Florida Congresswoman Frederica Wilson speaks to police and youth attending a 5000 Role Models conference at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida on Nov. 1, 2022. (Jose A. Iglesias/Miami Herald/TNS

By Rep. Frederica S. Wilson

History has a way of disappearing if no one is willing to tell it.

Too often, we celebrate milestones without remembering the struggle that made them possible. We inherit rights without understanding who fought for them. We walk through doors without knowing who had to break them open. That is why I believe every generation has a responsibility to remember, because when history fades, so does our appreciation for what it took to change it.

This is not an endorsement of any candidate. It is a civics lesson. It is a history lesson. Before you cast your ballot, know the story of District 20.

District 20 is more than a congressional district. It is a civil rights victory.

Its story begins with Josiah Thomas Walls, the first Black Congressman from the State of Florida. His election during Reconstruction represented one of the nation’s earliest promises that democracy could become broader, fairer, and more representative. For a brief moment, Black Floridians saw themselves reflected in the halls of Congress.

That promise did not last.

Across the South, white supremacist violence sought to erase the gains of Reconstruction. Terror replaced hope. Intimidation replaced participation. Organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan worked to drive Black Americans from public life and dismantle the political power they had only just begun to build. Josiah Walls was forced from Congress on April 19, 1876, and with his departure, Florida entered one of the darkest chapters in its democratic history.

For the next 117 years, Florida did not elect another Black Member of Congress.

That is longer than any lifetime. Entire generations were born, raised, and buried without ever seeing Black representation from Florida in the United States Congress. Families taught their children to keep believing even when history gave them every reason to lose hope. Black people died. Black blood was shed. Black skulls were cracked beneath the blows of nightsticks. In the rivers of Florida, the water became an unmarked grave for Black Americans whose only demand was the right to vote, to be fairly represented, and to have their voices heard. Churches became organizing centers. Neighborhoods became movements. Ordinary citizens are still carrying, to this day, extraordinary burdens because they refused to accept that this was permanent.

The story of District 20 is, in many ways, the story of America itself. It is a story of extraordinary progress born from extraordinary sacrifice. It is also a reminder that progress has never followed a straight line. Every advance has been met by resistance. Every victory has required vigilance.

Then, in 1993, history turned.

Corrine Brown, Carrie Meek, and Alcee Hastings were elected to Congress, ending a silence that had lasted 117 years. Their elections did more than fill three seats. They restored a voice that had been absent from Florida’s congressional delegation for more than a century. They reminded the nation that the arc bends towards justice.

Congressman Alcee Hastings would go on to represent what is now Congressional District 20 for many years, carrying forward that legacy of service and advocacy.

District 20 is the legacy of those who refused to be erased.

It is a seat paid for by generations of Black sacrifice.

It exists because countless Black people challenged barriers that once seemed impossible to overcome. Black people organized when organizing carried real risks. Black people marched when marching invited retaliation. Black people voted when others worked tirelessly to deny them that right. Black people understood that democracy is strongest when every community has an opportunity to be represented and every citizen has a voice.

White nationalists marched through our nation’s capital carrying Confederate flags on the Fourth of July just to remind us that Black people cannot be comfortable. Even after more than 400 years of slavery, we still have to continue the fight. The fight for our freedom did not end. It simply became our generation’s responsibility.

That is why the history of District 20 matters.

If Black lives matter, then the history of Black representation matters too.

Representation is not merely symbolic. It shapes conversations and brings lived experiences into the rooms where decisions are made. A representative cannot erase history, but a representative can ensure that history is remembered.

The story of District 20 is also the story of America’s promise and its failures. It reminds us how difficult it has been to expand democracy and how much determination it has taken to make our institutions more representative of the people they serve. It teaches us that progress is not inevitable. It is built, protected, and renewed by each generation.

That is why history deserves our attention.

As the highest-ranking Black elected official in the State of Florida, I have a responsibility to tell you the truth. I know what our ancestors endured to earn a voice in these halls of power, and I know how quickly that voice can be taken away. I know what it costs to lose representation because our history has already lived through that pain.

That is why I am imploring you to vote like your future depends on it, because it does.

We deserve a seat at every table where decisions about our lives, our children, our communities, and our future are made. That seat was not given to us. It was earned through generations of Black sacrifice.

At a time when President Trump and many Republicans are working to undo decades of hard-fought progress, we need a fighter in Congress who understands the lived experiences of Black communities, who knows the history that brought us here, who recognizes what is at stake, and who will never hesitate to defend our right to be heard, represented, and included wherever decisions about our future are made.

So, I am asking you to do more than vote.

I am asking you to honor those who never lived to see this moment because freedom has always demanded participation.

That future is now in your hands.

Every generation must choose whether it will preserve it or surrender it.

When you enter that voting booth, remember that you are carrying the hopes and voices of those who were denied one.

You are carrying the prayers of those who never stopped believing that America could live up to its promise.

Do not leave that legacy behind.

Because District 20 is more than a seat in the United States Congress, it is the seat that Black history built.

Now it is our responsibility to make sure history never has to build it again.

