"Just like Carter Goodwin Woodson preached for the advocacy of a Fugitive Pedagogy and I also now comprehend and understand how this institutional education I received from 1960-1977 created in me a failed understanding of my blackness. The damage done even though most of those years 1960-1966 and 1973-1977, I was enrolled in all black schools. The reality is that the cirriculum those black schools used was definitely Euro-American and truly dangerous to my mental development. It has taken damn near 12 years to recondition my brain the proper channel of blackness. You see I wasn't mentally there from the age of 23-55. My brain had to be flushed and I had to completely re-channel my thoughts. I understand now what I should've understood decade ago. You cannot trust this American Education System to whip your mind in shape. Only you can whip your mind in shape by providing the necessary intellectual nourishment it needs. We must channel our energies to ensure that no other generation of black learners are sucked into this mentality. For its dangerous to the collective uplift of our black communities in the future."

#theblackblogger

"Am I the only black person in America that remembers May 31, 1955 when the SCOTUS turned back the clock and allowed America to continue to segregate its public schools with the "all deliberate speed edict"? I mean 65 years ago while black folks were still celebrating the Brown 1954 decision the all white justices told Black America, NAACP, CORE, and Urban League to hold up go ahead and burst those celebratory balloons because that 1954 decision was simply symbolic."

#theblackblogger

"My Dad, William Hall, was born in 1915 in the small Virginia town of Tucker Hill. By the time World War ll came he had already experienced almost 3 decades of racial bigotry and oppression. I remember many conversations my Dad about his military service, the segregation and extreme military racism he encountered. He served not because he wanted to but because he was drafted. He had no real affection for a nation that denied his rights simply because of the color of his skin. So every Memorial Day was not a day our family spent honoring those who served and sacrificed in America's armed forces. My Dad spent the day visiting those members of his family who suffered through the oppression of White America. We would always go to Tucker Hill, Virginia and visit Mount Zion Church where the members of his family were laid to rest. I kinda wish that my Dad's final resting place was in that small cemetery at Mount Zion but he was buried beside my mother and near his son in a Veteran's Cemetery in Crownsville, Maryland. Funny, neither my brother, Ralph, who fought in the jungles of South Vietnam, or his Dad believed in the United States a country that they both lived in and fought for. Why? Because, both understood the racism that forced them not be able to live their best lives. So, I was brought up not to have these grandiose visions of American democracy. I can thank my Dad for that. So, on this Memorial Day I bring remembrances of Ralph, and Rock who survived military duty but faced a more oppressive enemy at home. One that gave no quarter and fought against them gaining any strategic land. America, shame on you!"

#theblackblogger