Each year while gathering historical facts about little and unknown contributions of Black pioneers and history makers, we become mesmerized and exhilarated by the sea of information being made increasingly available over the internet and in volumes of other material on the subject.
It is especially rewarding to have experienced much Black history in the making over the past three-quarters (plus) of the most historic century in the history of man when the vast explosion of knowledge and the advancement in science and technology have far exceeded that of all former ages combined!
“Do ye know in what Day ye are living? We are asked in the Baha’i Holy Writings. “Do ye realize in what Dispensation ye exist? Have ye not heard that at the consummation of ages there would dawn a day the sum total of all former ages combined? This that day!
There are innumerable accounts of wars and other examples of man’s inhumanity to man that continue on a more sophisticated scientific, technological and massive sale. Yet out of slavery and civil rights movements within this comparatively new nation have emerged in the past century in particular, laws, agencies and administrative framework to protect victims of oppression more so than in any other period of history. Granted they have not yet been fully implemented but the infrastructure has been solidly framed for perpetual improvement and adaptation to a fast changing society.
How awe-inspiring not only to have lived through much of this historic era but to also have been entrusted with a media through which to record some small part of it. Through experience and observations garnered over the better part of this unparalleled century comes a growing awareness of the compelling need at this critical juncture to place more emphasis on the innumerable reality that unite us than on the superficial things used so successfully to keep us divided.
As at her inception, America’s intermingling and interaction of various migrants is once again becoming the source of her strength as well as the root of her social problems. But, below the surface of the struggles, of selfishness and greed often elevated into principle, there remains the conviction that this nation has a historical task to perform – that of demonstrating that the brotherhood of man is not an illusion, that justice for all is not an idle dream and that man is not a beast condemned forever to live at war with his own kind.
According to one Baha’i special publication, “Perhaps it was this inner conviction that impelled the educated to create in this country the world’s first and largest system of mass education, the Whites to struggle for the rights of Blacks and the rich to engage in philanthropy on a scale unparalleled elsewhere in the world.”
Therefore, with all of the world’s (and this nation’s) present ills, the more we learn of Black History, the more we may acquire “imperishable hope” for we read in the Baha’i Holy Writings. “As the black pupil gives sight to the eye, so shall the Black people give religious sight to the world.” (Investigate!)
