Embrace

What does Black History Month mean to me?  Fear, strength, history repeated, pride, honor, anger, pain, abandoned, taken.  When I think of Black History I wonder, will it happen again?  At times I fear tomorrow, but at the same time I embrace it, because that is what my people taught me to do.

When I was a child I did not see color.  I was taught pain and resentment, but as I grew that pain and resentment was molded into knowledge and wisdom for tomorrow.

I don’t want to judge people as I was judged over 300 years ago.   I want to go outside and take a walk and feel the breeze as it caresses my face like a mother to a child with my friends as we lie on the grass and watch the clouds go by.

I remember the first time I was called a nigger.  I was a sophomore in high school.  I had just finished track practice for the day and was walking home.  I remember thinking I’m so tired, and that I would never get home, when these three white guys came up behind me in a white truck.  They slowed down and threw something at me.  It just barely missed my face, as they yelled “Go back to Africa, nigger!”  I was petrified, and still had about a half mile to go.  I didn’t know if they would come back or follow me home.  After what felt like a minute, I started to run as fast as I could, my legs felt like Jell-O, but I still ran.   I ran the whole way home and never looked back.

Now I sit and wonder what does Black History Month mean to me?  I think, will my babies have to go through the same pains and fears that their people went through or will it end before it is their time?  I pray every day that their tomorrow will be different from my yesterday.  Because of this, I am thankful for the blood that was passed on to me because I have the pleasure to pass it on to them.  From these strong people they will always have a strength that is everlasting, and because I am part of them, their strength gives me strength to push on every day.

I can hardly fathom what all it took for me to be here.  I had to cross seas in a boat where a man who used my mother as a play toy conceived me.  She never understood a word he said but yet she still was saying stop, hoping that he could understand her.  Once I arrived in this new world, I was taken out of my mother’s arms and sent to live with a new family.  They looked like me but they did not sound like me.  I had to change my name and learn a new language.  I worked long days in the heat and cold.  At night I was mistress to my master and his friends.  I was beaten for walking on the wrong side of the street and for talking proper English.  I buried my husband’s body after he was hung and burned alive.  They said he touched a young white woman.  She had fallen in the street and he was only trying to help her up.  I received a call from the hospital, it was my son.  The police said he ran a stop sign, but everyone knows that there are no stop signs on that street.  My daughter was walking home from school when she was raped.  The teenage white boy was never convicted, they claimed she was prostituting; I am expecting my first grandchild in three months.  She is only 12 years old.  My grandson went to heaven yesterday; the boys said he was wearing the wrong colors and he needed to learn some respect.  My granddaughter is graduating from Harvard with honors.  She is going to be a doctor.  She is engaged to a white man.

To remember our past is to embrace our future.  Knowledge is the power that we must ingrain into our children.  It is the only way to break the cycle of yesterday.  What does Black History Month to me?  A better tomorrow.                    

                                                                 Macklin Marie Harris