Tools to Cultivate the Promised Land

Promised Land: A place or condition believed to promise final satisfaction or realization of hopes.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

With icons of the movement on my journey

Let me share an excerpt that provides perspective on this new book, rooted in my passion for culture, history, and pursuing one’s dreams. As a child of the civil right’s movement, I note the value of progress. In the image are snapshots that chart part of this journey, a 1973 paper I wrote on the Civil Rights Movement my senior year in high school, attending the Frederick Douglass statue dedication in June 2013 and visiting the MLK Memorial in February 2012.

So take time to note your personal highlights and narratives.

The African American story has been one of striving, climbing, and watching. From 1619 until this present moment in 2013, we’ve realized promises and broken new ground. We’ve sprouted from those ancestors who first planted the seeds of freedom, and our growth has sprung from the vigilant agitation of daring souls, rooting us in history. As this book is published and read, we stand at a critical juncture in the chronicles of time. Let’s then take a moment to get perspective on this current place and those venues yet to be.

We’re in a season that showcases vigilance for victory—a jubilee! This year is a banner year in our history and the evolving search for the American Dream, as we can numerically chart progress and overcoming. Not only is 2013 a banner year, but it is also a breakthrough year in the battle for equality, political and social advocacy, as well as the quest for change in both ugly and good ways. A big wow of this year marks 150 years since President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. A centennial of service formed as twenty-two Negro women at Howard University founded Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc. to address the social and economic needs of their community—of which I am a member. A hundred years ago, a legacy of women’s suffrage was marked in their marching for the right to vote. A symbolic guard changed when Harriet Tubman dies and Rosa Parks is born in 1913.

The marking of movement and promise through horror and hallelujah in this plot of the USA continues. Just fifty years ago, Civil Rights activist Medgar Evers was gunned down in front of his home in Mississippi by a white supremacist. But the March on Washington in the heat and humidity of an August 1963 day was a momentous intercultural, interfaith event, the setting for Dr. King to profess his resounding, timeless words: “I have a dream!” Yet police continued to let the dogs out and turned fire hoses on protesters in Birmingham, while at 16^th Baptist Church, four little girls were killed when the building was bombed. Then, on a bleak November day in Dallas, our country was scarred with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the first Irish Catholic elected to inhabit the White House, who set the stage for legislative change in the push for equality in America.

And still how could we not be in awe of the celebration on January 22, 2013, on the steps of the nation’s Capitol, when the inauguration of the forty-fifth President of the United States and the first African American one, Barak Hussein Obama, took place on the Martin Luther King holiday? Further symbolizing the significance of two other key figures to the reality of his dream being realized twice as the first of his hue to hold this office, President Obama swore in using the Bibles of chronicled icons, Lincoln and King in that monumental ceremony, breaking boldly through in the midst of these other historical occurrences.

And marking these hallowed chronicles continues into next year. May 2014 recognizes 60 years since The Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education ruling on school desegregation and July 2014 marks 50 years since the Civil Rights Act was signed to enact legislation prohibiting racial and other discriminatory practices and access to public accommodations.

These events have impacted many of our lives in a myriad of ways. I recognize the possibilities and promises from this history with much appreciation for the people who helped me, such as my grandparents.