“Knowledge is Biblical. Education is not”. (Me).
Can’t let this week pass without acknowledging the ‘broke the Internet’ Interview of Katt Williams by Shannon Sharpe. “2024 is The Age of Truth.” (Katt Williams). He made clear his truth to all who feel as though he should not ‘trash’ other black comediennes in saying: “The Divide is not Race; it’s you either with God or you are with the others.” Amidst all the flurry of Facebook —yet ongoing, I commented: “Truth ain’t Trash!”
Nashville has become a multi-purpose ‘for form and for-profit’ motivation in Black Holiday celebrations. Despite all of the gentrification’s influx of a whole New Residence of Blacks, there appears to be little to no interest nor regard for the persons who have already worked for years to advance causes for the betterment of the community. Their motivations appear as “profit” as they introduce their ‘brands’ as what occurs to me as a ‘walk all over’ the years of community building work.
This is MLK, Jr. Holiday week and what began as a city-wide March Event up Jefferson Street to Jefferson Street Church to Convocation at TSU is now more Events than I can even begin to count; let alone the who’s and the why’s Black Nashville has such a difficult time in becoming ‘the Power of One Voice’.
The starting point lies in things that so many never even got… A Common Foundation in the work that must be done in the collection and the translation (through Dialogue) and transmission of this Knowledge ALL THE WAY ACROSS… The FIVE GENERATIONS that lives among us as a broken and fragmented people… (destroyed for lack of knowledge. Bible).
I have reached the mind previously that ‘The Primer’ for this course in direction should begin with “The Souls of Black Folk” (W. E. B. Du Bois). Stop ‘The Spinning of Wheels Self-Serving Ways’ as individuals. JUST… Stop! IT IS… not serving God; but serving The ‘OTHER’. Every Faith has at it’s foundation… “Self-Denial!” JUST… STOP!.
Since 2023 Kwaanza celebration at St. Luke Church, I have found that those Black men of intellect who forged out the course of ‘Africana American Studies Departments’ in many Colleges and Universities, both historically White AND Black, place Du Bois in a very predominant position in defining the Knowledge Base as well as historicity of being Black in America. And so again, I have reached for my ‘Primer’; leading me further into the work of Du Bois.
He was born in 1868 in Great Barrington, MA. just 3-5 (3/5th?) years into Emancipation. After having taken the course on “The Underground Railroad”, the historical dots connect his birthright to a very powerful abolitionist movement in Massachusetts where the US Army had gone seeking some very powerful ‘Runaway Slaves’ that found safe haven there in fleeing from Philadelphia. After his time of undergraduate studies here in Nashville at Fisk University, Du Bois returned to Boston where he is often identified as the first Black Man to graduate Harvard; Class of 1895. But he is only one of TWO Black Men in this Class —William Monroe Trotter born 1872 in Monticello, VA, a direct descendant of Sally Henning and Thomas Jefferson. Shortly after his birth his Family moved to the Hyde Park district of Boston where Monroe graduate the all white Hyde Park High School as Valedictorian and President of the Class.
By 1901, these first ‘Two’ Black Graduates of Harvard unleashed their powers. The organized Women in Buffalo petitioned Du Bois to do an “American Negro Exhibit” for the ‘1901 World’s Fair’, Buffalo, NY. Meanwhile, Monroe Trotter in 1901 founded the Boston Guardian. He had Joined the Massachusetts Racial Protective Association; and gave his first major protest speech, attacking Booker T. Washington’s ‘Accommodationist’ stance.
In 1905 Du Bois, Trotter, and two others organized a meeting of radicals from across the nation in Buffalo. The Meeting in July just across the Canada–US border in Fort Erie, Ontario became the
founding of the Niagara Movement. The group espoused a radical declaration of principles (authored by Trotter and Du Bois), calling for agitation for equal economic opportunity and exercise of full civil rights for African Americans.
By 1906 the Meeting was moved to the campus of Storer College, Harper’s Ferry, WV. The Historical Marker there reads: “The Niagara Movement. Here, on August 15-19, 1906, on the Storer College campus, the Niagara Movement held their first open and public meeting on American soil. Organized by W. E. B. Du Bois and others a year earlier in Erie Beach, Ontario, Canada, the Niagara Movement became the cornerstone of the modern civil rights movement and was the forerunner to the NAACP.”
by email: myfathersmansion@mail.com
