A Black History Month Sermon

Black By Popular Demand

By Sean Gonsalves, AlterNet. Posted February 19, 2007.



How can a group of people who had their power stripped from them for so long still have so much strength? Tools
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I wrote a column for Black History Month in 2001. Every year around this time, longtime readers of this column ask about getting a copy of the column or a recording of the actual sermon described in the piece.

So, once again, for Black History Month 2007, it's black by popular demand -- a remembrance of one of the best sermons I've been blessed to hear.

Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Chicago was the guest preacher at Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland, Calif. He began by reading a portion of the Samson and Delilah story as recorded in the Book of Judges. He ended his reading with Delilah's question: What makes you so strong? Then, he flipped the question on his African-American audience: What makes you so strong, black man?

How is it that after 200 years of slavery, in which skin color was the determining factor of your servitude and social status, you could still produce a Frederick Douglass, a Booker T. Washington and a W.E.B. DuBois? What makes you so strong, black man?

How is it that after losing millions of souls crossing the Atlantic on slave ships, losing your name, language and cultural identity, you could still produce a Benjamin Banneker, a Louis Armstrong, a Duke Ellington, a Paul Robeson and a Jackie Robinson? What makes you so strong, black man?

How is it that after two centuries of being someone else's property and another century of Jim Crow laws, lynchings and daily insults, you could still produce a Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, a Malcolm X, a Howard Thurman and a labor leader like A. Philip Randolph? What makes you so strong, black man?

How is it that even though for years they had a law making it illegal to teach blacks how to read, you could still produce a Langston Hughes, a Ralph Ellison, a Richard Wright and a James Baldwin? What makes you so strong?

How is it that after having your intelligence and moral worth devalued and degraded by some of the leading intellectuals of modern scholarship, you could still produce a noted pediatric surgeon like Ben Carson, a mathematician like Bob Moses and an inventor like Lewis Latimer?

How is it that after being considered inferior by leaders of Western civilization, including the man who signed the Emancipation Proclamation, you could still produce a Joe Louis, a Muhammed Ali, a Hank Aaron, a Michael Jordan and a Jesse Owens, who told Hitler to stick it in his ear by winning four gold medals in Germany?

And what makes you so strong, black woman? How is it that after 300 years of being used -- used as a toy for the slave master, as a punching bag by your own men, you could still produce a Harriet Tubman, a Sojourner Truth, a Fannie Lou Hamer, a Rosa Parks and early 20th-century millionaire Madame C.J. Walker? What makes you so strong, black woman?

How is it that after being inculcated with the idea that your skin color is ugly, your hair nappy, your lips too big and your hips too wide, that the less you look like a blonde beauty, the worse off you are, you could still produce a Josephine Baker, an Angela Bassett, a Jane Kennedy and a Pam Grier? What makes you so strong?

How is it that after being walked on and walked out on, after being portrayed as a sexless Aunt Jemima and an oversexed temptress, you could still produce a Toni Morrison, a Zora Neale Hurston, a Maya Angelou and an Oprah Winfrey?

How is it that after men, even your own men, told you were good only for housekeeping and making babies, you could still produce an educator like Mary McLeod Bethune? What makes you so strong, black woman?

How is it that after being cast as lazy welfare queens, you could still produce a sculptor like Meta Warrick Fuller and a Dr. Jane Cooke Wright, whose research led to treating cancer patients with chemotherapy and who later became the first black woman to be named associate dean of a medical school in America?

What is the source of this incredible human strength and resilience that turns victims into victors?
______________
Thank you, black America, for the many marvelous things you have contributed to this great nation, and for reminding us of the paradoxical power of the powerless.

What makes the Black so strong? It is the human spirit that no man can tamper with. Try as he might to suffocate the light that the Creator has placed in every human mind and spirit, that light that seeks freedom of expression and upliftment, independence - it cannot be blown out with cruelty, exploitation or slavery of the body.

Obama is Black enough for Black Women of the World

Obama Wouldn't Be First Black President
By Aysha Hussain


© DiversityInc 2007 ® All rights reserved.


You've seen the headlines: "Are Americans Ready for a Black President?" "Is Obama Black Enough?" "Obama: America's First Black President?"



Ever since the nation first met Illinois Sen. Barack Obama in 2004, his race has been called into question more times than Michael Jackson's. Obama is clearly a black man, but is this really a breakthrough? Some blacks say Obama isn't "black enough," which seems ironic because for many blacks, former President Bill Clinton was "black enough." In 2001, Clinton was honored as the nation's "first black president" at the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) Annual Awards Dinner in Washington, D.C.



Were there other "black" presidents? Some historians have reason to believe people don't really understand the genealogy of past U.S. Presidents. Research shows at least five U.S. presidents had black ancestors and Thomas Jefferson, the nation's third president, was considered the first black president, according to historian Leroy Vaughn, author of Black People and Their Place in World History.



Vaughn's research shows Jefferson was not the only former black U.S. president. Who were the others? Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge. But why was this unknown? How were they elected president? All five of these presidents never acknowledged their black ancestry.



Jefferson, who served two terms between 1801 and 1809, was described as the "son of a half-breed Indian squaw and a Virginia mulatto father," as stated in Vaughn's findings. Jefferson also was said to have destroyed all documentation attached to his mother, even going to extremes to seize letters written by his mother to other people.



President Andrew Jackson, the nation's seventh president, was in office between 1829 and 1837. Vaughn cites an article written in The Virginia Magazine of History that Jackson was the son of an Irish woman who married a black man. The magazine also stated that Jackson's oldest brother had been sold as a slave.



Lincoln, the nation's 16th president, served between 1861 and 1865. Lincoln was said to have been the illegitimate son of an African man, according to Leroy's findings. Lincoln had very dark skin and coarse hair and his mother allegedly came from an Ethiopian tribe. His heritage fueled so much controversy that Lincoln was nicknamed "Abraham Africanus the First" by his opponents.



President Warren Harding, the 29th president, in office between 1921 and 1923, apparently never denied his ancestry. According to Vaughn, William Chancellor, a professor of economics and politics at Wooster College in Ohio, wrote a book on the Harding family genealogy. Evidently, Harding had black ancestors between both sets of parents. Chancellor also said that Harding attended Iberia College, a school founded to educate fugitive slaves.

Coolidge, the nation's 30th president, served between 1923 and 1929 and supposedly was proud of his heritage. He claimed his mother was dark because of mixed Indian ancestry. Coolidge's mother's maiden name was "Moor" and in Europe the name "Moor" was given to all blacks just as "Negro" was used in America. It later was concluded that Coolidge was part black.

The only difference between Obama and these former presidents is that none of their family histories were fully acknowledged by others. Even though Obama is half-white, he strongly resembles his Kenyan father. And not only is Obama open about his ancestry, most people acknowledge him as a black man, which is why people will identify Obama, if elected, as the first black president of the United States.