THE LIBERTY SPOON BOOK
INTRODUCTION 

When I returned to South Carolina, it seemed as if I had a reunion with my fore-parents.  It was like the parents of the eighteen hundreds were more active in speaking to me than my most recent deceased parents.  One day I heard this clear and didactic voice say, “Please, my little Great-Great-Grand Son, Jacob, let me tell you some important things about life.  You are a Black person in America.  America is the most racist developed nation on earth.  There are forbidden places in this nation.  Blacks cannot aspire to or go into certain places.  Every time that you get to the place that Whites once occupied, they will have created another for themselves.  Do not chase White folk from place-to-place.  Do not bother hating White folk or any ethnic group.  Assay your own needs.  Live with pride in whom you are, what you have, and can create.  Live by example for your people, family, and children.  Your satisfaction must come from inner satisfaction.  If you chase the material gains of Whites and other ethnic groups in America, you will always have heartbreak.”

“You may want to or have fallen subconsciously into the trap of hating.  To avoid this, you should use what I understand Socrates said to Cebes:  There are misanthropists, or haters of men, there are also misologist, or haters of ideas, and both spring from ignorance of the world.  You should, my son, hate no man or idea.  Try to examine ideas and understand men.  There are many good men and only few bad men in this world.  Good ideas may come from anywhere and anyone.  Try to learn from both types of men and all ideas.  The world is filled with great ideas and men.”

“It is unfortunate that greed has driven so many people to hate others, based on race or color.  In this hate environment, it is not realistic for Blacks to judge themselves by White standards.  Be proud of Blacks and their standards.   You are in a Black Nation that is occupied and dominated by White people with colonialist mentality.  To aspire to the societal norms of your captors is not a comfortable normalcy for you.  Original Black standards could be the most admired and cherish, instead of abhorred, if Blacks loved themselves more.  When you do the best that you can do with what you have, God loves you.  This is how standards are established in a stress free living environment.  To pretend that you have what someone else has and that you live in someone else’s environment is a mistake.  It is also false worship and idolatry.”

“You cannot get the norms of a Black society to become the standards for other people either.  Whites force their norms on everyone else.  They will tell you flatly that you cannot excel in their environment unless you talk like them, look like them, and act like them.  To impose Black folk culture on Whites or  reverse what White folk have impose on other racial groups, will require multiple types of forces.  This would require a complete disruption of the structure of the American racial and capitalistic cast system.  Short of a bloody war, there is no known program or military organization that can disrupt this System.  More often than not, anyone or any program attempting change in America soon becomes an ineffective part of the cast system themselves.”

“A major part of the foundation of the American cast system is capitalism and race.  Anyone who attempts to over throw this capitalistic racist system must be prepared to fight and die at anytime.  The powerful forces around you would constantly pursue your death or incarceration.  That is why I want you, my great-great-grand son, to seek smarter alternatives.”

This voice went on and on like it was standing over me and speaking softly and smoothly to me.  He continued, “If you want your Black children to have the same recognition and standings from others in the community as Whites, forget it.  The system, as presently constructed, is designed to relentlessly protect and perpetuate itself.  Some small amounts of churning will occur to give the appearance of changes for minorities, but there will never be a totally harmonious America.  Listen to me, son.  There is a way for you to turn off your chase of Whites and their materialism.  You can judge yourself by a different and better standard.  You can stop measuring yourself by the proximity to Whites and comparative accumulation of stuff.  I am your blood and soul, three generations removed.  Your grand father is my son.  My name is Joshua and my birth date is about 1810.  I left this racist system and was buried in an unmarked, segregated, Lexington County, South Carolina graveyard in 1894.  Lexington County is the headquarters of the Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.  The Klan burned their crosses and killed my people with impunity.  Even now, they burned their crosses on the soil above me.  I have to mourn the treatment of my people even in my grave.”

The voice my great-great-grandfather began to give me his history.  He said, “Virginia is my place of birth.  My hard life in South Carolina began in 1880.  Your great-great-grand-mother and I moved south so I could follow the turpentine workers.  I need to talk to you, son.  You need to know what has been tried before you were born.  This spiritual telepathic transom is a communications opportunity for me to share my knowledge with you.  This is an opportunity to warn and advise my heirs.  Jacob, you can help Black people generally by including what I know into your experiences.  If you look at the history of what has happened, especially since 1810, you will know that there are places, you cannot go.  Does that upset you, Jake?  Do you want to share the news and save others from wasting their lives chasing the promise of life, liberty and justice for all?   It would be more productive if you told everyone, who will listen, to reformulate their dreams.  If this second class citizenship pleases you, then you should hold your joys and satisfaction inside. It is shameful to teach your children to enjoy second class citizenship.”

I wondered why he chose me to tell this intricate message.  It was frightening to me at first but once I listened more intensely, especially when he called me by name, it did not bother me as much. I want to hear and learn from whatever sources there are out here.  He said, “Jacob, please make sure that all of my children and your children know what I am now revealing to you.  Be proud of yourself and Black people generally.  Many will not listen to you, but tell them anyway.  Do not write a book or use a megaphone to tell this story.  You must quietly past my words onto your children.  If you must speak in public, tell this story to the children by riddles, plays, stories, jokes, counseling, and by example.  If you are too vocal, there are enemies among you who will silence you if they think that you are enlightening the sleeping Black Nation in America.”

