May. 11, 2019
Gentrification Thoughts About Black Spirits Past
This
and the previous black generation have sold the sacred lands that housed the homes of Countee, Langston, Robeson, Johnson, White, DuBois, Baker and Hansberry. The question I ask this afternoon is where do those giant elegant, majestic, honorable ghosts of
yesterdays roam now? Do they still abide in those homes of their pasts? Or do these spirits now move through time searching for the black communities that they fought so hard to nourish? Looking at gentrification and asking why, oh why couldn't we hold on
to these most honored places.
Can these spirits of black greatness invade the souls as well as the homes of peoples who know not their contributions? Can the give spiritual
nourishment to people who unlike them suffered no sense of racial loss? Those wondrous black eternal souls who embodied our people's spirit, lifted our people's struggle, feed our people's dreams, and even salvaged our peoples' desolate dreams? These great
majestic souls created what is known as black peoples' magic, and provided our ancestors a sense of black worth.
Why did we seek a way out rather than ensuring
that we maintained a way in? Is it because we could? Did fortune seal the fate of eternal spirits lost? Oh, why the hell no, we asked. We could so, therefore, we should, was our non-thinking answer. The green outweighed our majestic ancestors' hopes and dreams
that we black people maintain our communities radiant beam. Goodbye, sweet Harlem. goodbye, sweet Shaw we hardly knew thee. In comes others who now reside in places that roam of the spirits of our great black past. We ask that they cherish those sweet sprinkles
of black days past. Yet, they do not understand our struggles nor care about our past. They need a new coffee and cake shop nearby. So goodbye Countee, Sweet Langston, Hurston, Johnson, Robeson, and White past memories have faded fast and yesterday's light
cannot last.
Who now keeps that rich history of yesterday's past? So who protects our glorious past? It surely isn't those who eagerly sold it so easily away sold it away so fast.
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