Life Found A Way
Many centuries ago, a man and woman were in a tropical paradise when suddenly a shaking reverberated through the dense vegetation. The sound began emerging louder and louder and caused the hairs on the man’s back to rise in hot anxiety. Tiny feet of two frightened children ran to this adult couple, their parents. In the act of preservation, the man picks up the children into his strong arms. As he released one arm, he hurriedly reached back to grasp his wife’s hand. Just at that time, she was abruptly jerked out of his grasp. His head snapped around only to find that she was being dragged through a break in the brush.
Before he could gather his thoughts, his two children fell away from his clutch; as he now lay prone, he found himself being dragged. His freshly bound feet rendered him helpless as the shrill sound of his babies crying filled the sultry air. What happened? Two more African inhabitants once free find themselves now enslaved. Their children, they may never see again.
This story is repeated over and over again. Generations of greatness are literally snatched into obscurity. These African people’s deaths filled the seas as the sick, dead, and dying were tossed from slave ships, those who made it lived out the rest of their days in a life of violent servitude.
“In 1790, the first census of the United States counted 697,624 slaves. In 1860, the eighth census counted 3,953,760. This remarkable growth was the result of two factors: (1) continued importation of new slaves from Africa and the Caribbean; and (2) natural population growth, especially among American-born slaves,”
From ’20. and odd’ to 10 million: The growth of the slave population in the United States
J. David Hacker
Through all of the trauma and tragedy, “Life Found A Way.” With the accumulation of enough education in a short time, newly freed African Americans found their way into the halls of government. The South Carolina State legislature was majority black during Reconstruction, a period between roughly 1865 to 1877. Also, Louisiana elected America’s first African American Governor, Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback. During this time, blacks were represented in congress and the voting booths.
Suddenly it all changed with the compromise of 1877, which gave a contested election to Rutherford B. Hayes. That action closed the curtain on Reconstruction. The separate but equal days of Jim Crow firmly anchored itself into American Society. Then the screams in the night returned as the sundown towns (communities in which black people were not to be found after dark) emerged. The killing fields of lynching spread through the south, yet “Life Found A Way” as the great migration commenced.
Twentieth-century massacres, police killings of African Americans, Redlined property in the worst and most polluted cities (“the other side of the track”), where the water was bad, cancer rates surged, and incomes plummeted into poverty. This was the reality. Yet, “Life Found a Way.“
The 21st century continued police and vigilante killings of African Americans. Also, a national surge of gun violence led to “Black on Black Crime,” it looked like African Americans would fade to black in the fabric of history like a relic. COVID 19 hammered black communities so much more severely than the dominant culture and the rest of the American people.
The 2020 census figures were released last week, uncovering many findings, three of which were significant:
- The white population decreased for the first time since 1790 at the first census.
- The 129% growth of the nonwhite population not declaring any other race. (Many of which were Biracial African American +)
- Beyond all of the challenges African Americans face, their numbers still grew over the last ten years to reach 43984096 because Life Found a Way.
By Kevin Robinson Executive Director of Accord1, Founder, Editor/Publisher of Three-Fifths Magazine
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