Letter to My Daughter - Maya Angelou [14]
We have asked questions down a pyramid of years and given answers, which our children memorize, and which have become an integral part of the spoken American history.
Patrick Henry remarked, “I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death.”
George Moses Horton, the nineteenth century poet, born a slave, said, “Alas, and was I born for this, to wear this brutish chain? I must slash the handcuffs from my wrists and live a man again.”
“The thought of only being a creature of the present and the past was troubling. I longed for a future too, with hope in it. The desire to be free, awakened my determination to act, to think, and to speak.”
—FREDERICK DOUGLASS
The love of democracy motivated Harriet Tubman to seek and find not only her own freedom, but to make innumerable trips to the slave South to gain the liberty of many slaves and instill the idea into the hearts of thousands that freedom is possible.
Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Democratic Freedom Party were standing on the shoulders of history when they acted to unseat evil from its presumed safe perch on the backs of the American people. It is fitting to honor the memory of Fannie Lou Hamer and surviving members of the Mississippi Democratic Freedom Party. For their gifts to us, we say thank you.
The human heart is so delicate and sensitive that it always needs some tangible encouragement to prevent it from faltering in its labor. The human heart is so robust, so tough, that once encouraged it beats its rhythm with a loud unswerving insistency. One thing that encourages the heart is music. Throughout the ages we have created songs to grow on and to live by. We Americans have created music to embolden the hearts and inspire the spirit of people all over the world.
Fannie Lou Hamer knew that she was one woman and only one woman. However, she knew she was an American, and as an American she had a light to shine on the darkness of racism. It was a little light, but she aimed it directly at the gloom of ignorance.
Fannie Lou Hamer’s favorite was a simple song that we all know. We Americans have sung it since childhood…
“This little light of mine,
I’m going to let it shine,
Let it shine,
Let it shine,
Let it shine.”
Senegal
Samia was a famous actress from Senegal who dressed in glamorous flowing clothes. I met her on a trip to Paris. She and her French husband, Pierre, were members of a group of artistic intellectuals who drank barrels of cheap wine and who discussed everything and everybody, from Nietzsche to James Baldwin.
I fitted into the Parisian assemblage comfortably. We all preened about our youth and talent and intelligence as if we had created the gifts ourselves, for ourselves.
Samia said she and her husband lived most of the year in Dakar, the capital of Senegal, and I would always be welcome in their home. Years passed before I did visit Senegal, but the telephone number they had given me still worked. I was invited for dinner.
I entered a beautifully furnished living room to the sound of people laughing and glasses clinking with ice. The guests were integrated. As many Europeans as Africans were enjoying a full-blown party. Samia introduced me to a small group near the door and stayed talking to us until a server offered me a drink.
I wandered from group to group. Samia’s first language was Serer but I did not speak Serer and the Senegalese accent made the French which was spoken, hard for me to comprehend. I passed an open door where people stood along the wall, careful not to step on the beautiful Oriental rug in the center of the room.
I had known a woman