More Than A Bus Ride

02/28/2021

Lesson in Community. I respect and admire the continued custom of Jewish Culture in regards to celebrations of passage of children into beginning of young adulthood. They learn religious history, Jewish history and obligation of youth to themselves, their family, their community. And if they are and become members of a secret society, their goal is not serving a clique, but the whole of Jewish society.

02/19/2021

Fred Gray, Sr is more than deserving of recognition for his efforts to bring about equal rights and justice in America. He was mentored by E D Nixon, Rosa Parks, and Jo Ann Robinson in high school, college and as a young lawyer. He was responsible for strategy to get a Brown v Board type lawsuit to end segregated seating Montgomery. Mr. Gray and Rosa Parks were in agreement that in order to make changes, they had to change the law and it is why she took a calculated stance to challenge the system. Two other women, then teenagers, Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith challenged white supremacy on a city bus before and under same conditions as Mrs. Parks. And unlike her, they challenged white supremacy in federal court( Browder v Gayle) and the decision of the court fully restored the full parameters of the 14th Amendment, thereby giving the boost to the civil rights and equal justice movement in America. And after listening to Fred Gray, Sr talk about their role, I find it difficult to understand why they have not been nominated for congressional and presidential recognition, especially when considers they played a key and determinant role in civil rights and equal justice legislation since 1956, they played a key role in the success of the boycott and for launching the career of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

It is especially puzzling in this day of women with prestige, positions and power to lift up those two sheroes. Listen to Mr. Gray, Sr.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVjwxzOynRI

William Waheed
www.morethanabusride.com

“…thousands and thousands of people stand up and say we should not have to be treated this way, we must free ourselves, we must demand that the larger society , that those with power not abuse their power and respect our dignity the way they expect us to respect their dignity…”

02/09/2021

Mrs. Hamer, a Human Rights Activist and the struggle to make life better inside the democratic party.

Colin Edwards interviews Fannie Lou Hamer on the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, voting rights, human rights, and politics during an interview he taped...

02/02/2021

Black History Month in Honor of our Forerunners.

Black History taught today is reduced to stories of “firsts”, it does not give us a full review, the good and bad. I want to share with you see excerpts from Dr. Harding’s book There Is A River, one of the most honest and thorough assessment of our forced journey, our holocaust. Dr. Harding’s work is an honest and spiritual telling of our history before 1619 and a generation after.

“There Is A River,The Black Struggle For Freedom in America”, by Dr. Vincent Harding

…we may sense that the river of black struggle is people, but it is also the hope, the movement, the transformative power that humans create and that create them, us, and makes them, us, new persons. So we black people are the river, the river is us. The river is in us, created by us, flowing out of us, surrounding us, re-creating us, and its entire nation…Dr. Harding

Excerpts from Chapter 1: From the Shores of Africa, The Forerunners

…we stood in arms, firing on the revolted slaves, of whom we killed some and wounded many…and many of the most mutinous leapt overboard, and drowned themselves in the ocean with much resolution… John Barbot, Slave Ship Captain, 1701

It began at the edge of our homeland, where the verdant forests and tropical bush gave way gradually to the dandy stretched of the Guinea coast. It began at the mouth of the rivers, from the northern point where the Senegal and Gambia pour their troubled streams into the waters around Cape Verde, down the thousands of miles of coastline to the place where the mighty river Congo breaks into the ocean. On these shores near the mouths of these rivers, we first saw the ships.
There was no way to know it then, but their crews of men and boys came from many ports and many pasts to find the shores of Africa. They sailed from Amsterdam, Libson, from Nantes and LaRochelle, from Bristol and London, from Newport and Boston on ships with strange names. They came to us on Brotherhood and John the Baptist, on Justice and Integrity, on Gift of God and Liberty; they came on the good ship Jesus. But by the weary lines of chained and mourning travelers saw the vessels riding on the coastal waves, there could be but one name, one meaning:captivity. Thus it was on the edges of our continent-where some gulped down handfuls of sand in a last effort to hold the reality of the land-that the long struggle for black freedom began.

…Imprisoned now in the heart of the earth they had known so well were miners familiar with the long African traditions of iron, gold, and diamond mining. Blacksmiths, their companion artisans, were also captives. Weavers and potters; workers in bronze, copper, and gold; traders whose wide-ranging movement had long ago put Africa in touch with Asia, Asia-Minor, and Europe-all of them were now among the prisoners in these cramped and fetid waiting rooms of history. Where were herders, perhaps captured while pursuing their lonely, roaming occupation, and fishermen and fisherwomen. But surely no group was more fully represented in the barracoons than the vast body of farmers. And none was more essential to the life of the people the the priests and musicians who illuminated, intensified, and celebrated the ritual integument and vital religious center of African life…

…we may sense that the river of black struggle is people, but it is also the hope, the movement, the transformative power that humans create and that create them, us, and makes them, us, new persons. So we black people are the river, the river is us. The river is in us, created by us, flowing out of us, surrounding us, re-creating us, and tis entire nation…

01/20/2021

Lately I have been placed in the fire because of my identification with being a Black American as opposed to any other classification. Here are excerpts from Paul Robeson, Jr : " black Way of Seeing Things: that explains reality of former enslaved Africans in the USA.

Notes From Paul Robeson, Jr. “ A Black Way of Seeing Things.

I choose to call myself Black American vs African American why?
Black American identifies with field slaves whom I descended. Different from the small group of privileged house slaves and skilled slaves. House Slaves were placed at the top of the hierarchy, generally more lighter and more docile, identified with culture of slave master. Next were skilled slaves who were valued based off their skills, and field slaves who were at the bottom of the social order.
African American does not identify with the slave culture that I am from, it implies a dual national self identification, like Italian-American, Chinese-American, Jamaican- American, etc. Middle class and upper class blacks identify with African-American because it separates them from their slave past.
The melting pot in America was designed by the Anglo Saxon Protestant Elite for successive waves of immigrants. The purpose was to assimilate ethnic cultures into honorary Anglo-Saxons. Blacks were excluded from the melting pot on the false ground that they had no distinct culture and therefore did not merit ethnic status. Blacks were assigned a racial minority…below immigrant, and consequently immigrants, including those belonging to “racial minorities” are given preference over Black Americans whose ancestors were enslaved.
White America has exploited this difference by pitting higher class of immigrant-descended Africans Americans and a lower class of slave-descended Black Americans by pitting these two groups against each other…Paul Robinson, Jr

Now it is for this reason, you have an Kenyan-American elected as President and an Asian Indian-Jamaican-American as Vice President and why Jesse, didn’t make it.