ANCESTRAL MANDATE
Pausing momentarily from my inaugural reading of BOOKER T WASHINGTON EDUCATOR OF HAND HEAD AND HEART (1955) by Shirley Graham, it is such moving biography on the life of the "wizard of Tuskegee," that I began today, that I was moved to reflect upon the implication of such things, then and now.
Washington was in the generation of African Americans who were born amidst slavery and as slaves. In 1855, his birth year, there were over 4 million slaves.
Straddling life in two states of being: slave and freed, the now-former slaves were tasked with "making it on their own", while being poor, illiterate, landless, unorganized. This began sporadically within an eight-year American political interregnum known as "Reconstruction." Strong people were they who made it through. It is well to recall that each one of us has had forbears who were in that number. We therefore are heirs to the miraculous ones who survived!
How they made it through is very much lost upon most of us; indeed, to all but a few of us. Most of us have been brainwashed to be ashamed of our ancestors. Now, more than ever before, we need to know what they did, and surely how they did whatever they did, just to be able to deliver us to where we now are.
Ask those who may yet be around. Or if gone, read about their tales in heroic books that they may have written or were written about them. Read letters that they have sent; view handicrafts they have left; and/or walk upon the land they have by God's grace and mercy: deeded, ceded, bequeathed to you or yours.
These people, our forbears, were the blessed ones who brought our nation through its twin terrors, slavery or freedom ; twin towers of war and restoration.
Appreciate them, your and my beloved ancestors! Appreciate even more than them, yourselves and the blessed ancestral mandates that we all bear forward.

Friday, March 9, 2018
ANCESTRAL MANDATE
ANCESTRAL MANDATE
Pausing momentarily from my inaugural reading of BOOKER T WASHINGTON EDUCATOR OF HAND HEAD AND HEART (1955) by Shirley Graham, it is such moving biography on the life of the "wizard of Tuskegee," that I began today, that I was moved to reflect upon the implication of such things, then and now.
Washington was in the generation of African Americans who were born amidst slavery and as slaves. In 1855, his birth year, there were over 4 million slaves.
Straddling life in two states of being: slave and freed, the now-former slaves were tasked with "making it on their own", while being poor, illiterate, landless, unorganized. This began sporadically within an eight-year American political interregnum known as "Reconstruction." Strong people were they who made it through. It is well to recall that each one of us has had forbears who were in that number. We therefore are heirs to the miraculous ones who survived!
How they made it through is very much lost upon most of us; indeed, to all but a few of us. Most of us have been brainwashed to be ashamed of our ancestors. Now, more than ever before, we need to know what they did, and surely how they did whatever they did, just to be able to deliver us to where we now are.
Ask those who may yet be around. Or if gone, read about their tales in heroic books that they may have written or were written about them. Read letters that they have sent; view handicrafts they have left; and/or walk upon the land they have by God's grace and mercy: deeded, ceded, bequeathed to you or yours.
These people, our forbears, were the blessed ones who brought our nation through its twin terrors, slavery or freedom ; twin towers of war and restoration.
Appreciate them, your and my beloved ancestors! Appreciate even more than them, yourselves and the blessed ancestral mandates that we all bear forward.

