I rose from abject poverty and climbed several rungs up the Socioeconomic Ladder. I was the first person in my family to complete high school, college and graduate school. My brother and sister have post- graduate educational degrees. None of us have ever been on Welfare. We have had 40-year careers as professionals.
America is unique. God has blessed America. I rose from abject poverty and climbed several rungs up the Socioeconomic Ladder. I was the first person in my family to complete high school, college and graduate school.
Living
in America is not always “peaches and cream”, if you are a Person of
Color (POC). Life is not a Rose Garden for Black People no matter how well off
you are economically. America can appear to be a Police State for a POC. Just
going about your normal daily activities anywhere in America, chances are you
are going to come into contact with police and other law enforcement personnel.
I have had many encounters with white cops. Most of them
have been pleasant, some not so pleasant. It did not matter what I was wearing
or the time of day, it was the character and education of the cop that
determined how the situation was resolved. Sometimes I was wearing my military
officers' uniform, other times I was wearing a suit and tie, but the manner
that I was treated usually was determined by how comfortable the cop felt in
dealing with a POC. I have been disrespected. I have been insulted. I have
received Traffic Tickets. I have never been hand-cupped. I have never been
arrested. I have never been beaten like Rodney King in California.
We are parents and grand parents. Not one of our children has
ever been in jail or in the hospital, except to deliver a baby. Not one person
in my family has a criminal record. We own our own homes. Some own several. We
have traveled and seen most of the Free World. Until we left home our parents
had never traveled more than 50 miles from where they were born. Several of our Grand Parents were born, lived and died in the same house that their parents had lived in. In one generation we went from the cotton field to the Board Room and the Court Room.
We were raised as Bible base Christian Missionary Baptists. We learned to pray before the age of three. Our Mother prayed hard and constantly. She taught us that God will make a way some how. And she was correct. Her prayers have been answered to the fourth generation. Her Faith was not been in vain. Only in America, a Christian Constitutional Republic could our story have been possible.
I am a
Story Teller. This is my story. It is my Life. Looking back, I am convinced
that God was in charge of my Life. He guided me as a Father would guide his
child. He protected me when I ventured off the straight and narrow path. He
endowed me with the Power Of Choice and placed me in a Country where I had
Freedom to choose. I am happy with the choices I made.
Reading
this Book is a stroll down Memory Lane. Most of it was written by God as He
spoke to me spiritually. The Words are His Words. The Events related are the
ones He wants to emphasize and perpetuate. I enjoy reading my own book because
God wrote it through me. I would write when I felt Divine Inspiration. Over the
years I would feel spiritually moved to record and photograph certain things
and keep them. The house where I was born is an example. Soon after I
photographed it, it was destroyed. I have been saving material for over 50
years. I have been writing this book for about 13 years. I started writing in
2006 on a Laptop while vacationing at the Marriott Villas Resort in Newport
Beach, California.
I have
not sacrificed Truth and accuracy for entertainment and self-aggrandizement.
Nor have I exercised journalistic license to embellish. The facts, the events,
the people and places are all true to the best of my recollection.
These
events in my Life spanned eight Decades of American History. They tell the
story of the American Transition from Post-slavery Agrarianism, to Segregation
and Jim Crow, and Separate-But-Equal, through the Civil Rights Movement, to
Integration and finally back to the
Beginnings Of The New-Segregation. This is evident in higher education.
In
2018 Black Graduates At Harvard University opted for a Separate Black Only
Graduation Ceremony. In 2019 more than 73 institutions of higher learning opted
for separate ethnic-specific ceremonies. It appears that this phenomenon is
spreading and may become the New Norm. I hope not. It is not the American Dream
that we fought for. We believed in inclusion and fought to be included in the
greater American Society. We were not Separatists and did not want to be
excluded from Main Stream America.
God
has chosen to tell this story through my life. I hope that others will enjoy
reading this book as much as I. I pray that it will serve as a source of
inspiration to my children and to future generations of Americans.
