noting, nearly a third of the people who traveled in the terrifying "Trail of Tears" alongside the Indians from 1830 to 1842 were Black people. The citizens of Oklahoma chose a Black governor; there were PhD’s, Black attorneys, doctors and professionals from all walks of life contributing to the successful development of this community. One such luminous figure was Dr. Berry who also owned the bus system generating an average income of $500 a day in 1910. During this time physicians owned medical schools to empower and develop African Americans.

The area encompassed 36 square blocks, over 600 businesses with a population of 15,000 African Americans. There were pawn shops everywhere, brothels, jewelry stores, churches, restaurants and movie theaters. Their success was monumentally evident in that the entire state of Oklahoma had only two airports, yet six blacks owned their own planes. Just to show how wealthy many Black people were, there was a banker in a neighboring town who had a wife named California Taylor. Her father owned the largest cotton gin west of the Mississippi. 

When California shopped, she would take a cruise to Paris every three months to have her clothes made.

There was also a man named Mason in nearby Wagner County who had the largest potato farm in the west. When he harvested, he would fill 100 boxcars a day. Another Black man not far away was doing the same thing with a spinach farm. The typical family averaged five children or more, though the typical farm family would have 10 kids or more who made up the nucleus of the labor.

What was significant about Black Wall Street was they understood an important principle - they kept the money in the community. The dollars circulated 36 to 1000 times within the community, sometimes taking a year for currency to leave the community. Something the African America community of today does not fully appreciate or practice because a dollar will leave the Black community today in 15 minutes. This community was so tight and wealthy because they traded dollars hand-to-hand because they were dependent upon one another as a result of the Jim Crow laws.

Another powerful image, and extremely significant, was education. The foundation of the community was to educate every child because they understood that education is the single most important ingredient necessary to neutralize those forces that breed poverty and despair. When students went to school they wore a suit and tie because of the morals and respect they were taught at a young age. In addition, nepotism contributed greatly to the success of this community as a way to help one another – a tactic that needs to be instilled in our culture today.

A postscript to Tulsa’s legacy is the world renowned R&B music group the GAP Band. The group of brothers Charlie, Ronnie & Robert Wilson chose the group’s name taken from the first letters of the main thoroughfare Greenwood Avenue that intersects with Archer and Pine Streets; from those letters you get G.A.P. Another legendary figure from Tulsa is their favorite son, basketball great and jazz musician the late Wayman Tisdale. These are just a few luminaries that Tulsa has produced, surely the most recognized today.

An unprecedented amount of global business was conducted from within the Black Wall Street community, which flourished from the early 1900 until 1921. Then the unthinkable happened and the community faced a valley or more accurately stated feel of a cliff. The Black Wall Street community suffered the largest massacre of non-military Americans in the history of this country.

As you might well imagine, the lower-economic Europeans looked over and saw how prosperous the Black community had become and destroyed it. I don’t know the true reason, jealousy was mentioned, but racism was certainly at its core. Lead by the infamous KKK, working in concert with ranking city officials, and many other sympathizers.

The destruction began Tuesday evening, June 1, 1921, when "Black Wall Street," the most affluent all-black community in America, was bombed from the air and burned to the ground by mobs of resentful whites. In a period spanning fewer than 12 hours, a once thriving black business district in northern Tulsa lay smoldering. A model community destroyed and a major Africa-American economic movement resoundingly defused. The night's carnage left some 3,000 African Americans dead and over 600 successful businesses lost.

Among them were 21 churches, 21 restaurants, 30 grocery stores and two movie theaters, plus a hospital, a bank, a post office, libraries, schools, law offices, a half-dozen private airplanes and even the bus system. This historic event, you would think should be common knowledge – but not so. One would be hard-pressed to find any documentation concerning the incident, let alone an accurate accounting of it.

Not in any reference or American history book documenting the worst incidents of violence ever visited upon people of African descent. This night of horror was unimaginable. Try if you will to imagine seeing 1,500 homes being burned and looted, while white families with their children standing around the borders of the community watching the massacre much in the same manner they would watch a lynching. It must have been beyond belief for the victims.

I wonder if you aware of this little known history fact, where the word "picnic" came from? It was typical to have a picnic on a Friday evening in Oklahoma. The word was short for "pick a nigger" to lynch. They would lynch a Black male and cut off body parts as souvenirs. This went on every weekend in many part of the country with thousands lynched in the first part of the last century. Unfortunately, that is where the word actually came from.

