Black Un-history
If you have spent any amount of time in the American government school system since the late 1970’s or so you may be familiar with the forced teachings of historical injustices upon Black Americans from the origins of slavery through the Civil Rights movement and thereafter, aka. “Black History Month”. There are many mixed feelings from the different sides of the race barrier as to whether there should be a single month dedicated to the history of one race, or the opposite, that Black history is American history and that it shouldn’t be restricted to just one month. This at least has integration of races on both sides of this issue. American history, according to the European male American, is the perspective that has been taught as general curriculum and many feel that information has been intentionally left out.
A new perspective from a man Tony Watkins who asks the question have we have really moved beyond the shackles of slavery? With stories from freedom fighters of the civil rights movement that have not been heard. We hear about the usual Dr. King, Rosa Parks hero stories, but he goes deeper than that; to the untold stories of the people who had to endure the unspoken violence and documents them in his self-published novel, “Shackled Again?”. There are stories of when he found shackles buried in a shack on his grandmothers’ property (pictured above), a woman having a rope tied to her neck and drug behind a pickup truck, to horses trampling new black voters. These among many other stories that have been all but forgotten, depict the struggles that many people suffered but were too afraid to talk about in case it might bring the hate brought upon them back to life. He touches on todays’ society in America to see if the change that was fought for has been achieved and the effects from slavery's’ legacy diminished, with events like the election of a black president, to the Trayvon Martin killing.
