SPEECHES

From Slavery to Freedom:  Africans in the Americas
A speech in honor of the 2007 Abuja African-American History Month Program

By

Consul General
Brian L. Browne

February 27, 2006

Thank you for joining us in this year’s celebration of Black History Month, and thank you for affording me the opportunity to make a few remarks.

I will say something that sounds strange.  I wish we did not have to celebrate Black History Month.  I wish that not because I don’t want to be here with you this morning.  There is no place I would rather be right now.  I wish that because it would mean the tragedies and suffering that lead to Black History Month would not have occurred.  However, we can’t erase the past.  What is there shall remain there.  And on second thought, I would not erase that past even if able.  For to erase it, would also mean we would have to erase the triumphs that both the human spirit and justice gave to racial discrimination in the United States.

It is fitting and proper to have and celebrate Black History Month.  Black History Month is necessary because it is fitting and indeed necessary to recall the struggle of Black Americans to claim their rightful seat at the banquet of democracy. 

It is good to celebrate this struggle for our sober reflection on this aspect of human history should both enlighten and encourage us to continue onward to a higher political and social elevation.  It is necessary to always take stock of who we are and from where and what we have come, for in the fight of justice against injustice we all must learn a cardinal lesson – even though the fight has been won, it is never over.

Injustice never dies, it only retreats.  Injustice is like a thief that you had to your home before he could make off with your valuables.  Should he ever think you lazy and inattentive in guarding that which you treasure this thief will surely return as day turns into night?  So, we acknowledge Black History in order to keep that cunning thief at bay.

In 1926 the noted Black American Historian, Dr. Carter G. Woodson organized the first annual Negro history Week, on the second week of February.  Woodson chose this date to coincide with the birthdays of Frederick Douglas and Abraham Lincoln – two men who had a great impact on the conscience of America.  One was black.  One was white. 

The one who was white was a president of the United States.  It was said of Lincoln and it has been etched into the annals of history that he fought a war to free the slaves.  In doing so, he became America’s greatest political figure in the 19th century and perhaps the greatest American president. 

The one who was black actually did something that made what I said about Abraham Lincoln somewhat inaccurate.  Fredrick Douglas showed that Blacks were not slaves in their own estimations but were human beings; inherently possessed of a dignity and worth equal to those of anyone else, yet they had been unjustly condemned to bondage and then wrongly accused of being inferior in order to justify that bondage. 

Thus what Lincoln did was not give freedom to slaves but to restore unto a people a portion of what never should have been taken from them in the first instance. 

Now, over time, Negro History Week evolved into the Black History Month that we know today – a month-long celebration of African American History.

The history of blacks in America is defined by great hardships yet greater triumph. It is a legacy of people who understood they had to struggle for what they believed in. It is important to remember and pay respect to this legacy, because it is the core of the Black American experience in the United States.

At the core of the core of Black American struggle, was the quest for the right to vote, for the right to select one’s government.  The right to practice democracy in a land that prided itself on its democracy, although that democracy was flawed because it was racially selective.  In fighting for their rightful place, Black Americans not only benefited themselves, they also helped perfect America’s democracy.

Through this quest for racial equality, democracy has grown and strengthened in America and thus you now see the election of representatives of different ethnic and religious groups into the Congress and the Senate of the United States of America.   

Here, may I offer a small confession.  At one point, I looked at the theme of this year’s Black History Month, “From slavery to Freedom”, and began to craft an address on this historic journey Black Americans took from chained bondage to liberty.  Something funny happened as I started writing the speech.  I could not do it.

A thought kept interrupting me.  This pesky thought was that now would not be the moment to give what would have hopefully been an interesting survey of history.  Informative, yet not befitting the moment in which we find ourselves. 

Nigeria itself now stands on the threshold of history.  An hour of great portend approaches.  I could not stand before you and not speak in a way that acknowledges this great fact.  To do so would be to speak nicely but to talk small. 

However, I did not come here to say what is easy.  I came here to say what you need to hear from a friend.  To do otherwise would be like inviting a hungry man to dinner and then offering him a most meager meal, then compounding the disappointment by taking away the food even before he had an opportunity to eat the little that was given him.  Such a thing I cannot do.  So permit me to deviate from the appointed theme.

After succumbing to that rebellious thought I concluded that it would be appropriate to talk about the lessons Black History can illuminate in order to better light the way for Nigeria’s journey into dawn – its journey into democracy.  After all, was not the struggle of Black America, the struggle to which we dedicate this month, one that ultimately transcends place and time?  It was not just a struggle of race against race.  If you view it in that limited context, you have missed its significance. 

