40 ACRES AND A MULE - THE STATE OF BLACK AMERICA (SOBA)

40 Acres and a mule – that was the promise of reparation for the atrocity called “slavery” which black America endured.

40 Acres and a Mule

“Forty acres and a mule" refers to a concept in the United States for agrarian reform for former enslaved African American farmers, following disruptions to the institution of slavery provoked by the American Civil War. Many freedmen believed they had a moral right to own the land they had long worked as slaves, and were eager to control their own property. Freed people widely expected to legally claim 40 acres (16 ha) of land (a quarter-quarter section) and a mule after the end of the war, long after proclamations such as Sherman's Special Field Orders, No. 15 and the Freedmen's Bureau Act were explicitly reversed.(Lincoln was assassinated and Andrew Johnson revoked Sherman’s order.

Some land redistribution occurred under military jurisdiction during the war and for a brief period thereafter. But, Federal and state policy during the Reconstruction era emphasized wage labor, not land ownership, for African Americans. Almost all land allocated during the war was restored to its antebellum owners. Several African American communities did maintain control of their land, and some families obtained new land by homesteading.. Most blacks acquired land through private transactions, with ownership peaking at 15,000,000 acres (6,100,000 ha) in 1910, before an extended financial recession caused problems that resulted in the loss of their property for many”. -Wikipedia

Have we truly overcome? We have gone from slave shanties to tenement houses; from tenement houses to low-income housing and finally from low-income housing to home ownership. Although we are still a freed people in the natural, the Federal and State policy during the Reconstruction era which emphasized “wage labor” over “land ownership” has passed from generation to generation. With the wage labor mentality, our people have become a nation of consumers and not producers. The economy of the nation depends largely on production and consumption. We, as a people, are largely on the “consumer” end of the deal. In fact, just as the nation was built on the backs of slave labor, our economy is now braced on the shoulders of consumerism. Instead of investing our wages in assets like homes and businesses, we fill our lives with the task of acquiring things that once purchased tend to decrease in value. It’s tax return season. Stores are gearing up to receive all your hard-earned increase and leave you no better off than you were.

There are some black owned businesses and even enterprises but not nearly enough of them. In order to leave a legacy to the next generation, more of us must become producers and asset owners. We must teach our children to become producers and not just work for a wage labor and then hand it over to the producers of this world. We must teach them the tenets of investing, trading, giving and receiving. We must teach them to become land owners because it is the one asset that no one is making more of. Teach them to become landlords instead of tenants. If we must celebrate Black History, let us celebrate our history on Black Wall Street in Greenwood, OK. Let us celebrate more than just our downtrodden slavery history. We are a nation of people that endured the worst the nation could offer and still rose to economic power. It is time now for history to repeat itself, in a positive way. - Apostle Ej, your marketplace Apostle

BLACK HISTORY IS MY HISTORY

Black History is my history:

I could see the look in her eyes. She tried to be brave and put on a 

happy face. But she was not happy. Again we were at the jailhouse. Again she was bringing him cigarettes and putting money on his account. Again, she was looking at her firstborn son through the bars of a jail cell. I was just a little girl but I could see the hurt and the pain in her face as her heart broke yet again. Then one day, he graduated to the big time and was hauled away to prison. Miles and miles now separated us from him. There would be no more weekly visits. Now it would become a burden to drive the extra mile with three small children in tow, to go through the ritual procedure of signing in to the space behind the barbed-wire fence. This indeed was a gated-community, but not the kind of community she had wished for him. Now we would have a picnic, in the yard that was surrounded with a chain linked fence, that was crowned with barbed-wire circles, so he couldn't get out. None of us could get out. I remember being frightened that they wouldn't let us go home. In my small little-child heart, I made a vow that I would never do the thing that my mother was doing. I would never make these horrible trips to the jailhouse behind a son of mine. I would never allow my heart to break over and over again in this way.

When I grew up, I had a son. As he grew older, I rehearsed for him my childhood vow. I would say to him, “I don’t DO jail! You have no business at the jailhouse! If you go there, do not expect me to come for you because I DON’T DO JAIL!” He would just look at me and not say a word but he knew that I meant every word. After he was a grown man, he told me of an incident where he had gone to jail when he was about 30 years old. And even though it was history, and he had only stayed overnight, my heart sank. I breathed a sigh of relief at the same time as my heart was gripped with fear. Would he be a repeat customer? I prayed not. And to this day, he has never returned to jail. It would seem we dodged a bullet on that one.

