Black

© 2013 by James M. Lamb. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 10/31/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4918-2377-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-2378-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-2379-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013918023

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Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction to Black

Black

I am not an African, I am an American!

The Black Mind

The Word Black

State of Black America

Vibrations

Ancient Egypt

Continuous Cover-ups

How does God describe Himself in the Bible

Dinknesh

The Danger

Questions?

The Moors

The Kingdom Of Ancient Ghana Why you need to know your story!

The Kingdom Of Ancient Ghana

The Mali Empire

The Songhai Empire

Dr. Martin Luther King and the Bible

The Bible

The Jewish Wars

Josephus

The Reformation

Religion

How did Christianity become so powerful?

The Role of Africans in Adopting Christianity

Persecution

Slavery

Christopher Columbus

Personal

Haiti

Christopher Columbus and King Leopold II

A Colonial or European Education

Myths

The Pilgrims

American Indians

The Christian Law of Nations

Looking into the European psyche

Colfax, Louisiana

Black Wall Street

The Wilmington Race Riot

The Atlanta Race Riot

The Rosewood Race Riot

The Bible and History

Africa

The Great Pyramid is Built on Solid Rock

The Temple in Man

Egyptian Medical Treatments

Black Madonna Child & Black Popes

Three Black Popes and More!

Kemet/Egypt says: before Abraham I Am

The Temple of Isis

Alert: Black Man writes most of the New Testament!

Solstice

The Galactic Year

The Pentateuch (Back to the Bible)

The Pope’s Apology

The Pentateuch (Back to the Bible) Continues

The Names of God

Africans in the Western Hemisphere before Columbus

The American Public Educational System

The War

Bibliography

About the Author

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my eternal gratitude to my Mother Florence M. Lamb who went home to be with the Lord (2008). She prayed me through all my failures and did live to witness the results of her prayers. And, to my Dad, Henry Cannon Lamb who was a man’s man and I still love and admire him to this day.

I am grateful to Bishop William Philpot, Pastor of Christ Chapel and former Pastor of Community Baptist Church in New Haven Connecticut and the Christ Chapel members who played such an important role in my life and prayed me through a self created hell.

To Richard Bullard, Pastor of Grace Evangelical Baptist Church my friend and mentor who encouraged me by his diligence in study and his vast knowledge of religious studies that inspired me to write along with the loving members of Grace.

I cannot write any book without a special thank you to Dr. Mimi Silbert Ph D., and her staff at the Delancey Street Foundation. They took my devastated life and trained me how to live. Those four years and ten months in Delancey Street were some of the best preparation years of my life.

To Lindy Fair, APN who keeps my head on straight despite my battles with PTSD.

To all my friends and fellow counselors within the Arkansas Department of Correction, thanks for all your critical insights, suggestions and your support that challenged me to continue writing.

I want to especially thank my loving and patient wife Lashauna for her undying support. Many a night as I studied, researched and wrote, she prayed and encouraged me to press on. She is a rare and special gift from God.

To my Brother and Sister who loved me in spite of how I acted for so many years. It was their undying love that rescued me many times. Without their constant love and guidance I would not be the man I am today.

Most importantly, to my son James M. Lamb II, I owe you a debt that I cannot fully repay. It is you who motivates me to continue the quest of bettering myself. It was your hope, faith and prayers, my son, which lifted me. It is the look in your eyes that took many years to earn. It is the look of love and pride I see in your eyes that continues to inspire me and move me forward.

Introduction to Black

I was born James McRussell Lamb in March of 1945 to two wonderful parents, Henry and Florence. I grew up on Rock Creek Road in Westville Connecticut in the suburbs of New Haven. My Mother told me that when I first went to School the school was considering me for a scholarship for gifted children. I don’t know what happened.

The community where I grew up was integrated with multi ethnic backgrounds and cultures. Just about every group you could think of was represented. There were success stories among the African American Community. We had some who went to private schools like Johnny and found their way to Congress in Washington and could be seen on television working right below Thomas Phillip Tip O’Neill, Jr. who was an American politician and Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. His brother Jamsey was one of the first hired to a prominent position with Campbell Soup. We had Maurice who became the first Black quarterback for Southern Connecticut State.

