Following The Path: December 2008

December 11
I Have a Dream Speech - Full text, audio & video of Martin Luther King Jr's most famous speech, I Have a Dream / Address at March on Washington

I Have a Dream Speech
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.

We cannot turn back.

There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. *We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by a sign stating: "For Whites Only."* We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."¹

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest -- quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."²

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.

Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,

From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of
Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that:

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!³

¹ Amos 5:24 (rendered precisely in The American Standard Version of the Holy Bible)

² Isaiah 40:4-5 (King James Version of the Holy Bible). Quotation marks are excluded from part of this moment in the text because King's rendering of Isaiah 40:4 does not precisely follow the KJV version from which he quotes (e.g., "hill" and "mountain" are reversed in the KJV). King's rendering of Isaiah 40:5, however, is precisely quoted from the KJV.

I grew up believing that I was equal to anyone I met because of this man...I cannot comprehend how it was for black people in America how anyone could do this to another human being. Why was there no revolt? , why was there no hero? Throughout history races of people have been enslaved how did they gain freedom? History tells us some of them earned their freedom in various was from work to fighting to the death. Many were free after revolts and by bloodshed.

Regardless blacks and many minorities after slavery was repealed in this country found that they were at a disadvantage in just the simple basics of life. We were denied education, the right to vote not allowed in certain parts of town's etc.

Archie

"...Jesus answered...I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice. Pilate said to Him, 'What is truth?'..." (NKJ translation of the Christian Scriptures/New Testament, John 18:37-38)

"When it comes to fundamentally wrong behavior, there is no tolerance. Wrong is wrong!" Pastor Clarence Patterson. 3

“No one has the right to choose to do what is wrong.” Abraham Lincoln

Searcher: "How can I know if what you tell me is true?" The Ancient One responded: "Friend, unless it exists, you cannot know the Truth. For if there is no objective Truth, then why be deluded? Better try instead to enjoy the brief time left to your pointless existence! But what if a deeper reality actually exists? To be real, the Truth must stand alone; everything contradicting it must be counterfeit!" Anon.

Overview:
The Christian church's main justification of the concept of slavery was based on the "curse of Ham" which appears in the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) in Genesis 9:25-27.

"Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers. He also said, 'Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem! May Canaan be the slave of Shem.

Christians at the time believed that Canaan had settled in Africa and that his descendents had become black.

Although slavery was widespread in Palestine during Jesus' ministry, the Christian Scriptures (New Testament) does not record his opinion of it. Slavery was casually mentioned without criticism in the various books of the Bible. It was accepted as a natural part of life by almost all Christians until the 19th century CE.

Anabaptists started to criticize slavery in the late 17th century. They were joined by Quakers and Mennonites. It was only when John Wesley (1703-1791), founder of the Methodist movement, became concerned about slavery that the small protest became a mass movement for the abolition of slavery.

Slavery is still advocated in North America by some Reconstructionist Christians and a few racist fringe groups within the Christian Identity movement.

During World War II, millions of Jews, Roma (Gypsies), Poles, other Eastern Europeans, and people of other nationalities and religions were forced to work under inhuman conditions in Nazi industry as slave laborers. Many did not survive, and became part of the Nazi Holocaust (a.k.a. the Shoah; the Devouring).

Philip Mendlowicz is a Polish Jew who was a slave laborer at Volkswagen. He now lives in North York, ON, Canada. He commented: "They wanted you to be an animal. They didn't care if you fell down sick. They sent you to the death camp. There were always more to take your place." 8

We have been unable to find any reference of money having been paid in the past as compensation to former slave laborers. Although Germany has paid out nearly $90 billion in restitution to certain survivors of the Nazi regime, none had apparently been directed to slave laborers.

A final agreement has been reached in which the government and certain industries in Germany will equally finance a $7.5 billion (U.S.) fund which will be dispersed to victims of Nazi persecution.

History of slavery and the slave trade
Main article: History of slavery

Slave market in early medieval Eastern Europe. Painting by Sergei Ivanov

Slavery traces back to the earliest records, such as the Code of Hammurabi (ca. 1760 BC), which refers to it as an established institution.[28] Slavery in ancient cultures was known to occur in civilizations as old as Sumer, and it was found in every civilization, including Ancient Egypt, the Akkadian Empire, Assyria, Ancient Greece, Ancient Persia,[29] Rome and parts of its empire, and the Islamic Caliphate. Such institutions were a mixture of debt-slavery, punishment for crime, the enslavement of prisoners of war, child abandonment, and the birth of slave children to slaves.[30] Records of slavery in Ancient Greece go as far back as Mycenaean Greece. It is often said that the Greeks as well as philosophers such as Aristotle accepted the theory of natural slavery i.e. that some men are slaves by nature.[31][32]

