Letter to Students, Spring 2022

 2 February 2022

Dear Students:

I hope you have had a good start to this New Year. Hope you are also staying warm. Today is Groundhog Day. Did the Groundhog see its shadow? Is spring near?

I have been reading 19^th Century Black Women Writers—a Schomburg Library and Oxford University Press collaboration. Henry Louis Gates Jr. edited the series. Since the books were all published 100 or more years ago, the copyright has expired and we can find many of the books online. One of the authors we will read in class is Mrs. Jarena Lee. She was a Black woman preacher, the first, I think in Richard Allen’s AME church.  Here is a link to Mrs. Lee’s (Feb. 11, 1783 – 1855/7) narrative.[1] It is available at the Internet Archive.

19^th century women, especially Black women, were discriminated against because they were Black. This was the time when slavery was not over, so these free women, led tough lives—and suffered greatly from poverty and sexual violence. Even highly educated women did not do much better economically. Unless they wanted to work cleaning houses for white women for pennies, women like Mrs. Lee had to think of creative ways to earn wages. 

One of these strategies was to write. Most of the women noted here wrote their stories or as in Sojourner Truth’s case, told her story to another for publishing. The women had there books published and sold copies.

Mrs. Jarena Lee published her sermons too. 

Harriet E. Wilson was the first published Black novelist: Our Nig.  I bring your attention to Ms. Wilson’s work because she was a spiritualist – and has a fascinating story.  Dr. Gates in the appendices in the Penguin Random House edition speaks about her life and struggle.  Check it out from the library. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/191882/our-nig-by-harriet-e-wilson/

There are a number of Black women spiritualists profiled in one of the volumes in the Schomburg 19^th Century Black Women Writer’s series. Sojourner Truth’s Narrative and Book of Life is published in a separate volume.  I am sure everyone knows Truth was a preacher too. I found the stories of these Black women who wanted to preach, who were called to preach and were discouraged, yet answered the call nonetheless, fascinating. I hope you do as well.

Most if not all of you are aware of the marvelous Black Church Series Dr. Gates produced last year. We will watch the episode on Black women clergy. Perhaps the pastor at Allen Temple, might be persuaded to join us one evening. Here is a link to a PBS hosted discussion with Gates last year.

I have also been watching quite a few films over the past couple months: Passing based on Nella Larsen’s novel by the same title is about a Black woman, who pretends to be white and misses her other life when she runs into a childhood friend; The Harder They Fall is a Black western with a twist. All the characters were real people, but the story is fictional. I read a collection of early 19^th century biographies, My Soul Has Grown Deep, edited by John Edgar Wideman. One of the narratives was by Nat Love, a cowboy. It was really good. He is in Harder. For anyone who is working with populations who are struggling with addiction or are Adult Children of Alcoholics, this narrative fiction for them.

Wideman’s collection also includes Jarena Lee’s story. Check his book out from the library. I really like his introductions which include biographical sketches of the writers. I have linked to Nat Love and Mrs. Jarena Lee’s books in this letter. All these writers in Wideman’s book tell compelling stories.

Don’t Look Up was also great. A meteor the size of the Empire State Building is headed for Earth and the president tells the public: “Don’t look up,” as she plans her escape. There are multiple ethical dilemmas to explore here and in the other films too.

Back to films (smile).

Lastly, Jeffrey Robinson’s Who We Are: A Chronicle of Race in America, directed by Emily and Sarah Kunstler opens this week in theatres. As the directors weave Civil Rights Lawyer, Jeffrey Robinson’s lectures, personal anecdotes, and interviews with perpetrators, survivors and victims of racial terror violence – we are left with a modern myth of a post-racial America. It does not exist. Completely factual, the numbers don’t lie, yet there is blood dripping from every documents from the Bill of Rights to the US Constitution that legalized the sale and purchase and free labor from African people. It’s the kind of film you should not see alone.

We will be exploring these kinds of documents as well as current events to see what evidence is used to make an argument.  In Robinson’s film, you will note that logic doesn’t matter when someone wants to make a point in his or her favor. In this case, a person stated that slavery had nothing to do with the Civil War. He also said that the Confederate Flag was not a symbol of Black oppression and systemic racial injustice then and now. Facts are often a matter of opinion. I am sure you can think of lots of examples where the lie carries the day, even when people know the truth.

Opinions are welcome here and please bring all of your experience too. Living certainly counts in this class. Your lives are libraries too.

Think whatever you like. Debate is healthy. However, we lead with evidence, facts not fancy. Agreeing with me will not get you a pass or an A, so speak from your heart. Challenge yourself to walk for a moment in another person’s life or situation. Our personal biases stunt our emotional growth and what is egregious about such maligned lives is that we don’t even know we aren’t whole. We can visit spaces and have difficult conversation, yet if this internal excavation is not happening 24/7 for the rest of our lives we will not move past our own surrender to a lower self.

Our humanity is actively challenged all the time and to live fully we have to stay awake and not slip into routine or practices that make other people’s lives harder than they already are. Some people have to work harder to get to the same place other people accept as their birthright. This is why the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is such an important document. Ironically, the idea of a UDHR was first introduced by the Hon. Marcus Mosiah Garvey in August 1920 in a document: Declaration of the Rights of Negro People of the World. The United Nations refused to adopt it; however, in 1948, 28 years later, we see unattributed familiar language.

UDHR takes the racial and national specificity away from what all human beings are entitled to like shelter, safety, education and food—a livelihood. There is no reason why people have to work sick and others are losing their homes.  This pandemic makes human rights issues even more important. (Oh one more film, The First Wave, which looks at who is dying when the pandemic first hit US cities in 2020).  If other countries can provide everyone wages so that everyone can stay home and stay safe, why can’t this nation do more than eke out meager stimulus checks that help, but don’t solve systemic economic disparities between the “essential workers” and everyone else?

You are here at the Leadership Institute at Allen Temple, taking Critical Thinking because ideas are interesting to you. That’s what we do in these spaces—interrogate knowledge. Well you are probably taking these classes because the academic guided pathway you tread placed you here.

Nonetheless, scholars play with ideas.  Scholars think. They think a lot. I remember when I was an undergrad at Holy Names College (now university), I’d think so much in my philosophy classes, I’d get a headache.  I was hungry. Thinking burns calories.

How do we know what we know? Why do I believe what I believe? What didn’t I question this person when he or she said something I now know is untrue?

What is my worldview? What kind of thinker am I: a hedgehog or a fox?

Buckle your seatbelts and get ready for an engaging ride. This semester we will look at the concept “empathy” as well query one of the UDHR from the perspective or point of view not our own. We will squeeze our feet into shoes that don’t feel as comfortable as the ones we wear presently.

I hope you find the class engaging and fun. I can stay a few minutes after class if anyone has a question. You can also email me before class and we can arrange a time to talk. I encourage students to create study groups and help one another.

I have taught at the LIAT two times now. This semester makes three. It was an engaging and fun workshop last January. I am not sure if there are academic resources for students like tutors, but I will ask.  

Peace and Blessings,

Professor Sabir

---

[1]
Other women writers in Spiritual Narratives (The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers) are: Maria W. Stewart (Author), Jarena Lee (Author), Julia A. J. Foote (Author), Virginia W. Broughton (Author), S. E. Houchins (Introduction). (If you are interested in reading other authors, search for these women’s work separately.