The riots weren't caused by anything Black or white. It was caused as a result of Black prosperity. A lot of white folks had come back from World War I and they were poor. When they looked over into the Black Wall Street community and saw that Black men who fought in the war came home as heroes also contributed to the destruction. It cost the Black community everything - justice and reconciliation are often incompatible goals because not a single dime of restitution was ever provided, to include no insurance claims have been awarded to a single victims.

As I began, there are milestones, mountains, and valleys which surely encompassed this community and its people. This is why it is so important to teach these lessons because those who neglect the lessons of the past are doomed to see it repeated. Life is not a race you run, it is a relay and it is your responsibility to pass the baton.

Our youth, the next generation, must be prepared and know when they look at our communities today that they came from a people who built kingdoms. And that's my Thought Provoking Perspective...

This like offers a detailed account of the incident: 

http://www.theroot.com/views/who-killed-black-wall-street?page=0,1

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Just a Season

Legacy – A New Season 

AMAZON

Communicating The “N-Word”

Well it’s been a very tough week for black folks in many respects but the elephant in the room, as always, was race. With the George Zimmerman murder trial underway and some descriptive words used to describe one race or another.

Then we had to endure the historic gutting of the most significant piece of legislation since the Emancipation Proclamation with the Supreme Court deciding the country has evolved and changed. Of course, we saw how right they were because within a few hours states began to enact laws that the Voting Rights Act was designed to protect against. But the big story was Paula Dean’s use of the word, apology, and sort of denial that she’s a racist.

I would not dare get into the conversation about who should do what other than to say we can see there is an ilk that wants to somehow return to the good old days prior to 1965. This post is specifically for someone who sent me a comment a few days ago saying I was “no political scientist”. LOL!!! I agree with you sir.

However, I lived thought what history calls Jim Crow and have seen those who feel they have an inherent privilege to abuse people worst than you treat your dog. Your comment, and others like yours, are from the minds of people who have no idea what degradation is like until you have walked in the shoes of an African American – past or present.

Trayvon did not deserve to die at the hands of this man and I pray justice is served. Paula, well if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck – it’s a duck! Now, with respect to the “N-Word” and what you call being racist because people of your hue cannot use it. I found this video by someone who looks like you to explain it to you and maybe his message will resonate. 

“To your comment specifically: I may not live to see another black president but today, in this lifetime, look at the picture sir. He is the HNIC!!! And that’s my Thought Provoking Perspective…

Black Music Month: Soul Train

Black music means all things to our community; at least the way I see it. It dictates the rhythm of our soul. I have said many times that “our story is the greatest story ever told”. We, as a people, have had the fortitude to make something out of nothing. Yes, and I know that is an understatement – but so true.

I cannot pay homage to Black Music Month without giving credit to Soul Train and to Don Cornelius who made something possible at a time when it was impossible. Lest remember that just a few years earlier black music was not allowed to be played on radio. Let me remind you it was called "Race Music" segregated like the rest of America.

I left for Vietnam in 1969. At that time, our representation on television as it related to African American’s was basically nonexistent. Of course, there was the buffoonery and unrealistic representations of who they wanted us to appear to the world. When I returned, a year and a half later, I was changed as a young man so was the world left behind. Thanks in large part to a Saturday afternoon television show called “Soul Train”. 

The host of this groundbreaking show Don Cornelius was a tall always stylishly dress. He was an enigmatic mélange of ambition, vision and begrudging affection who unlike most old school show biz impresarios. African American’s knew that Soul Train’s rival American Bandstand did very little for the artist or our community or did provide joy within our souls. Mr. Cornelius had the vision to create the hippest trip on television and dare I say in America. 

Soul Train was not just a great American story of triumph over travail; it was a hallowed symbol to the African American community. Soul Train changed the world through its outstanding reflections of our pride and talent. The show shined a light, a bright light, on the African American culture through great music while showcasing the performers who in many cases had no other national platform. This included the known, unknown, and obscure literally making stars of them overnight. Soul Train was the powerful vehicle and it became the longest running syndicated show on television, a black history fact to remember.

