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They are watching and rejoicing: Reflection of African American struggle
for equality and justice By Amdetsion Kidane, DBA Howard University “All of them are ‘up there watchin’” was what Alex
Haley’ aging cousin said about her relatives who like every Black sustained harsh
treatment under slavery in approving Haley’s effort to trace his African roots.
At this historical moment when Senator
Barack Obama is the likely winner to the highest office of the United States,
it is appropriate to remember those revolutionaries who against all odds
fought for freedom and inalienable right that Blacks were entitled but
deprived of. Every step that these individuals took against slavery was a step
forward to the point where we are now.
Indeed, thousands of individuals have participated in the historic
march to justice and equality climaxed by likely election of Senator Obama as
president of the United States. It is appropriate then to mention few of
those revolutionaries who subscribed to equality, justice and human dignity
for all, and fought without fear to ensure that slaves were beneficiaries of
their sacred beliefs and hopes. ·
John Brown lived his life supporting the anti-slavery
movement by following his own dream and beliefs of equality for blacks. His involvement in the act of “sabotage” at
the arsenal military warehouse at Harper Valley, Virginia, where he lost two
sons in a shootout with federal soldiers led to his guilty verdict for
treason and murder and his subsequent death in the gallows. ·
Elizabeth (Harriet) Beecher Stowe, author of “Uncle
Tom’s Cabin,” endured hate and racial epithets from whites living in the South
for her stand against slavery and influence on whites in the North for
anti-slavery movement. Her contribution to the good cause was so great that “Abe
Lincoln labeled her as ‘the little lady who started the big, bloody
war’" ·
Levi Coffin and his wife Catherine, Quaker
abolitionists, who was born in North Carolina and lived in Indiana, helped
more than 2000 slaves escape to freedom over a 35-year period. Levi got money for slaves, as quickly as
they needed it, and without fear, traveled up and down the Underground
Railroad, encouraging workers and seeing for himself, that runaway slaves
received humane treatment. Coffin was so dedicated to the cause that, risking
his life, hid slaves in rooms and cellars in his own house. His effort for the good cause was so much
that it won him the designation “President of the Underground Railroad.” ·
Sojourner Truth (born Isabella Barnfree), Harriet
Tubman, Fredrick Douglass and Booker T. Washington were all born into
slavery. As such, they were so bitter
of the harsh treatment they sustained under the bondage of slavery that they wholeheartedly
decided to do whatever they could to free as many slaves as possible when
they got their freedom. Truth, as
civil rights leader, stood for women right and blacks’ right. Her sermons against slavery were so
powerful that even Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used her text on anti-slavery when
he first started his career as a preacher.
Harriet Tubman made 19 dangerous trips to the South and helped 300
slaves, out of which only 10 were her relatives to run away from slavery. Fredrick Douglass risked his life in many
ways to make people understand the horrors of slavery. Booker T. Washington was an abolitionist
who in addition to being famous academician at Tuskegee University, early on taught
for two years slaves in Malden, West Virginia, how to run away from their
owners. Civil right activists have picked up the moral obligations
of these and thousands of other abolitionists and worked hard to ensure
realization of the beliefs and hopes that their predecessors envisioned.
Again, the number of civil right activists, who devoted their times and
energy and brought their lives in harms way so that we enjoy the civil rights
and dignity we were deprived for long, is too many to write about. However, let us recognize three selfless
leaders in the true sense of the word: Rosa Parks, A. Phillip Randolph and
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who rightly deserve the honor. ·
Rosa Parks triggered the civil right movements of
the 1950s and 1960s when she refused to relinquish her seat in a bus to a
white passenger. Her action was heroic beyond imagination considering the rule
of injustice and might of some white supremacists over the right of Blacks at
the time. Mrs. Parks did not refuse
to give up her seat because she was physically tired as the media widely
reported it to be, but because she was “tired of the degradation and unjust
treatment that African-Americans were subjected to daily.” Her defiance sparked the famed 1955 Montgomery Bus
Boycott led by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., which lasted 382 days and
opened the door for anti-segregation legislation and a Supreme Court ruling to
ban segregation on public transportation.
