Come on People

Some years ago, I heard a voice – a commanding voice, a male’s voice, a Black man’s voice – a voice so sure and reassuring that it immediately got my attention. The man’s message was a call to action. I felt like rising up, almost as if I was being called to war.  I haven’t felt that way since Martin Luther King organized the people of Birmingham to protest in the 1960’s.

It was the voice of Dr. Bill Cosby in Newark, New Jersey, forty years and less than a month after the death of Dr. King. He had written a book called Come On People: On the Path from Victims to Victors along with Harvard psychiatrist Alvin F. Poussaint and was touring communities across American to promote the message and stimulate the people to get “on the path from vicitims to victors.” The point of his message was to encourage African Americans to make a better life for their children, their community and for their future. His message was bold - change the way you are raising your kids and teach them to respect themselves and others.  Most fundamentally, the culture of victimhood must end.

For days, I listened to the news on TV and on radio stations trying to find out where to sign up for the next revolution. The media amped up the negativity spouted by Blacks who either disagreed with him or in the way he presented his argument. His voice soon went silenced.

No one was prepared to pick up the baton in the spring of 1968 when it fell from the hands of Dr. King on April 4, the day he was gunned down in Tennessee.

There was no master plan for the next revolution even though Gill Scott-Heron wrote a poem and song about it in 1970; The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. He said of the song in an interview “That song was about your mind. You have to change your mind before you change the way you live and the way you move...The thing that’s going to change people will be something that no one will ever be able to capture on film. It will just be something you see and all of a sudden you realize ‘I’m on the wrong page.”

Cosby’s call was a leap in the right direction: it brought these issues into the open, confronted taboos, and opened the conversation. Yet the conversation has halted. There remains a void in the Black American experience.  Someone has to set aside the excuses once and for all and pick up the baton. We need to come together, find solutions, and start the next 'untelevised' revolution. 

Our Ancestors Have the Power

Never forget or underestimate the power of our ancestors to be a force of inspiration and guidance. Their spirits live vicariously through those who call them to task; their presence remains strong through memory and through the legacy they leave behind. Our ancestors made their mark and shaped the future; they shaped the world in which we exist. We build on their legacy. The world we live in can often be an overwhelming and confusing place, and it can be hard to find the right path and stay on track. But whenever we feel lost or overwhelmed, we should remember our ancesters, and learn from their wisdom.

Personally, I look to Sojourner Truth for guidance. Lately I’ve been asking her and my grandmother, who passed away many years ago, for guidance. All I have to do is call on them. You would be astonished at how quickly they respond. They LOVE doing GOD’s work. They get to live again through you – if only for a second. What will happen to you when you reach out to them? You will have the thrill of enlightenment. So if you ever have doubts about the path you should follow or a choice you must make, call on their wisdom. Call on them through prayer or meditation. Most importantly: Forget Them Not.

Sojourner’s Truth- A Personal Celebration of Black History Month

Top Left: Me at age 10, around the time when Martin Luther King Jr. visited our church to discuss plans for a freedom march; Top Right: me. at age 2 or 3; Bottom: me at less than a year with my sister who is three years older than me

I have a confession to make. I’ve always thought I was the reincarnation of Sojourner Truth – I swear, I really have. I can’t really explain why…. It’s too deep.  But this belief has also inflicted on me an unshakeable yet motivating frustration– I just can’t figure out why I was born with the fear of “letting go and letting God.”

Sojourner was able to let go of her fears and let her faith guide her: “The Spirit calls me, and I must go.” Harriet Tubman let go of her fears, Martin Luther King Jr. certainly did too– and because they did, the world became a better place. Because of heroes like them, Obama was free to dream, to hope and to change history.

The power and conviction behind her words continue to inspire me, shake off my doubts and give me the courage to “let go and let God.”

Creating the Black History Flag was my attempt at reminding African Americans and showing our youth through art expression what happens when you let go of your fears and stand for something. This is what I mean by “letting go and letting God.”

The Black History Flag is my best creation as an artist.  Each moment of research for this project felt like a moment with God.  Moments filled with tears, reverence, and spiritual guidance.  The flag celebrates the lives of civil rights leaders that I honor for the sacrifices they made to change America for me – a “little dark chocolate girl” in Birmingham, Alabama – so that I could be free to be who I am in America. In the midst of Black History Month, the flag serves as a symbol of these leaders’ courage and pride, and as a personal reminder of the courage it took to overcome my own fears.

Before calling me Sojourner, call me Betsy Ross. I am back, Black, and Proud to create the first and only Black History Flag.