IT'S A HARD KNOCK - PART II

 Our parents and grandparents wanted something better for us. They had to claw and scratch for everything that they had. No one gave them anything. Let's go way back here. Yes, I'm getting ready to go there. During slavery our ancestors worked with what they had, what they were given, and what they knew. 

O.K. then, what are you talking about, LAND. Are ancestors work the land for others, so they knew the soil, they knew what would grow in land that others thought worthless, THEY KNEW!.....even though they could not read or write. They survived and adapted into a land that was not their own. In this new land, they understood to have wealth, one of the keys was owning land. Our ancestors knew that land had a value, and that there was a certain amount of land on the earth. And once it was gone that was it. Pretty good for a group of people that could not read or write. 

Another key was education. Slaves were not allowed to read or learn how to write. Can you imagine being told what and how you should think. And then after centuries of your ancestors being enslaved to be free of other thoughts. What would be one of the thing that you would want beside land. And Education, and yet still...IT'S A HARD KNOCK.

IT'S A HARD KNOCK

 For most Americans of African decent, it is a hard knock going into the past when you are doing genealogy. We realize some very important things. First, we realize that we don't have all of the information on family members that we thought we had. We may not even know family members past our grandparents. We have lost the sense of community. 

When my parents were young, community life was all that they had, it was as I said, a way of life. Everyone knew everyone else and sharing with others, family members and friends was a necessity. Children were raised by everyone. Parents took care of their parents. When one of the community children made it to College, it was a big deal, and everyone celebrated their success. And guess what? The child would come back to the community because they knew that their degree would help everyone in the community. And guess what? Most of the times the child got a degree in Education. YES, I said the curse word. ED-U-CA-TION. When my parents were growing up, a school teacher was a highly respectable job. Teachers poured knowledge into children that had been denied to them when we were brought here as slaves. Remember one way to keep a group of people down is to not educate them.  IT'S A HARD KNOCK.