As the Roman Republic expanded outward, entire populations were enslaved, thus creating an ample supply. The people subjected to Roman slavery came from all over Europe and the Mediterranean. Greeks, Berbers, Germans, Britons, Thracians, Gauls (or Celts), Jews, Arabs, and many more were slaves used not only for labour, but also for amusement (e.g. gladiators and sex slaves). This oppression by an elite minority eventually led to slave revolts (see Roman Servile Wars); the Third Servile War led by Spartacus was the most famous and severe. By the late Republican era, slavery had become a vital economic pillar in the wealth of Rome.[33]

13th century slave market in Yemen

The early medieval slave trade was mainly to the East: the Byzantine Empire and the Muslim world were the destinations, pagan Central and Eastern Europe, along with the Caucasus and Tartary, were important sources. Viking, Arab, Greek and Jewish merchants (known as Radhanites) were all involved in the slave trade during the Early Middle Ages.[34][35][36]

Medieval Spain and Portugal were the scene of almost constant warfare between Muslims and Christians. Periodic raiding expeditions were sent from Al-Andalus to ravage the Iberian Christian kingdoms, bringing back booty and slaves. In raid against Lisbon, Portugal in 1189, for example, the Almohad caliph Yaqub al-Mansur took 3,000 female and child captives, while his governor of Córdoba, in a subsequent attack upon Silves, Portugal in 1191, took 3,000 Christian slaves.[37]

Slavery in early medieval Europe was so common that the Roman Catholic Church repeatedly prohibited it—or at least the export of Christian slaves to non-Christian lands was prohibited at, for example, the Council of Koblenz in 922, the Council of London (1102), and the Council of Armagh (1171).[38] However, the moral aspect was not considered binding by church representatives in regards to the enslavement of Africans. The 15th century Portuguese exploration of the African coast is commonly regarded as the harbinger of European colonialism.

In 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull Dum Diversas, granting Afonso V of Portugal the right to reduce any "Saracens, pagans and any other unbelievers" to hereditary slavery which legitimized slave trade under catholic beliefs of that time. This approval of slavery was reaffirmed and extended in his Romanus Pontifex bull of 1455. These papal bulls came to serve as a justification for the subsequent era of slave trade and European colonialism.[39]

The Byzantine-Ottoman wars and the Ottoman wars in Europe brought large numbers of Christian slaves into the Islamic world too.[40] After the battle of Lepanto approximately 12,000 Christian galley slaves were freed from the Ottoman Turks.[41] Christians were also selling Muslim slaves captured in war. The Knights of Malta attacked pirates and Muslim shipping, and their base became a centre for slave trading, selling captured North Africans and Turks.

The maritime town of Lagos, Portugal, was the first slave market created in Portugal for the sale of imported African slaves - the Mercado de Escravos, opened in 1444.[42][43] In 1441, the first slaves were brought to Portugal from northern Mauritania.[43] By the year 1552 black African slaves made up 10 percent of the population of Lisbon.[44][45] In the second half of the 16th century, the Crown gave up the monopoly on slave trade and the focus of European trade in African slaves shifted from import to Europe to slave transports directly to tropical colonies in the Americas - in the case of Portugal, especially Brazil.[43] In the 15th century one third of the slaves were resold to the African market in exchange of gold.[46] Spain had to fight against relatively powerful civilizations of the New World. However, the Spanish conquest of the indigenous peoples in the Americas was also facilitated by the spread of diseases (e.g. smallpox) due to lack of biological immunity.[47] (although the natives retaliated by spreading diseases like syphilis among the Europeans.) Natives were used as forced labour (the Spanish employed the pre-Columbian draft system called the mita),[48] but the diseases caused a labour shortage and so the Spanish colonists were gradually involved in the Atlantic slave trade. The first Europeans to use African slaves in the New World were the Spaniards who labourers on islands such as Cuba and Hispaniola, where the alarming decline in the native population had spurred the first royal laws protecting the native population (Laws of Burgos, 1512-1513). The first African slaves arrived in Hispaniola in 1501.[49] England played a prominent role in the Atlantic slave trade. The "slave triangle" was pioneered by Francis Drake and his associates. Slavery was a legal institution in all of the 13 American colonies, and the profits of the slave trade and of West Indian plantations amounted to 5% of the British economy at the time of the Industrial Revolution.[50]

Historians say the Arab slave trade lasted more than millennium.[51] Ibn Battuta tells us several times that he was given or purchased slaves.[52] Some historians estimate that between 11 and 18 million black African slaves crossed the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara Desert from 650 AD to 1900 AD,[53][54][55] or more than the 9.4 to 12 million Africans brought to the Americas.[56] According to Robert Davis between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by Barbary pirates and sold as slaves in North Africa and Ottoman Empire between the 16th and 19th centuries.[57]

