The pictures that speak--Black Life Matters

How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?

How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are? Just think about that for a moment. It’s an intriguing question.

How does your age affect the way you behave, what you do and what you don’t do? How often do we give in to societies – or the media’s – idea of what “old” is?

What if we could lose our preoccupation with age—just put it out of our minds? What if – instead of being preoccupied with aging – we focused more on living? Would we behave any differently? Would we treat other people any differently? Would we be happier and enjoy life more?

 Studies show the life people aspire to as they age – self-sufficient, active, participating in leisure activities and building closer relationships with family and friends – contrasts sharply with their understanding of aging as a process of deterioration, dependency, reduced potential, digital incompetence and family members living at a distance. “These deep and negative shared understandings make the process of aging something to be dreaded and fought against, rather than embraced as a process that brings new opportunities and challenges for individuals and society.”

We have to change this. We have to “disrupt aging”! The first step is to “own your age.” I’m not talking about just accepting your age. I mean really own it: embrace it, feel good about where you are in life, and more importantly, about where you are going.

People turning 50 today have half of their adult lives ahead of them. They don’t want to be defined by how old they are – they want to be valued for who they are. They don’t want to live in fear that their possibilities become more limited as they age. They believe their life experience has value. They still want to make a difference in the world.

Yet our perceptions – as individuals and collectively as a society – are simply out of sync with the new reality of aging. The negative stereotypes of aging are so ingrained in our psyches, they are difficult to overcome. Most of us don’t even try. We either just accept the old stereotypes and live out the negative image of aging – or, we just deny that we are aging and fight it with every fiber of our being, and in some cases, with every dollar in our bank account.

We not only live in an aging society, we live in an “ageist” society. Today it is socially unacceptable to ignore, ridicule or stereotype someone based on their gender, race or sexual orientation. So why is it still acceptable to do this to people based on their age? Perhaps the bigger question is, why does this matter? It matters primarily for two reasons:

First, ageism – and the negative perception of aging it perpetuates ­– creates a negative reality of aging. And, as long as that exists, we will never face up to the changes we need to make to adapt to our aging society.

Second, it’s bad enough that ageism can influence public policy, employment practices and how people are treated in society, but what’s worse is that we accept the ageist behavior ourselves and start acting it out.

It isn’t age that holds us back. In fact, age may not be a barrier at all.

The point is that every day, older people are forced to navigate an environment that was designed neither by them nor for them. We often blame our limitations on the fact that we’re getting older. But in reality, it may simply be that our environment doesn’t fit us anymore, or the product isn’t designed to fit our needs.

Once we muster the courage to admit that and do something about it – like adapting the car seat to meet the needs of the 75-year-old instead of blaming the person – we can begin to develop creative solutions that benefit people of all ages.

That’s disrupting aging. That’s what happens when we own our age

 

Free but not Equal? Are we going back?

Now we are free. What do we want? We want education; we want protection; we want plenty of work; we want good pay for it, but not any more or less than any one else...and then you will see the down-trodden race rise up.

—John Adams, a former slave   Slavery is not abolished until the black man has the ballot. —Frederick Douglass, 1865 We went every day about nine o’clock, with our books wrapped in paper to prevent the police or white persons from seeing them...After school we left the same way we entered, one by one, when we would go to the square about a block from school, and wait for each other. —Susie King, who attended a secret school in Savannah, Georgia Have we really actually been free?

Freedom Now Everyone! President Nelson Mandela!

Let us all be free free free free Let us all be free free free free Let us all be free free free free Free our bodies free our minds Free our hearts Freedom for everyone And freedom now They throwed him in jail And they kept him there Hoping soon he'd die That his body and spirit would waste away And soon after that his mind But every day is born a fool One who thinks that he can rule One who says tomorrow's mine One who wakes one day to find The prison doors open the shackles broken And chaos in the street Everybody sing we're free free free free Everybody sing we're free free free free Everybody sing we're free free free free They throwed him in jail And they kept him there Hoping his memory'd die That the people forget how he once led And fought for justice in their lives But every day is born a man Who hates what he can't understand Who thinks the answer is to kill Who thinks his actions are god's will And he thinks he's free free free free Yes he thinks he's free free free free He thinks he's free free free free Soon must come the day When the righteous have their way Unjustly tried are free And people live in peace I say Give the man release Go on and set your conscience free Right the wrongs you made Even a fool can have his day Let us all be free free free free Let us all be free free free free Let us all be free free free free Free our bodies free our minds Free our hearts Freedom for everyone And freedom now Freedom now Freedom now Freedom now Let us all be free free free free Let us all be free free free free Let us all be free free free free








Mark your calendar and get on board! Making History Again!

