During Black History Month, I Know Favorites

 by Sally Dugman

I have favorites for this month celebrating Blacks in the USA. There are about ten of them because they are me and I am them.

Here is one:

“Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would cost me millions of dollars. But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality. If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail, so what? We’ve been in jail for 400 years.” ― Muhammad Ali

On Saint John’s Island, I was visiting a former slave plantation. It is characterized here:

Annaberg Sugar Plantation

Historical landmark in the United States Virgin IslandsOpen

I waved my family forward with my hand and said that I’d join our group later. Then they went forward and I stayed back.

I was sitting at the place wherein slaves slept out in the open. Gorgeous place looking out on the Caribbean waters.

I dug my hands there in the soil and then went deeper. I was then satisfied that I got cells or something less whole than cells of the slaves under my nails. Their cells belong to me, I thought. Then I got up from my sitting place and joined my family. Indeed I was carrying the remnants of others with me.

I can’t help myself since I have so much sympathy for hurt others. So I carry then ideologically with me. They are under my nails, for example.

Some of the same terribleness was handled in an awful way by a plantation and slave owner. He let loose not indigenous poisonous snakes on another plantation to kill slaves.

Opps, they proliferated and came onto his land to kill his workers. Duh for the outcome! What a stupid-head he was!

So he then bought Asian mongoose animals to kill snakes. They are still on the island today and even eat birds, as well as other creatures like indigenous lizards, eggs and more.

I saw one. It was a sneaky, fast creature. So the best that I have is holding the slaves and others close to my heart.

Sally Dugman lives in MA, USA