Author: Reggie Jackson

“My children, you are permitted in time of great danger to walk with the Devil until you have crossed the bridge.” – Old Balkan proverb Those words are an example of how and why people consistently ignore things and make alliances with evil forces in order to justify maintaining the status quo. We face a time when recent political events provide evidence of just how much people are openly willing to side with forces damaging to the ideals of America’s Founding Fathers. America has been here before. The world has been here before. Far too many people have tried...

“If some groups are simply meant to be at the bottom, then there are no questions to ask about their deprivation, isolation and poverty. There are no questions to ask about the society which produces that deprivation, isolation and poverty. And there is nothing to be done, because nothing can be done: Those people are just the way they are.” – Jamelle Bouie I have read more and more recently about people claiming that the observation of America being a nation where some have been oppressed is a lie. As efforts by people of color to express their true...

“Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history.” – Dr. Carter G. Woodson, Founder of Black History Month “The foremost purpose of Black History Month is to make all Americans aware of this struggle for freedom and equal opportunity. It is also a time to celebrate the many achievements of Blacks in every field, from science and the arts to politics and religion. It not only offers Black Americans an occasion to explore their heritage, but it also offers all Americans an occasion and...

“The thought of the inferiority of the Negro is drilled into him in almost every class he enters and in almost every book he studies. If he happens to leave school after he masters the fundamentals, before he finishes high school or reaches college, he will naturally escape some of this bias and may recover in time to be of service to his people.” – Carter G. Woodson, “The Mis-Education of the Negro” My earliest memories of school leave me with an empty feeling today. I was never exposed to the wonderful intellect and creativity of Black people. I...

“History, as nearly no one seems to know, is not merely something to be read. And it does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do. It could scarcely be otherwise, since it is to history that we owe our frames of reference, our identities, and our aspirations.” — James Baldwin, “White Man’s Guilt” (Ebony, 1965) I took a short ride recently...