It was a struggle for human decency, dignity and justice.  In its essence, this month celebrates not a distinct and separate volume of history but rather it celebrates what is just a long chapter in the even more epic account of man’s progress against his own worst vices. 

It represents the best stirrings of man, the stirrings of man not to surrender himself unto oppression and degradation but to give himself unto the nobler if more elusive callings of equality and hope. 

It is a story of the attempt of a people to stop being put down and pressed down in the very land of their birth.  It is the story of waking the conscience of a nation so that the hand of prejudice, hatred and ignorance is stayed and is replaced by a more humane treatment of those who suffered under that hand.

It is the story of the battle of right against wrong.

It also teaches us an important lesson. If you don’t get tired, if you don’t quit, if you don’t wilt when the hour is the bleakest and when the strong wind pursues you, both bleakness and storm will pass.  Yet you will remain standing with your objective, your victory, closer at hand.  This is a lesson that Black America has learned the hard way.  This is a lesson I hope to share with you today so that it might not take Nigeria so long or so hard to get its complete victory in its grasp. 

As long as the United States practiced legal discrimination on the one hand but espoused political freedom on the other, it was a nation struggling against itself.  It was a nation that did not have an identity because it had one identity too many.  One identity was free, the other was slave and slave-holding.  The two could not live side by side in the long term for they were each other’s opposite.  One would have to subdue the other.

A person cannot walk in opposite directions at the same time, nor can a nation be part free, part just, while part slave, part unequal.  For a house divided against itself cannot stand.

While still imperfect and with more than a day’s journey to go before we reach the point that America as a society is colorblind and race neutral, America has long ago made up its mind to move in that positive direction.

As we are gathered in this fine assemblage, Nigeria has a similar decision to make.  Regarding the impending election, I have heard many people state that Nigeria is at a crossroads.  If only it were that easy.  If at a crossroads, a traveler only has to decide which split in the road he must take, then resume his journey. 

In Nigeria, the question is much more existential.  Nigeria is now battling to define itself.  Nigeria is fighting itself for its very soul.

Will Nigeria continue to emerge from the mire and fog of military rule and its attendant ills which benefited a few, but redeemed none of its promises to the rest of the populace? 

Will Nigeria emerge a better, healthy nation of expanding political and economic freedom for all, without regard to ethnicity, religion and region?  Or will progress be throttled so that Nigeria slides back into the costly ways of an unproductive past?  This is nothing short of a contest to define the collective spirit of the nation. 

Now, one should turn to face reality squarely when it taps you on the shoulder.  So let’s face it.  There are some people who have benefited from the way things were.  They are not eager to see Nigeria as it should be.  Having taken full advantage of the imbalances of the past, they seek to resurrect that past. 

Fortunately, there is a growing chorus of people who realize that a system which provides the opportunity of freedom, prosperity and fulfillment for all is the best insurance for securing these things for themselves.   Yet, their collective voice is still feint and uncertain. 

If we are not careful, they could still be drowned out by the stentorians of an old order who do not want to see Nigeria further develop into a more economically and politically just society.

Before I go any further, let me warn you if you have not already gotten an indication that I will not talk in subtle phrases.  The situation is too compelling and the hour is much too short for that luxury.  It is time to say what needs to be said for there is no certainty that a second chance will come our way.  Thus, let us say what we have to say.  Thus, there will be no double or hidden meanings in this address, so subtract nothing from what I say.  Neither add to it.  What is said shall be no more and no less than what you hear.

Also, do not think what I am saying is intended to favor or oppose any person, group or organization.  I am not here to condemn or commend any particular person or party.

If you are looking for whom I support, don’t go to any elected official’s office.  You won’t find me there.  Don’t go to any party headquarters.  My footprints will neither be there.  I am singularly disinterested in who beats whom in the political game. 

What has my abiding interest is that Nigeria continues to improve its ability to look after the well being of those citizens who do not have the capacity to fully look after themselves.

Thus, if you want to see whom we support, get out of your chair, walk out of this hall and go to the schools to see young children struggling to obtain an education that will give them hope for the future.

Go to the marketplace.  See the somber-eyed mother with too many needs to meet but too little money with which to meet them.  Go to the farms.  See people working and tilling the soil from sun up to sun down in order to scratch out a living, to feed their family and feed this nation.  Go to the bus stops.  See the men and women who wake up tired in the morning and come home even more weary from work late at night.  These are the people I support.

Now, there came a point as I grappled with the alternative theme of this address where I could not decide how best to present the key lessons to be gleaned from Black American History.