Then he became political and more philosophical in his admonitions to me.  He said, “Your enemies will discredit you and try to prohibit your ability to earn a living.  You need to know that they will try to negatively label you.  They know that, if they can label you unfavorably, people will not listen to you.  They will not love you, hire you, associate with you, or speak well of you.  You, my great-great-grand son, know that all of your ancestors love you.  We already know that you will, in spite of our admonition to not write a book, that you will seek the easy way out and write a book. You will say that your book is for the family, for Black people, and for anyone who will read it.  We know this in spite of our admonition not to do so and we still love you.  I know your courage is also your inheritance.  Your ancestors want you to know that by telling other of this communications and or writing a book is not going to make you loved or money for you.  Even within your race and immediate family, they will want to know why did you write a book and upset White folk.  They will say, if you write a book about us, people may think that your people and family are not loving and caring.  Jake, you must know that telling the truth to people who are unprepared to listen, can have a devastating impact on your life.  The literacy levels are so low and the fears of Whites are so huge, some folk will attack you without ever reading your work.  The low literacy level of your immediate family is likely to cause them to not read more than a page or two.  Yet, they too will attack you for having written such a book.  Some of your family members, who did not read this work, will make their judgments based on what others say.  They will not even read this work for themselves before they criticize you.  In the end, all will say whatever the few, who read it, say.”

“Jake, you and all thinking people should wait for the readers of the work to speak before you unravel the riddles here.  You may not get your information directly from a few of your family members or friends who read this work.  Critical information that you want, is like the source of a rumor, hard to come by.  My son, Jake, you may be the last person to know what reviewers are saying about this book. Riddles are like scriptures; they are interpreted and reinterpreted over the years.  In time, all will know and believe the truth.”

In this book, Joshua and Jake are trying to light a candle in the wind.  That is not easy but it is important.  The story must be told.  Jake believes that if Joshua could read beyond the basics, he would like this book.  He would like this book’s candor.   Joshua did not like flattery and would rather have the truth, even when it hurt.  This book could not be written in fear of what people might think.  To write a book on flattery for the family, would miss the point.  The point, which this writer is risking all to tell, is that the family is an imperfect organizational institution.  Yet, if Black people are ever to overcome, the family will and must lead the way.

Family organizations are all of the positive things that we have all heard.  The family is also a vehicle for crippling the young and serving them into a racist society.  It is counter intuitive for me, the messenger writer, to write an accusatory book about the family or Black people.  I want supportive connections, and family like most people.  Certainly, I know that the writing of this book will cost me materially and socially.  Yet, I believe that regardless to cost, one must share revelations and experiences that may help others.  I hope my readers will understand the need to reduce to writing those things that one cannot adequately verbalize.

My attempt here is to write a very honest and positive book.  The messages of this book are couched into the stories of my life.  It so happens that much of my life was in the south.  In no way is this intended to infer that life was any different for Blacks in other parts of America.

This story starts in Virginia in about 1810.  Eighteen ten is the birth year of the earliest known Jackson family parent, Joshua.  Joshua Jackson is the mixed race great-great-grandfather of this Author.  He has many descendants in South Carolina.  It is a story that would otherwise be lost if not told.  One reason this story would be lost is that too few family members and Black people generally, want to remember.  We are willing to remember the Nation’s wars with other countries.  We are also willing to remember the wars between parts of this country.  Most people are not willing to remember the genocidal treatments extended to Blacks in America.  The other problem is that there are not many young people who can recognize the blunt and sophisticated racist life as described in this book.  America cannot and should not attempt to go forth without more openly acknowledging its ill deeds.

Youth today thinks that racism is so subtle that they can pretend that it is not there.  The positive aspects of this book are that a solution to racism is obvious throughout the book.  Children must learn racism.  Children are not born racist.  To unlearn or dispel racism, the truth must effectively permeate the society.  Parents, teachers, the media, and educational institutions must guard the truth with our most aggressive vigilance.  Our young people must also learn to recognize racism and not assume that if they ignore it, it will go away.

This is the end of the Introduction of the book:

THE LIBERTY SPOON BOOK

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A bonus peep at a part of:
 

CHAPTER ONE

Jacob, my great great great-grandson, I think a good historical place to start the truth dispersing activity is with the story of how Columbus discovery of America.  We need to clear-up the lies and myths about these pristine Pilgrims who landed in America.  We must abandon the lies about how savage the Africans and American Natives were at the time of White settlements in America.  This is not as impossible to do as it may seem.  First, we must call it what it was.  Europeans’ entrance into the Americas was an invasion.  You know that any time that a group of people enters another country and takes the land that is an invasion and an occupation.  You should start the truth with yourself by not calling an invasion or occupation a “discovery.”  Every day that you do not address the lies in the system you are unwittingly supporting the lies.  Every day that you neglect the truth provides another day for racism to live.  Life cannot exist for long outside of the truth.  You are like the walking dead when you live on a foundation of lies.  If you start to come alive and wake another person the truth will spread like fire.  If you do not start with yourself then you are a collaborator helping to institutionalize racism and the furtherance of national historical lies. 

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