In our community I had friends I played with and grew up with who were Jewish, Italian, German, Polish and Black. My Mother told me that when I was very young that Levi Jackson, who was a football standout at Hillhouse High School (New Haven, Connecticut), and was the first African-American football captain at Yale University, and the first African-American executive at Ford Motor Company, sat me on his lap and read to me. He had relatives in the community and used to visit. Perhaps that was one of the reasons I love words.

Also, I remember Johnny Huggins, born to a prosperous Black family in New Haven. They were the only Black family that lived in one of the two predominately Jewish areas of New Haven. He joined the Black Panther Party and played a key role in organizing the Los Angeles chapter, the first chapter to open outside the Oakland Bay Area. Three weeks after his wife, Ericka Huggins, gave birth to their daughter, Mai, on January 17, 1969, Johnny Huggins was killed. I remember going over his house a few times when we were in the boy scouts together. Johnny was so far ahead of the rest of us in his thinking and willingness to engage in the struggle of freedom and the empowerment of our community.

I came from a good family. My Father had his own business, spoke three languages, taught himself shorthand, typing and he played the piano. He learned to fly a plane at 68 which was his life time vision. It was on the front page of the New Haven register I still have a copy of the article. Everyone in the family was so proud of him. He was an accomplished individual, yet he was forced to work in a factory because of the lack of opportunities for Blacks back then. My Mother was a stay at home mom who baked cookies that were soooo good and took me on walks and launched paper boats in the local stream not too far from our house.

Everyone in my family, Brothers, Sisters, Uncles and Aunts, cousins, nephews and nieces were all well accomplished in life. My older brother was so smart he worked for the government on top secret projects traveling the world and later worked for a company that sent him all over the world trouble shooting their machines that took cataracts off of eyes. My younger brother was a model who appeared on television, in magazines and various advertisements in many publications including Ebony and Essense.

Me, I dropped out of high school, began drinking at a young age, went to jail, lied, stole, became disruptive, rebellious and was completely self-centered. Although I grew up in church and had every opportunity to succeed I chose to be the consummate jerk.

The second time I was arrested; I woke up in jail and didn’t know how I got there. I was in a Blackout and did not know for years what had happened. I knew I was hanging around with the wrong crowd and going to all the wrong places. I could see a life in prison coming at me fast. When I was released from jail, I had made up my mind; I had to get away from New Haven. I went right around the corner and told an army recruiter that I needed help and I needed to get out of town. I told him my story and he helped get my charges, including breach of peace and stolen cars, waived and I entered the Army in 1964.

Somewhere near Tong Binh province, Republic of Vietnam, in the pitch Black, just before dawn, the blast shook the night, KARAABOOOM!!!! It was followed immediately by an endless staccato of machine gun and AK-47 fire. That steady noise was punctuated by the KRRUMMMPP of 40-mm shoulder—launched rockets that flashed in explosions all around. The flashes, briefly pushing back the Blackness of night, were quickly extinguished by the suffocating blanket of night as two companies of North Vietnamese soldiers overran our outposts, fire control center, communications center and one gun parapets in one swift stroke. We could not see but we heard death approaching. At the moment of the first deafening explosion, there was the sound of a man screaming, and the sound was inhuman. It sounded like a dog that had been hit by a car. The howling of that man caught in the agony of death’s grip was different from the steady screams of horror on the battlefield that night.

Later we found him. He was shot once in the side, a small entry wound, a large exit wound. It was the mark of an M16 round spinning through the body. There was also a large hole in his head, provided by the first sergeant who emptied a full clip of M16 rounds on full automatic, the muzzle pressed into the eye of the still moaning victim. The first sergeant turned to me, smiled and said, ‘Lamb, next time we catch one alive, I’ll show you how to castrate ’em.’

It was becoming light now. The enemy had broken off the fight and there was no more incoming fire. We continued to fire. We had just fired another round when suddenly I felt something I could not see step out of my body and rise upward and away. I fell down between the trails of the gun, stunned and suddenly almost paralyzed by fear. I was not afraid of what just happened with this being leaving my body. I was afraid because this invisible being took with him all the bravado and fearlessness that I had exhibited in the battle with him when he left. Just minutes ago I was not afraid. I was yelling orders and working along with my fellow warrior soldiers of the 2nd and 320th Artillery in the 101st Airborne Paratrooper Division. Now, I was shaken, frightened and stunned.

