The month of February 2019 not only recognizes black history in America but it also is the month when some twenty odd African slaves arrived in the colonial city of Jamestown, Virginia in 1619. This was the beginning of centuries of abuse and exclusion of people of color in the new world that the colonist envisioned where all whites were to be treated with a high level of respect by those who served them from birth to death.
America grudgingly accepted giving a national holiday to Martin Luther King after much discussion. The civil rights act of 1964 and the opportunities for black Americans to at least find meaningful work in the government because even to this day employment in the private sector is still restricted to a few blacks usually those with degrees in higher education.
Today’s date and its relation to slavery will be downplayed by the media and even in the black community as a whole, but it should be a reminder of how long we have suffered as a people of color in America and as we watch the events in Virginia about the governor and a picture related to racism in his past. This is another chapter of American racial history that seems not to change no matter how much time passes. That is the sad part of our society.
