By Angela Wright, December 4, 2018 — Yesterday I came across a book on my bookshelf. I don’t know who it belongs to. It could have been my daughter’s, son’s, or my husband’s. As I scanned through the book, I found that it spoke of slavery. It told how Africans were brought as captives to America. They were shackled, chained and packed by the thousands on ships. Families were separated and sold to different slave owners far away from each other.
When some of the captives gained their freedom, they managed to return to Africa where they settled in an area that they named Liberia. They sang a song of “How I Got Over.” I thought about that song and how it speaks to me. How growing up on a farm where there was segregation we couldn’t go to certain places and attended all Black schools. There was no kind of integration. I sometimes wonder how I got over that. Right now, I have no ill feelings about how it was back then.
I have been in many meetings where my husband and I are the only Black people in the groups of 500 people. I think about when President Obama was elected as the first Black President. We were in Virginia for a month. The day after the election, no one said a word about the election. You would have thought that there hadn’t been an election the day before.
I am so glad that I had gotten over the way I was brought up. You knew where the line was drawn and you stayed on your side. How I got over: I can say it is because of my belief in God.