Then I realized I was lying on a patch-work quilt handed down to me from family generations past.  The quilt was made of different pieces of cloth but woven together in a pattern to express a theme. 

It dawned on me that the quilt provided a clue on how we should present this address.  Consequently, let me distill from the Civil Rights Movement, from Black American History, a few major themes and then weave them together to form a fabric relevant to Nigeria today.

The first theme is “Don’t forget the forgotten”.  This is the very essence of Black History Month.  For so long a portion of my nation’s existence, Black people were either bondsman or citizens with neither rights nor recourse, they were also not considered agents, nor subjects of history. 

It was as if they were not part of the national family, but part of the family’s assets as if a human being could be reduced to chair or table, bench or a plow.  And no sane person would ask a table or chair how it feels or thinks.  A table, chair, or any similar prop is to be acted upon but never is considered an independent actor. 

Nor were Black Americans.  Thus their story was not told, for it was thought they had no story.  Their struggle to stay alive in the bowels of overcrowded ships that trafficked human cargo from one coast of the Atlantic to the other is a courageous example of human endurance against the glare of death.  But it was a story not to be told. 

The struggle to move from slave to freeman, from freeman to equal was not being told.  But it was an inspirational tale of the lowly, the poor and powerless contesting against the weight of privilege and prejudice.  And as such it is a story that belongs to none of us exclusively because it belongs to all of us as human beings.  It is the story of the forgotten man claiming his place in the world and his right to be heard above the din of the machinery of power. 

While it manifests itself different here, the call to not forget the forgotten is also a challenge in today’s Nigeria.  Look at how we view the Nigerian elections.  All of us are guilty of focusing on the top candidates and parties. 

But is the election solely about these famous personalities?  If so, we have all already lost the election regardless of our partisan or nonpartisan stripes.  No, for Nigeria to move forward the election cannot be about the well-known, the famous, and even the infamous.  It is more about the welfare and aspiration of the anonymous farmer, cabdriver, seamstress and school teacher. 

It is about whether they can wake up and work more productively for their families.  It is about whether they can look at their sons and daughters and tell them that the future will be better and mean it as the truth and not just something one says just so their children can go to bed at night without tears.

Consequently, as we look at the political leaders and their quest for elective office, let’s not lose sight of the real object of the elections.  Which is not to obtain office but to bring good governance and a better life to those anonymous people we will never know.  While we do not know them, they should not be forgotten as they form the backbone and future of the nation more than any elite can. 

The second theme is that it is easier to change a law than to change a person’s mind or heart.  This implies that we must not place too much emphasis on form.  By form, I mean the institutions and laws that purportedly govern the nation.  By substance I mean how things are actually done and practiced. 

The image of the founding of the United States is one of men fighting against the most powerful nation of their age in order to secure their political freedom.  However, the very underbelly of that same image is one of these same men intentionally enshrining the enslavement of other human beings simply because of a difference in the hue of their skin.

When the fight against slavery was won, the Black man became legally free.  The U.S. Constitution explicitly called him out as a free and full citizen.  However, someone forgot to tell his former owners. 

He still had to endure all manner of indignity and danger.  Those who opposed his freedom, after a momentary retreat, launched a well planned counter offensive that ended up re-defining and diminishing the status of the freeman until he was little more than an indentured servant. 

During the last century, the Civil Rights Act and several other laws were passed to guarantee legal equality.  Notwithstanding this bevy of laws, the scores of Black History Months we have celebrated, and the very language of the U.S. Constitution itself, there are still too many Americans who still harbor antagonism toward people of another race.  The enlightenment implied by such a law often takes time to finally shine the light into the heart of a racially prejudiced individual.

This lesson is an important one in Nigeria where you now have the formal institutional trappings of democracy but not enough people have sufficiently imbibed the spirit of democracy so that we can state with confidence that democracy has been secured on these shores. 

You have a presidential and federal system.   You have state and local government.  You have had and will continue to have elections.  Despite these institutions and forums, Nigeria is not as democratic as it ought be. 

Too many people look at winning an election as a type of investiture and not the assumption of a public trust.  Too many people see electoral victory as not making the victor the representatives of the people but as a form of elected royalty.  Thus, instead of them believing they should act in the public’s interest, they believe the election means the public should act in their interest.

Democracy in its true sense is not something found on a piece of paper, or in the organizational structure of an institution.  Democracy flourishes or is buried by how we relate to each other as human beings.  For it to thrive, democracy must be etched in the hearts and minds of the players in the national drama.  It must seep into how we act daily, into our discussions, our decisions, into how we view the world and each other’s place in it.

