Bookmark and Share
Comment and read the comments of others on the BlackCommentator.com Blog.  http://blackcommentator.blogspot.com/
Click to go to the home page.
Click to send us your comments and suggestions.
Click to learn about the publishers of BlackCommentator.com and our mission.
Click to search for any word or phrase on our Website.
Click to sign up for an e-Mail notification only whenever we publish something new.
Click to remove your e-Mail address from our list immediately and permanently.
Click to read our pledge to never give or sell your e-Mail address to anyone.
Click to read our policy on re-prints and permissions.
Click for the demographics of the BlackCommentator.com audience and our rates.
Click to view the patrons list and learn now to become a patron and support BlackCommentator.com.
Click to see job postings or post a job.
Click for links to Websites we recommend.
Click to see every cartoon we have published.
Click to read any past issue.
Click to read any think piece we have published.
Click to read any guest commentary we have published.
Click to view any of the art forms we have published.
Road Scholar - the world leader in educational travel for adults. Top ten travel destinations for African-Americans. Fascinating history, welcoming locals, astounding sights, hidden gems, mouth-watering food or all of the above - our list of the world’s top ten "must-see" learning destinations for African-Americans has a little something for everyone.
 
Barack Obama and the Great Yearning
By Jean Damu
B
lackCommentator.com Guest Commentator
 
Custom Search
 
 

The election of Barack Obama as 44th President of the United States is a benchmark event in African American’s long, long history in this country. However, the overwhelming support Obama received from the nation’s Black communities, support that saw unprecedented numbers of African Americans marching as one to the polling booths, stemmed from emotions and events far removed the world of modern politics.

The massive support Obama received from the nation’s Black communities was an expression of most of African America’s long and historic yearning to be a part of America, to be perceived, accepted and respected as equal citizens; a respect and acceptance that eludes many Blacks to this day.

This historic yearning to be a part of America should not be interpreted to mean that masses of Blacks yearn to meld into white America, but rather a yearning that they, their institutions and their communities be nurtured and respected and that individuals be treated accordingly.

Many commentators have assumed that Obama’s successful campaign began with the Civil Rights movement and Martin Luther King’s 1963 I Have a Dream speech at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial. Lots of evidence supports these theses. Others have noted Obama stands on the shoulders of Black politicians who were successful during the post-Civil War Reconstruction Era. Lots of evidence there also.

While it is important to recognize that Obama won because he had the support of broad sections of the US electorate, no section of the US electorate supported him in a proportion equal to that of Black America. Therefore, it is important to trace to its origins, Obama’s massive Black support and equate that support to Black America’s historical yearnings to be an equal part of America.

This desire was possibly first articulated on January 15, 1817 at a meeting held at Philadelphia’s Bethel Church, pastored by Richard Allen, founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. The meeting, called by Rev. Allen, shipping entrepreneur Paul Cuffee and others, was to discuss a proposal made to Cuffee by the newly formed American Colonization Society to re-colonize free Blacks in West Africa.

For many years previously, Cuffee had supported emigration efforts on the part of Blacks who wished to re-settle in Africa after suffering lifetimes of abuse at the hands of white Americans. Richard Allen, who had found it necessary to establish a Black church because free Blacks were unwelcome in white churches, was sympathetic.

From Charles Johnson and Patricia Smith’s Africans in America: America's Journey through Slavery, we learn that Cuffee, in his remarks to the 3,000 men who had assembled at Bethel Church to discuss the emigration proposal, noted that he and others on the stage, including the ubiquitous Absalom Jones, were now old warriors and recalled their unsuccessful struggle 20 years earlier to repeal the Fugitive Slave Act. He made these observations to defuse any notions some might have had that he was quitting the fight for equal rights and against slavery. But he said he was also a realist. He had been to Sierra Leone, a colony of free Blacks who had resisted slavery by supporting the British during the American Revolution, and finally resettled from Nova Scotia to West Africa. There, he said the multitude of Blacks “enjoyed all the rights that are withheld from us here.”

“Here in America we face an uphill struggle. Our victories can be taken away with a single stroke of the pen by men like former president (Thomas) Jefferson. He and others like him have always envisioned the United States as a white man’s nation…”

The debate on whether or not to accept the American Colonization Society’s (an organization that refused to accept Black membership) proposal to emigrate raged throughout the entire day. Finally the measure was put to a vote.

According to the January 16, 1817 edition of the Philadelphia Liberator newspaper, as ballots were handed out to the 3000 in attendance and then counted, the Bethel choir entertained the guests. After just two hymns, attendants announced that the voting results had been tabulated.

As the Rev. Mr. Allen stepped to the podium and cleared his throat, the audience drew quiet.

“You, the people, have voted unanimously against your leaders. You have rejected returning to Africa. Whatever our future is to be, you have decided that it will be here on these shores. God help us all.”

As decisive as this unanimous vote was, it did not end for all time the emigration issue among African Americans (13,000 newly freed Blacks were to re-settle in Liberia and even today there is a mini-movement among well-to-do Blacks to establish dual citizenship in an African country) but it did lay the basis for what we refer today as the African American identity, and it was a signal that after almost 200 hundred years in what became the United States, African Americans in 1817 felt themselves to be as much a part the US fabric as anyone else.

It was this yearning to belong, to be able to claim for itself equal membership in a nation in which they are neither American nor African which drove African Americans collectively to the polling booths. The next stage of the African American journey will determine how Obama’s presidency addresses African American’s yearnings to become equal partners in America.

Click here to post a comment about the election
and read what others are saying
on the BC Readers' Corner Blog

BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator, Jean Damu, is the Acting Western Coordinator for N'COBRA, the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America and he chairs the California Coalition for H.R. 40, Congressman John Conyers' African-American Reparations Study Bill. He can be reached at [email protected].

Any BlackCommentator.com article may be re-printed so long as it is re-printed in its entirety and full credit given to the author and www.BlackCommentator.com. If the re-print is on the Internet we additionally request a link back to the original piece on our Website.

Your comments are always welcome.

eMail re-print notice

If you send us an eMail message we may publish all or part of it, unless you tell us it is not for publication. You may also request that we withhold your name.

Thank you very much for your readership.

Your comments are always welcome.

 

November 7, 2008
Issue 298 - Election Issue
Executive Editor:
Bill Fletcher, Jr.
Managing Editor:
Nancy Littlefield
Publisher:
Peter Gamble
Est. April 5, 2002
Printer Friendly Version in resizeable plain text format or pdf format.
Frequently Asked Questions
Comment and read the comments of others on the BlackCommentator.com Blog.  http://blackcommentator.blogspot.com/
click here to buy & benefit BC
Cedille Records Sale