In Celebration Of Black History –
The Battle For Equality Is Not over
By D. Kevin McNeir
Many years ago, I learned a song that our church choir would sing every Sunday. One of the verses directed members and
visitors alike to “look back and see how far we have come . . . over hills, over mountains, in the sunshine and the rain, oh, look
back and see how far we’ve come.” In 2014, Black Americans can attest to the truth of this simple song of praise. And yet, we
must also recognize that there are still many roadblocks, dead end alleys and centuries-old obstacles that remain in our path.
There are hurdles that were established when whites realized that they could exploit us as slaves and become prosperous in the
midst of our pain. In addition, the source of that destruction of millions of souls, the devastation of the Black family and the
eradication of so many potentially bright futures was slavery.
Perhaps it is this dark period in the history of Blacks here in America and across the Diaspora that has resulted in our frequent
efforts to repress any memories of slavery and to deny its impact. Unlike members of the Jewish faith who continue to tell their
story and to teach their children the truth, we prefer to act as if slavery was something that happened to others and that it has
no real bearing on our lives today. This is our greatest error.
As the philosopher George Santayana discerned, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
When I first read the book Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America, written by the former senior editor of Ebony,
Lerone Bennett, Jr., I discovered a new reality and truth about my ancestors. While I was aware of the achievements of men and
women like Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass and Crispus Attucks, I knew very little about the contributions
to this world that were made by my African forefathers and foremothers. It wasn’t until I combed through the pages of
Bennett’s seminal work, which in turn led me to read other books, like Ivan van Sertima’s They Came Before Columbus, that I
began to see that the history that I had been taught by my seemingly-benevolent school teachers was a lie.
During my first year at Princeton Theological Seminary, I was introduced to an educator and author whose provocative work of
fiction would be awarded the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Her name was Toni Morrison and her book was entitled, Beloved.
The book’s epigraph reads, “Sixty-million and more” and is dedicated to the Africans and their descendants who died as a result
of the Atlantic slave trade. Morrison’s novel is based on the true story of a slave, Margaret Garner, who temporarily escaped
bondage during 1865 in Kentucky by fleeing with her children to Ohio. When her former master, invoking the Fugitive Slave Act
of 1850, legally pursued her and recaptured her, Garner killed her two-year-old daughter rather than allow her to live one more
day as a slave. Was slavery and those who maintained that invisible institution so heinous that death was a better outcome than
a life of servitude? Garner, at least, believed it was.
We will never fully understand the impact of slavery on our ancestors. In fact, many Blacks today posit that we need not reflect
on slavery at all since we now live in a “post-racial” world. Now that we can intermarry, attend white colleges, live in almost any
neighborhood we desire and with the election of our first Black president, Barack Obama, there is a growing belief, both among
Blacks and whites, that our country has become devoid of racial preference, discrimination and prejudice.
I would wager that Trayvon Martin, the Black teen shot and killed by a white neighborhood watch volunteer, George
Zimmerman and Oscar Grant III, a 22-year-old, Black single father who was shot by a white police officer after being arrested on
a San Francisco commuter train, would both disagree, if they were still alive to speak to us. Neither of them had committed a
crime, save for “walking while Black.”
As President Obama shared following the announcement that Martin’s murderer, George Zimmerman, had been acquitted by a
“jury of his peers,” “there’s a lot of pain around what happened here; I think it’s important to recognize that the AfricanAmerican community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn’t go away.”
The stories of success and triumph that we share each February must be tempered by those tales of horror, calamity and other
examples of man’s inhumanity towards man. We can continue to hide our heads in the sand like the proverbial ostrich, but if we