"Humility" by visionary artist Kadir Nelson...because a little humility goes a long way.

“Soon I will be done with the troubles of the world…”

The slave sang songs like these all the time,
long before Queen of Gospel Mahalia Jackson sang
this mouthful of trouble.

Imagine the slave plowing the field, row after long row, day after day, in hundred degree heat.  Rings of neck sweat, harassing gnats and mosquitoes around collars.  Imagine them picking cotton, sun anew, shining hotter . . . all the while obeying shouts stinging like lashes from heathens on high horses.  “Pick up the pace, quit dragging your feet, you lazy!”  Imagine the backs aching.  And, instead of Tylenol and muscle relaxants, imagine the arthritic fingers twisting open a can of camphor to rub the stooped back.  Imagine the slave sweeping the tracks off the sandy ground leading to the big house, like wind breathing over the earth.  Imagine the slave slaving over hot potbelly stoves filled with burning slave-chopped wood.  Imagine the head rags feeling too tight.  The hands and feet callused after all of that “white glove” cleaning.

Imagine the horror of jumping the broom intending to form a family that could never be—for long.  Imagine the slave birthing another child to someday be sold down river—wherever that was.  Imagine the slave, languishing in a flourishing plantation-cage, with bars of sun rays hot as pokers to the touch, under a sky-blue ceiling too tall to climb. Imagine them risking the whip, risking life, risking death to read.  For Massa knows all too well) that reading, this too, is an attempt at escape.

Imagine all the slaves who said, “No, it is better to drown in this bitter ocean than live bitter beyond it.”  Imagine the courage it took to die . . . free . . . and the courage it took to live . . . bound . . . without freedom of person . . . language . . . movement . . . thought . . . anything.

Then ponder the slave’s descendant, the modern African American, whom “they say” has embraced a “slave’s mentality” of utter dependence on someone or something else other than themselves and their god.

Imagine the slave’s descendant living in the land of milk and honey and complaining about the hardships (as real as they are) of being poor . . . but free!  Mahalia Jackson lived in a three-bedroom dwelling with more than ten other relatives—and a dog.  The slave lived in a shack with dirt for a floor and ate pig parts—all of ’em.

“I sing God’s music because it makes me feel free.  It gives me hope. With the blues, when you finish, you still have the blues.” –Mahalia Jackson

The slave’s descendant is too fly to fly a plane.  Too ashamed to work at a grocery store. But bold enough to let his children starve . . . for the presence of him . . . tho’ he be free. The lyrics have changed (“I don’t givva eff bout yooooo or anything that you dooooooo.  I don’t givva, I don’t givva, I don’t givva….”) but the sentiment is as miserable and disturbing as the slave song.

So many freedoms!  Too many freedoms??  Trading arrested potential for a resting potential!  The slave’s sweat has afforded the modern African American too many freedoms!  Including the freedom to choose not to vote.

This Black History Month, take a moment to imagine the ancestors singing sad slave songs to get them through.  Day after long day.  Year after endless year.  Then imagine their surprise when they learned—after swallowing pride and mouthfuls of bitter trouble—that they died, sweat and strength exhausted, so that the modern African American could choose to do . . . with their hard-won freedoms . . . nothing . . . useful . . . absolutely.

I can’t imagine it.

The slave's descendants...choosing to forget...the high cost of freedom.

Nobody knows—anymore—the trouble the slave has seen.  Do they?