Triumphant Warrior Book Tour Continues

Triumphant Warrior, the memoir written by Wilmington Ten survivor Wayne Moore, is in Week 3 of its Official Release to the world. This evening, Mr. Wayne Moore will be at the lovely Pomegranate Books in Wilmington, North Carolina for a book discussion and signing. Come prepared with your questions and feedback. For the latest news on the Triumphant Warrior Book Tour, Click on the Book Tour Tab.

Where Have All The Leaders Gone

  

I believe that the greatest hope for a brighter future for inner city youth and ending gang violence is for our leaders to first acknowledge, and then take steps to remove, the psychological chains of slavery. It’s time to call a spade a spade. It is self-hatred that has given rise to self-destruction and dysfunctional behavior in the inner cities of America. That self-hatred has its roots in the psychological trauma of slavery. As evidenced by significant population of successful African Americans, the psychological chains of slavery have been broken for most. For others, not so much.

For many, the pain and humiliation of indentured servitude, along with the separation of families during slavery, has left a lasting and ongoing legacy that has for far too long, been overlooked. In most cases, a defining legacy that has seldom been openly addressed. Therefore, without realizing it we have passed down from generation after generation, a legacy of inferiority and self-hatred.

Young people who hate themselves don’t have a problem hating others , or killing someone. They hate themselves because subconsciously, they believe in their minds, that in the eyes of society they aren’t good enough, that they aren’t equal. They don’t feel empowered to determine their own destiny. Therefore to them life has very little meaning. It’s kill or be killed.

We need to find ways to empower our youth. We need leadership that will subscribe to that fact. We need an army of courageous leaders to not only identify viable solutions to this problem, but also to lead a mentally enslaved peopled to the Promised Land, where self-hatred, hopelessness and fear are non-existent.

But where can we find such leadership? It seems that our most introspective and talented leaders have fled to a safe haven in the plush surroundings of  suburbia, leaving behind so many who so desperately need to bear personal witness to  the successful achievements of people who look like them. It is selfish not to acknowledge where you came from, and it is insensitive not to be willing to lead to freedom those you have left behind. Yet I understand all too well your reluctance to look back. You have little or no desire to return from whence you came, especially when your most vivid memories are rooted in desperation and hopelessness. You somehow beat the odds, you played by the rules and made it to suburbia vowing to never return to the bowels of that slave ship from which you so desperately fled.

Honoring Mothers of the Wilmington Ten

              

The Mothers of Wilmington Ten

  

The Wilmington Journal had had just been bombed. My mother had been sitting at the kitchen table with a young civil rights leader named Ben Chavis. Suddenly the plates on the table rattled from the concussion of a loud blast around the corner from the house. With my mother leading the way, they rushed out of the door toward the sound of the explosion. As they approached ground zero, they found a shocked Tom Jervay Sr., standing in front of the building he owned. The iconic structure which stood in heart of black Wilmington, had just been blown to smithereens. It had been home to the cities’ black newspaper, The Wilmington Journal.

The 1973 bombing had come in the wake of racial hostilities that had begun in 1968 with the closing of the city's only black high school. Mr. Jervay had been the voice of the black community throughout the turmoil. No doubt, the bombing was a not-so-subtle attempt to muffle the resounding sound of Jervay’s constant drumbeat for justice. 

As if this courageous man needed reassurance, my mother looked up at him, as he stared blankly at his blackened building - she said, “We are not going to let them scare us. Bombing our community’s newspaper will not silence us.” 

That was my mother. Like Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, like Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King. Dolores F. Moore will always be remembered as one of those brave and courageous African American Women, who made a difference in the world around them, who “refused to remain silent in the face of injustice.” 

To me Dolores F, Moore was the greatest civil rights leader of all time. “Triumphant Warrior” is my attempt to honor her legacy. She once said in a documentary on the Wilmington 10. 

“Wayne would never speak up about what was happening to him, She then said “I had no choice but to step forward.” 

She is the pillar on which I lean, and the prism through which I have always viewed the future . When I was lost she helped me find my way back home. When I was weak she lifted me up; when the jaws of injustice and persecution swallowed me up, she boldly and courageously stepped forward to free me. She taught me to never give up, to never forget to hold my head up high, to be bold in the face of injustice, to love even my enemies, that it is always better to give than to receive. I cannot fill her shoes, but I promised her during her transition that I’d try to walk courageously in her footsteps. With “Triumphant Warrior” I have at least stepped forward.

Addiction To Racism

 

 

               Seldom does anyone, black or white, ever want to be told that they have issues.  Just try getting an alcoholic to admit that they are an alcoholic, or a husband or wife to admit that they are the reason the marriage failed. It gets worse when you try to get a racist to admit to being a racist.

 

 I have for some time now, felt that racism is an addiction not unlike addiction to drugs or alcohol.  Donald Sterling   retreated into denial the second his blatant racism was revealed before the world.  After having his addiction to racism exposed, he denied that there could have been even the slightest possibility of racism underlying his “unfortunate words”.

 

Just as Scarlett O’Hara in “Gone with the Wind”, boasted about how well she treated her slaves, Sterling continues to boast about how well he treats “his” blacks, especially his black players. He talks of buying them “food, and cars, and houses”. He doesn’t have a clue how that sounds to his millionaire players, whose exceptional talents helped him make his billions. He is so blinded by his racist superiority complex, that he actually believes that his players love him. In all actuality, they probably want to open up a can of ass-whipping on him.

