AGITATE! AGITATE! AGITATE!
Frederick Douglass said with his last breath, “Agitate!
Agitate!” before succumbing to a heart attack in the entry hall of his
Victorian Mansion nicknamed Cedar Hill.
His sprit was again set free this time undoing a bond infinitely more
crucial than earthly, mortal freedom it was loosed unto the eternal ages
themselves. From the familiar grounds
of his home that sat high atop the southeastern hillside overlooking the
Anacostia River in a neighborhood of Washington D.C. then called Union
Town. His second wife, a gently strong
white woman named Helen Pitts-Douglass held his body lovingly as the last
breaths fled his lips, his passing marked the end of a brilliant and tumultuous
era in the struggle for human and civil rights in these United States.
One might say that Frederic Douglass experienced it all;
from the bitter whip of slavery to the sweet redivivus of a man who became
renown intellectual, author, orator, banker, publisher and United States
Ambassador. His voice was ever in the
willing ears of Abraham Lincoln whom he no doubt counseled to the cause of
emancipation itself; he lived to see the sociopathic institution of slavery
ended, he watched as reconstruction was planned, erected and substantially
dismantled and he watched as a new, united and empowered Black American
community began to create a sound economic infrastructure to buffer itself
against the rising tide of racially motivated socioeconomic segregation and
oppression that ensued as the century closed.
But throughout his long and remarkable life Mr. Douglass kept the
pressure on, he lived his life’s philosophy to agitate, to push back, to
challenge every atom of oppression be it racial, social, economic, sexual or
otherwise; he was a bulwark for freedom!
Douglass would be both astounded and grieved were he able to
visit America today 119 years after his passing. He lived to see the beginning of a toxic and
systematic wave of political assassinations intended to weaken the cause of
universal freedom in general and to hold back the socioeconomic and political
progress of Black Americans in specific.
Abraham Lincoln was the first target of a failed rebellion against the
egalitarian ideals of the Enlightenment.
Killed by cowardly, seditious traitors that he lovingly welcomed back
into the Union thinking to preserve it for posterity Lincoln became a martyr
for universal, humanitarian freedom and lesson for the evil and relentless
passion of racially charged revenge. Future presidents, fearing this clear act of
retaliation capitulated with the implementation of a broad array of racist laws
as did other legislators from congress right down to the lowest civil servant
on state and federal levels. The
crippling effects of institutionalized racism in America, much to the
frustration of those who sought to keep Black Americans down had the reverse
effect of causeing Black Americans to create their own institutions that would
provide them the fair services and employment opportunities they were denied in
mainstream American culture. By America’s
centennial Black Americans had created their own banks, news media and
publishing houses, schools, businesses and community outreach they had proved
themselves ingenious and industrious, tenacious and indomitable in the face of
the determined forces of oppression and yet they remained peaceful and humble
in the grim faces of their oppressors, they did not return hatred for hatred. It
was this very infrastructure of black attorneys, clergy, professionals, writers
and publishers, inventors and entrepreneurs and ordinary citizens that helped
galvanize the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s. Racially motivated hate groups having erected
a fortress of fear to deter white politicians from reversing segregation and
other ethnically driven laws were satisfied with the millions of lynching’s
combined with physically and mentally brutal sociopathic acts but they feared the inevitable presaged by
W.E.B. DuBois’s Niagara Movement at the turn of the twentieth century and when
it became evident that change was coming again they resumed their latent policy of brutal assassinations beginning
with the early Civil Rights leaders and ending with the assassinations of
Martin Luther King Jr. , Malcolm X and President John F. Kennedy. Once civil rights leaders had been
neutralized racists could focus on oppressing the general population again
without fear of a unifying cored and this included the implementation of a well-planned
strategy to diffuse the focus of the black community lest it resume its former vigor. But full credit cannot be placed on anyone
but the black community itself for not reorganizing its ranks, analyzing the situation
using its many think-tanks such as the NAACP and resisting the temptation to
abandon the struggle for freedom and equality for mere existence. By the time of the Civil Rights Movement
Black Americans had sacrificed their lives for the cause of freedom in the
Revolutionary War, the American Civil War, World War II and other smaller wars
and skirmishes thinking that they had paid their debts to a country in a world
where freedom most certainly was not free…
Furthermore, they had borne the burden of this country for over 300
years as a free labor source allowing a struggling America to rise to its role
as an economic world power only 100 years after it became a nation. Whatever had fueled the nation’s sudden
wealth it was certainly not the blood and sweat of lazy southern planters
sipping mint juleps, smoking Virginia Tobacco cigars, raping slave women, (and
men) in their cabins and playing brutal games with the lives of millions of
human beings stolen from Africa and enslaved under the assumption that they
were somehow divinely preordained to be their lords masters. America was built on the blood sweat and
corpses of hard-working and ingenious Black Americans who were illegally bought
to this country possessing all manner of technical skills and disciplines that
the men who owned them did not possess. This
single factor has been one of the best kept secrets because were it to be
universally acknowledged the myth that the African and American slaves were
savages would be exposed as a lie. The mind
blowing fact about the issue of reparation is that were we to attempt to assess the actual value
of the knowledge, skills sets, technical contributions and labor compensation
not to mention the physical and mental anguish owed to the Black American
community it would be inestimable, America as we know it would not have been
possible without slavery. Southern
planters would never have been able to make even a meager subsistence were it
not for a highly skilled, physically and mentally formidable team of free
laborers, without them profit would have been an impossibility. Without slavery we would be looking at a far
different historical outcome for America, one which almost certainly would have
ended up as a string of struggling former English colonies just waiting to be
retaken by England or some other European world power.