Watching Soul Train made you instantly cool, no matter if you were black, white or otherwise. Where else could you learn the latest dances, hippest fashions, and the next best way to rock that Afro and what products you had to have to keep it looking good? The legendary Soul Train Line was essential viewing. Can you remember those parties you attend on the Saturday night after watching the show where you used the moves to do your own Soul Train line? It could be said that it raised your “Cool IQ”. Soul Train was a window into a world rarely seen by the world. 

When Mr. Cornelius signed off on February 1, 2012, it was a tragic end to a long running iconic figure in American music. In remembrance of the creator’s legendary roll; I wish him love, peace and soul. May his soul Rest In Peace! And that’s my Thought Provoking Perspective!

  "Just a Season"

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 AMAZON

The State Of Black America

We will soon commemorate the 50th anniversary of the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which was a watershed moment in our history. However, we must be mindful that it was not a welcomed event as most of white America and the Kennedy Administration were very much against such a gathering of blacks in the nation’s capital. I am saddened to say that as a community, we are not much better off today than we were fifty years ago.

I'm not saying that there has not been significant and important progress in the last 50 years. Surely for some, but if Dr. King were to have an opinion – he would be very displeased. Marc Morial, President of the National Urban League, believes there’s a decrease in poverty, increases in high school graduation rates and enrollment rates". This may well be true but I wonder what statistics has he seen to come to this conclusion.

I don't profess to be as honorable or noteworthy as some of our so-called leaders but the disparity between black Americans and white Americans when it comes to jobs, income, healthcare and wealth remains vast and much too large. When you look at the urban communities - the African American plight is worse than ever in most of these categories.

Recently, several organizations gathered for the release of the annual "State of Black America" report, which highlighted the economic forecast for African Americans. Although the report is presented annually, this year, the Urban League commissioned a half-century study to commemorate the 1963 March on Washington.

The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) Chair Marcia Fudge reported that “the unemployment rate is double for blacks than for whites, we've lost more homes to foreclosure than whites and we've lost more wealth than whites”. Yet, they say the percentage of blacks living in poverty has declined 23 points and the percentage of black children living in poverty is down by 22 points since 1963.

It is worth mentioning that the march was prior to the signing of any of the landmark civil rights legislation which adds little credibility to that statement. It is also noteworthy to remember that at that time the, in 1963, Jim Crow was the law of the land and its restrictions did not allow us to use the same bathrooms or eat at lunch counters. So, if you consider this environment - minimal gains have been made to be viewed as great progress.  

The report credits the civil rights measures that were enacted to open the doors of opportunity for blacks in education and standards of living. Rep. Chaka Fattah said, "It is without contradiction that African Americans have made extraordinary progress in the report... But, compared to the majority, we still have some room to grow". I wonder if his constituents would agree in Philadelphia?

Morial then said, as the budget debate continues in Washington on whether to cut critical program funding, the "State of Black America 2013" highlights a harsh reality. "Budget cutting fever will cause economic pneumonia. If we are to move toward a lasting economic recovery, full equality and empowerment, we must apply sustainable solutions keenly focusing on jobs for all Americans and closing the gaps that result in a tale of two Americas”.

 I will tell you that I have lived long enough to have witnessed and know that people will say anything, regardless of complication, on any subject. Many will say “there is no race problem. There’s a black president”. Or they will point to the few, out 42 million, successful African Americans, and I am proud of them.

However, as we commemorate the March that produced the famous “I have a Dream Speech” I believe it is fair to say that most African Americans will see the remnants of the “Dream” more as a “Nightmare”. I have to say from my vantage point the forecast looks GRIM! And that’s my Thought Provoking Perspective…

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Huey P. Newton A Revolutionary

Huey P. Newton was born in Monroe, Louisiana, on February 17, 1942. You may find this surprising but he was named after former Louisiana Governor Huey P. Long. Brother Huey’s legacy began in 1966 with co-founder Bobby Seale when they founded the left-wing Black Panther Party for Self Defense.

The organization was central to the Black Power movement, making headlines with its inflammatory rhetoric and militaristic style, becoming a leading figure in the black power movement of the 1960s in Oakland, California.

The Black Panthers wanted to improve life in black communities and established social programs to help those in need. They also fought against police brutality in black neighborhoods by mostly white cops. Members of the group would go to arrests in progress and watch for abuse. Newton himself was arrested in 1967 for allegedly killing an Oakland police officer during a traffic stop.