Once, I attended a church service where a panel of prisoners was allowed to come in to answer questions from the young people in the congregation. Our pastor had at one time been locked up as a teenager. His crime: murder. This was his attempt to give the next generation some first-hand experience with some young men who knew the truth about jail-time and were still living it. The question was asked, “What is the worst thing about being in jail?” The answer came quickly. “Being separated from family,” one of the young men said. “It is the loneliest feeling you will ever know.” His voice broke and he dropped his head briefly. The rest of the panel nodded in agreement. My mind flashed back to my brother and his stints in jail. Somehow, my mother had known what I, as a child, could not fathom. Because of that, she was willing to sacrifice to stay connected to him.

Still Their Slaves

My mind now goes to the days of slavery. Men and women were bound with chains and torn from the arms of their family members. Children were sold off like chattel. The worse thing about slavery may not have been the abuse and rough treatment. Perhaps the worst thing about slavery was “the separation from family.” If that is the case, and more and more jails are built every year, perhaps we have not yet overcome.  What if the reason so many of our young black men and an increasing number of women are under a generational curse that has passed down through the ages and the atrocities of slavery? What if we are still their slaves?  Have we truly overcome?

BLACK HISTORY - HAVE WE OVERCOME?

Breaking the Generational Curse of Poverty

This is why I do it. 

Generation after generation is steeped in poverty and hopelessness. Studies have shown that if a family stays in poverty for four generations, future generations are likely to remain poor.

 As far back as I can remember our family has remained in the proverbial “poor” class. My grandfather was a “laborer”, meaning he worked in the fields on somebody else’s farm. ”. My grandmother died in a field while working as a “laborer.” My father was a logger(or pulp wood man) and my mom was termed a “laborer” as well. She probably worked the same fields as my grandfather and grandmother before her.  At the age of 12, I was taken to the fields to work alongside my mother. Business law at the time said a child could work at the age of 12 without a social security number. All this meant was that the rich farmer who I worked for could get cheap labor and not have to pay taxes. On the brighter side, it meant that the family income would increase by whatever amount the 12-year old managed to acquire. It was back-breaking work bending and hauling bundles of flowers that were taller than me, and probably weighed more as well. It was not long before I decided that this would NOT be my lot in life. I dreamed that someday I would be a Secretary in an office somewhere, far away from the dust and bugs of the fields of the rural south.

Four years later, I was a teenage mom who had dropped out of school and I saw my dream slowly fading away. I returned to school to complete my high school education and graduated with honors. I was determined not to be a part of the statistics and demographics of my own little village. Everywhere I looked, teenage girls were becoming teen moms and bringing their children home to their parents to add to a family budget that was already sagging under the weight of the burden of “not enough”. I decided to “break free” and like Kunta Kinte, I ran. I ran and ran and ran but it seemed that wherever I went, poverty followed me. As a young wife and mother I struggled to run a household the way I had seen my mother run hers. Once I had my own household to run, I realized why sometimes she would not eat but only have a cup of coffee and a cigarette why the rest of the family consumed the food she had labored to provide. I understood that when we had fried chicken for dinner, she chose the chicken necks and backs as her portion. Every day the thought of how to get out of poverty was on my mind, so I reached for my dream.

I achieved the rank of Secretary after high school and worked in a very nice office. Looking back on my life then, I was still a “laborer”. It was only the location that had changed. The money that I brought home was never a’more than enough” and more than enough is what it will take to break the curse of poverty. So in the spirit of Kunta Kinte, I ran again. I ran as far away from my childhood experiences as I could. I joined the Air Force and took my first plane ride to Basic Training. In doing just that one thing, I had already exceeded the limitations of my ancestors and my siblings.

However, when your life is held in check by a generational curse that is passed on from generation to generation, no amount of running will help. It then became my mission to discover how to break the generational curse of poverty. 

Statistically speaking, we are not in keeping with the plans of God:

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This is not the future that God has planned for my generations of grandchildren. God wants his people to prosper. In fact, his word declares that he already has plans for us to prosper. There is a way out of Poverty and like Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman before me, I am bound to find it and once the path is clear, to return to the masses and lead captives to the Promised Land. I'm on the move again with a new business venture that promises to be "the way". Fear not. I'll be back for you.