Following Ancestral Teachings to Freedom

Following Ancestral Teachings to Freedom
By Alton H. Maddox, Jr.

The sights, pictures and images that we are witnessing in Louisiana are reminiscent of the plight of our people immediately after the end of the Civil War in 1865. Our people were homeless, hungry and penniless. Congress created the Freedmen’s Bureau in 1865 to allegedly provide relief. This inept agency was a forerunner to FEMA.
At the same time, there was no Black “educated class” in this country. There were very few Black professionals. Wilberforce College awarded its first baccalaureate degree in 1857. Ashman Institute was founded in 1854. It is now Lincoln University. The school was originally named for Jehudi Ashmon, a white emigrationist.
Thirty years ago, there would have already been scores of Black lawyers and law students in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi to address the legal concerns of our people which are immense. While I was in law school in the 1960’s, many of us showed concern for the plight of our people.
Scores of our people are being prosecuted on trumped-up charges in a legal system which has fled New Orleans. The current system is composed of military tribunals which are already in play for enemy combatants, a synonym for refugees. These military tribunals are designed to criminalize heroic acts.
Despite the absence of a well-intentioned relief agency and a professional class, our ancestors rose to magnificent heights based on communal love and racial pride which had never been broken after three hundred years of racial oppression. They were not caught up in a race-class debate.
They knew that they were all in one boat. Instead of calling press conferences and competing for the title of HNIC, thy rolled up their sleeves and wrote an amazing story of people hobbled by centuries of oppression and state-sponsored defamation.
Elementary schools, colleges, banks, insurance companies and mutual aid societies, among other institutions, were built. Thirty million acres of land were acquired despite the benefit of a homestead exemption law and the burdens of privatized terrorism under the umbrella of government operating with criminal intent.
Today, Blacks, in the United States have an educated class which exceeds the parameters of the educated class of Great Britain. Yet, we are witnessing the same images that arose 140 years earlier although we are supposed to not only enjoy the franchise but also federal protection. With a miseducated class of Blacks in 2005, our condition remains static.
Before our beloved Malcolm X was assassinated, he advised us to go to the World Court. Malcolm X was only able to aspire to become a lawyer. He had more legal knowledge in his toes than Thurgood Marshall had in his brain. Marshall despised Malcolm X who was actually practicing law without a license. Malcolm understood the role of law in our oppression.
Throughout my prior writings, I have consistently repeated Malcolm’s legal instruction. I criticized the reparations movement for suing in Uncle Sam’s courthouses for reparations and retaining a white man, Ed Fagan, which rounds with pagan, to be the lead counsel. If you are currently reading legal publications, you know that he has been discredited as a lawyer for matters unrelated to our plight.
In all of our business matters, we still believe that we need the presence of whites to guarantee our safety despite the teachings of the founders of Freedom Journal in explaining the need for a Black newspaper in 1827: “We wish to plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken for us.”
We have a wealth of teachings from our ancestors to get us out of this morass. Our disobedience to their teachings is leading to long-term suffering. While some of us elevate Malcolm over Martin or vice versa, we refuse to repeat the conduct of either in the pursuit of liberation.
When you go to any legal forum for relief, the first question to be answered is the identity of the parties. Since we have been robbed of our names, our culture, our religions and our specific, national origin, we are in deep trouble. We have no identity. To make matters worse, our legal status is still unknown. That being the case, we are in a legal trap.
Uncle Sam has given us all of the burdens of citizenship. Our rights are subject to the whims of whites. Thus, we have never been citizens. Until an international tribunal declares our true legal status, we are under Uncle Sam’s jurisdiction. His classification of us is shifty.
This gives Bush 43, for example, the right to block any foreign aid that foreign countries have offered to ameliorate our plight. If he decides that the money and assistance is not subject to an embargo, it will go to him or his designees. Our people will never enjoy any of its benefits. Uncle Sam is the broker.
It would be a different situation if a competent, international tribunal had already declared that Uncle Sam has no jurisdiction over us. The first clue is the term “refugee.” It refers to a stateless people. This has been our predicament for four hundred years. Blacks are no longer able to suffer from this classification.
This is criminal fraud but it is consistent with the enforcement of the U.S. Constitution which was written with criminal intent. All oathtakers – Black and white alike—must enforce the Constitution against descendants of enslaved Africans.
In addition, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has created a class of Black, plantation overseers. This law allows us to elect our gatekeepers. They were ordered to stay out of Mississippi and Louisiana between August 28 and September 1 until Uncle Sam did his thing.
Some of these plantation overseers were allowed to be in Louisiana on Friday and Saturday after Hurricane Katrina. The media outlets were engaged in media wars for ratings and advertising dollars and especially on Saturday. These overseers were needed as props to discuss the false premises of race and class, fabricated by media outlets, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, a man-made disaster.