For Nigeria, the battle to establish the institutional forms of democracy has been won.  Congratulate yourselves yes but do not overly celebrate for the victory has been only partial.  We still have work to do.  The next phase is to move from giving Nigeria the trimmings of a democratic outfitting to making democracy feel so welcome in Nigeria that democracy feels as if it has come home to a family reunion.

The third theme is that, we all should develop a healthy regard for diversity.  Give the racial context of this topic, the prior statement seems like a mere telling of the profoundly obvious.  But here, I mean more than meets the eye.

For I am not talking about harmony across the racial or ethnic divide.  Here I refer to what often happens within the movement for equality.  Often those who are ostensibly fighting for the same objective became the bitterest enemies because of differences in tactics or emphasis.  This internecine squabbling retards progress and provides nothing but moments of undiluted joy to the opponents of progress.

During the period of slavery, two schools of thought emerged regarding how to free the slaves.  One sought emancipation through force of arms – through rebellion.  One sought it through peaceful change in the Nation’s legal infrastructure that provided the legal justification for chattel slavery.

The rebellions lead by Nat Turner and Gabriel Prosser and Denmark Vesey proved that slaves were willing to go to war and die to win freedom. 

Their attempts destroyed the notion of undermining that slavery was a form of benevolent servitude embraced and welcomed even by the slave himself.  These efforts also frightened the slaveholders to no end.  Beyond these two ancillary contributions, the attempts were futile.  The culmination of this approach came during John Brown’s fateful raid on Harper’s Ferry.

As irony would have it, John Brown, a white man, was unsuccessful in convincing Frederick Douglass, a black man and former slave, about the utility of armed rebellion.  Douglas believed rebellion was doomed to failure and suicidal and that it would direct greater fear and hatred at the already downtrodden slaves who need not carry such an extra burden.  Disagreement between Douglas and Brown was fierce. 

Those who believed in the abolition of slavery but differed over its method became almost as implacable foes as they were with the proponents of slavery.  The rift between Douglas and Brown presaged divisions among the Black population once slavery had ended and Blacks were legally free.

Then the question became of how best to improve the lot of black people and to win equality.  Personified by W.E.B. Du Bois, one group believed that black people should focus on advancing their civil and political rights.  The other group, with Booker T. Washington and later Marcus Garvey at the helm, believed racial equality was better pursued through economic development.

The arguments between Du Bois and Washington were historic, sometimes profound and almost always unfortunate.  They worked at cross purposes and grew to become rivals. The enmity between Du Bois and Garvey was even worse.   Regressive forces tried to pit each against the other and to a degree these forces succeeded because Du Bois and Washington could not see the inconsistency of their own positions. 

While advocating white society to be more tolerant or accepting of Blacks, both men were intolerant of different shades of opinion within the Black ranks.  Their perpetual feuding and concomitant failure to break bread and forge an agreement regarding points of view that were essentially reconcilable hurt the Black movement and wasted precious time, resources and human effort.

A similar feud erupted in the 1960’s.  Martin Luther King became the pillar of the non-violent Civil Rights Movement.  While many whites reviled him at that time, some of his most unforgiving critics were fellow blacks.  Malcolm X, H. Rap Brown, and Stokely Carmichael all at one point or another branded King.  Interestingly, Malcolm X was not assassinated until he began to turn a less confrontational leaf.  Even more interestingly he met his demise at the hands of black authors.

Even among the radical groups, there was pushing and tugging from pillar to post.  Each group wanted to be the foremost.  Each wanted to be seen as the most radical and militant.  Each wanted to be the authentic voice of Black America.  Each group tried to out black the other one.  This was not only reflected in fiery rhetoric but in actual gunfire against each other.  People who should have been allies tried to and actually killed each other.  Again the differences of opinion seem almost inconsequential compared to the differences they had with the guardians of racial prejudice.  Yet these individuals and groups fought each other almost as much as they did their stated enemy.

In Nigeria, we have myriad civil society groups that have among their stated purposes the promotion of democracy in Nigeria.  Yet to get them to work together, to get them to pool resources, is often as difficult to do as convincing a lion to eat with a knife and fork. 

 The aim of democracy should be so transcendent that it compels these organizations to overcome other considerations and work together.  Unfortunately, such cooperation is more the exception than the rule. 

Too many groups are mere extensions of their founders or of their leadership.  Ethnicity, region and even religion act as barriers to collaboration.  Instead of cohesion, often an unspoken coldness exists among the group.  They stand apart as neither friend nor foe.  Sometimes this coldness erupts into outright and embarrassing hostility.

