From Slavery to Graduation

It is very difficult for me to speak of these things because they are not my story to tell. I did not walk these steps; I did not fight this fight. So simply from the perspective of a by-stander, I try to grasp the significance of this day; Amanda’s graduation from college.

Slavery seems far reaching into our past. Even today the 60’s seem an era long gone where civil unrest was a common force in our American society. Men like Martin Luther King, Jr. paving the way for equality and freedom of choice of ALL people, regardless of their race. I’m afraid when things seem to far into our past we forget them, forget their significance, forget their meaning. We should not forget from where and which we come for the places we come from is the destiny of our future.

Today as Amanda accepts her degree from Miami University she does so as the first ever in her Newsome family line, embracing the spirit of “We have overcome”. For it was just one generation before her that her father attended segregated schools. He remembers integration and the unrest that ensued. Though the “colored children” were allowed to attend school with the white children, there still was a great divide of equality in education.

The generation before that, Amanda’s great-grand father, Zach Moore, was a share cropper, poor farmers that inherited a way of life birthed out of slavery. Basically, they were paid slaves but an honest day’s work didn’t necessarily earn you an honest day’s pay. This was a hard working generation of people embracing the freedom that was still new to them. Zach grew up a free man but with a taste of slavery in his mouth. Even as a grown man, he had a fear of “the white man” because he knew that freedom from slavery did not mean equality in a nation where there was still a vast separation in the equality of all men.

Zach’s father, Pompeii Moore, though not a slave himself he was born to slave parents who had been freed. Pompeii was no stranger to slavery as he watched his very own sister on the auction block one day. He witnessed first hand accounts of ownership of black people and I’m sure he vowed better for his own family one day.

Every generation a recovery from the last, the fight they took upon themselves, the sacrifices they made all paved the way for this day, Amanda’s college graduation. It was just one generation before her, her father that was able to even attain a high school education.

Amanda. 5^th generation from slavery.

Amanda. College graduate.

She represents them well.

She makes us proud.

Congratulations, Amanda on your graduation from Miami University.

Go now and teach.

Teach the future generations to read

and write

to grow

and learn

to live

and love

to know

and remember

the fight

the freedom

the place

from which you came

and to where you will go

with the blood, sweat, tears, love and blessings

of generations before you.