“Memories, Memories, Memories, Memories!”

When I woke up this morning my mind was in a very strange place. A real deep heaviness was weighing upon me. In fact, that deep heaviness has been on me for many years. I cannot and have not been able to escape the pain in my heart re: my forefathers.

Sometimes I wonder if it was wise to allow myself to continuously think about or read about their past. Then I realized that it’s because of that past the pain still lingers. Why? Because, he who forgets the past is destined to still see it continuously going on in their present life. Now it’s most definitely understood why our school systems chose not to have a “serious” account of our history taught throughout their school systems, because it shows the deep inhumanity of their forefathers.

To that I must say, “He Who Forgets The Past Is Doomed To See It Repeated Over And Over Again!”

The book that I have been recently reading is “12 Million Black Voices” (A Folk History of the Negro In the United States) by Richard Wright 1941. This was one year after I was born.

WOW! These words that I’m writing are taken directly from this book and truthfully they are very painful. “The slave ships, equipped for long voyages, were floating brothels for the slave traders of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Bound by heavy chains, we gazed impassively upon the lecherous crew members as they vented the pent-up bestiality of their starved sex lives upon our sisters and wives. This was a peculiar practice which, as the years flowed past, grew into a clandestine but well- established institution which the owners of cotton and tobacco plantations upheld, and which today, in large measure, accounts for the widespread mulatto population in the United States. Indeed, there were slave-breeding farms. Slaves were valuable; cotton meant cash, and each able-bodied slave could be depended upon to produce at least 5000 pounds of cotton each year. To quench all desire for mutiny in us, they would sometime decapitate a few of us and impale our black heads upon the spars, just as years later they impaled our heads upon the tips of pine trees for miles along the dusty highways of Dixie to frighten us into obedience.” Wow!! This was pure “Injustice” that was waged upon our people.

Now let me share with you Dr. King’s version of “Justice” which is taken from his “I Have A Dream” book: “Even today there still exists in the South-and in certain areas of the North- the license that our society allows to unjust officials who implement their authority in the name of justice to slavery, social license and custom placed the unbridled power of the whip in the hands of overseers and masters, today- especially in the southern half of the nation- armies of officials are clothed in uniform, invested with authority, armed with the instruments of violence and death and conditioned to believe that they can intimidate, maim or kill Negroes with the same recklessness that once motivated the slave owner. If one doubts this conclusion, let him search the records and find how rarely in any southern state a police officer has been punished for abusing a Negro!” These words were written by Dr. King in 1968 and the above words were written by Richard Wright in 1941, which were 27 years earlier than Dr. King’s words. Now here we are 52 years later (2020) and the same mentality is still in existence towards us as a people.

Please give some real “Serious” thoughts about this. “What Are We Going To Do About ‘All’ Of This?” Let me leave you with some “Real” serious thoughts about this for “He Who Forgets The Past Is Doomed To See It Repeated Over And Over Again!” This “Past” behavior towards us is still in existence. It’s time to make a change and “We” are the people that can and should bring it, but will we?

Let me leave you with these words birthed from the heart of Dr. King: “The present tensions represent the necessary pains that accompany the birth of anything new…It is both historically and biologically true that there can be no birth and growth without birth pains and growing pains. Whenever there is the emergence of the new, we confront the recalcitrance of the old. So the tensions which we witness in the world today are indicative of the fact that a new world order is being born and an old order is passing away. When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds and our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, we will know that we are living in the creative turmoil of a genuine civilization struggling to be born!”

My friends this is what we are now experiencing with this “Corona Virus” going on. Wake Up!
What are we going to do??? We “Must” give some real “Serious” thought to “All” of this and then decide that we “Must” start striving towards making things better for “All” of us! If not, we “All” are doomed!

This is “Lillie’s Point of View” and I’m just having my say!” What’s Yours?