I saw no African people in the printed and illustrated Sunday school lessons. I began to suspect at this early age that someone had distorted the image of my people. My long search for the true history of African people the world over began.
Interpretation
The quote reflects a realization of the absence of accurate representations of African people in education, prompting a quest for historical truth.
John Henrik Clarke expresses a profound concern about the lack of representation of African individuals in educational materials, specifically in Sunday school lessons. This absence prompted him to question the narratives he was presented with and led to a lifelong pursuit of understanding and uncovering the true history of African people. The quote highlights the importance of accurate representation and the impact of education on identity and self-awareness.
In practice
In a speech about cultural representation, one could mention this quote to highlight the necessity of diverse historical narratives.
As the eldest son of an Alabama sharecropper family, I was constantly troubled by a collage of North American southern behaviors and notions in reference to the inhumanity of people. There were questions that I did not know how to ask but could, in my young, unsophisticated way, articulate a series of answers.
Anytime someone says your God is ugly and you release your God and join their God, there is no hope for your freedom until you once more believe in your own concept of the 'deity.'
The Europeans not only colonialized most of the world, they began to colonialize information about the world and its people. In order to do this, they had to forget, or pretend to forget, all they had previously known abut the Africans.
I understood that my family was rich in love but would probably never own the land my father, John, dreamed of owning. My mother, Willie Ella Mays Clarke, was a washerwoman for poor white folks in the area of Columbus, Georgia where the writer Carson McCullers once lived.
Africans in the United States must remember that the slave ships brought no West Indians, no Caribbeans, no Jamaicans or Trinidadians or Barbadians to this hemisphere. The slave ships brought only African people and most of us took the semblance of nationality from the places where slave ships dropped us off.
The rise of African nations concurrent with the spread of the Nation of Islam and the civil rights movement gave black America a burst of pride over and above anything they had had since the decline of the movement of Marcus Garvey.
We wish to learn all the curious, outlandish ways of all the different countries, so that we can "show off" and astonish people when we get home. We wish to excite the envy of our untraveled friends with our strange foreign fashions which we can't shake off.
Real knowledge, like everything else of value, is not to be obtained easily. It must be worked for, studied for, thought for, and, more that all, must be prayed for.
Tell them stories. They need the truth you must tell them true stories, and everything will be well, just tell them stories.
With the changing economy, no one has lifetime employment. But community colleges provide lifetime employability.
When entire companies embrace a growth mindset, their employees report feeling far more empowered and committed; they also receive far greater organizational support for collaboration and innovation.
If you're curious, you'll probably be a good journalist because we follow our curiosity like cats.
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