Courtesy of the Westside Gazette

Based on reporting by Jacksonville Free Press.

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It was like a “Tale of Two Cities”: The best of times and the Worst of Times.

It was the best of times for the hundreds of immigrants that were sworn in as U.S. naturalized citizens across this great land. Their swearing in was a manifestation of the provisions of the 14th Amendment creating citizenship status for persons not born in this country; a provision of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution just as important as citizenship by birth. This is the provision that President Trump tried to get the U.S. Supreme Court to nullify, the Birthright Citizenship case which the Court rejected.

While many recited the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence words stating that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed….” Many among us are being denied those very rights today as evidenced by armed troops on the streets of our cities and Federal agents killing and imprisoning immigrants, citizens and anyone who appears to be out of step with this administration.

The celebrations, parades and millions of dollars spent on fireworks left many of us to remember to question those events with the immortal words of Federick Douglas when he raised his rhetorical question during the 1852 76th anniversary celebration of America’s independence; “WHAT TO THE NEGRO (BLACK PEOPLE) IS YOUR FOURTH OF JULY….? TODAY ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY FOUR YEARS LATER, the question is

still all too real. For those of us concerned about the police state and kingship that Donald Trump would establish, let us take heart in the fact that today we have tools that Douglas did not have. In addition to the Constitution with its 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, the only thing we lack to make change is the will to get involved and do so. Let’s start right where we live. Let’s start with the issue of making sure that each of us can vote, register and prepare to do so. Let’s take another look at how we are spending the few dollars we have. Let’s take another look at who we can help as a part of our collective and prepare to use our numbers like never before in all that we do. Let’s create our own fireworks that will last all year long with our involvement and collective agreement to help ourselves before we expect others to do so, and in all this, let’s make a lasting reality out of the change that Frederick Douglas envisioned.

Based on reporting by Milwaukee Community Journal.

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By Rev. Dr. Heber Brown III

I often look to our Ancestors to guide my service to the Black community today. They connect me to the movement that has been and is ongoing. Recently, I have been reflecting on two such inspiring Ancestors: Malcolm X and Queen Mother Audley Moore.

These two leaders at the vanguard of Pan-Africanism and the reparations movement understood the importance of securing land to build power. As Malcolm X said, “Revolution is based on land. Land is the basis of all independence. Land is the basis of freedom, justice and equality.” Queen Mother Moore, in a 1975 speech, declared, “We believe African captives in the USA will not have freedom until they have land of their own.”

Through their wisdom and the examples of so many others, we see how Black-owned land is a source of cultural memory and spiritual grounding. When we hold land, we find freedom.

I learned this firsthand through my great-grandparents’ lives “down the country” in rural Virginia. That land was a respite of sorts from the ravages of racial capitalism found in the city. It was an oasis amid a society that burdens Black people in so many ways. The whole family benefited from having significant landholdings to care for themselves. There was pride in self-sufficiency.

Economic sovereignty joins these attributes that land gives us. Since Black people have lost land — due to racial violence, the discriminatory impact of “heirs’ property” and exclusion from banking and farm programs — our overall wealth has decreased. According to the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, Black people owned 16 to 19 million acres of rural land in 1910, compared to less than 3 million acres today.

This is partly why I founded The Black Church Food Security Network. Pairing Black farmers with churches who own land ties together food justice, community and freedom. While food pantries and food drives are necessary efforts to fulfill an immediate need for those who experience food insecurity, they are not enough. Securing land, infrastructure and the means of production is the key to overcoming food apartheid in our communities. It must also be a primary component of reparations.

African leaders, led by President John Dramani Mahama of Ghana, recently coordinated a United Nations resolution that finally declared that the trafficking of enslaved Africans was the “gravest crime against humanity,” urging the need for reparations as the next step. There is no peace in the world, leaders said, without healing and reparative justice for Africans across the diaspora.

This closely echoes the words of Brother Malcolm; he said our redress should be seen as a violation of human rights, and now the global record acknowledges it as such.

Though further support and action is still required, the UN resolution marks an important step towards the goals of our Ancestors. Queen Mother Moore long advocated for “the long overdue debt of forty acres and two mules, repay in land.” Malcolm X similarly strongly advocated for reparations for land for Black Americans, as the U.S. government has shown is possible.

Both of these leaders sought to bring the issues of land and justice in front of the UN. Now that those issues are there, we hold the hope of progress.

As Queen Mother Moore asserted, our spirits were never removed from Africa. We are still connected to that land and heritage. We have achieved much, but reparations — through land and other means — are required to be truly free from exploitation.

All roads lead back to land ownership. Colonizers erroneously see land as a portal to access resources, from precious minerals, to oil, timber and even people. For the rest of us, land signals security and communal self-reliance.

So, farmers, churches and communities continue working hand-in-hand. This is the unfinished work of our Ancestors. It is up to us to continue their legacy of liberation through collective land ownership.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the writer and not necessarily those of the AFRO.

The post The basis of freedom: Reclaiming land as an act of liberation appeared first on AFRO American Newspapers.

Based on reporting by Afro-American – Washington.

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