3) Freedom: The African Legacy in the Americas

WE HONOR OUR ANCESTORS
The history of the United States presented as a story of freedom and opportunity is promoted as a model for the world. We and our ancestors defined individual freedom, a core principle of the nation written about in the founding documents of the United States. The African legacy in the United States, being one of overcoming inhumanity and enslavement, has tested the lofty concepts of freedom and serves as the defining proof that makes it, human and civil rights real for every American man, woman and child.  

The American colonial revolution to escape the tyranny of the British, the leading power in the world at the time and the bounty of a culture of enslavement and systematic dehumanization of Africans established the United States. Africans along with the indigenous tribal nations of North America, were to be a human sacrifice to the new nation but the Civil War ended slavery and sends Africans into a new phase of their struggle to proof and define the realities of freedom and human rights for all Americans. This part of the the African legacy in the United States is essential to the founding principles of the country. Without the African experience and victories the concept of the United States would not be a reality.

The African legacy of defining freedom is obviously of paramount significance to the United States but Africans have also created and transformed culture in the United States into a unique and dynamic force attracting people from around the world. The language, music and cultural expression of the United States was and is given a unique voice and character by ingenuity, creativity and distinct culture of Africans in the Americas.

So with pride in our own selves individually and our own people collectively across the African diaspora, we honor our ancestors and their work, their wisdom, their instincts and culture, their accomplishments, the specific and significant contributions and leadership, known and unknown, they and we have provided  to the Americas and the world.  WE HONOR OUR ANCESTORS.

1) We Honor Our Ancestors

WE HONOR OUR ANCESTORS
In honor of those of us (our ancestors) individually and collectively, who were taken from Africa to be brought to the Americas, let us center ourselves and with focused purpose recognize them. We honor the millions of named and unnamed mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters, who were separated from their homeland, culture and language. To those who did not survive the "middle passage" across the Atlantic ocean, due to the crass inhumanity, raw brutality, and the heartlessness of their captors, to those who were killed in attempts to free themselves and return home, to those who died from sickness or fear, and heart break, let us recognize and honor them solemnly with purpose. Let us recognize and know that as our ancestors are a essential part of our past, and they remain a vial part of our present and and future.

                                            http://www.adinkra.org/htmls/adinkra/nyawu.htm

In honor of those Africans who survived the "middle passage" and arrived in the Americas, let us honor them individually and collectively recognizing the deliberate and inhumane, physical, psychological, spiritual treatment they (we) constantly endured being violated as if we were less than human beings for many generations and centuries and yet survived and overcame this shameless brutality. Let us recognize their (our) constant fight, resistance, and many victories in overcoming this treatment and our ongoing self-healing into whole, honorable, respected, talented, and prosperous men, women and families.

In honor of our mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters who day to day, then and now, do the seemingly mundane to maintain self, and create a sense of connection and family between us; who protect themselves and earn respect in the face of gross inhumanity and disrespect while recovering, restoring, redefining, recreating and sustaining a unique and fundamentally African culture here in the Americas. Individually and collectively we honor our ancestors.

In honor of those of our ancestors, individually and collectively, who accomplished great things in the endeavors of humanity; family, science, education, theology, leadership, the arts, athletics and more, pushing through, past, and over sub-human designations, enslavement, discrimination, injustice and physical and psychological oppression such that our experiences and hard fought victories defined freedom itself in the United States and in the world and further defined American culture as unique, dynamic and desirable across the world. We recognize and sacredly value the legacy of these, our African ancestors and their struggle advancement and great accomplishments in the United States and the Americas. 

Captive in a culture of inhumanity, oppression, and enslavement, that held Africans as socially and legally less than human required that we constantly work to protect ourselves and our relationships to each other, that we lift our own humanity in every way possible. We and our ancestors did and do these things as Africans, this is the only way we could possibly be human in the face of inhumanity. In our families, in our spiritual lives in our cultural expression and in our souls our humanity is expressed through being fundamentally African in the heart of America. So with pride in our own selves individually and our own people collectively, across the African diaspora, WE HONOR OUR ANCESTORS we honor our ancestors, their work, their wisdom and accomplishments for sustaining our humanity as Africans in the Americas. We also commit ourselves to continuously honoring our ancestors and to sustaining our humanity as Africans in the Americas and the world.

2) Delivering Honor and Respect To Those Who Have Come Before Us & Those Here Now

http://www.adinkra.org/htmls/adinkra/wofo.htm

In creating the African Ancestral Legacy in America blog I am hoping we will advance African inspired culture(s) through sharing, learning together through a high and positive sense of self, the sacredness of our ancestors and  of all life. 

We are a diverse people, we have many perspectives and points of views but if there is one thing we as Africans share in common culturally, it is honoring our ancestors. So I say let us do it well on this site.

I ask that each word shared on this site be done in honor of and with proper respect to the spirit of our ancestors, their contributions to the world, the suffering they endured in surviving day to day, and in lifting and contributing significantly to the world. 

                                                  

In addition to showing respect for them, let us also honor and show respect for ourselves in every way on this site.