The things "they" didn't teach us

The older I get, the more I'm certain that is has nothing to do with what school we go to, but our willingness to be responsible for our own education, to forgive those who didn't/couldn't know it all and were products of their own time and tradition. The great--universal?--heritage of humans is one of curiosity, especially about each other. I found the first glimmer of curiosity that lead me to the link below in NAACP's The Crisis Magazine. None of us are inherently morally superior to others. We are all struggling to honor individuals and groups, to make sense of the global parfait --the "fallout" of human curiosity and migration.



And, if you ever find yourself as the lone white-girl at a gathering to listen to one of Dr. King's comtemporaries and the auditorium opens by rising and belting out the following song -- that you are left standing, silently, in the middle of while your body thrums with the energy around you the . . .here are the words

The Black National Anthem"
by James Weldon Johnson

Lift ev'ry voice and sing,
Till earth and heaven ring.
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise,
High as the list'ning skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chast'ning rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet,
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might,
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee,
Shadowed beneath thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land.