The case was eventually dismissed after two retrials ended with hung juries. He was later convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to 2 to 15 years in prison. But public pressure - "Free Huey" became a popular slogan of the day - helped Newton’s cause.

Despite his legal run-ins, Newton began to take his education seriously. Although he graduated high school in 1959, Newton barely knew how to read. He became his own teacher, learning to read by himself. In the mid-1960s Newton decided to pursue his education at Merritt College where he met Bobby Seale. The two were briefly involved with political groups at the school before they set out to create one of their own.

The Black Panther Party for Self Defense was founded in 1966. Unlike many of the other social and political organizers of the time, they took a militant stance, advocating the ownership of guns by African Americans, and were often seen brandishing weapons. A famous photograph shows Newton - the group’s Minister of Defense - holding a gun in one hand and a spear in the other.

The group believed that violence - or the threat of violence - might be needed to bring about social change. They set forth their political goals in a document called the Ten-Point Program, which included better housing, jobs, and education for African Americans.

It also called for an end to economic exploitation of black communities. Still the organization itself was not afraid to punctuate its message with a show of force. For example, to protest a gun bill in 1967, Newton and other members of the Panthers entered the California Legislature fully armed. The action was a shocking one that made news across the country.

The Panthers became in disarray mainly because of efforts by the FBI and their initiatives like COINTELPRO. Most don’t know that what we now know as Head Start was developed by the party. FBI Director Hoover said, “The biggest internal threat to the countries internal security was the Panthers program to feed the children of the black community”.

During the Party’s existence, members of the group clashed with police several times. The party’s treasurer, Bobby Hutton, was even killed during of these conflicts in 1968. In the 1970s, the Black Panthers began to fall apart. Key members left, and Newton faced more criminal charges. To avoid prosecution, he fled to Cuba in 1971, but he returned three years later.

Despite his legal run-ins, Newton began to take his education seriously. He returned to school, earning a Ph.D. from University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1980. In his final years, however, it is believed that he suffered from a drug problem. The once popular revolutionary died on August 22, 1989, in Oakland, California, after being shot on the street.

Huey Newton was a man of profound stature and in my opinion had the courage or made the selfless sacrifice to the benefit of a people at a time when the community needed it most. He once said, “You can jail a Revolutionary, but you can't jail the Revolution. If you stop struggling, then you stop life. Black Power is giving power to people who have not had power to determine their destiny.”

And that’s my Thought Provoking Perspective…

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The Cause and Effects of Discrimination

Hate is one of the most powerful emotions a person can experience or express. Those who have prejudices, simply live life in fear. They are afraid of what they do not know and this fear presents as hate. For people who have experienced this loathing nature, it can be devastating or surreal. Human beings cannot choose their ethnic backgrounds, sex, or physical features.

A person has no control over his or her DNA. Nevertheless, when stigmatisms arise about a person’s race, this fact is blatantly overlooked. Multiculturalism, gender differences, and sexual preferences are factual parts of the world and counteracting these facts is the theory of hate.

When people choose to hate, the effects of this lifestyle choice can be detrimental on numerous levels. Racists and those with extreme bias in regards to ethnicities, socially segregate themselves, resulting in severe developmental issues. This segregation occurs due to acceptance, anger, experience, fear, ignorance and/or social pressure. Choosing to be a racist is a decision to be limited to the unique experiences offered by gaining knowledge of other cultural or ethnic groups.

Frederick Jermaine Carter died by hanging from a tree in a predominantly white neighborhood, with the reputation of not being welcome to African Americans, in Greenwood, Mississippi, on December 3, 2010. In 1955, the murder of Emmett Till occurred in a town 10 miles from Greenwood, and this crime was similar to the Carter situation. The more recent death of Frederick Carter has rehashed the details of Emmett Till’s tragic death and the similarities in both cases.

Emmett allegedly whistled at a married Caucasian woman and for this assumed action, her husband and an accomplice executed him at the age of 15. The trial of the Till lynching was recorded by over seventy reporters and this sparked an international awareness of Southern racism. This awareness has fueled the desire for justice in the present Carter case and demands for change in the state of Mississippi and beyond.