SLAVERY IN OUR TIME
The Boston Globe, April 2, 1996
By Jeff Jacoby
"I have heard their groans and sighs, and seen their tears," grieved Harriet Tubman, "and I would give every drop of blood in my veins to free them."
How the great abolitionist heroine of the 19th century would weep to learn that at the threshold of the 21st century, black chattel slavery still exists in this world. More than weep: Harriet Tubman's very heart would crack if she knew that almost no one, not even the descendants of the American slaves for whose emancipation she fought so desperately, seems to care. Chattel slavery - the buying and selling of human beings - ended in the West in the 19th century. In the East, especially in the Arab-dominated nations of Sudan and Mauritania, slavery abounds. Tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of black Africans have been captured by government troops and free-lance slavers and carried off into bondage. Often they are sold openly in "cattle markets," sometimes to domestic owners, sometimes to buyers from Chad, Libya, and the Persian Gulf states.
These people are slaves in every grim sense of the word. They are owned outright by their Arab Muslim masters. Many are branded like cattle, forcibly converted to Islam, lashed if they resist, tortured if they attempt escape. They are put to work as household servants or at hard labor in the fields. Girls and women are routinely raped. Kidnapped boys as young as 15 have been impressed into the Sudanese army, to be used as cannon fodder in Khartoum's "holy war" against the black Africans of southern Sudan - and as blood banks for older soldiers.
Chattel slavery in Sudan and Mauritania has been conclusively and repeatedly documented by eyewitnesses, human rights investigators, the United Nations, Sudanese and Mauritanian defectors, and a handful of dogged journalists. Yet most Americans know nothing about it. Why? To end apartheid in South Africa, activists the world over kept up an unremitting campaign of pressure against the former government in Pretoria - condemnation, vigils, sanctions, divestment, boycotts, marches, protests. Where is the campaign to free Africa's slaves?
"Every schoolchild in America knows that women have been raped in Bosnia," says Charles Jacobs, director of the Boston-based American Anti-Slavery Group. "Everyone knows the whales have to be saved. But no one seems to realize you can buy a black woman as a slave for as little as $15 in Khartoum."
Jacobs, a management consultant by profession, became a latter-day abolitionist in 1992 after an unsettling conversation with a client who worked out of Senegal.
"I had heard these rumors about slavery in the Arab world. I asked him, 'Can it be true?' He said, 'Sure it's true; you want to buy one?' "
Together with Mohamed Athie, an exiled Mauritanian diplomat, and David Chand, a black Christian from southern Sudan, Jacobs has spent 31/2 years trying to shine a light on the horrors of slavery in North Africa. Almost everywhere they have turned - the eminent human-rights agencies, the women's groups, the church councils, the civil rights coalitions - they have encountered the same response: Yes, we know about the slaves. No, we're not prepared to fight for their freedom.
"For people who . . . have been at the forefront of the anti-apartheid movement," bewails Athie, "I seriously cannot understand how they can turn their backs on this . . .. I cannot believe people do not want to take action."
The new abolitionist movement has a few heroes. Several are black journalists from the non-mainstream media (some of them spurred to action by research from the American Anti-Slavery Group): reporter Samuel Cotton of the City Sun and publisher William Pleasant of the Liberator, both New York weeklies; Nate Clay of the New Metro News and WLS radio in Chicago; PBS television host Tony Brown. Gutsy Tim Sandler of the Boston Phoenix and Brian Eads of Reader's Digest have journeyed to Sudan to find escaped slaves and record their stories. Kevin Vigilante, a Rhode Island doctor and humanitarian, has tracked down the camps in Khartoum where abducted black children are brutalized. John Eibner's Christian Solidarity International raises funds to literally buy the freedom of captives in the slave markets of southern Sudan.
But these are rare exceptions. In most of America's prestige press, in the boardrooms of the great civil rights organizations, in the offices of famous black leaders, in the corridors of the State Department, one of the most bitter evils of our time evokes only a cowardly silence. Jesse Jackson cannot get involved in fighting slavery, one of his aides told Jacobs, because he "is busy with affirmative action." The NAACP hasn't acted. TransAfrica hasn't acted. The chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, US Rep. Don Payne of New Jersey, recently dismissed the slave trade as a "sub, sub issue."
Only with aching slowness is this blackout being lifted. In May 1995, Jacobs convened an abolitionist congress in Harlem. Last month, a congressional subcommittee held a first-ever hearing on slavery in North Africa. But the pace of progress is microscopic. And all the while, tens of thousands of human beings are bleeding and dying in their chains

Following The Path

Thursday, December 25, 2008

The Hope

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

You Can Only Get To Oz By Going...

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Has The Dream Come True? Im Looking For More...

JFK Quotes