 Instead of consolidating resources to better promote democracy, groups often bicker over who is the truest and fairest democrat of them all.  By trying to “out democracy” each other, the groups do not advance the cause to which they claim to be wedded. 

Instead, they sow the seeds of confusion and disillusion as the public finds it nigh impossible to draw a distinction between the behavior of the proponents of democracy and the behavior of the guardians of the past.

 Those of you who work to advance democracy, you have more than enough enemies like poverty and ignorance to fight.  There is no need to fight amongst yourselves when you can fight these social ills that are your true foes. 

If Nigeria is to advance as it should, civil society will have to act in accordance with its stated priorities.  This means that proponents of democracy must be intolerant with regard to compromising on the ultimate objective. 

Yet when it comes to the means and methods for attaining the fullness of democracy for Nigeria, they must be tolerant and receptive to different views and approaches.  For out of diversity should come discourse and through the crucible of discourse and debate, our ideas are further wrought and refined.

The fourth point is that Black History teaches us that we all must remember where we come from and not take undue advantage of any advantages justice may bestow on us. 

Usually, when we search through Black History, we focus on the extraordinary and the great.  Here, I want to focus on a less noble part of Black History in order to drive home this point.  Here, I want to discuss the founding of the nation of Liberia.

A stark lesson from the Age of Slavery is Liberia.  Liberia’s establishment was sponsored by the American Colonization Society.  In the first half of the 19th century, the Society was formed to promote immigration of Black Americans to Africa.  Financed to a considerable degree by slaveholders, this project was ostensibly intended to provide free Blacks a place where they could truly be free and to prove they were capable of self-governance.  The underlying purpose was to export as many freed Blacks as possible from America.  The slave holders feared the freedmen would cause those still enslaved to think too much, too soon about freedom.

Unfortunately, the Blacks who ventured to Liberia carried with them the worst lessons from the ante-bellum South.  They treated the Africans much the same way the slaveholding South had treated them.  Because their quest for freedom was limited only to their own small group, their dream was flawed.  It became a story of domination of the Africans they encountered.  The seeds sown over the next 150 years reaped the Civil War that turned Liberia into a paroxysm of destruction.  What happened there is a senseless tragedy born of black-on-black prejudice.

Let the lessons of Liberia be clearly understood.  Freedom is not divisible.  Freedom monopolized by one group only means the oppression of all others.  Secondly, inhumanity is no less inhumane because it is intra-racial.

Now Liberia has a new dawn and a new president.  Black America should awake to the opportunity it has to correct this dream which went awry.  It can do so by working with West Africa and the international community to help that war-poxed nation build itself into a conducive home for its people.  The challenge is no less than to turn tragedy into treasure.

Now, let’s move closer together so that we can really talk frankly.  What the story of Liberia teaches us is that not everyone who talks about democracy, equality and justice actually practices it when they have a chance to do otherwise.  You see a poor and powerless man is constrained by his poverty and lack of a political arsenal.  He has no other weapon but to appeal to morality.  Thus when the powerless talk to you, you do not always know whether it is genuine or if this is a despot disguised in a democrat’s clothing. 

It is only when he has a touch of power, does a man reveal his true nature.  Then he has a choice to decide whether he uses his power to do as he might or does he temper the exercise of that power with morality so that he does what he ought. 

On this decision faced by thousands of people holding varying degrees of power, much depends. 

Thus, it is crucial for Nigeria to never forget from where it has come.   It is crucial for those people who have felt the bitter sting of injustices in the past, not to repeat those same mistakes.  I am not saying you must be perfect.  No, for as long as we are on this earth, mistakes we will surely make.  The thing is that the mistakes we make should be those of reform and not of repetition.

In the final analysis, Nigeria can glean these and many other lessons from Black American History.  If applied correctly not only will Nigeria advance but it will become a model from which future generations will take inspiration and guidance.

 As I conclude let me state, should Nigeria fall in this democratic enterprise, succeeding generations will look back and be baffled at how, given the corps of talented people and the ample store of resources Providence has lent this nation, we let it run aground.

To be found waiting at this moment would be allowing your destiny to pass through your fingers as if it were the wind we were attempting to hold but it is not the wind.  It is our very selves.  So we must hold fast.  We must act wisely and well to justify why we have been placed here in this special hour.  Remember, what Nigeria does today, Africa will do tomorrow. 

What Nigeria becomes today, is what Africa will be tomorrow.  You have a responsibility that extends beyond your borders and your shores.  Great is the responsibility.  Great is the potential reward but also great are the consequences of failure.  Let not that responsibility crash against the shoals of failure because of indecision, indifference and want of vision.

 Thank you.