Having hatred for those who differ from a self-preferred group, spans far past race. On October 3, 2010, in the state of New York, one man and two teenage boys were beaten and sodomized for hours by nine attackers for being homosexuals. Occurrences like this crime are unfortunately frequent and influence movements such as anti-gay hate crimes. Unfortunately, those who are multicultural and gay experience the double whammy of being a potential target for an active hater. A positive effect of these situations is the gained awareness of impending dangers.

Sexism applies to discriminations or prejudices in regards to either sex as a whole or male or female chauvinism. The term sexism arose in the mid-20th century and this induction resulted in movements such as Feminism, Masculism, Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Intersex and Questioning (LGBTIQ) and Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT). Chauvinism can affect people in a major way. If a person feels discriminated against because of his or her gender, the effects are long term emotional and possibly mental issues.

No matter status or location, everyone has experienced hate personally or indirectly. It is a revolting, continuous fact. Detestation is a vicious cycle that is hard to bring to an end. However, for those who choose to make positive impacts in anti-hate movements and lifestyles, learn that past atrocities prove to be effective incentives to make change.

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Legacy – A New Season 

AMAZON

Just a Season

Black Women And Faith

I am one who likes to think I have faith. Maybe more spiritual than religious because I understand that religion is a business and being spiritual is of the soul. There has been any number of articles suggesting, with statistics, that African American women are the most fervently religious people in the country. Now, having know a few black women in my time this was not that much of a surprise because I have found that most will out Pope the Pope!

There was a woman quoted in one such survey as saying: “Finding that verse at that moment was no coincidence… God had spoken. Instantly, a sense of calm and confidence enveloped her. In times like these, when she feels anxious, afraid or unsure… relies on her faith.” Just so you know faith is that what you believe to be true that cannot be seen. Keep reading I have some thoughts on this too! But first let me talk about the survey.

A Washington Post and Kaiser Family Foundation nationwide survey about six months ago found that nine in 10 African American women reveals that as a group, black women are among the most religious people in the nation. The survey found that 74 percent of black women said that “living a religious life” is very important. On that same question, the number falls to 57 percent of white women and 43 percent of white men.

I understand during times of turmoil, which is living in America. Black women endure much more than any other group causing them to turn to their faith to get through. Black women, across education and income levels, say living a religious life is a greater priority than being married or having children, and this call to faith either surpasses or pulls even with having a career as a life goal, the survey shows.

Stacey Floyd-Thomas, an associate professor of ethics and society at Vanderbilt University Divinity School, says “Black women have been the most mistreated and scandalized group in U.S. society and culture as they wrestle both individually and collectively with the triple jeopardy of racism, sexism and classism.” To this I agree!

Looking back on her childhood, Hutchinson wonders: “Why would children be compelled to profess belief, especially when they look around them and see that the world is overpopulated with adult believers flaunting their immorality?” Hutchinson contends that perhaps there aren’t more black women grappling with that answer because there is little in their community that supports a different perspective.

The article went on to say “for most African American women, absolute trust in a higher power has been a truism for centuries. The women said their focus is on one thing: their personal relationship with God.” Even more important than relationships, money, and family to which I find shocking. God created man for you, to give you children, which is family. I cannot believe it is his will to forsake that which he has provided for you.

LAW AND ORDER THEME!!!

Ok, here is where I am sure to upset some. First, we were brought to America as slaves and there were two choices; take the Bible or die - by way of the rope or gun. Let me remind you there was no word G-O-D in any African language before the coming of Europeans. In addition, the first registered slave ship was named the “Good Ship Jesus”. The WORD, supposedly given by God, that most so fervently believe was rewritten twenty-eight times with the last revision ordered by the diabolical King James of England, who stood to benefit from his rendition. My point here is that maybe we should not take the WORD literally.

I want to make two more points; the image of the deity that hangs on most church walls is that of a blonde haired blue eyed European who could not possibly have come from that region of the world. The other point is this: there is a church in most communities on every corner, so I say if that was the answer why isn’t working.

“I believe in something greater than I and I chose to call it God”. This in the practical sense should be adapted to mean “Good Orderly Direction”. I would respectfully suggest that we, and black women in particular, look to what is within to find strength because there you will find heaven. Lastly it might be a good idea to not be so devoted and blindly follow con artist, or maybe I should say, pimps in the pulpit and you know who they are.

