Are We "Back-on-the-Back"
Where were the buses? There were a number of persons, in the media, and during the Memorial Marches reminiscing about those days, "50 years ago". Many of them remembered the unending lines of buses, and the long bus rides, that brought hundreds of thousands to Washington, and carried them away -- all in the same day.
Not now! Why?? Because those were "segregated days"! Negroes, in those days lived, supported each other, and survived in hundreds and thousands of small towns and "hollows" throughout this country. The combined oppression of federal, state, county, and city laws; the unrelenting hostility of whites, and Klan terrorism, created and sustained those "communities". Just about all of them had access to a bus for travel. Not today. Its those "communities" that disappeared; largely because of Integration of the schools. Kill a school, kill a community. Hence; almost no buses at the Memorial 50-years later.
But, you might ask, the Negroes fought for integrated schools! They sure did. Just like Oprah's purse, they thought that anything the whites had was somehow "better". They know now that they were wrong about that. Their children are not the same after unprotected exposure to "white schooling". Not everywhere, of course; in some of those "hollows" there were no schools for any children, white or non-white. Many agricultural areas (not all in the South) have consistently fought against "education", because it interfered with farming.
One of the lines in the recent film The Butler, was a jab at the movie roles played by Sidney Poitier. One of roles played by Sidney that I remember, was in the 1957 film, Band of Angels: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Band_of_Angels, in which Sidney played an African slave, captured as an infant, and raised as a "son" by Clark Gable. What Sidney told Clark in their last scene in the film is something we all might "think" about?
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Good post, Willi. I think about that alot-- African Americans and the lack of unity. I... I'm not sure it was segregation by itself that made things worse, but also a lack of cultural identity that keeps African Americans from progressing as a singular people. They want "white things" because they only know "white things". There's no interest in learning about where they came from, forgetting the lessons that have been taught time and tie again in history about the importance of cultural unity. It's a unique situation African Americans were forced here, not through immigration but by force. For centuries they were taught to forget everything they know and, as time went by, their cultural identity faded away.
ReplyDeleteIt's a tough road but, during the Civil Rights era, there was a Pan-African momentum that looked so strong. Now, the big issue is whether African Americans should use the word "nigga". Things have de-railed, but maybe there's hope in the future. There always seems to be, no matter how small