Am I Dangerous?
Volume 1, No. 12
I stopped at the grocery store to pick up a couple of items. I was contemplating between the 10 items or less line and the self checkout. I usually go to the 10 items or less line to support someone having a job. We don’t get paid to check out our own items but that’s discussion for another day. This day the 10 items or less line was extremely long and the self check out shorter. I watched as a white woman at one scanner and a white man at the other check themselves out. The woman who was suppose to watch these registers was two lines over chatting with another cashier.
The moment I entered the self check out, she hurried over and stood watching me get my two items. I didn’t say anything but I stared her down as I walked out of the store as she tried to cover her actions by telling me to have a nice day. The people who self checked out before me had over 20 items in their carts and she didn’t do anything other than glance once or twice over her shoulder while talking with the cashier who was working.
Am i threat? Do only black people have the capacity to steal? Do they not realize that they took over the land in this country through stealing and killing? Even when the country practed separate but (nvevr) equal, black success was destroyed based on false narratives (i.e. Black Wall Street, Rosewood).
So who should be afraid of who?
HIDDEN HERSTORIES:
Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977): Voting and women's rights activist, community organizer, and a leader in the civil rights movement
Fannie Lou Hamer was born into a sharecropping family in Montgomery County, Mississippi. She was the youngest of 20 children. Hamer spent much of her early life in the cotton field starting at the age of six. Due to having to work the fields to help her family, Hamer dropped out of school around the age of 12.
Hamer made a life changing decision in 1962 when she and 17 other black. people went to the county courthouse to register to vote. Because of her bravery, she was punished by being fired and run off the plantation where she worked as a sharecropper and timekeeper. According to The New York Times, she said "They kicked me off the plantation, they set me free. It's the best thing that could happen. Now I can work for my people."
This semi-literate black woman seeking the right for black people to vote terrified the police. While seeking to get more education at Septima Clark’s citizenship school, Hamer was arrested and beaten so severely that she suffered permanent kidney damage and was partially blind. She terrified black intellectuals who thought her unworthy when she was given an honorary degree by Tougaloo College (1969).
She helped organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), an alternative to the state’s white-controlled Democratic Party. This small statured black woman terrified the President of the United States, Lyndon B. Johnson (PBS video clip). President Johnson scheduled and delivered a live address at the same time the news networks were broadcasting Hamer’s testimony at the Democratic National Convention. It was later televised in full on the evening news.
Hamer was a powerful speaker who traveled the country to speak at rallies and public lectures, and appeared on many college campuses. In her most noted speech, “I’m Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired,” opens with this:
“My name is Fannie Lou Hamer and I exist at 626 East Lafayette Street in Ruleville, Mississippi. The reason I say “exist” [is] because we’re excluded from everything in Mississippi but the tombs and the graves. That’s why it is called that instead of the “land of the free and the home of the brave.” it’s called in Mississippi “the land of the tree and the home of the grave.””
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
“Sometimes, the more success you have, the more threatening you appear.”
— Deborah Gray White
There is more room at the top because so few work to get there. A person’s success and/or work ethic threatens to shatter the illusions and lies that people tell themselves about why they are not just a successful. One should never shrink into a space just because that’s where others are comfortable seeing you.
MENTAL/SOCIAL CHALLENGE:
For the next seven days, count how many times you move out the way because others pretend they don’t see you or just expect you to move.
I noticed a while back that I automatically moved out of the way. I have made a point to occupy space. You will see me for we are both human and children of God. If I concede, I do it out of Christian love not because someone believes I need to be placed in a space that make them comfortable or believe they are better than I am.
Until next time.....remember your voice and stories matters!