Let me close by asking “how can you love God, who you cannot see. Yet, you fail to love yourself or your man, who you can see. Let’s get back to family, which is strength! And that’s my Thought Provoking Perspective…

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A Message For Black Women

I have been known to post Thought Provoking Perspectives that evoke controversy as well as thoughts based in sound reasoning. This post I’m sure will do one or the other. It is not my intent to cast blame or fault. However, there is blame and fault to be extended to a large part of our female population.

I can remember a time when Big Mama would not dare allow the ladies of her day to be the women we see today. Sadly, as much as most proclaim the rightfulness of womanhood, this is not exactly true. From a black man’s perspective many of our women have fallen into the cultural digression of a strange reality. I will not dare speak to your womanhood mainly because I am not qualified to do so. But the attached video speaks to what appears to me as reality.

Yesterday was Mothers Day, so let me suggest that mothers teach your young black girls the need to understand this for the betterment of their lives and for black men. This is one black woman who gets it. And that’s my Thought Provoking Perspective…

The Sister has something to say and for the sake of our survival – PLEASE LISTEN!!!

Its Time To Wake Up

Since the year of our Lord 1619, when people from Africa were first dragged onto American shores; African Americans have been chastised, criticized, punished, beaten, robbed, and murdered. All while the culprits have enjoyed wealth and prosperity as a result of our never ending allegiance and patriotism, often blindly. Even today when we have ascended to the White House there are those who castigate much vial abuse upon this uniquely qualified man of African heritage.

We are a unique people, a forgiving people, a steadfast people, and a brave people unlike any known to the world. It was our labor that built this country and is responsible for the great wealth America enjoys to this very today. When you look upon America’s enormous wealth and the power derived from its tremendous control of resources, think about the sacrifices our families made to make all of this possible. We have looked out for this country for hundreds of years and still doing today, which is simply amazing.

Upon our backs, laden with the stripes of punishment for what they believed was for discipline and in spite of our loyalty, diligence and tenacity – we loved America. Even when America refused to allow us to even walk in the shadows, we followed, believing that someday we would come to accepted and treated like men and women. Our strength in the face of adversity is vastly understated.

Our history is one of unbelievable struggle. We’ve been brave on the battlefield, despite being classified as three-fifths of a man. This was, and is, outstanding and frankly beyond the call of duty considering that we have lived through, slavery and under an Apartheid like system. We have raised America’s children, attended to its sick, and prepared their meals while those forefathers were occupied with the trappings of the good life.

In today’s business environment, we do not support each other and just keep doing business with the larger community or in fact any other community. Some say we, as a people, were very successful after slavery ended and even as recently as 1960, but you know what happens when you began to build your own communities and do business with one another – you’re pitted against one another and destroy ourselves.

This includes our acquiescence to political agendas, abdicating our own economic self-sufficiency, and working so diligently for the economic well-being of other people. Even though the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments were written and many died for the rights described therein. We did not even resist when they changed Black Rights to Civil Rights and allowed virtually every other group to take advantage of them for their progress.

Moreover, we went beyond the pale when we allowed our children to be turned over to the American educational system. With what is being taught to them, it’s likely they will continue in a mode similar to the one we have followed for the past 45 years. Remember, Mr. Lynch when he walked the banks of the James River in 1712. He prophetically said he would make African’s slave for 300 years; little did he realize the truth in his prediction. Last year, 2012, seemed to fore fill his prophetic prophecy.

We resisted the messages of trouble-making Blacks like Washington, Delaney, Garvey, Bethune, Tubman, and Truth for fighting and dying on the battlefield for us all. Yet, Mr. Lynch’s message reigns supreme. But with two generations of children going through this education system, we can look forward to at least another 50 years of despair. We can change that come by simply understanding that education is the single most important ingredient necessary to neutralize those forces that breed poverty and despair.

When you continue to do what you’ve always done; you will get what you always got and that’s my Thought Provoking Perspective.

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Legacy – A New Season 

AMAZON

Just a Season

What Happened to the BLACK FAMILY?

In a past life, one of many that I have enjoyed, I taught a college course called the Psychology of the Black Family. From time to time I go back and look through some of those old term papers from that class. There was one assignment given to each student to write a term paper on “The Breakdown of the African American Family”.

