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| Perryvilla Island Jan. 23, 2013 |
Black business promotional for Cheers Natural Salon in Lauderhill, Florida
for a 40% discount mention Perryvilla Island for any service. Perms & braids are welcome.
ask for Nadine: 754. 246.0492
http://cheersnatural.net/
Now, I live far away from Florida, and I don't let anyone, but my wife touch, or take care of my hair. But it is important to illustrate, by example, one of the ways to promote Black American businesses anywhere in the United States, and tell why it is important to tell this story.
The Internet provides a way to promote in a mirrored fashion the way Colored folks (Members) had to promote home business during the Neo-Slavery period of American history. There were many challenges others citizens (non-Members) had to face. Whites were known for their intense contradictions, their rages and jealousies. The slightest hint of prosperity exceeding theirs was more than enough for them to harass, hang, burn out, steal from, undercut, or regulate Negro business out of business!
The United States government through to the lower governments were granted immunity for decades as the practice of arresting and gathering Black men off streets for the imaginary and minute misdemeanors to work as laborers in the prison system, or chain gangs, and produce millions of dollars worth of products for American commerce. A Colored man could be walking in nice clothes without a dime in his pocket and be arrested for loitering, vagrancy, or trespassing. Colored men could be sodomized and otherwise tortured before being hung for displaying intelligence, asserting himself, glancing at a white woman, or being successful, or the simple object of a white man's jealousy.
A Colored's life was always challenged by the foibles of an insecure white people. Thus challenged Negroes were always re-inventing themselves, and challenging themselves, and each other to be braver, wiser, more thoughtful, and cunning than their elders, and ancestors.
"Change gonna come," is what the song said.
Segregation commanded attention of the best and the worst of Negroes and Whites. During those times Blacks had to operate on the high of their creativity on every level of their existence, and the wise counsel of Elders and sidekicks had to talk many a Colored man from killing a white man! Negro communities promoted their businesses and expertise was a commodity that could travel from town to town, or state to state. It seems, as I listened to the old timers talk, each trade had a traveling road. Musicians traveled the 'chitlin' circuit', for example, and it could have led to New York, Chicago and a few other places where the money, the venues, and the hip cats lived and played with the best of the best.
One of the old men in my mother's church, Brother Couch, told me stories about his life over and over again, as any good storyteller would. It is why I remember the important ones. In his early days he traveled with his father who was a master bricklayer. His father was so good at his craft it was dangerous for him to stay but so long in any town or city because of the dangerous aspect of white men's jealousies. He was also a good looking man, a smooth talker, and loved the women. "In every town," Brother Couch told me, "my father had women. All them he married cuss it weren't right to have relations with 'em if n you weren't married to them. So, I had a lot of step-mothers!"
"When I was about 12 years old I decided to stay with one of them down South Carolina. (I believe that was the Carolina) I liked her. My father let me stay, and moved on. I bought my first piece of land at 13. Saved up every quarter, and got laughed at, and talked about, but I bought a quarter acre of land. That was the start. The next year I married my wife..."
Brother Couch's stories weaved the Old South from his memories to mine until I understood the relationships between the Coloreds and the Whites were woven skillfully with pain, guilt, anger, manipulation, and skills the other needed, and would either work together for, or pay for it. The relationships were complicated. When Brother Couch left his family to find a place for them in Washington DC he went to his Congressmen.
"I knew how Peckerwoods think. You had to know how white folks think." he continued. "Now we couldn't vote, but them they needed a niggah's support. Didn't like niggas, but they needed us. So, I went to see him, and talked to him in his office. Got him to send for and pay my family's way up here, and got me a job!"
I can't remember the work the old Pecker wood Congressman got him, but it started him off in the political circles of DC that continued until he died in his 80's.
The point I am making is directed at the generation entering and about to enter the job market. They grew up without the Elder's stories to help fill in the vast gaps in their thinking, and understanding. These children were educated by a system determine to undermine their effectiveness, dim the kaleidoscope of their visions, and to dumb down their inherent genius. For many thousands they were successful, but the numbers work another direction. Every generation of Africans born into the American system has produced, and continues to produce children from and committed to excellence in phenomenal ways. This generation is no different. They just know and understand things with far less clarity, and the critical thinking their great grandparents developed. This story is one of many they will need to regain what was taken from them by sales men and educators. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories 5.5.13
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| Jan. 23, 2013 |
That is a low blow in the face of an American cultural tendency to vote against their best interest with silence, indifference, and ignorance of what is occurring across the country. With a cultural tendency in significant parts of the United States to vote against one's best interest based on race comparing Obama to Hitler is ludicrous under the analytical glare of the past administrations, and the conduct of the American public who has largely been allowing the erosion of their rights, and access to work by what they don't know, don't do, don't understand, won't learn, and don't want to see and know.
In short, I am talking about the self-sabotage practiced as a prerequisite of citizenship! That is the culprit. We have what we voted for. - Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories
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