The Lucy Addison High School Class of 1960 held a reunion recently and it prompted my reminiscences of Roanoke’s historic Black generations.
Post-slavery racism has kept African Americans quite low on all positive demographic indicators – e.g., no progress in 50 years (Economic Policy Institute, 3/19/18). Einstein said that if we knew the cause and the effects of our unfortunate condition, the path to its alleviation would be short. Cultural knowledge is an awesome empowering spirit and only those people who embody that spirit can succeed and imbue ensuing generations with advancement power.
America defines and names generations based on unique characteristics and experiences that, in notable measure, influence America and, thereby, American democracy. America has titled eight titled generations since 1900. “They” even labelled a Greatest Generation.
A nation is a true democracy (Great) only when the humblest and weakest persons enjoy the highest civil, economic, and social rights that the biggest and most powerful persons possess. –A. Phillip Randolph
The most effective way to thwart a group’s trajectory toward the “… blessings of liberty …” is to obliterate their history: falsify every record; destroy every book; alter every date; and rename every statue, street and building. – George Orwell
What is considerably more efficacious than external suppression is to “impel” the targeted subgroups to inflict the oppressive harm upon themselves and each other – Oppression by Proxy.
If an ethnic group has ceased to teach its children– by discourse, modeling, advocating, and enforcing — the core cultural values that clarify their historical truths, whether the cessation was wholly self-induced or fostered by enemies, then that ethnic group no longer controls its progress, self-determination, cultural identity or freedom.
Frederick Douglass said: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” After the mid-sixties, because of mainstream America’s cultural intrusion into the Black universe, our demand should have been directed more stringently at the oppressed than at the oppressors. MLK said we must rush through the slightest crack in the door of opportunity.
Using Randolph’s axiom, which pertains to inclusion/desegregation, the generation that has had the most profound effect on the advancement of American Democracy since the turn of the twentieth century has been hidden among the larger white-titled and white-dominated generations. Although unheralded, OUR Greatest Generation is the Third Generation, Post Slavery — which came to maturity between 1955 and 1965, and includes the LAHS class of 1960.
Our defining roots spanned five prior generations – three Pre-Emancipation Generations – third, second, and first, in that order leading to passage; and two Post-Slavery Generations – first and second leading from the enactment date.
The three Pre-Emancipation Generations enabled America to become a dominant world Power in very short order through their unpaid slave labor — the largest single financial asset in the U.S. economy, worth more than all manufacturing and railroads combined; and by their incalculable military involvement in America’s victory over the Confederate Nation.
According to President Lincoln: If the United States had abandoned all the posts manned by Black soldiers, the Confederate Nation would have been victorious in three weeks.
The first Post-Slavery Generation, our grandparents, suffered 2000 lynchings during Reconstruction, 31% of the 6,500 total. Nevertheless, the second Post-Emancipation Generation, our parents, despite pervasive obstacles, developed the most powerful sub-culture in American history. Their efforts engendered an unprecedented rise above poverty and illiteracy and produced the Third-Generation, Post-Slavery.
WHY I CALL THE THIRD GENERATION THE GREATEST: After the Civil Rights Laws were passed in the mid-sixties and America was forced to desegregate, we were the ones with high school diplomas, college degrees – nearly all from HBCUs; and possessed cultural power instilled in segregated Black Communities. Black Roanoke’s sons and daughters, for example, ventured into white dominated arenas, excelled, and paved the way for subsequent generations. There were many ONLIES and FIRSTS in our group. If not for our generation, America would not be nearly as racially desegregated, or Democratic, as it is.
Today, we, the descendants of slaves, have another opportunity to save America, our own people, and future Black progeny from Fascism just as our forebears did in the early 1860s, as well as pay the debt we owe our intrepid ancestors. To refuse to participate in the shaping of OUR future is to give it up. Do not be misled into passivity either by false security (the Fascists don’t mean me) or by despair (there is nothing we can do). Each of us must find our work and do it (Audrey Lorde).
What we must do is encourage – relentlessly, uncompromisingly, and by every means possible — the 111 million 2024 self-disenfranchisers (which include about 12 million eligible Black voters) to go to the polls at the Midterms, November 3, 2026, when the majority of governing seats are up for grabs. If we do not, we become accomplices of the Fascists.