On December 17, 1966, I received the Department of the Army’s Award of the Army Commendation for Heroism in connection with military operations against a hostile force. According to the award signed by Major AGC Adjutant General, J. G. Brown, "private first class Lamb distinguished himself by exceptionally valorous actions near Tong Binh, Republic of Vietnam. I know that God saved my life in Viet Nam at least seven times, including the battle described above.

There was one thing about Vietnam that disturbed me. I found myself suddenly concerned about why I was there. I mean, at home we were fighting for civil rights and the ability to ride in the front of the bus and yet I was fighting people I didn’t even know and why was I doing that? Even in Vietnam I saw the racism of White people especially White officers who wanted to advance using us at as targets to write bad conduct discharges and other charges based on the flimsiest of behaviors. I saw them use creative disciplines which had Black soldiers gardening and waiting on officers just like it was the plantation. On the battlefield there was little racism because everybody had a gun but in the rear racism existed openly.

I returned from Viet Nam to find my Mother a changed Woman. After testifying, to me about the Lord, I was inquisitive because I knew something had happened to her and I was curious so I went to Church with her. I really wanted to see for myself just what she was talking about because it still sounded kind of crazy to me. Plus, my mom kept moving suddenly as if hit by a small electric shock and saying, Oh, praise the Lord! or Thank you, Jesus! This was really strange to me but obviously either something had happened to her or she had lost it.

That same week we went to a small storefront church. I walked in and sat down. The music was lively and, as the preacher began to preach, the people were moving like my mom did. They seemed to be moved by something I could not see and definitely did not feel. I looked carefully at this group of both old and young people. One thing that struck me was that they seemed like normal, ordinary people. Some of them seemed to have this glow. I kept looking at them and assessing the situation. They were moving and praising God and getting happy but their movements seemed at times unrelated to what the preacher was saying. Again, they seemed to be responding to something I could not see nor feel.

I went to these services for a few days and did not know what to make of all this. These people were excited about something but I just did not see or feel what all this commotion was about.

At the end of one of these services, they would pray for you by laying hands on your head. An evangelist, Sister Redmond, was praying for this young girl about the age of 14. Sister Redmond said, I command you in the name of Jesus to come out of this girl. A voice spoke out of that girl that a human could not produce or reproduce. The voice was not human. It was a deep and animal-like. That voice spoke out of the girl, and the sound filled the small church. Whatever was in that girl spoke and it said, I will not come out! The girl did not speak—the thing spoke out of her. Her lips did not move!

I jumped out of my seat on the pew and the guy next to me jumped. I looked at him; he was still staring straight ahead at the girl. I almost yelled, Did you hear that? With open, bulging eyes, staring straight ahead and mouth wide open, he managed to shape his lips to forcefully say, Yes! From that moment on, I was totally interested in what could not be seen. The young girl was delivered that night from the demon and went on later in life to become an evangelist herself.

But, the moment I heard that demon speak, I began to seek the Lord in earnest and had an instant and newfound respect for the Bible. At that unforgettable moment in time, everything in the Bible became very real to me.

Some of the experiences I am going to go through are real experiences I had in my quest to know the divine.

I already described the first dynamic spiritual experience of the demon speaking. After that I began to fast and pray like crazy. In my mind I felt if God is that real and can be accessed then I was going to have access. One day at noon day prayer the same evangelist Sister Redmond laid hands on me while I was kneeling at the altar. I began to feel what I would describe as a living cloud around me. My eyes were closed by I could sense this presence. I was praying with all my might, reaching from within to get closer to God. I felt this presence move away from me and I cried out with all my heart and a mouth full of emotional words of prayer. Suddenly, this presence filled me, and I do mean I felt this presence enter my being. I began to speak in words that were not my own. I had been filled with the Holy Spirit as I had heard about in the Bible and in Church.

After that it was like I knew joy at a level that was beyond words. I began to have deep spiritual experiences. I saw spirits in people. I saw a red cat looking at me inside one of my friends who was, still in the world, a term used for the unsaved. I saw a spider come out of a Minister and walk through a wall. I had to go to knowledgeable Ministers who knew the Lord to help me understand what was going on. I was told I was seeing the spirit of the people. In the case of the red cat he later went to jail for stealing. In the case of the Minster, it was later found out that he was trying to seduce young boys in the Church.

