This special reading comes from the Equal Justice Initiative website: eji.org. You must understand our history our black ancestors served in every conflict or war this country was involved. They served with honor and distinction only to come home from the service to face acts of terror, torture​ , white mob violence​ , and public lynching. So, when you remember those of our black ancestors who paid​ the ultimate sacrifice on foreign shores. Please remember those who served with honor and respect over there only to savagely murdered simply because of their skin color over here.

“It is impossible to create a dual personality which will be on the one hand a fighting man toward the enemy, and on the other, a craven who will accept treatment as less than a man at home.”

Today as I continue my journey on this Memorial Day Weekend 2019. I call out just of few names of the names of black excellence buried at America's Arlington National Cemetery. This historic site which was once the home of many enslaved blacks owned by the Custis Family as well as Robert E. Lee. Now is the final resting place for thousands upon thousands of our black ancestors who battled on both the battlefields of foreign shores and the battlefields of the lands of this nation​ seeking our full black equality and citizenship. As I read the names that were listed on the Arlington National Cemetery's website I do so with solemn recognition of each one's​ lifelong sacrifice, many of whom battled on faraway​ shores dying for the cause of democracy. Only to be persistently being denied those rights of democracy on the soil of their birth.

Sammy Younge Jr. wasn't killed on any foreign land defeating the international messengers of world destruction, hate, and oppression. He wasn't killed during either of the World Wars. Nor did Sammy Younge die in Korea or Vietnam fighting the supposed red communist scourge that was threatening democracy in the Far East. Sammy Younge Jr. didn't receive a Medal of Honor, Silver Star, or the Navy Cross for his sacrifice.

Sammy Younge Jr. was murdered in cold calculated blood in the soil of the land that was supposed to be the symbol of free democracy. What was the reason for Sammy Younge Jr.'s murder? He was murdered because he simply needed to use the restroom in a Tuskegee, Alabama gas station. That's right, Sammy Younge Jr. who sacrificed his kidney while in service to his country. He was murdered on January 3, 1966, because he attempted the unthinkable in a white racist society, trying to use a whites-only restroom.

So today's Memorial Day tribute is the story of Sammy Younge Jr. murder. I could've chosen a black military soldier but Sammy Younge was a soldier, a soldier for justice. He represents all the other slain black soldiers murdered in this nation on the soli of their birth simply attempting to gain the citizenship and social rights promised to them by the Constitution of the United States. Still, today soldiers are being murdered and deprived of liberty, freedom, and justice some 53 years since Sammy Younge Jr.'s ultimate sacrifice. Many of those names we know many of those names we don't. However, it is imperative that remember that soldiers performed heroic acts of courage on the battlefields of social and civil justice.

Those battlefields were named Greenwood, Selma, Chicago, Detriot, Houston, Washington, Harlem, Los Angeles, Montgomery, Philadelphia, Jackson, and many more towns nameless of the victims. Because these struggles were covered up by the injustice of white supremacy's acts of wanton violence.​

On this Memorial Day Weekend, I am going to highlight a few of our honored past black military heroes. Many of our black military heroes were not treated as equals either on the battlefields or in the communities in which they lived. One such hero was Doris "Dorie" Miller, a black naval messman who was stationed as a cook on the battleship, West Virginia, in the early morning hours of December 6, 1941, when the Japanese launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii... Today, The Blackman Who Reads Aloud is reading an article, Doris Miller A Great Black Hero for my first entry this Memorial Day.