بسم الله الرحمان الرحيم الحمد لله!!!
As Salaamu’ Alaikum Dearly Beloved,
Here’s an article I submitted for publishing to a local newspaper.
They haven’t responded so I am going to publish it myself! It’s so lovely being independent!
NEW ORLEANS – THREE HUNDRED YEARS OF SLAVERY
New Orleans is what the slavemaster calls “The Deep South.”
It is where slaves farther North were threatened to be sold if they misbehaved. It is where slaves knew if here they ended up, they would very likely never see their relatives again.
Because New
Orleans is so far embedded in the Deep South – passage to “FREE STATES” farther North was much more difficult to attain.
What with “passes” from the white slavemaster or “free papers” being required lest one should be accosted by patrollers seeking a bounty on any Black person traveling throughout the slaveholding states.
A more viable option was to escape among the Red Indians who were driven from their homes by the Imperialistic white slavemaster colonists, and forced to eek out an existence in the marshes and swamps, loaded with alligators.
These people are known as “MAROONS.”
They are fiercely angry with this white slavemaster for all but annihilating them. The ones who were not killed were only spared so that the white slavemaster could point them out to his children as the people from whom “his” country was stolen. In other words, their lives were spared only to be ridiculed and mocked.
The decendents of these fugitive slaves who sought refuge with the Red Indians still mask; but try and find one who is indigenous.
New Orleans is a long way from where Emancipator, Harriet Tubman, organized the infamous and infallible UNDER GROUND RAIL ROAD to ferry former bondspeople to freedom.
She was from Maryland and only had as far to go as from there to Philadelphia to
reach liberation.
After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, which made it lawful to re-capture fugitive slaves who had successfully reached free states, and return them to bondage, it became necessary to travel all the way to Canada to ensure freedom. Making freedom for the Black slave in New Orleans an even much more distant and hardly attainable goal.
Slave traders in New Orleans had partnerships with their Northern Brethren to con free Blacks into false friendships so they could then deliver them up into the hands of their Southern slavetrading Brethren and into the merciless bounds of slavery in New Orleans – the deep South – miles away from their loved ones and the base of the slave trade for the entire gulf coast.
The Port of New Orleans is where many of our poor ancestors first set foot in the Western Hemisphere, where their children still today are blind to what it really means to be free.
Step outside the box and take a good look at THE BIG PICTURE. Every where you look you will still see slavery, only it is much worse today because now we are “free slaves.”
The white slavemaster no longer has to WHIP us into submission. We willingly allow him to rule over us. We prepare our resume and beg him to put chains on our hands and feet. This is due to the fact that although he says he freed us in 1863, the chains are still locked firmly around our minds.
This, coupled with the omission of the promised forty acres and a mule, left the majority of us still dependent on the slavemaster for the necessities of life.
We are still their servants – completely dependent on them to provide us with the basics. They still feed, clothe and shelter us. Just as they fed, clothed and sheltered our poor foreparents. We don’t produce anything for ourselves.
The white devil slavemasters brought us here solely to serve them and serve them we still are.
For instance, if you observe any major event in this cosmopolitan city, ninety-nine per cent of the employees are Black serving the ninety-nine per cent white people out enjoying themselves at the recreation.
From the man directing traffic to the man providing the entertainment, our lives are given for the benefit of the white slavemaster’s use.
The only way to end this perpetual cycle of slavery, is to think in terms of doing something for self.
The whiteman does not train and teach his children to go to school, graduate, go to college and get a “good job.”
That is slavery Teachings that he teaches our children. So they will forever have a slave.
His sons go to school with briefcases and dressed in suits to prepare them for the business world.
They are taught to get an education that will equip them with the knowledge that will enable them to start and own their own business.
He thinks LONG TERM. If he starts his own business, his family is set forever. No more begging the slavemaster for anything.
We must have something to start with. Therefore, if
you must get a job, only work with the object of mastering a skill or acquiring enough capital to open your own business. If you can do it for him, you can do it for yourself. Think like an entrepreneur. Otherwise,
His children will know that they forever have a slave because we continue the wretchedness of slavery by bringing our children in under their employment. Even our people with college degrees return and give the benefit of all their learning right back to the white slavemaster.
Yes, they receive higher salaries than their unlettered brethren but they are merely high paid servants for the white slavemaster. And, he is quite willing to pay a high price as long as he can keep you from leaving his service and going for yourself.
The LAST thing he wants to see is his once Black slave taking a free step away from him to earn his own living independently of him. No, because then he has lost that Blackman forever and that Blackman is on the way to becoming his former slavemaster’s equal. Owning his own and determining his own future and his progeny’s future is secure and free from slavery to the whiteman.
This Blackman is on the road for self and the Black people he employs will be able to go for self. They have freed not only themselves but their children and their children’s children and their employee’s children and so on and so on. Forever breaking the cycle of slavery that has thrived here in New Orleans for the last three hundred years.
This Trailblazing Blackman has become a shining star illuminating the path to freedom in deed for his fellow Black Brothers who are still mentally enslaved, just by exemplifying what we are capable of once we take advantage of the freedom to leave the slavemaster’s “plantations.”
The chains still keeping you bound to him are your (his) last names, your religion (Christianity) and FEAR.
For three hundred years in New Orleans, we have carried the white slavemaster’s luggage, we have driven him around and parked and retrieved his cars. We have prepared and served him his meals, we have waited on him at his tables, we have cleaned up after him, we have paid him to transport us to perform these services for him or paid him for spaces to park our cars, we have served him and his family as loyal slaves for generation after generation – for three centuries – Our families serving their families indefinitely.
Is it going to take another three hundred years for us to get up and put the rag mop down, put the horn down, put our dress down and start building something permanent so our future won’t be spent as invariable servants to the white slavemaster?
❤ Wadoodah ❤
Homemaking For The Black Muslim Woman Journal ™ 