 

               Like most addicts, Sterling has failed to seek the help he most urgently needs.  He is learning the hard way, a very important lesson; that in 2014, he lives in a society where the majority of its citizens, at the very least, want to appear to treat its fellow citizens with a degree of fair-mindedness and humanity.  The blatant transgressions of a few brought on by years of unbridled addiction to a tradition of racism will no longer be tolerated.

Mothers of the Wilmington Ten

There has been much said about Ben Chavis and the Wilmington Ten. No one ever mentions some of the greatest civil rights workers of all time, our mothers. As Mothers’ Day approaches, I am dedicating this entire week to the mothers of the Wilmington Ten.  

These women fought hard and valiantly for our freedom. Dolores F. Moore, Louise Hyman Carolyn Vereen, Margaret Jacobs, Etta Patrick, Sarah Wright, Elisabeth Chavis, Florence Epps, and Lue Vell Tindall. Though Ann Sheppard was also a co-defendant she was also like a mother to some of us. These brave women risked their jobs and reputations to fight for justice and freedom. They marched tirelessly around the country demanding justice for the Wilmington Ten. They car-pooled to prisons around the stare delivering comfort and home-cooked meals to us. 

Most of them never lived to see to us pardoned, but it is never too late to honor them. I honor them now. I will do a special honor to my mother in my blog on Thursday.

Melissa Harris-Perry Mentions Wilmington Ten

In case you missed it, the United Church of Christ and the Wilmington Ten were mentioned on the Melissa Harris-Perry show yesterday in a segment entitled, "Faith-based Action Oriented Toward Justice." In this segment Harris-Perry cites some of the social justice causes the United Church of Christ has championed over the years, including the Wilmington Ten. My memoir,Triumphant Warrior, details the support given by the UCC at the national and local level.

In the 1970's the United Church of Christ spent close to $1,000,000 defending the Wilmington Ten. After posting close to $500,000.00 bond for our release, they provided scholarship money for four of us to go to college. Through one of their many ministries, the Commission for Racial Justice, they paid our legal fees throughout a long and expensive appeal process. It was one of it's member churches, Gregory Congregational, from which we launched our boycott. It is only appropriate that I launch the story surrounding that boycott from a UCC affiliated church:The Church of the Good Shepherd in Ann Arbor, Michigan. 

The Thing I am Learning to Accept

Since the soft launch of my memoir, Triumphant Warrior, in my hometown of Wilmington, I have been overwhelmed by the positive feedback I have received from local educators and former Williston Senior High classmates like Diane Emerson.

The praise from Diane means the most to me because is deeply rooted in a story that we both share. That story hit home a few years ago when I read her doctoral dissertation. It was only then that I came to realization that we had both accomplished things that are often praised in society. We had achieved a certain level of success beyond the stereotypical expectations of folk from the inner-city.

Diane once lived on the front row of Jervay Projects just across Dawson Street from Dew Drop Inn, a local hang-out for Wilmington’s most “aspiring pimps, players and pushers had obtained their kick-ass diplomas there. It was where dope addicts went to get their fixes and potheads went to cop a nickel bag.”

It has been said that living in the projects is a horrible and demeaning way of life designed to control an entire segment of society. But not everyone can be controlled. Not everyone is willing succumb to the wretched designs of the environment in which they live. Diane was such a person. Like Diane I too am a product of Jervay projects, though I was there by choice. It was the one place my mother always told me to never hangout. She had heard all the horror stories about the drugs and shootings in and around Jervay. “Nothing good can happen by you hanging out there” she said. Yet I had been hanging out in front of the Dew Drop Inn across the street from Jervay when a friend provided me a way out. 

“One evening, in September 1973, my old friend, Kojo Nambtambu, walked up to me and took me aside. He asked with worry and concern playing in his eyes. “What are you doing hanging out on a street corner? You need to be in college.”

 Kojo Nantambu, no stranger to how the streets can wreck the aimless, asked me if given the chance I would go to college. I said sure, and he said, “Go home and pack your bags. We are going to Raleigh and Shaw University tonight.” I did exactly what Kojo told me to do. I went home, packed a duffel bag full of clothes, and rode off to Raleigh in Kojo’s ‘67 Dodge Rambler. Like Diane, I was able to see beyond the "now' in which I then lived. Life in and around Jervay was environment in which mere survival is worthy of praise. A place where praise is seldom looked upon as being sincere.

I have never expected praise for doing what I believe is a natural instinct. Nor have I ever wanted to be looked upon as a victim. As we approach Mother's Day, I should mention how I have long been inspired by the courage of the mothers who survived the Middle Passage, after giving birth to their young, in the bowels of slave ships. Like those mothers, people like Diane were determined that it would be themselves, and not their environment, that would determine their destiny.

Up until recently I shunned praise. Who can you trust? Praise can be the voice of friendship but it can also be the language of the insincere, the fair-weather friend. Additionally, it didn't quite seem fair to be praised for just surviving when other classmates were being praised for their accomplishments. So, I developed a way to measure when it was okay to accept praise. For me, that development has come only in the past few years - - now that I am being praised for being a man of triumph, an overcomer, a writer, an author, the founder of a social justice organization - instead of a victim. 

What I am noticing is that I am slowly learning to accept praise. It is why when a Ph.D. from the projects reaped praise on my work I jumped for joy. She had been where I had been. Done what I had done, and understood my triumph.