Neo-Slavery
In the month of August
in the year 1964 I raised my right hand and when I lowered it I was in the
United States Army for three years.
I served a tour of duty
in the Dominican Republic with the 82nd Airborne Division and after
returning stateside, sent to Viet Nam there I served ten months with the 7th
Cavalry Airmobile, sick, malaria, wounded I was sent home to finish my military
commitment at fort Ord now defunct and on August 1967 I was honorable discharged.
I returned to civilian
life a shattered vacuous shell of nothing in particular, left with the daunting
task of trying to make sense of my life, now complicated by wars emotional
injuries.
Youth memories of
innocence and its leisure maturing, laughter all wiped away leaving me a stranger whose starting point was laced with
intermitting flashes of terror, anger, violence and three questions that had that
had somewhere along the way enveloped my mind completely, Who am I? What am I, Why am I?.
A year after my
discharge, meandering through civilian life searching for me, certain of one
thing; if the universe took notice of a star a billion light years away,
assuring its place in the cosmos by delicately coordinating its balance its purpose
in the entirety of everything, then surely
all I need do was close my eyes to the fandangle’s of Western culture loudly touted
as truth, stretch out my arms fall backward doubting nothing and I would be
lifted above the fray and attain my reason.
I was certain of one
thing, that my life belonged to me entirely. Spared, in war and prolonged by a
power I only knew as god. My life. my breath, my heartbeat the most precious
possession was all that I had and absolutely nothing else demanded of me to
make an account of my moment in the Sun and
not squandered one moment in
frivolities.
Life a measured gift counted
down each moment by the raising and setting of the sun. Life should be lived in joyous songs of praise and everlasting gratitude, so
why was I huddled in the corner of my clothe closet hoping no one would see me,
why wasn’t I singing tunes of joy and praise of gratefulness rather than cloaked
in misery, my song was a sad hymn wherein gave me no comfort.
I embraced my life but
the uncertainties of war driven deep into my consciousness left me unable to find my refuge in money,
familiar gadgets or the idols of fame, and most emphatically I vowed never sit in the
congregation of the hypocrite who taught that god responded to flattery.
***
Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways
before him. He also shall be my salvation: for an hypocrite shall not come before him.
***
Therefore the
Lord shall have no joy in their young
men, neither shall have mercy on their fatherless and widows: for every one is an hypocrite and an
evildoer, and every mouth speaketh folly. For all this his anger is not
turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.
***
He is wise in
heart, and mighty in strength: who hath hardened himself against him, and hath
prospered? Which removeth the mountains, and they know not: which overturneth
them in his anger. Which shaketh the earth out of her place, and the pillars
thereof tremble. Which commandeth the sun,
and it riseth not; and sealeth up the stars.
Which alone
spreadeth out the heavens, and treadeth upon the waves of the sea. Which maketh
Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades, and the chambers of the south.
***
I would search and find
God for myself I would make God my own personal deity who knew me by name and
loved me and trusted me with all its secrets, my God would know my heart know it to be steadfast, diligent unwavering in whatever
task set before me.
In the year 1968, looking
for distractions I absently browsed through the book store in Inglewood
California. I finally settled on a copy of The Naked Ape and Valley of the
Dolls I chose these two for no other reason, they were the best sellers of the
day.
I stood waiting at check
out next to a rack of discount books, including inexpensive red vinyl covered, vacuum
sealed in cellophane bibles.
I picked one up, hefted
it as if books revealed its worth by weight, I laid the two best sellers down paid
for bible and left.
That night I broke the seal and the fragrant
newness of the pages waft up into my nostrils and gave me the feeling that I
had done the right thing and I was about to embark on a journey that would take
me to splendid locations.
I opened the book and the
first words slammed against my mind like an awakening dream, ‘In the beginning.’ my God is heady I thought.
I felt as if I had received
a letter from a distant people who knew me. It was very personal. I read all
that night and thereafter ate, slept and carried that book with me all the time
until the cover separated from the spine and the pages all underlined,
highlighted rendering no significant difference from one paragraph to the other,
nil.
I turned its pages
until the leaf and font no longer accommodated my eyes it was respectfully relegated
to reference only, replaced by a larger black bible with large font but it
lacked the character of its predecessor.
Times past and big
black book was replaced with a computer a CD that alas introduced I and X to
the whole world, all wholly timed in heavenly perfection.
During all those years
of study, I gathered no worldly goods, pursued no prestigious occupations, which I could have, attended college and for a
brief time homeless but my song became that of continual praise and gratitude
for everything that nourished my soul and continued my existence, poor, I
lacked nothing.
I did not gravitate to
people but they were drawn to me and I was and still am respected. I never taught
scriptures feeling, you can’t lead the flock not knowing where exactly you are
going or leading them. X gave me my first congregation and you read along with
me and we learned together.
The
Lord God . . . Is a NIGGER!
Yup,
I am, a nigger.
Being a nigger is not
something I am proud of or tout as anything less than a retched relegation to
the lowest rung of social ladder, yet at the bottom was where I was cast immediately
after my first inhalation breath, into the pit where there was no water, in the
low lands, the realm of niggerdom the ghettos of Harlem.