'Now I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired: Fannie Lou Hamer, a leader of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party

Fannie Lou Hamer, a leader of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, speaks before the Credentials Committee of the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, August 22, 1964

Mr. Chairman, and to the Credentials Committee, my name is Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer, and I live at 626 East Lafayette Street, Ruleville, Mississippi, Sunflower County, the home of Senator James O. Eastland, and Senator Stennis.
It was the 31st of August in 1962 that eighteen of us traveled twenty-six miles to the county courthouse in Indianola to try to register to become first-class citizens.
We was met in Indianola by policemen, Highway Patrolmen, and they only allowed two of us in to take the literacy test at the time. After we had taken this test and started back to Ruleville, we was held up by the City Police and the State Highway Patrolmen and carried back to Indianola where the bus driver was charged that day with driving a bus the wrong color.
After we paid the fine among us, we continued on to Ruleville, and Reverend Jeff Sunny carried me four miles in the rural area where I had worked as a timekeeper and sharecropper for eighteen years. I was met there by my children, who told me that the plantation owner was angry because I had gone down to try to register.
After they told me, my husband came, and said the plantation owner was raising Cain because I had tried to register. Before he quit talking the plantation owner came and said, "Fannie Lou, do you know - did Pap tell you what I said?"
And I said, "Yes, sir."
He said, "Well I mean that." He said, "If you don't go down and withdraw your registration, you will have to leave." Said, "Then if you go down and withdraw," said, "you still might have to go because we are not ready for that in Mississippi."
And I addressed him and told him and said, "I didn't try to register for you. I tried to register for myself."
I had to leave that same night.
On the 10th of September 1962, sixteen bullets was fired into the home of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Tucker for me. That same night two girls were shot in Ruleville, Mississippi. Also Mr. Joe McDonald's house was shot in.
And June the 9th, 1963, I had attended a voter registration workshop; was returning back to Mississippi. Ten of us was traveling by the Continental Trailway bus. When we got to Winona, Mississippi, which is Montgomery County, four of the people got off to use the washroom, and two of the people - to use the restaurant - two of the people wanted to use the washroom.
The four people that had gone in to use the restaurant was ordered out. During this time I was on the bus. But when I looked through the window and saw they had rushed out I got off of the bus to see what had happened. And one of the ladies said, "It was a State Highway Patrolman and a Chief of Police ordered us out."
I got back on the bus and one of the persons had used the washroom got back on the bus, too.
As soon as I was seated on the bus, I saw when they began to get the five people in a highway patrolman's car. I stepped off of the bus to see what was happening and somebody screamed from the car that the five workers was in and said, "Get that one there." When I went to get in the car, when the man told me I was under arrest, he kicked me.
I was carried to the county jail and put in the booking room. They left some of the people in the booking room and began to place us in cells. I was placed in a cell with a young woman called Miss Ivesta Simpson. After I was placed in the cell I began to hear sounds of licks and screams, I could hear the sounds of licks and horrible screams. And I could hear somebody say, "Can you say, 'yes, sir,' nigger? Can you say 'yes, sir'?"
And they would say other horrible names.
She would say, "Yes, I can say 'yes, sir.'"
"So, well, say it."
She said, "I don't know you well enough."
They beat her, I don't know how long. And after a while she began to pray, and asked God to have mercy on those people.
And it wasn't too long before three white men came to my cell. One of these men was a State Highway Patrolman and he asked me where I was from. I told him Ruleville and he said, "We are going to check this."
They left my cell and it wasn't too long before they came back. He said, "You are from Ruleville all right," and he used a curse word. And he said, "We are going to make you wish you was dead."
I was carried out of that cell into another cell where they had two Negro prisoners. The State Highway Patrolmen ordered the first Negro to take the blackjack.
The first Negro prisoner ordered me, by orders from the State Highway Patrolman, for me to lay down on a bunk bed on my face.
I laid on my face and the first Negro began to beat. I was beat by the first Negro until he was exhausted. I was holding my hands behind me at that time on my left side, because I suffered from polio when I was six years old.
After the first Negro had beat until he was exhausted, the State Highway Patrolman ordered the second Negro to take the blackjack.
The second Negro began to beat and I began to work my feet, and the State Highway Patrolman ordered the first Negro who had beat me to sit on my feet - to keep me from working my feet. I began to scream and one white man got up and began to beat me in my head and tell me to hush.
One white man - my dress had worked up high - he walked over and pulled my dress - I pulled my dress down and he pulled my dress back up.
I was in jail when Medgar Evers was murdered.
All of this is on account of we want to register, to become first-class citizens. And if the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?
Thank you.
Fannie Lou Hamer's life took a dramatic turn the day she showed up for a mass meeting to learn about voting. It was August 1962 and Hamer, who was forty-four years old, wasn't even sure what a "mass meeting" was. "I was just curious to go, so I did," she said.¹ The meeting was organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Hamer was told something she'd never heard before: black people had the right to vote.
One of twenty children born to a family of sharecroppers in the Mississippi Delta, Hamer grew up picking cotton and cutting corn and attended school through the sixth grade. She married a fellow sharecropper and the two scratched out a living doing hard, menial work on a plantation near Ruleville, Mississippi.
According to biographer Sina Dubovoy, when Hamer heard SNCC's presentation, she asked herself, "What did she really have? Not even security." A lynching in a nearby town in 1904 had terrorized blacks then, and the ever-present KKK still kept them quiet. As Dubovoy notes, "The Mississippi Delta was the world's most oppressive place to live if you were black."² Hamer decided on the spot to register to vote. On August 31, 1962, she boarded a bus to Indianola with seventeen others to try to register to vote. The next day she was kicked off the plantation where she had lived and worked for eighteen years. Her husband lost his job, too.
Hamer immediately went to work as a field organizer for SNCC. Returning home from a training workshop in June 1963, Hamer's bus was intercepted by policemen. She and two others were taken to jail in Winona, Mississippi, and mercilessly beaten. Hamer suffered permanent damage to her kidneys. After recovering from her injuries, she traveled across the U.S. telling her story. With her genuine, plainspoken style, Hamer raised more money for SNCC than any other member.
In 1964, with the support of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), Hamer ran for Congress. The incumbent was a white man who had been elected to office twelve times. In an interview with the Nation, Hamer said, "I'm showing the people that a Negro can run for office." The reporter observed: "Her deep, powerful voice shakes the air as she sits on the porch or inside, talking to friends, relatives and neighbors who drop by on the one day each week when she is not campaigning. Whatever she is talking about soon becomes an impassioned plea for a change in the system that exploits the Delta Negroes. 'All my life I've been sick and tired,' she shakes her head. 'Now I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired.'"³
SNCC had formed the MFDP to expand black voter registration and challenge the legitimacy of the state's all-white Democratic Party. MFDP members arrived at the 1964 Democratic National Convention intent on unseating the official Mississippi delegation or, failing that, getting seated with them. On August 22, 1964, Hamer appeared before the convention's credentials committee and told her story about trying to register to vote in Mississippi. Threatened by the MFDP's presence at the convention, President Lyndon Johnson quickly preempted Hamer's televised testimony with an impromptu press conference. But later that night, Hamer's story was broadcast on all the major networks.
Support came pouring in for the MFDP from across the nation.⁴ But the MFDP's bid to win a seat at the Atlantic City convention still failed. At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago four years later the MFDP succeeded. On that occasion, Dubovoy recounts, "Hamer received a thunderous standing ovation when she became the first African American to take her rightful seat as an official delegate at a national-party convention since the Reconstruction period after the Civil War, and the first woman ever from Mississippi."⁵

