ARTICLES BY RUBY SALES<  Back

Keeping It Real: Black Star / Introduction / Imagine
May 2011

Black Star

I always wanted to be a black star
dazzle the world with my ingenious intellect
so that I might glow on glossy white paper
and live forever
but one night, I saw a big black star fall
and land so hard
that even I felt the pain
then I realized that stars belong in heaven
and black people belong on earth.
- Ruby Sales

Introduction

The documentary “Freedom Riders” sparked for me the realization that E. Franklin Frazier and Vincent Harding are two black historians who best understand that freedom is a collective journey with a collective destination, where individuals and communities become one on this dynamic journey.  No one individual holds the power to move us toward this destination; it is within community that we find the resources, power, and spirit to roll away the stones that halt our movement toward freedom. So, let’s get real and claim our power, rather than giving it away to others who say they stand for us when really they stand for Western cultural, spiritual, and economic imperialism.

Imagine

Imagine a world where we offer our knowledge, passion, time, and energy to finishing the unfinished business of popular domestic and international struggles of the ‘50s through the ‘80s. I don't know about you, but I am distressed at how we continuously divert our energies to defend or blast rich and powerful elites who do not love or value us, and who see us and our young as "light stuff" and expendable waste on the "scales" of life in a technocracy. What if we decide that human rights and collective work to restore human dignity for all of us is a labor that is worthy of our love and commitment in the 21st century?