Gaining and Maintaining Freedom-1 Tommy Green – Mobile Beacon City Editor The process of “Gaining and Maintaining freedom is a marathon not a sprint because if you aren’t careful, you may lose the freedom that you have struggled to gain. To maintain freedom, you must remember history, and how difficult it was before freedom was achieved. This is the first article in Gaining and Maintaining Freedom. I am going to start with the African American journey toward freedom in the 1965 after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Bill and the 1965 Voting Rights Acts became the law of the land. I will deal with gaining freedom first because it comes before maintaining freedom. Slavery in America was different from slavery in other countries. When Black people were enslaved, their children and succeeding generations were to be enslaved for life. Slavery in other countries had been practiced during war where the country that won the war would enslave the defeated countries, and foreigners would be enslaved for a time period. There was another difference in slavery in America where the African slaves’ mind and body were controlled. This process is called brainwashing. After being indoctrinated for approximately 347 years in Black inferiority, you are told that you are free after working 247 without any compensation. In addition, you worked a 100 years during segregation for meager wages. You are told again that you are free, but most of the Black people didn’t have any assets or only a small amount that were accumulated during those trying years. How do the Black people who have been shown overtly and covertly that they are inferior to White people function as equals in America? Some of the oppressed group makes every effort to be amenable to the oppressors because they have accepted that they are inferior to them. On the other hand, some of the oppressed group will only bend their back so far because they have too much pride to be stripped of all of their integrity. There is a myth that Black people had a love for their Black brothers and sisters before segregation was officially ended. I can remember how my parents and their neighbors gathered their crops at the end of the growing season. However, there was an undercurrent of Black self-hate lurking below the surface. I can remember in my small town that Black people didn’t express any anger against White people, but they expressed anger and hatred against their Black brothers and sisters because they had been indoctrinated with hating anything black. During segregation, Black people were being threatened 24 hours a day. For their survival, they came together for their self-interest. If you observe the Wildebeest and other animals in the jungle that are threatened by more powerful animals, the threatened animals will travel in groups because that is the only way that most of them can survive. However, you can see what happened after segregation ended, a large number of African Americans couldn’t wait to get as far as possible from their Black brothers and sisters. Even today, there are Black people who think that it is a disadvantage to live in a majority Black community. During the 1960s, Black people were taught to love their Black selves and other Black people. However, if you aren’t conscious of the past, you may end up with the same results. The freedom that we received in the 1960s weren’t the first time that we received freedom in America. After the Civil War ended, African slaves were granted freedom with the passage of the 13th Amendment, the 14th Amendment established citizenship for them, and the 15th Amendment allowed them to vote. As soon as the amendments were implemented, the White supremacists started a campaign to reduce those rights. If you didn’t know the history of the 1860s, you may have thought when the 1964 Civil Rights Bill became a law and the implementing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that finally Black people wouldn’t have to struggle for freedom as we had in the past because we were finally recognized as full citizens in America. When President Obama was elected President of the United States, this was our confirmation that we had arrived. How gullible we were? We see today how the White supremacists are treating him. I hope in 2014 that we will finally wake up and smell the coffee. “THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES!”
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 13:00:18 +0000
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