Our cure is not to be found in the grocery stores or pharmacies, but online, in book stores, and libraries. Therein lies that cure that evades us.
In 1847, reading was outlawed in the State of Missouri as were black preachers, out of the slavemasters' fear of increasingly intelligent slaves.
Such slaves were threats to their continued, profitable exploitation of that free, black labor that framed their economic, social, and political status quo. Becoming literate, learned, conscious, persons was, therefore, totally incompatible with valuable and marketable bondsmen remaining enslaved, I.e., one whose body, mind, and spirit were bound alike to whites.
These slave owners feared the future emergence of such persons as Denmark Vesey of South Carolina, whose 1822 plot was conceived from and concealed within the scriptures and lessons of the Bible, and within Charleston, South Carolina's nascent African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Other such feared persons included David Walker of Boston, a former slave, and Massachusetts transplant, whose 1829 classic, APPEAL TO THE COLORED CITIZENS OF THE WORLD AND ESPECIALLY OF THE UNITED STATES, shocked the entire nation with its historical, apocalyptic, and Biblical prophesies of divine redemption for the black man.
In like manner, Nat Turner's bloody, 1831 insurrection was carried out by a Southhampton, Virginia, slave, who taught himself to read and to write both human symbols and nature's. He and his fellows killed 60 whites, in a never-to-be-forgotten rampage. Nat Turner's intelligence was marveled at.
Like Vesey, Walker, and others before them, Prophet Nat Turner found strength and instruction in the Bible.
Others before Turner included Prince Hall, a free man who founded the black Masonic Lodge in the 1770s-80s, after serving in the Continental Army, and receiving his Charter directly from the Grand Lodge in England for his mother African Lodge of Boston.
"Others" before Nat Turner also includes Absalom Jones, and Richard Allen, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, founders in 1787 of the Free African Society, for mutual aid, the forerunner of the black St Thomas Episcopal Church and of the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in later years. Education was restorative, medicinal, secular, spiritual, ongoing and empowering in all of these men.
Contemporaneous with these great men, was one Phyllis Wheatley, a native-born African female, who was educated as a child in America in her captivity, and is renown for her poetry and piety, in America and in England.
There were thousands of others who acquired varying degrees of learning and Biblical insight making them unfit to be slaves! Some of the more famous names include: Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown, William Still, James Forten, Paul Cuffee, J. W. C. Pennington, etc.
The cure that evades black America is to be found in its history and in the Bible, not as prescribed to them by others; but, as ascribed to each of them personally by that quiet, soft, voice whispering from the Holy Spirit.
"11So He said, "Go forth and stand on the mountain before the LORD." And behold, the LORD was passing by! And a great and strong wind was rending the mountains and breaking in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. 12After the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of a gentle blowing.…" 1 Kings 19.
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
"WHISPERS" THAT CURE
"DIETARY" WHISPERS THAT CURE
Dietary deficiency is a terrible thing. Pictures of gaunt, skeletal-looking babies from Africa or Asia plead for money with which to feed and care for them. With horror, we avert our eyes, even as others rush to donate.
We suffer from a similar deficiency ourselves, not of the body, for we are robust and buxom, even in many cases, obese; fat, sleek and sassy.
Our deficiency is of the mind and of the spirit. While appearing to be well, we suffer a debilitating malaise of self-doubt, self-hatred or contempt.
Our cure is not to be found in the grocery stores or pharmacies, but online, in book stores, and libraries. Therein lies that cure that evades us.
In 1847, reading was outlawed in the State of Missouri as were black preachers, out of the slavemasters' fear of increasingly intelligent slaves.
Such slaves were threats to their continued, profitable exploitation of that free, black labor that framed their economic, social, and political status quo. Becoming literate, learned, conscious, persons was, therefore, totally incompatible with valuable and marketable bondsmen remaining enslaved, I.e., one whose body, mind, and spirit were bound alike to whites.
These slave owners feared the future emergence of such persons as Denmark Vesey of South Carolina, whose 1822 plot was conceived from and concealed within the scriptures and lessons of the Bible, and within Charleston, South Carolina's nascent African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Other such feared persons included David Walker of Boston, a former slave, and Massachusetts transplant, whose 1829 classic, APPEAL TO THE COLORED CITIZENS OF THE WORLD AND ESPECIALLY OF THE UNITED STATES, shocked the entire nation with its historical, apocalyptic, and Biblical prophesies of divine redemption for the black man.
