Trayvon Martin and The Dark Past Revisited

We are one week into the verdict of not guilty and our feelings are so remorseful. I am praying that our country will become a better place to live. We have been here too often and with the same results. Till. Dred Scott. Evers. King. (Malcolm and Rodney)  We come to this crucial point in our history or to make history or to make a difference: We misstep. The same fight. Different players. Same pain. Different pressure point. Have we really matured?

It is our dark past. We carry it as a security blanket when we want the outcome in our favor and as a battering ram when we are trying to get our way. We watched Lemrick Nelson have one state trial and two federal. Two lives ruined. Two families destroyed. We did not learn. The politicians remembered Mayor Dinkins' support of the verdict and it cost him the elections. Trayvon is not a political statement, a social movement, or a quest for a voice from the myriad of social activists and race organization. He is a reminder of our dark past. 

The pundits have sat back to re-ignite the hatred shared between our races. The use of the government to promote harmony and peace cannot be achieved.

We are a great nation that has been given the responsibility of expressing love and forgiveness to everyone.

What do we sing in the backdrop of Trayvon's death and America's tragedy?

Lift Every Voice and Sing" was publicly performed first as a poem as part of a celebration of Lincoln's Birthday on February 12, 1900, by 500 school children at the segregated Stanton School. Its principal, James Weldon Johnson, wrote the words to introduce its honored guest Booker T. Washington. The poem was later set to music by Johnson's brother John in 1905


Lift every voice and sing, till earth and Heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise, high as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered;
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered;
Out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,
Thou Who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou Who hast by Thy might, led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee.
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee.
Shadowed beneath Thy hand, may we forever stand,
True to our God, true to our native land

I am not pleased with the songs that I hear about Trayvon's death because we are so blinded for our need for immediate gratification or the fuel of race by the race pundits. We are better than this America.

The example that is shown through this dark place (we are revisiting) is enhanced by the race baiters. I am a healer. I will not participate.