Black Americans Are No Less Than the Physical Embodiment of American Freedom

In Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in May of 2005 seven friends and myself rolled our Harleys into Gettysburg. We showed up at our motel and washed, rested a bit and then went for dinner as a group. We had a lot of fun chatter and genuine camaraderie to spill over unto each other. We had just completed a journey of twelve hundred plus miles in three days and one of those days was largely spent at the crash site of flight 93 at "The Field in Pennsylvania", as it has come to be known. We spent some time talking to the one eyewitness to the horror of that day in September of 2001 as that plane swept over, around, upside down and into a flaming grave.

America is a story to tell if nothing else of how hard, difficult and trying times are to preclude any success. My wonderful date, who will become my wife later this year and I left our companions the next morning early and rode together to the other "Farmer's Field in Pennsylvania", known as Gettysburg. The wonder of the energy on that sprawling piece of real estate is remarkable to say the very least. We went in "blind" as I call a random approach to a thing of gigantic proportions where one would think the usual course would be to have a plan. I chose that we would approach the first day solely as a tribute to the lives, blood, tears, sweat and sheer determination that were spent there that year of 1863 where over the course of three days 58,000 lives were lost and countless more were forever changed and the course of freedom for all people the world over was eternally altered.

The cannons on the hilltops set quiet today. As we looked thru the sights of them we could see with our mind's eyes the images sure as day that played out in front of the cannoneers as they laid fire over the fields. I thought about how the freedom of men and women was won on those fields. It was there that the designs of the master were carried to fruition.

Men from the Confederate South were lead by General Lee who marched them on foot and on horseback around in a legendary "hook" for miles in order to lay siege from the north to Washington DC. General Robert E. Lee thought this would be unexpected by the commanders of the north by which he would attack Washington and face little resistance. This would assure the south their victory and seal for them the things they thought fruitful of such an outcome.

General Lee was marching that giant tinking, clanking, rustling tramping Army 25 miles up the western side of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and then to the east to swing south and lay siege to Washington, hence, the "hook". The word of his movement spread and the Northern Commanders looked over the terrain and chose the assault path Lee would have to take. They deployed the Union forces, hastily to defend Washington. General Grant's Union Army was ill equipped, they were dragged north from all over the south and west of Washington and restaged and hastily set-up in "The Field in Pennsylvania".

Brenda and I walked about the hills, and we rode along, slowly, the roads now there in the battlefield for tourists. I stopped and looked at the memorials, I read the plaques and looked at all of the names of those that could be named on the Memorial to the Pennsylvanians lost in the struggle that occurred at Gettysburg. There are too many to read them all. It hurts the heart, stings the eyes and pains the soul to think of so many lives lost in only three days.

One is left to see and even hear the horrific reality of men in struggle just wanting it to end. At any cost, I could almost hear them scream, "Let it end! Let it end here and now with my sacrifice!"

That of course is the cry of the soul. The sounds on the battlefield were surely a writhing in agony of a giant on two sides of an epic struggle in which the victor would be freedom or the lack of it for some and more of it than what is fair for others.

We looked, we took pictures, we saw, we felt. One could not walk the fields of Gettysburg and not feel. To experience an absence of feeling would require a complete state of denial of what really happened there. As we looked over the remaining parapets, and out from the tree lines of the Virginia Army, or the Michigan Army or The Maine, or The Massachusetts, there is no way to avoid seeing the scene that no longer plays out in the fields that have grown silent.

I wondered, "Have the fields grown silent?" They have not, I decided. The battle is still fought, the pleas are still made, the bargains of freedom's bounty are still being struck. The people who were freed were the African Blacks held by plantation owners and other rich socialites but the ideals that were freed may either be recognized or not.

There is clearly today a victory to America, and the world. Black people contribute in untold ways to the causes of freedom. From the struggles that the freed men and women of those days endured thru to what the present generations of their families practice in their lives today, we have evidence and provide evidence of freedom to the world. From the life experiences of their ancestors and their descendents today men everywhere have a testimony to the value of freedom. Blacks in America are strong, successful proud Americans. They have fought valiantly in all of Americas wars, they have struggled as Americans with all the other Americans and uphold traditions of love, respect and fellowship.

From the young black man to the great old grandmother, the black people are a line of America in which we can be proud. They are damn sure as the cries of 58,000 Americans, some for and some against, a testimony to what America is, what America continues to be, and why to be an American is a great honor before the world. We do here what no other people on earth do. We live together. We seek harmonic balance, tolerance, and understanding not only for ourselves, but also that we can extend from ourselves and gift to others.

When I work to see not a black man, but a man, and when a black man works to not see a white man when he looks at me but a man, we have learned to do something that transcends the physical and unite with our true purpose here. As a commemoration to Black History, which we can all take pride in, there is a statement by Martin Luther King that has influenced me for my whole life. It is from his "Letter From A Birmingham Jail", which I think is one of the greatest pieces of literature ever produced:

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds. Words of, Reverend Martin Luther King Circa 1963.

These words come from one of the greatest pieces of literature I have ever read.

Search, "Letter From a Birmingham Jail" and prepare for as you read, another part of the epic struggle of Freedom. While you read that great work by a truly fabulous mind of a man, remember that freedom will be fought for, it will be earned and it will not be gained thru practice that supports the foe of freedom. It is not change that oppressors fear, oppressors fear a free man, but while one among us anywhere is not free, none of us will be. That principal has never had a finer orator than, Reverend Martin Luther King.

We have struggles; we have issues of great importance to which we must commit to resolve. If the Americans of African Ancestry are any example to us, and as in "A letter from the Birmingham Jail", they certainly are, we will figure it out, we will find our way we will fight any foe, and we will resolve those things that must be resolved.

Black Americans are no less than the embodiment of the principals of freedom. All America must take pride in that. Freedom has been bought then paid for; the price was due in love and willingness to endure the gauntlet of the fires of rebellion. Our brothers and each other that boiled it from the cauldrons of hell live and thrive together with us in our memories as part of all that we are and in the spirit of our love and brotherhood.