Bearing witness
6th February 2017 · 0 Comments
By Edmund W. Lewis
Editor
It’s Black History Month again, a season for the renewal of our commitment to being our best selves, striving to honor and celebrate those who came before us and bearing witness to the time-tested African adage that says “I am because we are.”
Whether we know it, admit it or even acknowledge it, we are all connected and part of a larger family that can be traced back to the dawn of humanity and civilization.
Our collective spirit, ingenuity, wisdom, resilience, courage and sense of purpose are as ancient and formidable as “the flow of human blood in human veins.”
We were in ancient Kemet (Egypt) designing and building pyramids, charting the stars and practicing holistic medicine and healing long before that stellar civilization was repeatedly invaded, plundered and gentrified by outsiders with no knowledge of or appreciation for the fact that the Creator is the source and the aim of all life.
We crafted and taught philosophy, science, medicine, architecture and engineering at ancient universities at Timbuktu and other sacred learning centers whose names have been purged from the history books and obscured by a concerted effort to rob us of our collective heritage.
Long before anyone else, we traveled the world and shared our insights, wisdom and brilliance with people in lands as far away as Spain, Japan, India, the Pacific Islands, Peru and Mexico.
I would venture to say that the best leaders and spokespersons of African descent throughout the history of the United States have been men and women who were called to lead by our Beloved Ancestors and the Creator. Those leaders include Mama Ida B. Wells, the Hon. Marcus Garvey, Dr. Martin Delany, Malcolm X, the Rev, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Queen Mother Moore, Mama Fannie Lou Hamer. Dr. Mary McCleod Bethune, Dr. Carter G. Woodson, Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner.
While we need to make knowing ourselves in the ancient Kemetic sense our primary purpose and motivation in studying our collective history, it is imperative that we also be vigilant in defending the legacy of our Beloved Ancestors, particularly those who our oppressors have tried and continue to try to use to undermine our efforts to fully liberate ourselves mentally, physically, culturally and economically.
We’ve seen the enemies of justice, equity and democracy do this in trying to alter or distort of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s message by suggesting that it is Black and Brown people who are clinging to racial enmity and refusing to judge our brothers and sisters by the “content of their character.”
Now we see President Donald Trump singling out revolutionary abolitionist Frederick Douglass for praise, suggesting that people are just getting around to recognizing the contributions and accomplishments of this freedom fighter.
Speaking before some of “the Blacks” he famously gets along well with, Trump told the group that included HUD Secretary Dr. (Uncle) Ben Carson, “Frederick Douglass is an examine of somebody who has done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more.”
Though he probably thought he was being magnanimous and progressive, Trump came across like someone who himself just learned who Douglass was and took a “Cliff’s Notes” approach to learning more about the antislavery leader before his Black History Month listening session.
It was pretty ridiculous, kind of like Jeff Sessions waxing nostalgic about an uncompromising and fearless civil rights warrior like Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.
If he and others knew who Frederick Douglass was and what he stood for, there would be no way the Trump Administration would have even thought about praising the fiery abolitionist and tireless freedom fighter during Black History Month.
Douglass, himself a former slave, was a fearless leader who was adamant about giving Black men an opportunity to fight for their own freedom in the Civil War and called out the United States government and its wealthy landowners for celebrating Independence Day while enslaving, oppressing and marginalizing people of African descent.
Douglass was equally committed to making sure that women of African descent played an active role in the freedom struggle and that their voices were not drowned out by men of color.
It would be interesting to see how Douglass, who always had the courage of his convictions, would address President Trump’s blatant disrespect for women and his disdain for news organizations, given Douglass’ creation of The North Star as a tool of enlightenment, ennoblement, empowerment and liberation.
It would also be interesting to know what Trump thinks of Douglass and his legacy after he actually reads what the freedom fighter had to say about what it takes to be free in America.
“Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform,” Douglass said. “The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. In the light of these ideas, Negroes will be hunted at the North and held and flogged at the South so long as they submit to those devilish outrages and make no resistance, either moral or physical. Men may not get all they pay for in this world, but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others.”
I suspect that these prophetic and insightful words will be revisited often as resistance to the ultra repressive Trump regime continues to grow over the next few years.
It is imperative that we not let Donald Trump or anyone else outside of our collective experience as people of African descent tell us who our leaders and heroes are and what they stood and stand for. Point blank.
We owe it to ourselves, our Beloved Ancestors, our children and our children’s children to learn everything we can about us and those who came before us.
That is a monumental task and too weighty a mission to complete over the course of a single month on a calendar, but every February is an opportunity for us to rededicate ourselves to getting back to who we were and the wisdom and insight that comes with knowing that “I am because we are.”
Happy Black History Month, y’all.
May the Creator and the Beloved Ancestors protect, inspire and guide you as you take conscious, deliberate steps to reach higher ground.
This article originally published in the February 6, 2017 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
