IN TOUCH WITH: The Beating of The Drums
“Love your neighbor as yourself. If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.” Galatians 5:14-15
Betty Miller Buttram
Of Fort Wayne Ink Spot
I
It has always been feared that giving black folks the right to vote is like giving them too much power.
We have had some drum majors like Medgar Evers, Fannie Lou Hammer, the Freedom Riders and John Lewis leading the way to democratic enfranchisement. The years 2008 and 2012 gave President Barack Obama the majority of black votes. This year, with black votes being counted, the nation has elected as Vice President, Kamala Harris, an African/Indian American woman. In the State of Georgia, Stacy Abrams has become a drum major in getting out the votes for African Americans and other people of color.
As I reflect on my life, I began to wonder when did my drumroll begin. When did I become aware that the color of my skin turned people against me? It was Emmett Till.
It was a hot summer afternoon, and I was an elementary school child enjoying playtime with my friends in the neighborhood. I entered my grandfather’s home, and it was so quiet. The grownups and a few neighbors had gathered there, and all of them looked as if a family member had died.
I learned later that Emmett Till was a fourteen-year-old boy from Chicago who had been visiting his grandfather in Mississippi. He and his cousins had gone to a country store, and it was alleged that Emmett had flirted with the white store owner’s wife. For that alleged offense, he was brutally murdered and unrecognizable when his body surfaced from a river. His mother identified him by the ring on his finger that had once belonged to his deceased father. His father had served in World War II.
I will not reiterate our story about how our ancestors crossed the ocean packaged like sardines in tin cans in the bottom of ships. You know that story. I will not reiterate how our ancestors were stripped of their customs and culture. You know that story. What our ancestors brought with them over that ocean within the ships that took them further away from their homeland was the beating of the drums in their spirits. That beat has been embedded in our DNA from generation to generation for over 400 years.
Today requires a brief visit to our African American past just to go over a few historical benchmarks in our ancestry participation in the history-making of the United States.
II
The Thirteen Colonies fought the battle and won their independence from the British, and the United States of America needed a document, the U.S. Constitution of America, to get folks to follow the law to keep the order. It was a document to make certain that everybody followed the rules.
During the signing of the United States Constitution on September 17, 1787, 39 delegates were representing 12 states. Rhode Island declined to send delegates. It was a four-month-long convention that was held in Philadelphia. The delegates discussed and disputed how slaves in the southern states would be counted in this law-and order-document.
At that time, our ancestors were just commodities or property used by the South to get rich off their cheap labor. It was a little concerning since the states needed to determine a state’s number of seats in the House of Representatives and how much it would pay in taxes. More people need to be included in that count. A compromise was reached. It was agreed that three out of every five slaves would be counted as people, giving the Southern states a third more seats in Congress and a third more electoral votes than if slaves had been ignored, but fewer than if slaves and free people had been counted equally. One stipulation, the enslaved could not vote. That decision became known as the Three-fifths Compromise. It was voted on, passed and the drumbeat rolled on.
III
Years passed and the enslaved Africans multiplied and brought great wealth to the South, but there began unrest among the slaves. They wanted to be free. They listened to their slave masters preaching about a man named Moses who led a people called the Israelites out of Egypt. They listened to their slave masters preaching about a river that the Israelites had crossed and had reached their Promised Land. There was no slavery in the Northern States and the Ohio River was their crossing. The Northern States were referred to as “Canaan or the Promised Land.” The route often crossed to get to the Ohio River was referred to as “Jordan.” The spiritual “Wade in the Water” (get in the water to throw off the dogs’ scent), “The Gospel Train,” and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” contained direct references to the Underground Railroad used to harbor and usher slaves to freedom. The “Slave Songs” were sung among the slaves during their hard labor in the fields. Word was passed down to them through these spirituals that contained coded messages that the Conductor of this railroad was a woman by the name of Harriet Tubman and that she was coming to lead them to freedom. They just had to be ready to be on board “The Gospel Train.” The slaves moved with the drumbeat of their spirits.
The Civil War was ongoing for about two years when in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued an Executive Order named the Emancipation Proclamation. It took that order to change the federal legal status of more than 3 million enslaved people in the designated South from “slave to free.” The South kept on fighting until they lost, and our ancestors were free. The wealthy plantation owners had become as poor as their slaves.
IV
If that was not bad enough, the U.S. Constitution added three amendments. The 13th Amendment made slavery illegal in the United States. The slaves were free, and the South could not handle that. The 14th Amendment made them a natural citizen and gave them their civil rights. Their right to vote was included in this amendment; that did not sit well at all with the southern whites.
In 1870, the 15th Amendment was passed to protect the voting rights of freed slaves. That was the beginning of the fight for African Americans to have the right to vote. The free slaves made progress during the Reconstruction Period in the South for nearly thirteen years until the Union Army pulled out of the South and Jim Crow moved in. During the period of Jim Crow, awful things happened to black folks when it came to their civil rights and voting rights.
Racial injustice and the suppression of our right to vote have long been battles for us as a race of people. That is why it is so vital that we vote so that our voices are heard. Our young people danced in the streets while we danced in our living rooms during this past election, but it is not over. There is still danger out there, but your vote is your power. Pay attention and stay alert. Do not let yourself be conned into believing the misinformation and the lies.
Wake Up! Stay Woke!