There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere

There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires.
Nelson Mandela

 

Let freedom reign

Let freedom reign. The sun never set on so glorious a human achievement.

Nelson Mandela

 

Why Celebrate Juneteenth?

Why Celebrate Juneteenth?

Juneteenth today, celebrates Black descents of slave’s freedom in American and their achievement, while encouraging continuous self-development and respect for all cultures. As it takes on a more national, symbolic and even global perspective, the events of 1865 in Texas are not forgotten, for all of the roots tie back to this fertile soil from which a national day of pride is growing.

Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration commemorating the ending of slavery in the United States. Dating back to 1865, it was on June 19^th that the Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. Note that this was two and a half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation - which had become official January 1, 1863.

In the early years, little interest existed outside the Black American community in participation in the celebrations. In some cases, there was outwardly exhibited resistance by barring the use of public property for the festivities. Most of the festivities found themselves out in rural areas around rivers and creeks that could provide for additional activities such as fishing, horseback riding and barbecues. Often the church ground was the site for such activities. Eventually, as Black Americans became land owners, land was donated and dedicated for these festivities. One of the earliest documented land purchases in the name of Juneteenth was organized by Rev. Jack Yates. This fund-raising effort yielded $1000 and the purchase of Emancipation Park in Houston, Texas. In Mexia, the local Juneteenth organization purchased Booker T. Washington Park, which had become the Juneteenth celebration site in 1898.

Economic and cultural forces provided for a decline in Juneteenth activities and participants beginning in the early 1900’s. Classroom and textbook education in lieu of traditional home and family-taught practices stifled the interest of the youth due to less emphasis and detail on the activities of former slaves. Classroom text books proclaimed Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863 as the date signaling the ending of slavery - and little or nothing on the impact of General Granger’s arrival on June 19^th. 

The Depression forced many Black people off the farms and into the cities to find work. In these urban environments, employers were less eager to grant leaves to celebrate this date. Thus, unless June 19^th fell on a weekend or holiday, there were very few participants available. July 4^th was the already established Independence holiday and a rise in patriotism steered more toward this celebration.

The Civil Rights movement of the 50’s and 60’s yielded both positive and negative results for the Juneteenth celebrations. While it pulled many of the Black American youth away and into the struggle for racial equality, many linked these struggles to the historical struggles of their ancestors. This was evidenced by student demonstrators involved in the Atlanta civil rights campaign in the early 1960’s, whom wore Juneteenth freedom buttons.

Again in 1968, Juneteenth received another strong resurgence through Poor Peoples March to Washington D.C.   Many of these attendees returned home and initiated Juneteenth celebrations in areas previously absent of such activity. In fact, two of the largest Juneteenth celebrations founded after this March are now held in Milwaukee and Minneapolis.