As I read through some of the thirty or so papers I found several very significant points and a common theme throughout the papers. I decided to capture some of the key points from those research papers to share with you. My intent is to, maybe, create some dialog within our consciousness as to why the black family, our community, and black people are the least likely to work together as a solid unit to the benefit of each other as other ethnic groups do.

During slavery, and from the 1800's through the 1980's, the concept of family was tight knit, strongly woven, and the envy of most cultures. The African American family unit survived in spite of unimaginable cruelty and adversity. It is only recently, during the last thirty years or so that the African American family became dysfunctional and lost its direction. One has to think for some twisted reason we do not feel whole because in many cases we allow others define us.

I can recall a powerful statement made by one of the students who expressed that she thinks the different social pressures on black men and women have contributed to the weak traditional family structure. Black women have been able to achieve more economic and educational success than black men, leading to them being higher wage earners. This inequality has eroded black women's reliance on men and their willingness to compromise on their needs or expectations, which in turn has led to resentment and disappointment on both sides.

Black women raise children, too often alone, and the bitterness that difficult task creates causes some women to make derogatory complaints against men in general, tainting their daughters and shaming their sons. Also, it seems that black women do not often hold their sons to as high a standard as their daughters, making them further vulnerable.

If proper behavior is not modeled for young people, they have difficulty fulfilling those expectations. This creates the perfect ingredients for the dismal situations to occur in our community. She went on to say that a lot of that has to do with our values, and the lack of knowing the importance of loving our communities, our families, and ourselves.

These are 12 key factors expressed from my student’s outstanding research papers:

1. The Vietnam War: Hundreds of thousands of strong, intelligent, hardworking black men were shipped abroad to be murdered, returned home shell shocked, severely damaged, or addicted. Many of which were unable to get back on track after returning from war because the government abandoned them.

2. COINTELPRO: The covert actions of J. Edgar Hoover in the wake of the Civil Rights Era and the Black Power Movements all but insured that anyone speaking out against the governments wrong doings would receive either long prison sentences or bullets. This fear silenced our forward progression, fueling distrust, and removing many of our leaders as well as potential future leaders.

3. The Assassinations of the 1960’s: Left a huge void in leadership that has yet to be filled, particularly within the Civil Rights Movement to include within the community. Instead, a universal acceptance of the pimp/hustler image in popular culture that presented alternative heroes to black youth, which resonant in the form of Gangster Rap. This genre leads to the glorification of the criminal element amidst immature minds that lack familial structure. In addition to black on black crime and staying silent while black youth are murdered by other black youth.

4. The Feminist Movement: Backed by liberal white women to fight for the equal rights of women; the same rights most black men had yet to fully be granted. A lot of black women got lost in the rhetoric of how men were keeping them down, losing sight of the fact that black men were down there with them. To this day, the power exchange and infighting among black men and women, is sadly considered the norm, a tool enumerated by Willie Lynch.

5. Oliver North & the Contras: The volume of drugs, mainly crack cocaine that flooded the black community during the 80 to which most of the drugs came in on U.S. ships with the support of the Government. The CRACK era escalated death and incarceration rates, unwanted pregnancies, neighborhood prostitution and a culture of violence. Folks were selling their kids to hit the pipe, and selling their souls to sell what went in that pipe. This epidemic destroyed our community in ways slavery could never have done. This form of contemporary was the cruelest type of slavery imposed upon our communities.

6. Mass media brainwashing & mind control: The influences of propaganda and distorted images of beauty and male/female roles. Shows like Life Styles of the Rich and Famous, Dynasty, Different Strokes, and the Jefferson’s for example. The American conscious during the 80's was money driven. Materialism became the idea that stuff defines you and others.

7. Education: The lack of proper education, financing support, and knowledge being taught by African American professionals. In addition our leaders and academics failed us as they fled the hood in droves for the suburbs during those crazy 80's. Prior to this period, kids saw on a daily basis married couples that looked like them, even if they didn’t live in their households. Yet the great migration to greener pastures left a void in the community leaving it to be filled by the image of the hustler-pimp-thug, ruthlessness, and violence.

8. Communication: This speaks to education of self and listening to the wrong messengers. The communication of values - parents became unavailable to hand down family legacies, traditions and value systems. We're like POW's locked in the same building for 20 years, unable to converse thru cement walls confined by our personas, egos, insecurities, isms etc.