I acquired this lowly
status at my birth which occured in the month of December the 12th
day in the year 1944. when I E. Samuel Brown Jr. born to both a father and
mother of African descendant into a segregated
America, where the fairs are on one side and niggers where ever they chose to put
them.
I was slapped on the
ass drew in my first breath and took my place among the oppressed. This I think
is when my sad song begin.
Today the era of genuine segregation is something young
people find difficult to grasp. they know that the inequity of racism is very mush in place but only a
lingering residual without the ropes and chain.
Today racism is share affair
with Latinos, Asian, middle Easterners’ and
so forth but back in the day of legalized murder, lynching, kangaroo trials,
beating on a whim perfected over two hundred years of slavery delivered with a veracity
totally reserved for the negroes
There were no Koby’s
Drake, Kanye and lord knows, there was no Obama’s even in our wildest dreams.
Perhaps that last
paragraph needs a bit of modification. Courage and conviction the voice of
truth was always alive in the Garden, there was Martin Luther, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers,
and other whose sacrifices generally with their freedom or freedom taken
away, were like a stones in a stream, that the impoverished stepped
from one to the other we walked on dry land until we reached the other side.
If it were not for the courageous
Sons of God, there would be no Obama. Yet my own ignorance of past misery is
also in evidence.
At the age of six, I
had the privilege of sitting at the feet of my Great, Great grandmother, my
Grandmothers, mother in Law. She was born and lived through the Civil war of
emancipation a woman who had walked the earth with Abraham Lincoln.
I had no perception at
all of my slave history or the Great women, a portal into the earth.
I did not possesses the
most minuscule of faculties to formulate the least elementary
of questions about the most dreadful of times of the negroes sufferings, sadly
all I remembered was my impatience and wanting to go outside and play in the
South Carolina sun.
Back then bigotry was
not a matter of individual preferences, in that day everybody, white and negro
toed the line Racism was the Law, a stringent set of inhumane precepts void of all justice, statures that were devised to create fear and written with the single purpose to enforced
with cruel zeal, the negro in his proper place.
There were ‘schools’
negroes could ‘go’ and universities a negro could only enter with a mop and bucket in their hand.
That of course was a
joke, they didn’t allow Coons to use a mop to wash floors they were made to get
down on their hands and knees and with a scrub brush and rag to wiped the clean
floors massa dirtied, .
Any objection to that method
meant the ‘Spade’ didn’t get the job and immediately became a candidate for a
beating or worst, accoeding to Jim crow law, stature nine paragraph, two
clearly stated, uppity was
punishable by death, along with running, laughing for no reason, looking a
white man in the eyes and so forth.
Many women of color who
worked these menial labor of mopping and cleaning toilets were left crippled
from the years of crawling on tile floors and marbled steps. (sic)
There were houses and
apartment spooks, could live in and homes the gigaboo’s saw only in magazines
and their dreams at night.
**
(Just
for the heck of pick up your smartphone an ask for the definition of ‘gigaboo’
then ‘nigger’
*****
Now
understanding
“Be fruitful,
and multiply,
and
replenish the earth, . . .
(The Earth, all Continents above the Heavens, I.e, the garden of Eden)
. . . and subdue it: (i.e law)
***
God created (below)
the heaven. . .
***
And
the Lord God said,
It is not good
that the man should be alone;
I will make him an help meet for him.
***
And God said,
Let us make man in our image, after
our likeness: and let them have
dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the
cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth
upon the earth.
***
And God said,
Let there be a
firmament in the midst of the waters,
and let it divide the waters from the waters.
***
And Adam called
his wife's name Eve; (Dark)
because she was the mother of all living.
***
And God made the
firmament,
and
divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament:
and
it was so.
***
In the beginning
*
So God created man in his own image
***
And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she
conceived,
and bare Cain, (Cain fair Assyrian, Hittite)
and said,
I have gotten a man from the Lord.
***
. . . and (above)
the
earth.
***
Now the serpent
was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.
And
he said unto the workman,
The firmament
Are
these three woman
Yea,
Again,
Me
Yea,
hath God
said,
Ye shall not eat of
every tree of the garden?
And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat
of the fruit of the trees of the garden:
But
of the fruit of the tree which is in
the midst of the garden,
God
hath said,
Ye
shall not eat of it,
neither
shall
ye touch it,
lest ye die.
**
Again,
And
she again bare his brother Abel.
And
Abel was a keeper of sheep,
Me
And
the Lord said unto Cain, Where is
Abel thy brother?
And
he said,
I know not:
Am I my
brother's keeper?
And he
said,
What hast thou done? the voice of thy
brother's blood crieth unto me from
the ground.
**
And
Adam knew his wife again;
and
she bare a son,
and
called his name Seth:
For
God,
said
she,
hath appointed me another seed instead of
Abel, whom Cain slew.
**
And Adam called -
his wife's
name Eve; (Dark)
because she was the mother of all living.
***
And God called
the firmament Heaven.
And the evening
and the morning were the second day.
And God said,
Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let
the dry land appear: and it was so.
Ge 1:10And God
called the dry land Earth;
and the
gathering together of the waters called he Seas:
and God saw that
it was good.
ISamuelyea