In like manner, Nat Turner's bloody, 1831 insurrection was carried out by a Southhampton, Virginia, slave, who taught himself to read and to write both human symbols and nature's. He and his fellows killed 60 whites, in a never-to-be-forgotten rampage. Nat Turner's intelligence was marveled at.
Like Vesey, Walker, and others before them, Prophet Nat Turner found strength and instruction in the Bible.
Others before Turner included Prince Hall, a free man who founded the black Masonic Lodge in the 1770s-80s, after serving in the Continental Army, and receiving his Charter directly from the Grand Lodge in England for his mother African Lodge of Boston.
"Others" before Nat Turner also includes Absalom Jones, and Richard Allen, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, founders in 1787 of the Free African Society, for mutual aid, the forerunner of the black St Thomas Episcopal Church and of the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in later years. Education was restorative, medicinal, secular, spiritual, ongoing and empowering in all of these men.
Contemporaneous with these great men, was one Phyllis Wheatley, a native-born African female, who was educated as a child in America in her captivity, and is renown for her poetry and piety, in America and in England.
There were thousands of others who acquired varying degrees of learning and Biblical insight making them unfit to be slaves! Some of the more famous names include: Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown, William Still, James Forten, Paul Cuffee, J. W. C. Pennington, etc.
The cure that evades black America is to be found in its history and in the Bible, not as prescribed to them by others; but, as ascribed to each of them personally by that quiet, soft, voice whispering from the Holy Spirit.
"11So He said, "Go forth and stand on the mountain before the LORD." And behold, the LORD was passing by! And a great and strong wind was rending the mountains and breaking in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. 12After the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of a gentle blowing.…" 1 Kings 19.
Our cure is not to be found in the grocery stores or pharmacies, but online, in book stores, and libraries. Therein lies that cure that evades us.
In 1847, reading was outlawed in the State of Missouri as were black preachers, out of the slavemasters' fear of increasingly intelligent slaves.
Such slaves were threats to their continued, profitable exploitation of that free, black labor that framed their economic, social, and political status quo. Becoming literate, learned, conscious, persons was, therefore, totally incompatible with valuable and marketable bondsmen remaining enslaved, I.e., one whose body, mind, and spirit were bound alike to whites.
These slave owners feared the future emergence of such persons as Denmark Vesey of South Carolina, whose 1822 plot was conceived from and concealed within the scriptures and lessons of the Bible, and within Charleston, South Carolina's nascent African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Other such feared persons included David Walker of Boston, a former slave, and Massachusetts transplant, whose 1829 classic, APPEAL TO THE COLORED CITIZENS OF THE WORLD AND ESPECIALLY OF THE UNITED STATES, shocked the entire nation with its historical, apocalyptic, and Biblical prophesies of divine redemption for the black man.
In like manner, Nat Turner's bloody, 1831 insurrection was carried out by a Southhampton, Virginia, slave, who taught himself to read and to write both human symbols and nature's. He and his fellows killed 60 whites, in a never-to-be-forgotten rampage. Nat Turner's intelligence was marveled at.
Like Vesey, Walker, and others before them, Prophet Nat Turner found strength and instruction in the Bible.
Others before Turner included Prince Hall, a free man who founded the black Masonic Lodge in the 1770s-80s, after serving in the Continental Army, and receiving his Charter directly from the Grand Lodge in England for his mother African Lodge of Boston.
"Others" before Nat Turner also includes Absalom Jones, and Richard Allen, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, founders in 1787 of the Free African Society, for mutual aid, the forerunner of the black St Thomas Episcopal Church and of the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in later years. Education was restorative, medicinal, secular, spiritual, ongoing and empowering in all of these men.
Contemporaneous with these great men, was one Phyllis Wheatley, a native-born African female, who was educated as a child in America in her captivity, and is renown for her poetry and piety, in America and in England.
There were thousands of others who acquired varying degrees of learning and Biblical insight making them unfit to be slaves! Some of the more famous names include: Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown, William Still, James Forten, Paul Cuffee, J. W. C. Pennington, etc.
The cure that evades black America is to be found in its history and in the Bible, not as prescribed to them by others; but, as ascribed to each of them personally by that quiet, soft, voice whispering from the Holy Spirit.
"11So He said, "Go forth and stand on the mountain before the LORD." And behold, the LORD was passing by! And a great and strong wind was rending the mountains and breaking in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. 12After the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of a gentle blowing.…" 1 Kings 19.