No one today believes in people owning people, but our forefathers did. We ended that bondage through a civil war between our better principles and our dark side. America is a country that learns from its errors. In Our 250-year history came repeated moral failures, and repeated rebounds. We keep on keeping on.
After the Emancipation Proclamation freed all slaves, a period of humane laws addressed how to help them find a footing in society, including the first federal law for public education for everyone. But soon the pendulum swung the other way, and new laws commanded that there were two races, Black and White, and they must live separately. Public education meant White children in fine buildings with resources, and poverty schools for Black children.
It was a century later in the 1960’s that our moral foundation took hold again. We passed laws to enforce equality of treatment for all Americans.
We have entered a dark moral period once again. From the White House today come messages of oppression. We live under a leader who models cruelty; who sends men with guns to intimidate innocent people; who withdraws operating funds from scientists, from the world’s starving children, and from journalists who pursue the truth. Today we need models for how to survive, how to keep on keeping on.
The models are in our midst: mothers who had to teach their Black sons how to survive a traffic stop; aunties who taught Black children when to stand up and when to retreat. The African American culture survived our nation’s moral failures repeatedly over her 250 years. They perfected survival strategies, with nuances and the sophisticated ability to read a dangerous situation. All this was passed down from generation to generation.
If we study their stories we can learn to manage dark times. The stories teach us fortitude, competence and hope. From Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. we can learn how to keep our moral compass in the face of cruelty. From Emmet Till’s mother we can learn courage when chaos is in command, and from Rosa Parks, persistence. A song from Curtis Mayfield says,
Withdraw from the dark, and look to the light
For everyone’s free, at least that’s the way it’s supposed to be,
We just keep on keepin’ on. Keep on keepin’ on.
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