I saw a bright glowing globe with a being inside it that you could not clearly see because of a fog inside the globe come through the roof of a Church and land on a Minster who then began to use the gift of Prophecy. I knew this young man. We grew up together in the Church. He was able to read minds and I know because he told me things that only I knew and his gift allowed him to see into the future of those thoughts he read. I have since met numbers of anointed Ministers who can do that.

I had an experience in Church where there was a sudden rush of wind that entered the Church so powerful that as it went down one side of the Church pews and up the other side that people were literally pushed forward and then backward as this wind moved through the Church. As people were praising the Lord, a being I assume was an angel that you could not see, entered my body and took control from my waist down. I was really shocked as I was taken to the altar. There was no personal volition in this at all. I was being controlled from the waist down. When I got to the altar it was like someone I could not see put their hand on my head. I immediately shot out of the top of my head and my consciousness traveled in a moment of time to another reality. There was no pain there; there was nothing but incredible, indescribable, peace and love that permeated every part of my being. I sensed a point in the unknown distance of total Blackness where this peace and love emanated from. I could see, (sense) in 360 degrees. I was aware of the Earth. Everything in the earth that humans’ value had no meaning there where I was; had no meaning what so ever! Everything a human could value, riches, power, health and everything that happens in the Earth meant anything in that place. As a matter of fact none of it had any meaning at all in the presence of such peace and love. I was aware of my family and I knew I loved them but I wanted to stay in this place. I noticed that I was rejoicing with praise, then I was being let slowly back down into my body. The first thing I noticed when I was fully back was that this body weighs billions of pounds compared to the lightness and freedom of my being in that place. I lost my fear of death!

I have had numerous spiritual experiences that are not recorded in this book. I just want to share three visions and one more experience.

A vision is not seeing something in your mind or something that happened while using any drugs. I was not asleep when these visions took place. The first vision was seeing something moving through water. It was black and long and it broke up. I later learned of the submarine Thresher going down but I was not completely sure that this is what I saw. Today I am sure because of the visions that were to follow. The next vision I remember because it was so historic. I had just come out of my Mother’s house headed for my car. Suddenly, it was as if a huge motion picture screen was dropped out of the sky right in front of me and I saw very vividly a scene unfold before me. I saw a man preaching behind a White pulpit with a red cross in front of the pulpit and a huge red cross behind him that stretched into the sky as far as the eye could see. He was making gestures and then I saw his neck shot out and the vision vanished. I was so amazed because I thought I was looking at my future and I was thinking at the time that I was looking at how I would die, on the battle field for the Lord. A few days later Martin Luther King was shot to death. Now I have told this story in Church over the years and I know that even some Christians do not believe what I just said. You may not either but it does not change the reality of what happened in my life.

The last vision opened up like the second and in this vision I viewed the United States and it appeared as a large, pulsating, thick, brown sore on the planet with large brown tentacles that stretched all around the world. It was like it was sucking the life of the world and pulsating like a living monster. The only other image in the vision was a large green dragon on the other side of the earth just switching its tail back and forth. Then the vision ended. I do not know the meaning of this vision. Does it mean that America is becoming so evil that it has come to the attention of God? Is judgment coming? Are we going to eventually face a war with nations of the orient? I do not know but I have shared these three visions.

One day at work after I had returned from Vietnam I felt a presence behind me. I worked in a room by myself printing labels on bottles for lotion that was sent to hospitals. After I printed each bottle I placed it on a conveyor belt that sent the bottles through a drying process. As I sensed this presence behind me, I looked around. There at the back of the room was a misty cloud. In my mind I was brought back to a very young age. When I was growing up I realized that there was something wrong with the way I was living. I was in a bunk bed in a room I shared with my brother and sister who were twins. The whole family was asleep except for me. I was agonizing over the fact that I couldn’t seem to do the right thing. Other children in school were doing well, my friends were doing well but I could not seem to do the right thing. I was so upset that I was crying and praying. I remember that prayer as it were yesterday but I had forgotten all about that day on till this moment when this presence brought my mind back to that prayer. The prayer was I need help somebody out there help me. They tell me your name is Jesus. I don’t know whether your name is Jesus on not but please, somebody up there please help me. Like I said I forgot all about that day until that moment. In my mind it was like someone said to me from that day I had my hand in your life and I have suffered all these things to happen to you that you might come home and serve me.

These accounts are true and there are many more. You would think that with those kinds of experiences a person would go on to great success. Within the space of 2 to 2 and half years I had come home from Vietnam, became involved in the church heavily, got married and thought I was going to be a great preacher. What I didn’t realize was the enemy that I was preaching and teaching about was in me. I did not realize that the beast inside me had come alive again. My hunger for the wildlife grew and intensified. My ego and sense of self importance would not allow me to seek help. So once again with great opportunity around me and people who are willing to help me I chose to go crazy. I began to drink which allowed me to unleash the monster.

Over the years and after I’d written my first book there were many Christians who wanted me to write a life story and autobiography. As I thought about it my main focus was to write books to help other people stay away from the lifestyle and dysfunction I had developed. I felt and thought that to get detailed views of the many indiscretions and ridiculous behavior that lasted on and off for so many years is really not necessary to show that I was out of control. Let me put it this way, Jesus talked about the treasure in us and those who bring forth treasure out of the evil treasure or out of the good treasure of the heart; I did both. When it came to the evil treasure, I was as out of control, selfish and self-centered as you could be. I went from drinking and partying and staying out with other women even though I was married to totally disrespecting my family loved ones wife and son. I drank, smoked marijuana and eventually became involved in shooting heroin and cocaine addiction.

I was a disgrace, running around the city in a new car with the license plate Rev JML on the back, in a car that I begged my mother to give me the money for the down payment, which I never repaid after to begging again promising that I would. I was mentally and spiritually abusive to my family and while not physically abusive I was cold and callous and uncaring. I would wind up in places like bars, shooting galleries, all-night clubs and apartments sometimes not knowing how I got there, sometimes not knowing who was next to me, sometimes with no money and no recollection of what happened. I went from bar to bar, woman to woman, and drinking to drugs, now on a daily basis. It was the same behavior that gripped me in Vietnam, to escape the reality of war. The rebellion and self-centeredness developed in my youth and became the driving force of my life. I sought to pleasure myself at the expense of others.

Several times I tried going back to the church only to fail again. Several times I tried rehabilitation. I have been in several different recovery programs, many 30 day programs, some 60 day programs and one 90 day program. I had gone from what I thought was partying and having a good time to living in a car with three other men looking like and smelling like death. I had come so close to death so many times through my reckless behavior and had failed so many times in my life that I really thought I would die outside the love of God.

I eventually left my wife, a faithful and loving woman and a son who only wanted his father. I found myself at a point of such desperation and pain that I wanted it to end. I took what money I had and bought heroin with the intent of killing myself. I woke up in a field staring at the sky. My first thought was, I made it I am dead. Actually, it was a foot that bought me up. Someone found me lying in the field and was kicking me and that’s how I woke up. He said to me, get out of here, get up and get out of here. I found my way to a phone and called my brother and once again asked him for help. He drove me to a hospital out of town.

When we got to the hospital they put me in a wheelchair, I was too weak to walk. I was about 125 pounds and smelled horrible. Just before we went to the hospital doors a nurse asked me could she take off my glasses. My sunglasses were the reflecting the type, you could not see my eyes. Nurses are trained to see tragedy and ghastly wombs and respond in a way that keeps patients calm. When the nurse took my sunglasses off she didn’t realize I had been drinking and drugging for four weeks without eating. My eyes were so bloodshot you could not see any pupil, it was just solid red. The nurse saw my eyes and said ohhh, as she turned her head away.

When I entered those doors little did I know that that was the last time I would live in the grip of the monster. I was a broken, shriveled up shell of a man. When they detoxed me the stench was talked about days later. I overheard the nurses talking about the sweat, the stench and the foul breath that permeated that room.

After 30 days in the hospital I was approached by a White man who was not my counselor. For whatever reason, he wanted to talk to me. He asked me about my life, I sat down and talked with him. He’d doodled on a piece of paper while I talked. When I finished talking he told me my problem was not that I did not know how to recover, I had done it many times. He said your problem is that you do not know how to sustain it. And he told me about Delancey Street. He gave me a brochure and I read it that night. I made up my mind that I was going to leave everyone and everything. I was going to give myself one more last chance. I called home and told my wife my son my mother and my brothers and sister that I was leaving and I was not coming back. The next day this White man that I did not know drove me some 100 miles to the program where I was interviewed and accepted.

From the age of twenty-three until I went into The Delancey Street Foundation treatment center in 1988, I went down a spiral staircase of bad choices, pain, lost jobs, marital infidelity, madness, heroin, alcohol, crack and cocaine addiction, numerous hospitals, drug and alcohol programs, PTSD, accidents, attempts at recovery and frequent trips to jail.

Delancey Street is a residential self-help organization for substance abusers, ex-convicts, the homeless and others who have hit bottom. The average resident has been a hardcore drug addict for 16 years, abusing alcohol and multiple drugs and has dropped out of school in the seventh grade and has been institutionalized several times. I fit in.

Run by CEO Mimi Silbert, Delancey Street, which has four other facilities around the country, doesn’t go in much for lectures, videos, 12 steps or classes. One of the very first set of principles you learn when you walk in the door is work hard, keep a good attitude and don’t get caught up, meaning do not argue. It doesn’t cost anything to be accepted in the program. The only prerequisite is that you have truly hit bottom and have a sincere desire to change your life. It is based on a philosophy which says, ‘act as if, and you will become.’

Delancey Street operates like a commune in that all the businesses produce training and funds that keep the program going. There are no government funds involved. This is intended to give everyone a sense of involvement in his or her own recovery. In short, residents earn respect by doing the right things and paying for their recovery as they pave the way for others.

I was able to go to college, Seminary and UC Berkeley while still in the program. I owe Mimi Silbert and the Delancey Street family a debt that can only be repaid by doing the best I can do each and every day to help others recover along the way.

One day while contemplating my efforts in the American Baptist Seminary of the West, I was confronted with the challenge of continued education in a unique way. I was standing there on campus overlooking both the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge with San Francisco in the distance as a picture perfect backdrop. I was thinking that just four years before that I was thinking that I was going to be pushing a shopping cart down the street with a wine bottle in my back pocket, mumbling to myself, or dead. I continued my education.

I am in no way proud of what I did, it was disgraceful. I am eternally grateful for the grace of God. I know that the mercy of God preserved my life. As I look back at my life it reminds me of a book my older brother gave me, it was titled Siddhartha, a man whose life reminded me of my own. Siddhartha is a novel by Hermann Hesse that deals with the spiritual journey of self-discovery of a man named Siddhartha. Siddhartha became the Buddha.

Although I had all these experiences, the one thing I had not done was to explore the universe within. Self discovery through meditation is one of three things I feel are the most important adventures in my life. Accepting the Lord, being filled with the Holy Spirit and meditation are the three events that are each within themselves a decisive move into higher realms of conscious awareness.

There is absolutely no substitute for introspection. Looking inside oneself without fear and learning how to correct you is the true source of personal change. Whatever the medium of change, the Bible, the 12 steps or any other source material, none will be successful or substitute for an honest look at you. As a result of my determined efforts to find out what was wrong with me I was able to translate that journey into two books that spiritually and scientifically revealed to any serious student, a true method of change. The two books, The Power to Change and The Revelation of Power, give any person seeking change powerful tools enabling change on deep spiritual and mental levels.

Unique to the recovery process for African Americans is the in depth look at low self-esteem. I remember when I was young going to a museum and having one of the guards look at my belt. The belt had markings on it similar to some type of Indian writing or symbols. The guard said that’s a nice belt you have there, then he said I didn’t even know you people could read or write. That hurt deeply and I didn’t have a response. I did not know that my ancestors had created paper and kept excellent records. I didn’t know, looking at the Olmec stone head behind him was evidence that Africans had been in the Americas before Columbus.

I could not tell you how many times I have felt insulted, demeaned and emotionally put down by both Whites and Blacks and the core root of that pain had to do with not knowing how great a people we truly are. I remember also as a child watching a television story about a Black man who had married a White woman in the South. I remember how in the end of the story Whites had chased down this interracial couple. The story ended with them running for their lives. I remember coming to my mother crying asking her why do they hate us so much? These and other numerous memories had an effect on my self-esteem. This book addresses many of the issues surrounding being Black and a White society.