Her defiance to follow order was not accidental by any means. Coincidentally,
the same bus driver who had her arrested in 1955 had ejected her from his bus
a decade earlier for not complying with orders to move to the back of the
bus. As a strong believer of civil
right for all, she served as secretary of the local chapter of NAACP for
twelve years prior to the noted arrest of 1955. In the 1940s, Mrs. Parks organized the NAACP Youth Council whose
members defiantly rode in the front seats of buses. It is obvious then that
her defiance to follow order was not a spur of the moment but a long deep-rooted
conviction that African Americans deserved dignity and respect. ·
A Phillip Randolph who showed unyielding life-long
struggle for the Blacks and all disinherited members of the nation was a
pioneer of modern civil right movement.
Prior to World War II, he traveled all over the nation urging Blacks
to unite against discrimination, which shut them
out of well-paying jobs in the factories. His insistence against
discrimination on jobs persuaded President Franklin D Roosevelt to sign an
executive order calling for an end to discrimination in defense plant jobs –
just six months before Pearl Harbor attack. With this event, the "fair employment practices began"
in earnest. About seven years later,
in July of 1948, Mr. Randolph again moved to fight against segregation and
Jim Crow in the Army, Navy and Air Force.
Once more, the power of his persuasion and the justice of his
complaints swayed Harry S. Truman to sign an order commanding that there
would be an end to this kind of discrimination not only in the armed forces,
but also in federal civil service jobs.
Anchoring his struggle on the premise that jobs and money are
the passports to human rights, Mr. Randolph planned
and organized such activities as the 1957 prayer pilgrimage for the civil
rights bill, the 1958 and 1959 marches for school integration and the 1963
March on Washington. In fact, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting
Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1968 are all the fruits of the
seed he and his co-workers sowed many years before. ·
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., had deep-rooted
conviction that justice was denied to Blacks, and fought to the last minute
of his life at a prime age of 39. However,
it is no mystery to any one that during his relatively short life, Dr. King
accomplished so much that he received a Nobel Peace Prize at the age of
35. As for his contribution, the most
notable ones, in a nutshell, are his leadership in 1955 Montgomery Bus
Boycott and subsequent ruling of the Supreme Court to ban segregation on
public transportation. As President
to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference,
an organization formed to provide new leadership for the burgeoning civil
rights movement, over an eleven-year period from 1957 to 1968, he traveled
over six million miles. He spoke over
twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest,
and action. He wrote five books as
well as numerous articles explaining his insight on no-violent civil disobidience,
an operational technique articulated by Ghandi. In these years, he led a massive protest in Birmingham,
Alabama, that caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he
called a coalition of conscience. and inspiring his "Letter from a
Birmingham Jail", a manifesto of the Negro revolution; he planned the
drives in Alabama for the registration of Negroes as voters; he directed the
peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people to whom he delivered
his address, "l Have a Dream", he conferred with President John F.
Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson; he was arrested
upwards of twenty times and assaulted at least four times; he was awarded
five honorary degrees; was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in
1963; and became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks but also a
world figure. The abolitionists and civil right leaders mentioned above and thousands other including students like Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman who were murdered in Mississippi in 1963 and demonstrators and like Mrs.Viola Gregg Liuzzo of Detroit who was shot in one of the marches from Selma to Montgomery , Alabama are not surprised this historic moment event has happened. They have been watching it progress in spirit. Now, they are rejoicing with pride that the dream for equality and justice for all they worked for has come true. Perhaps, even those individuals who staunchly supported slavery and put blocks to stop or to derail the progress are regretting knowing well that their effort to stand on the way of equality and justice had no merit. What a historic moment! |
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