Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune, an educator, civil rights activist, founder of Bethune-Cookman University, the founding President of the National Council of Negro Women, founder of the United Negro College Fund, and daughter of formerly enslaved parents, became the first African American honored with a state-commissioned statue in the U.S. Capitol National Statuary Hall.
It is from the immeasurable depth, breadth and length of the sacred library of our history that Haji Malcolm X teaches and reminds us we are richly rewarded for all our research.
First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and civil rights leader Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune successfully advocated for the admittance of African American women as enlisted personnel and officers
Once again, the edges of the years have met and merged, and another new year has come. And we find ourselves and the world in the midst of winter in the worst of ways. COVID-19, a pandemic of worldwide proportions and devastating impact, has swept across the world, wreaking havoc on the health, lives, and livelihood of millions, showing no mercy and no signs of an early exit.
As we wait for the final results of the 2020 election, I refer us to the article I wrote in 2016 under similar circumstances. And the point remains, whatever happens, the struggle will and must continue. No matter how things go down Tuesday night, we must wake up Wednesday morning still in struggle and reaffirm without unrealistic hope or paralyzing horror, that there is still much to do and it is up to us to do it. For indeed, as we always said, the time is now, there is no other; struggle is the way forward, there is no alternative; and we are the ones, there’s no avoiding it.
Now, at the heart of the pursuit of the Seven-Fold Path of Blackness, i.e., Think Black, Talk Black, Act Black, Create Black, Buy Black, Vote Black and Live Black is the overarching goal to bring good in our lives and the world. It is to remind us of the centrality of ourselves in our own lives, our own history and the ongoing ethical imperative to constantly repair, renew and remake ourselves, our communities, our people and the world, making them all more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited and encountered them.
It is the sacred wisdom of our ancestors that a great person lies down in death like a hill, still having height and always pointing the way upward, constantly calling us to the upward paths of our best ideas, values and practices as persons and a people. And so it is with our beloved and honored brother, Larry Aubry, an all-seasons soldier and uncompromising servant of his people, who made transition and ascension, Saturday, May 16, 2020 (6260), and now sits in the sacred circle of the ancestors, among the doers of good, the righteous and the rightfully rewarded.
Again, so we might remember and raise up, pursue and do the good. We owe this month of meditation, celebration and recommitment to increased study of our history to Dr. Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950), the founder of Black History Month, who rose up from the evil and debilitating depths of post-Holocaust segregation and suppression to point to a new way to understand and assert ourselves in history and the world.
In this time of warmongering, weapon brandishing and the waging of war of various kinds against the vulnerable, revisiting this Kawaida stance and statement on the importance and essential good of peace is both needed and reaffirming.
(Remembering, reflecting and recommitting.) We cannot say it too often, stress it too much and certainly must never downplay in any way the definitive, determining and decisive role the principle and practice of righteous and relentless struggle have played in the self-conception, self-construction and self-assertion of our people and our organization Us, and the persons called into being and cultivated by both. For among the most defining features of our people is that we are a culture of righteous and relentless struggle, earnest and ongoing struggle to free ourselves and be ourselves, secure justice, expand the realm of human freedom,
For it is on their tall shoulders we stand and look back into our past and forward into our future, extracting and applying the instructive lessons of their legacy. And it is in their long and sheltering shadows that we continue the legacy they left in the life-affirming and liberating ways we live our lives, do our work, and wage our struggle for liberation and good in the world. Indeed, as Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune taught us, our obligation is and must be a “ceaseless striving” and struggle for the Good for ourselves, others and the world.
Usually when we want to confront and discount America’s founding myth of creating a democracy of free and equal persons, its hypocritical and high-hype claims of justice for all and its self-congratulatory celebration of this myth on the 4thof July, we call Frederick Douglass to the dais. Or we hear Malcolm X, Fannie Lou Hamer and others knocking at the door, coming to insist on a courageous questioning of the self-deluding lies this society routinely tells itself.
Homage to you Seba Limbiko Tembo, beloved sister and sacred friend, esteemed and honored teacher of the good, the right and the possible, on this your birthday, May 3, 6259. We pay homage and pour libation to you, Limbiko, saying the Zulu praise poem of royal greeting. For you are royal in your righteous and loving service to our people. And so, we say, “Bayede, Nkosazana, homage to you royal one. Bayede, wena omnyama omuhle, homage to you, you beautiful Black one. Wena waphakati, you of the center – in the center of your people and in the center of our lives and love. Wena wohlanga, you descendent of the original ones, the awesome ancestors that brought us into being. Bayede,Limbiko, righteous and royal one. Olungileyo akaqedwa, the good and righteous one cannot be defeated or undone, even by death.”
In this era of political madness, mean-spiritedness, racial and religious scapegoating, continued and expanding police violence, obscene inequities in wealth and power, mass incarceration, extensive and needless poverty and proposals for mass deportations, immigration bans, an apartheid wall and national registries of suspected and stigmatized peoples, there is an urgent need for an African American communal voice of moral courage, political reason, and expanded righteous and relentless resistance. In a word, there is a pressing need for an African American ethical agenda speaking to the critical issues of our times.
If we are to know ourselves rightly, honor our history, radically improve our present and forge a future worthy of the names African and human, then we must reaffirm and renew our moral and social vanguard role as a people, wage righteous and relentless resistance to evil and injustice everywhere, and put forth in plan and practice a new history and hope for our people and humankind. In the months of February and March, which we of Us have designated as Black History Month I (General Focus) and Black History Month II (Women Focus), our people have set aside time and space to celebrate ourselves inhistoryand ashistory. For we are producers and products of this sacred narrative, and the subject and center of this awesome record and struggle, the most ancient of human histories.