2020: Time For A Reset
The first day of January marks the end of one year the beginning of another. In some parts of the country, New Year's Eve services are for Emancipation Proclamation observances.
At the Seventh Knoxville Observance of the Emancipation Proclamation, Sister Vrondelia Chandler, Exhorter, First AME Zion Church called for attendees to find vision for the future by reflecting on the past.
She reminded them that slavery, issues of freedom from enslaved minds are economic issues as well as matters of justice:
"Sankofa is a word that comes from the Akin tribe of Ghana that means to "go back and finish it".
There is a need for us to go back and finish the mindset of freedom.
Harriet Tubman, WEB Dubois, Fredrick Douglas, Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver and Sojourner Truth are all names that are synonymous with how the physical body can be enslaved but how the mind can still be free.
Today, we reflect on the Proclamation of 1863 that set in motion the beginning of the end of slavery. The original intent of the proclamation authorized the recruitment of free slaves for the Union Army.
It was recognized that after the war, the Emancipation Proclamation didn't have constitutional commitments so slavery still existed in confederate states and states exempt from the proclamation. The thirteenth proclamation was passed in 1864 and ratified in 1865 and slavery was forever abolished everywhere in America with these words: neither slavery or involuntary servitude shall exist in the United States.
There were lessons to be learned from the aftermath of slavery. After the Emancipation Proclamation, many former slave owners feared that the former slaves would raid the plantations and treat the former slave owners as they had been treated.
Former slave owners would terrify Blacks as night riders to try to protect the old ways of White privilege. Eventually, the Klu Klux Klan was established.
There was a fear of the loss of free labor and the good profit that had built great wealth. American Banks discriminatory lending and housing discrimination produced a system of tenants, not owners — practices still common today.
Lynching of emancipated slaves was common because there was a fear that Black men in suits would get the attention of White women.
After slavery, the slave cabins were empty, the fields were overgrown and the big house was un - kept and there was no delicious food being cooked or White children being tended to by slave women. The experts were gone.
Sharecropping was born out of the necessity in agreement with the people who had the expertise to make a profit.
The practicing of slavery and enslaved mindsets after the Emancipation Proclamation, have continued even until today.
There was now (and still is) a need for people who had been captured and enslaved for centuries to again learn to be free. "
It is the beginning of 2020, a new year. It is time to start thinking about a new start, a new identity — making new connections to our past, and not just for ourselves.
Think, Sankofa, with our children especially helping them to connect with purpose and values. Using the past, we can recognize and build on our strengths. Booker T. Washington walked miles and miles, not because he was poor and did not own a car, but because he valued education. He also wanted to make a way for others to get a good education as well.
His determination to make a way for others eventually led to establishing Tuskegee University.
Use our history to share with our children the successes and accomplishments. So, when others say that Blacks don't have the capacity to learn or they do not expect us to excel at subjects such as math, the whole myth goes away in so many instances — with the Hidden Figures narrative for example.
So it is time for a reset and we can make a resolution to build successes. Not all of them are going to want to, because remember that some Blacks stayed on the plantation after slavery was abolished just because they were comfortable on the plantation and it was all that they had known — just as some Blacks today are choosing to live their lives by what is easiest and more comfortable for them.
The on - going theme is that it is time in 2020 for Blacks to do a reset and rediscover who we are as a people.
Part II, next week.
Tagged in: