FOR THE BROTHAS: AN INTRODUCTION

It must have been about 20 years ago when I first began thinking about creating a "Cultural Salon" as a reaction to the mundane social circles In Washington D.C. The richness of intellectual and artistic interchange had died, college friends had moved, the internet had not yet become the phenomenon it now is... I romanticised about the Salons of the mid to late 1800's in Paris, London and Berlin and the cultural dynamo of the Harlem Rennaisance. I was fortunate enough to meet a gentleman, an artist who lived and traveled with James Baldwin... Jimmy he affectionately called him, and he spoke often of their small cottage in southern France and of the many Artists, Poets and Luminaries that dropped in to chat and relax. Well, the impressionists, cubists, modernists, etc. all hung out together famously in those days and shared their ideas with one another creating a creative greenhouse in a world that was rapidly changing. I longed to have lived in those times, to have met Cassat, Rodin, Ellington, Fitzgerald, Baker, Balwin, well I did finally meet Baldwin and others purely for the joy of intellection upon the arts. This was in the late 1980's and by the mid 2000's I happened to run into a friend of mine from Hampton University who had been living in New York since he graduated in the early 90s. Well, I was surprised to hear him comment that in all of the wonder that is New York he never met anyone who ever really had anything interesting to say about art, literature, architecture, science, fashion or anything... I was so surprised to hear this since it had also been my experience. Well here I am in 2011 attempting the Virtual Salon...

Monday, January 21, 2013

O’ER THE SWEETNESS OF TIME…


Black American Civil War Soldier 



When on July 4, 1776 Black Americans, both freedmen and enslaved, found their liberties to have been bitterly betrayed, even after every Black man who was able fight risked his mortal life toward the same goal… sweet freedom!

Black Loyalists fought for their freedom during the American
War for Independence from Britain.


We braced ourselves for the perilous battle that lay ahead.  The nation played out its long, emotional debate with the fate of those Black Americans who had been institutionally enslaved and disenfranchised by the policies of a nation, the wealth and power of which a free slave labor economy incontrovertibly launched into global super power status only 85 years after the birth of America.  Then as now many Americans were in denial regarding the great contribution Black men and women had made toward the rise of this great economic power largely because of their guilt, or ignorance since the success of the nation had been realised in great part through the unimaginably intense, inhuman, physical and psychological labor of others conveniently segregated by the mirage of divine right.  Black American slaves invisibly took on the real work they were unwilling to take on themselves…  In their hearts they knew slavery and the equally sinister system of racism conjured up to make it appear just in the conscience of men was singularly evil but the selfish nature of men who lust more for power than equality continued to ignore freedoms calling at the  door…

Black Civil War Soldier with his family.

Black men fought again, in the second war of racial vainglory… By then millions had already died enslaved that might have otherwise raised the tri-colored flag of this nation to inestimable glory.  Because of this bloody war Black men and women were, albeit reluctantly, given their freedom and for a brief time, equality as men…
The 13th Amendment freed Black Slaves.


In reconstructed America freedom was suspended upon a precarious pendulum, a meter of socioeconomic equality that was permitted to swing backward due to a combination of fear, animosity and lack of core leadership on the part of those who were newly freed and those who had newly freed them.  In this time the lions share of responsibility fell on congress to implement all measures required to fulfill and enforce the promise it had made with the men and women it recently freed from bondage...





Reconstruction Election
Ticket
Reconstruction Election
Ticket






Black Americans not being accustomed to the way freedom was defined in the law books of this country enamored of but betrayed by their newly acquired liberties watched in horror while each of them was spirited away beneath the pall of a white hood.  The first Black members of congress elected during reconstruction were gone!






Black American Congressmen Elected During Reconstruction


 The freedoms Black Americans fought and died for during the Civil War were gone!  The vengeful, criminal and immoral fist of the traitorous south had prevailed!

The First Black Man To Vote After The Civil War

But this injustice could not have launched if the north had not also blown wind into its sails! The sons of America lay rotting in their graves as if for naught for surely, though the blind have often denied it, the American Civil War was fought over the issue of slavery and the racial equality of Black men…

Valiant Black Soldiers Fought Against
The Criminal Rebellious South
For Freedom.


So dear did the seditious south hold slavery and the ideal of racial supremacy to Black men, they were willing to risk all in order to secede from a union they had also bitterly fought to create!  Over the entirely of Americas brief history the issue of race has torn it apart and prevented it from becoming the great nation it was envisaged to become…

Civil War Soldier


Yesterday, January 20th, 2013 the first Black American president took the second oath of office before the world.  On this day, January 21st 2013, Americans gather on the mall to experience this marvel firsthand.  For some Americans the issue of racial equality has not yet been solved but when Barack Obama walks out to be sworn in as president of The United States they shall have got their answer!  The laws of this land are ideals and it is up to the people to live up to them.  I do not like to draw significance to our president’s race when otherwise discussing his deeds because anyone of any race can theoretically be president.  But in America where race has always played such a key role in the way we live I mark the presence of a Black American president as a milestone.  We breathe a similar air to those who marveled at the first black congressmen during reconstruction.  Our eyes see hope and progress.  Like them it is imperative to keep vigilance a close companion for all Americans are not the friends of our equality or for that matter, the equality of All that call themselves American.  Since our unique struggle in this nation has borne us to this place the burden lay chiefly upon Black Americans to safeguard the bright torch of freedom if not for those who died without ever knowing its flavor, for those who have not yet been born to its sweetness.  For freedom is sweet but it is a thing that is bought with much pain.  America is healing itself slowly, certainly, but it has only come to live up to the great promise of its framers o’er the sweetness of time…

Civil War Soldier


Written  by David Vollin

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