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.