Fake Freedom - Pittsburg Juneteenth

Fake Freedom
Most organizations when they talk about Juneteenth, just talk about how on
June 19, 1865, how the calvary rode into Galveston, Texas and announced that the slaves were freed (every other state had already announced it). And they expand on this history with some other minor details.
BUT THIS MISSES THE MAIN POINT……
It was a fake freedom!!!
How do you enslave a people for over 250 years:
Treat them like property
Buy and sell human beings
Destroy families
Tearing wives from husbands & children from their families & sell them off
Rape women and daughters
Torture them
Lynch them at will
Take their names and give them slave names (steal their identity)
Make it illegal for them to learn to read and write (no means of support)
Deny men everything that makes them a man
Deny women everything that makes them a woman
Treat them like they are nobodies, or worse
Tell them they are nothing
Steal their culture and identity (everything that makes them a people)
Do unspeakable things to them over and over, generation after generation
Then suddenly tell them they are free
But do nothing & give them nothing to make their freedom a reality
Worse yet, hold their head under water next 150 years:
With legalized discrimination in every area of life
Requiring separate and inferior facilities (white only…)
Stealing their homes, land & businesses the minute they begin to succeed
Holding their heads under water
Doing everything you can to crush their spirit
Trying to make the Black skin a badge of shame
Unfair criminal justice practices
Continued lynching
Every nightmare you can imagine happened
And the legacy of slavery remains with us today
Just as wealth is generational, so is poverty, low education, poor health care statistics...
Is it an accident that we are on bottom of almost every list?
It is not by accident, it is by design
Very few would foolish enough to believe that we have “Liberty and justice for all”
HOWEVER….
We must now have an inner conversation, as to how do we uplift our people
Empower, inspire and equip our young people
Make our government do the right thing
But not wait for them
Because we must face our own reality, that is that some do not care and never will
So, we must not wait
We must press on
Must take on the mantle and assume our responsibility for this time & place in history
Set new expectations
New vision
And make new commitments to make it happen
Talk is cheap, what we need now is strategic, organized, action
Lastly, we must be motivated by love for our people, not hate for others
Join us and help make our communities a better place….