Being born in 1948 and thus my teenage years spent during the turbulent times of the now called "Civil Rights Movement," like most of us, we were pretty oblivious to the real story and the logic behind the events we witnessed or heard about. I certainly plead guilty or perhaps ignorant is a better plea.
Here we reside in a new century and thirteen years into it and many of us now in our sixties are baffled, fed up with or just plain tired of seeing and hearing some of the rhetoric from some of the same archaic mouths from the era of the "Movement." Jesse Jackson sort of comes to mind as an example of what I am talking about but there are several. I have many black, oops, excuse me, African American friends, have an African grand daughter, live in a world populated overwhelmingly by African Americans in the jails and prisons where I seek to minister. We see the staggering statistics of gun deaths by African American men killing other African American men and have societally pretty much just shrugged our shoulders and just believe or rationalize it is what it is and move on. My list of examples could fill pages but we all know what I am talking about especially if you are from the 1960s South.
This summer I have invested much research time in drilling into the strategic and tactical realities of the Battle of Gettysburg. Reading or rereading several 500 page books about each day of the three day battle fought 1-3 July 1863 is fascinating to me strategically and tactically. I know the commanders, the locations, the routes of march, the positions upon entering the theater of operations that hot summer, the weapons, etc. I know where my great grandfather and his two brothers were located all three days and about their march from New Guilford, PA to Gettysburg. I know much but what does that really matter when you reflect on the strategic dimension of that battle?
While I long to return to the Gettysburg battlefield and again walk the topography and feel the earth provide cover and springs that provided much needed water; all that was there in 1863, one must, strategically, link up the previous September of 1862 when Lee took his Army to Sharpsburg, MD where the flowing Antietam Creek would provide but one feature show in the theater of blood over three days that Autumn. Strategically, one cannot just look at Gettysburg and not see the direct linkage to the Battle of Antietam which, like Gettysburg, were Union victories. These were two devastating losses in men, materiel, political footing and pride for the South. Let us not forget that while Gettysburg was being fought, future POTUS Grant was defeating the Southern Army at Vicksburg cutting all the Mississippi River as the spine to the South. Three great battles with many skirmishes and cavalry battles mixed in led to the surrender by Lee not many months hence.
Most of us somewhere in our schooling understand all of the above paragraph in differing degrees but we all know the South lost the Civil War. For right or wrong, good or bad, the 1776 "Union" had been rejoined on the crucible of blood. Nearly one million Americans died in that struggle; we know the expanse and the numbers. But have we seriously stopped to understand how those events set America, and the Global Village, on a trajectory where we find ourselves today?
As America has just celebrated the 50th anniversary of the "I have a dream .." speech by MLK at the Lincoln Memorial, I have found myself in parallel with my research on the military struggle of America in the 1860s asking myself some questions I have honestly never stopped to consider nor to contemplate!
Remembering well the White and Colored water fountains, doctor office entrances, bathrooms, etc, it was no big deal for it was what it was; it was our collective culture. I had black friends that I played with regularly that lived "down there" and we all know, now, where "down there" was. I delivered newspapers both "down there" and "around here" meaning where the blacks lived "down there" and the rest of use lived "around here. I remember being angered that the only missed payments for the news papers were never "down there" but always "around here." I learned that blacks in my world in the 50s and 60s, could be trusted and were faithful to their debts even when times were tough, "down there." I always admired that and still do!
I do remember that day one summer when I was about ten that I realized blacks were different and that blacks lived differently that me. I did not understand it but it was as a light came on in a cave and I knew that something was strikingly different in their world versus my world. That fact drilled into me more deeply as the riots, the dogs, the fire hoses, the marches, the killings escalated in my world and I was overwhelmed with the cadence of my young life. Oh yes, and there was this thing called the Vietnam War which added a whole new explosive dimension to my world in seeking to connect the dots of why all this was happening. I am sure many reading this would quietly or openly affirm that same sense of wondering why all this was going and spinning out of control for out of control it was!
As the "Speech" celebrations have come and gone, the talk shows and media have been brimming with discussions on what was going on behind the scenes that was not obvious to many of our young eyes. SCLC, SNCC, NAACP were organizations that, for me and for most of us then, were only designations for groups of troublemakers. Nobody took time to explain what it all meant; at least in my world for it was what it was; it was our culture. But I knew that culture in which I grew up was in free fall; and still is!
When I learned this week that in 1963 that thirteen states still existed in the UNITED States where blacks could still not vote, I was appalled for all the Freedom Riders, the Selma March, the 16th Street Baptist Church bombings, etc, etc began to come back to me in hues of why all that turmoil was unleashed. How dreadful in a nation founded on equal rights for all where a whole people, a people taken from their homelands and brought to this nation to be literally enslaved in an institution as property with no say, no rights on any part of their lives!
As all this has focused in my mind, the great battles of the Civil War, the unending killings, bombings, strikes, assassinations, events of my childhood were all part and parcel to where we are now. We fought a war of independence from a foreign force. We fought a war to maintain the Union. We fought a war in Asia where a conscription draft system skewed the battle deaths sickeningly heavy toward blacks. This list could go on as well. Some of you are probably angry with me if you have read this far but what this world, our world, that world where my grand kids will grow up and earn and career and live has devolved hideously. The Emancipation Proclamation was politically explosive for Lincoln. He could not even bring it to the legal state until the Union Army had one, ONE, major battlefield victory. Antietam gave Lincoln that political green light.
There is so much I could say but will bring this to a conclusion; I hope. We became a nation in 1776. One hundred years later we killed nearly one million of our own to validate the Union established in 1776. One hundred years later the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed primarily because of the dismal, embarrassing state of reality with a significant portion of our population not allowed to vote. As this next century of events since 1964 cuts and meanders in some many directions, one must wonder what this next fifty year will bring. I will not be here nor will many of you so this is all hypothetical.
But as I sit here writing this looking at my beautiful four year old African grand daughter laying in my wife's arms loving on her., I cannot escape the windows of history outlined above and wonder what her life will be like as she grows to womanhood, family, life! Cultures are the sum total of the behaviors a great friend, John Loulan, taught me many years ago. I am not pleased nor happy as I look at my lifetime in the rear view mirror as weighed against the countless deaths and destruction cast upon this nation's people and still such atrocious behaviors still exist on some of our nation's people.
My summation; we are better than this! We are more advanced economically, politically, societally, than anywhere else on the globe. And yet, the ghosts and death angels of my young life reside "down there" and "around here." That is shameful. Having spent much time in South Africa and seeing the three race cultural struggles continue, I cannot escape this sense that we are smarter and capable of much more and much better in all segments of our population. My faith in this nation is still great. My hope for this nation is subverted with the morass in which we find ourselves in large part due to poor leadership nationally. The dealing with Syrian will point out the historical blundering that could yield catastrophic results; perhaps even the End Times!
I know I have stepped into the deep end of my societal pool. I guess that is what learning and education does; expand one's capacity to learn, right? But the real question is simple, what are we going to do differently for change begins with a choice and one step of energy. Fact is; what we are going is apparently not going in a right, more equitable solution for our national population and global village. None of this excuses the entitlement mentality that resides and abounds and is providing a cancer to the resources of this nation.
Yes, I look forward to your thoughts and recommendations please. If you wish to take shots at my words, I will absorb and move forward. When I think of the blood and loss in our very own nation since our birth that has brought us to where we are; frankly I am not too proud of the landscape. My grand kids deserve better from their Poppy. Our Hopie laying in my wife's arms watching Curious George is a metaphor for our national, collective cultural direction I believe. We can do better!
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