Thursday, November 2, 2017

AFRICAN AMERICANS ADVANCE

AFRICAN AMERICANS ADVANCE   The advances that we blacks in the Americas have gained were those for which we and our forebears had lived, hoped, worked, fought, built, bled, died, revived, prayed, loved, preached, talked, reproduced, over the years, through our tears, fears . Our struggles yet continue in the Americas, but our end is in sight. First in St. Dominique in Haiti, our mettle was shown as under able leaders we shocked the planters, the French, the British, the Spanish in successive military victories, in turn . Our Haitian victories spurred the supposedly invincible Napoleon to sell his "Louisiana Territory" and the City and Port of New Orleans to the United States of America for a pittance, roughly 3 cents an acre. Meanwhile in America itself, Haiti's victories had heightened the hopes, aspirations, ambitions of fellow slaves and marginal freedmen and women to lived on, to love on, to work harder, to fight longer, to build stronger, to bleed and die bravely, knowing that our flagging spirits would revive in our offspring, kin, and friends. So we prayed, we loved, we preached, we we talked, we reproduced; we cried, feared, persevered, until God again refreshed our thrust with a new crew of capable moral leaders: be they teachers, lawyers, workers, preachers, students, freedom fighters, even a few politicians who fought for us when we knew not our own strength, power , influence over those who were formerly our masters, oppressors, now "friends." So the symbolism of the 2-terms served by United States of America President Barack Obama ranks with the military triumphs of Toussaint L'Overture, and Dessalines of Haiti. Our struggles yet continue in the Americas, but our end is in sight.