Juneteenth Statement

This coming month, Abilene, Texas will experience another Juneteenth celebration. This day has been set aside by our ancestors who recognized that it was vital to our continued quest for liberation that we both remember and revel in our victories. Yet, despite the significance of our experiences under the harsh, cruel realities of chattel slavery, we are still yet being called to the field of battle to forge on for freedom. It is with that spirit that we not just come together as we have in times past, and that not being said to diminish any efforts of those who have labored for us, rather we our coming together today is to join hands in unity. We are a people of a common past, a current reality and an uncertain future. Our future is uncertain because we have not yet founded any major businesses that provide jobs for our community. We have not built any independent schools to educate our children in the relevancy of our story, which will undue the lies of His-story.{{more}} We must tell our truths. In addition our communities are just as vulnerable today as they were under Jim Crow. We have not fortified ourselves from crime, nor drugs, nor ruthless mobs; whether we call them bloods, crips or savage lynch mobs. The question of today and for this day is: where is our communal integrity? I venture to say that that question can’t even begin to be explored until we first discourse on the subject of identity; who are we? There are still some amongst us who find it fitting to selectively claim attachment to our group, but only when it serves their purposes. Further, a sign of our social sickness, and an unattractive refusal to love who God made US to be is the abiding need to accept this behavior, with no opposition, and to deny our group. We are today in shambles and few care to do anything about it because they have embraced this false idea of inclusion into the America Dream, that for far too many of our youth is an Amerikkkan nightmare. Read the stats, who are dying from AIDS; who leads in heart disease, who are over represented in the prisons from coast to coast, who is suffering from joblessness, who is below the poverty line, who owns the fewest businesses, who trails the rest in graduation from high school, college, or graduate school? You answer these questions and then we can have a healthy debate. So, as we approach this coming Juneteenth celebration starting on June, 17th and concluding on to the 19th, a Sunday we should have these thoughts in mind. I don’t want to presume that I can speak for everybody, but I think many of us want answers. Who will arise as our teachers? I say, “If not me, who; if not now, when?” This Juneteenth will be a power packed lineup of talent from Midland to the Metroplex. Poets, singers, speakers, artists, dancers, revolutionary rappers, and many more gifted souls. If you miss this three day festival, which begins in the Stevenson neighborhood, on Carver Street on June, 17 you will hear about it, because it will be off the chain. Come out and recall the road upon which we have trod, and let us prepare to lead the next generation into a greater union with our God who has brought us thus far, as Langston Hughes once wrote in this Negro National Anthem.