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The dismantling of the broad social reforms of the Civil
Rights Movement has been a slower but determined process during the last half
of the twentieth century and into the first quarter of the twenty-first such as
the revocation of affirmative action. The
preservation of unreformed and obsolete welfare, drug abuse and other programs all
of which have the stultifying effect of enabling a self-perpetuating class of
impoverished and ignorant peoples is not, in my opinion, within the general
intent of the Civil Rights Movement, they a perversion of its general intent. These dysfunctional programs drain the vital
resources from education and education is the empowering force that will
ultimately reduce the need for subsistence and rehabilitation programs. In concert with the gradual erosion of the
freedoms gained during the Civil Rights Era there has been an intensification
of laws that entrap black and poor men within the prison system such as the wildly
unconstitutional child support laws that actually pull working and productive men
without criminal records from their jobs and into jail whereupon they lose
their source of income and independence hurtling them into a hateful jaws of
failure. None of these obvious forms of
entrapment have been thoroughly challenged because the men who typically
succumb to them lack sufficient income to launch a formidable legal battle and
do not pose a formidable front for reform of current legislation. One can argue that such obvious traps should
not be tested, that it is the fault of the individual who knows of but does not
avoid the pitfall but one must first look to the lack of leadership as the
cause and then ask why there are no leaders.
The greatest blow ever dealt to the Black American community was the
assassination of its leaders during the 1960’s.
Over the past 50 or so years since this horror played itself out on the
streets of these United States the black community has fought an unsuccessful
battle to reorganize itself around a central leadership strong enough to pull
it out of decay. The black intelligentsia
has failed to galvanize the black community toward the pursuit of education and
economic solidarity it’s universities are on the brink of failure while
intellectually bankrupt social media including music and allied culture rake in
millions…
In today’s news we see the rise of a modernized lynching
regime aimed at young and mature black men.
In America it is open season to kill black men as it has always been,
all one has to say in order to be exonerated from an act of murder in cold
blood is that one felt threatened, threatened by the mere sight of a black
man? The lynching of black men is America’s
first national sport but this generation will eventually bring it to an
end! No one has been more threatened
than the black man in America and yet he has not risen up in arms against any
other race but continues to believe in the possibility of a harmonious
coexistence. His image is perverted into
the most reprehensible criminal as a means of justification for the abuse he
continues to suffer. To a racist
provocation without effective resistance will always be interpreted as a clear
sign of weakness. The laws of this country have been racially
perverted since its inception and the negative images conjured by the media
have always been utilized to make them appear just. What would they do if Black American’s
suddenly woke up and began to rebuild their communities? What if Black Americans rejected a media that
promoted ignorance and violence replacing it with wholesome music and culture
that celebrated intellectualism and economic solidarity around a central theme
of empowerment and core family/community values? Would the negative images disappear? Would innocent black men no longer have to
fear being murdered merely because they were seen as a threat by men fully
armed?
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Frederick Douglass who was president of a black owned bank
in the 1850’s would have been inspired to see the many wondrous economic and
professional achievements being made by Black Americans in 2014. He would be inspired to see the first Black
American president but dismayed to see the rise of racism as a challenge to the
presidents administration. He would be appalled
by the increasing ignorance and the dismantling of the family structure so
earnestly yearned for by his peoples 150 years after emancipation. He would be disillusioned to see that the
black community has abandoned its media and businesses and was unable to
provide decent and meaningful employment for itself, that it had relinquished its
self determination to forces which had historically betrayed it. He would have marveled at Blues, Jazz, Soul
and R&B but mourned because the innovators no longer preserved their cultural
and historical legacy. I do not think it
would be a good thing for Frederick Douglass to visit the twenty-first century
today, I would be ashamed to walk him through the violent, decadent and depressed
neighborhoods where he and I might be assaulted by other black men ignorant of
our purpose. If I knew he were coming I
would bid him wait a while longer to give me time to effect a change. I know
what he would say even in the face of what I fear he would think, he would look
at the sad state of his peoples community and say that what looked like an
ending could also be seen as a beginning, that positive change where there is
none is always a beginning but one must fight in order to gain any ground. He would say there is a formidable battle to
be fought and that I should look for hearty men well-suited to the challenge
and leaving he would repeat those words he last spoke advising me to Agitate!
Agitate! Agitate!
FIN
Written by
BIGDADDY BLUES
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