Not long ago I was introduced to “The 1619 Project” by Nikole Hannah-Jones. This felt like a good historical documentary for my writings regarding Black History Month.
In August of 1619, a pirate ship sailed its way through the still-warm waters of the Atlantic Ocean, heading north along the coast of North America…known to most Europeans as the New World.
The ship arrived at Jamestown in the British colony of Virginia, carrying an expensive cargo that the pirates hoped to sell to the colonists–Africans. The ship’s crew had stolen the 20 or 30 Africans from a Portuguese slave ship.
Thus began a 250-year history of slavery in a land that would later become the United States of America.
In her first chapter titled, “Democracy”, Nikole wrote:
“Dad always flew an American flag in our front yard. The blue paint on our two-story house was sometimes chipped. The fence, the rail by the stairs, or the front door might occasionally fall into disrepair…but that flag always flew pristine.
“My dad was born into a family of sharecroppers on a white plantation in Greenwood, Mississippi, where Black people bent over cotton from can’t see-in-the-morning to can’t-see-at-night, just as their enslaved ancestors had done not long before. The Mississippi of my dad’s youth was an apartheid state that subjugated its Black residents–almost half of the population–through breathtaking acts of violence. White residents in Mississippi lynched more Black people than those in any other state in the country, and the white people in dad’s home county lynched more Black residents than those in any other county in Mississippi, for such “crimes” as entering a room occupied by white women, bumping into a white girl or trying to start a sharecroppers union. My dad’s mother, like all the Black people in Greenwood, could not vote, use the public library, or find work other than toiling in the cotton fields or toiling in white people’s houses. In the 1940’s she packed up her few belongings and her three small children and joined the flood of Black Southerners fleeing to the North. She got off the Illinois Central Railroad in Waterloo, Iowa, only to have her hopes of the mythical Promised Land shattered when she learned that Jim Crow did not end at the Mason-Dixon Line…but that flag always flew pristine.
“Dad struggled to find promise in this land. In 1962, at age seventeen, he signed up for the army. Like many young men, he joined in hopes of escaping poverty and also with hope that if he served his country…his country might finally treat him as an American…but that flag always flew pristine.
“So when I was young, that flag outside our home never made sense to me…it deeply embarrassed me. In fact I had been taught, in school, that the flag wasn’t’ really ours, that our history as a people began with enslavement, and that we had contributed little to this great nation. My father knew exactly what he was doing when he raised that flag. He knew that our people’s contributions to gilding the richest and most powerful nation in the world were indelible, that the United States simply would not exist without us…so that flag always flew pristine.
Question…how do Black people in America reconcile experiences of racism and systemic discrimination with pride in their country?
As one Black person put it: “It’s such a tragedy, because I feel kind of entitled to patriotism. Our ancestors built this country. We should be able to be proud of it, and it should serve us just like it serves everyone else,” he said. “But more often than not, it’s not serving us equally.”
“I stand for the national anthem, always have,” said Watson, 46. “Black people have willingly fought and died for this. Every day when I drive to one of my businesses I drive through plantations, and honestly, I know I make my ancestors proud.”
Today, from voting challenges; unequal judicial practices; real estate inequalities; difficulty tracing ancestor roots due to poor record keeping and loss of original family names; uprooted Black communities in metro areas in the name of “progress”; senseless beatings for traffic stops; and many political conservatives wanting to diminish Black history in this country…many American Black patriots continue to fly their American flags proudly…holding out hope and faith for better days ahead.
We are all equal under God’s eyes as well as our Constitution. Let’s raise our voices for quality and let our votes move toward love versus division, Warriors.
Covid Humor: Before the Coronavirus I used to cough to cover a fart, now I fart to cover a cough.