9. The Black Church: Many churches have lost their way. The business of religion is bankrupting our communities. Many churches are not touching the lives of those outside of the church most in need. Just like back in the day when it was the design of slave masters, who did so much wickedness to use this as a tactic by offering a bible and in most instances nothing more than pain and a promise of a better life to keep us in line. This is not the same as faith which was necessary to survive our struggles.

10. Urbanization - work and home were once connected. Parents were near their families and children understood work as a way of life. Urbanization helped create “latch key" kids and images of hard work disappeared while replacing it with material objects.

11. Social Services: The advent of the system of welfare that demanded the absence of the influence of the black man in the home. Before Claudine during the early 50's welfare was a Midwestern farmer hook up and back then you HAD to be a complete family to apply. So the laws for welfare changed in the inner-city while many in the farm lands of Mid America started to change in culture to fit the application for welfare. For decades to follow, trillions of dollars in government spending on ineffective social programs in our cities have not by enlarge benefited the mobility of the family.

12. Segregation: Jim Crow Laws and Black Codes that prevented legal marriages, dehumanized people, and discriminatory practices in work/education left many African Americans unable to access resources necessary to build strong family bases causing disillusioned men/husbands/fathers to abandonment rather than face daily reminder of their "failure".

The next time you look in the mirror think about want happen. And that’s my THOUGHT PROVOKING PERSPECTIVE!

http://thoughtprovokingperspectives.wordpress.com

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Affirm Section 5 Of The Voting Rights Act

The Supreme Court will hear a challenge to a key provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was enacted to ensure that African Americans had a right that has almost always been denied since they arrived here in chains. The opposing parties are asking the Court to end a requirement forcing Alabama and other southern states to get Department of Justice approval to change its voting procedures and electoral maps.

The Voting Rights Act already allows governments that have changed their ways to get out from under this humbling need to get permission through a “bailout provision.” Nearly 250 counties and local jurisdictions have done so; thousands more could be eligible based on the absence of recent discriminatory efforts in voting. My question and it should be of every African American is why Section 5 should be removed?

History tells us that after the Civil War when slavery ended, wink, there were very clever measures designed to deny African Americans the supposed most sacred right to vote. There were Amendments to the Constitution that should have been sufficient. However, those Anti-Americans who preached liberty and justice for all found ways to circumvent the law. They used such things as Poll Taxes, Literacy Tests, and when all else failed Terror.

Then there came an era called Reconstruction which resulted in what they called “Separate but Equal” which was nothing more than American Apartheid. Of course that worked out well for the racial extremist. It took one hundred years for America to pass a law that was meaningful to work to some degree, the Voting Rights Act, and now was to dismantle.   

Let’s take a look at some very recent history, like last year and last month, to see why this provision should not be removed. In the last election, Republican went to many extremes to suppress minority votes through a myriad of state laws making it a mission to deny their right to vote.  The consequences of those desperate maneuvers, along with the accompanying vitriolic rhetoric, restrictive voter ID laws, encouraged Electoral College gimmickry and professed themselves unconcerned about long wait times at polling places tells us why this act is needed.

The viability of the bailout option could play an outsized role in the Supreme Court’s consideration of the voting rights law’s prior approval provision, although four years ago, conservative Justice Clarence Thomas said the prospect of bailing out had been “no more than a mirage.”

I can vividly remember “Bloody Sunday,” nearly 50 years ago, when 600 peaceful, nonviolent protesters attempting to march from Selma to Montgomery to dramatize the need for voting rights protection in Alabama. As they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, state troopers under orders from the Governor attacked with tear-gassed, clubbed, whipped, and trampled them with horses. Seventeen marchers were hospitalized that day.

In response, President Lyndon Johnson introduced the Voting Rights Act and later signed it into law. It is very clear that America has come a great distance since then, in large part thanks to the act, but efforts to undermine the voting power of minorities did not end after 1965. They still persist today. Just because a man of color is the president does not mean the battle is won.

John Lewis, a Democrat, represents Georgia’s 5th District in the U.S. Housel

Voting rights is still and danger. So let’s not tamper with one of the few laws that have been a beacon to this thing called Democracy. And that’s my Thought Provoking Perspective…