It is my hope that this book and the information contained within will liberate the minds of Black and White people alike. I have engaged numbers of White people in discussions about our true history as Black people and our history of slavery and mistreatment at the hands of the White majority in America. This is not to say that there are not many fair-minded White people, there are. However, when I engage numbers of White people the clergy included there is a shroud of denial that permeates their sensibilities. I’ve heard numerous responses such as why open old wounds, why can’t you just forget those things and yet others who say if you’re so upset with your treatment in America, why don’t you just leave?

When we see stories on television or hear people talk about the tragedy of the Jews under Hitler no one complains. When we hear about the Holocaust and about how the Jews study everything that happened to them under Hitler, no one complains. It is all right for them to look at their history and learn from it but in a conversation with Whites they want to deny the reality of what we have been through. They want to know why we are killing ourselves in such great numbers today. Most times they have never studied what has happened to us psychologically or sociologically. They are so willing to blaming the victim of their brutality and then ask us why are we the way we are. It’s like for 400 years they have had their foot on our necks and then ask us in bewilderment why you are where you are in life?

This book is designed to answer some of those questions and to give insight into the mind of what it’s like to be Black in White America. This is not true of everybody that is Black in America; there are many middle-class and upper-middle-class Black people who have been successful in America. There are many Black people who have had a positive image of themselves implanted by their parents or some other significant person. This book is for those primarily who suffer from low self-esteem which further holds them back.

I remember seeing Gil Noble in an interview with a person from the CIA. When questioned about the methods and motives of the CIA this person being interviewed responded by saying our first move is to get people to fight among themselves. If necessary we will topple governments by using outside forces and install a leader of our choice. We will assist them in taking over. We will pay them and encourage them in our efforts to gain power over the natural resources of that country. Gil Noble asked about all this money that they pay to these puppet regimes. The CIA person responded by saying it doesn’t make any difference how much money we pay them, they keep their money in our bank’s, we can take it back whenever we want. When Gil Noble asked about the future plans of the CIA the interviewee responded by saying we have looked carefully into the future and realize that in the end it will come down to the rich against the poor, the have’s against the have-nots, the northern hemisphere against the southern hemisphere. That essentially translates into the Whites against the Blacks. Gil Noble questioned the moral conscience of that approach. The CIA person responded by saying if you cannot stop us from what we are doing we have no respect for you. You cannot find this interview anymore on YouTube it has been removed.

This book is not about solutions, it is about a new mind to face the problems that we see as Black Americans in White America. As a result, there is a continual struggle between White and Black in America. However, we are all Americans and if we fail to resolve the issues of Black and White in America it will only serve to weaken America. If ever there was a time when Americans of all nationalities need to come together to form a more perfect union, it is now.

I conclude this introduction with a quote from the genius mind of one of the members in Grace Evangelical Baptist Church who allowed me to use her quote which I think so powerfully speaks to where we are as African Americans and what are we going to do?

I haven’t and wasn’t going to comment on the Zimmerman trial and verdict . . . but my heart is heavy. As a mother of two amazing young Black men, sister of 3 Black men, an just overall Black male cheerleader, my heart breaks WHENEVER any mother loses her child, whether it be to violence, drugs, the prison system or just nature. My heart is heavy because why are you protesting now?! Why are you angry now?! Where is your anger, your passion for the dozens of boys you walk by on the streets and judge because of their appearance? Where is the protest for the conditions of our education system? Forget the protest and try reaching out to a young person you know. BE the change that you want to see in this world! You want REVENGE?! Save a child who is still here!!! Help raise a change agent, a judge, a lawyer, a teacher! And let’s see if you’re still mad and motivated next weekend.

Shelley Ro

Black

M y first day working in San Quentin Prison was a day and an experience that I neither could nor ever will forget. San Quentin State Prison opened in July of 1852. It is the oldest prison in the state and houses the largest death row for male inmates in the United States. Eldridge Cleaver, a member of the Black Panther Party was an inmate there from 1958 to 1963. Just walking though the main gate with the huge blocks of stone on both sides and arched over the top entrance made you feel like you were entering into something so thick, solid and permanent intended to convey a feeling of solid weight and pressure that is crushing you, a visual, permanent tomb.

Stepping into one of the cell