c. 1997 Religion News Service
(Samuel K. Atchison is an ordained minister and has worked as a policy analyst and social worker to the homeless. He currently is a prison chaplain in Trenton, N.J.)
UNDATED _ Just prior to her death in 1955, Mary McLeod Bethune, the black educator who founded Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach, Fla., wrote what she termed”My Last Will and Testament”to her people.
Published posthumously in the August 1955 issue of Ebony magazine, the document expresses Mrs. Bethune’s hope that her bequests of such values as love, hope, faith and racial dignity”may be helpful to those who share my vision of a world of Peace, Progress, Brotherhood, and Love.” Four months later, in December 1955, Rosa Parks, a black seamstress from Montgomery, Ala., picked up Mrs. Bethune’s mantle _ and ignited the modern Civil Rights Movement _ when she gently but firmly refused to give up her bus seat to a white man in violation of Montgomery’s segregation law.
Four decades later, Mrs. Parks has written her own testament. Titled”Quiet Strength”(Zondervan), the book reveals the hopes, inspirations and lessons which led to and stemmed from a lifetime of fighting against injustice.
Taken together, the works of Bethune and Parks constitute a rich legacy of hope, determination and faith in God, a legacy that appears lost on many who have followed in their stead.
Imagine Mrs. Bethune’s shock if she were to learn, 40 years after her death, that there are now more black men in prison than in college or church. As an educator and would-be missionary, would she be pleased?
And what of Mrs. Parks, who, at the age of 81, was robbed and beaten in her own home by a young black male? Is this a fitting reward for a pioneer who battled white oppression?
Sadly, this trend represents only the tip of the dysfunctional iceberg. Indeed, the downward spiral of black-on-black crime, intimidation and sexual exploitation has even some of this generation’s young spokesmen wondering what happened.
Witness the lament of editorial writer Selwyn Seyfu Hinds in a recent issue of The Source, a black monthly that promotes itself as the magazine of hip-hop music, culture and politics:”What the (expletive) is going on with this so-called hip-hop generation?”What demons have possessed the legions of (expletive) that claim membership in said generation? And why don’t those (expletive) seem happy unless they’re breeding an environment of fear and tension?”the writer asks.
What, indeed, has happened to our young people? Why do they appear bent on self-destruction?
Certainly these are not the values bequeathed to them by Bethune and Parks. And yet, therein may lie the answer. For one of the most alarming characteristics of this generation of young blacks is the appalling lack of familiarity many have with their own history.
Interestingly, this comes at a time when the so-called Afro-centric movement has attempted to recast all of history from a black perspective. This has emboldened some revisionists _ including scholars of questionable repute _ to create history where none existed.
The irony, of course, is that the black community has a long and glorious past, the best of which is represented in Bethune and Parks.
Born at the dawn of the Jim Crow era, Mary McLeod Bethune, paradoxically, was not permitted to take the Gospel to Africa because of the color of her skin. Disappointed but undaunted, Bethune became a noted educator, civic leader and informal adviser to Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman.
A devout Christian, Rosa Parks has in recent years helped establish a foundation to, in her words,”help … youth to pursue their education and create a promising future for themselves.” Together, Bethune and Parks have provided African-Americans with a legacy of godly character, something that is in short supply in many areas of the black community. It is a legacy that we must adopt if our community is to survive.
MJP END ATCHISON
