A Prayer for Mother Africa’s Children
I pray to Thee, Almighty God, for children of
Mother Africa—
Those cast into this
barren land, now destitute in demons’ hands.
My people—Africa’s lost
clan—the humans who first roamed the earth...
Who reigned as kings and queens with wealth in
civilizations that they built.
Whose monuments and noble shrines encompassed cultures,
far and wide;
Whose towering, spiraling pyramids even now confound the
Western mind.
My people, who as noble
slaves, built this nation—phase to phase.
Armed with wisdom of their past; great expertise, these
slaves relayed;
Yet, their own blood, and sweat, and tears... were the rewards
this nation paid.
My people, who, now,
find our race indigent, dispossessed, victimized...
Devoid of knowledge, wisdom, and even the truth of
ourselves, our heritage....
We know NOT who we are:
We know NOT our innate power, potential, people-hood...
We meander aimlessly in this hostile nation...
Our minds, hearts, psyches, souls...stolen...stripped
from our beings;
Our self-esteems, self-direction, self-motivation...
virtually, nonexistent;
Our personal assets...miniscule—
--white wealth ...20 times the value
of black wealth;
--95% of the millions of acres of
land our ancestors owned...
Reverted to whites, based on white
people’s laws.
We are an impoverished,
programmed, powerless, helpless, hopeless people;
In the midst of a vast sea of people with varying
sensibilities—
Most ...who carry within their psyches their own distorted
Notions of who we are, ranging from
Good will, ambivalence, and paranoia;
To benign neglect and ingrained
prejudices;
To white superiority complexes;
To
conservative ideologies and Tea Party sensibilities;
From White Nationalism to actively
pursuing initiatives to undermine black
Black people’s abilities.
I pray for my people’s perilous
predicament: We know NOT who we are!
However, You know who
we are, Lord—
We are your people—the children of Mother Africa.
We lost our way in the
midst of this demon-infested nation;
But we are still your
children, Lord; we are still the beautiful, brilliant,
Awesomely gifted children of Mother Africa.
Lord, you know how this
nation deceived our people—
They stole us from our homeland against our wills;
They entrapped us, shackled and bound us in chains...
packed us, like sardines in a can,
and crammed us
in the bellies of ships, where we
smoldered in filth and stench...
in abject abominable circumstances
for months.
And, Lord, when we
finally arrived, barely alive, on the shores of America;
They put us on auction blocks and began
inspecting us as if we were animals.
And then, Lord, they
started separating us—
brothers from sisters, husbands from wives, mothers from
children...
We had never known such heartache and misery and agony...
Then, they threw us
into slavery,
Made us live in barn-like shacks... like animals,
And eat left-over scraps, slop... from their
tables;
They forced us to build this entire nation—to dig the ditches
and trenches,
clear the forests, build roads and
railroads, cultivate and harvest the land—
We built this nation’s total
infrastructure.
For over 200 years, this nation refused to pay my people one
dime
For our diligent...
relentless... tedious... work;
And even now, black wealth is virtually
nothing, compared to white wealth.
Lord you know how they
whipped, and flogged, and beat us;
How they maimed, castrated and hanged us—brutally tortured
us;
Even now, our prisons are overcrowded with mostly black inmates.
You know how they raped
and impregnated our women and little girls,
Then made slaves out of their own interracial children.
You know how they
killed our spirits—our self-esteem and self-worth—
They even made some of us ashamed of being Mother Africa’s
children—
To this very 21st century!
Lord, you know how they
cheated us— thwarted our attempts at progress,
Denied us opportunities, in the name of the “sanctity of
segregation...”
Lord, you know how hard
they worked us for no pay...
How the robbed us in all respects—
Educationally, mentally, psychologically,
spiritually, economically...
They robbed us of our
innate genius—of the truth about our own people-hood.
Lord, they stole
everything we had—even our sanity and sense of self!
It was like having our
very souls snatched—like raw, blood-curdling flesh—
From our bodies
By day and night, sheer
torture and terror have been our plight over 400 years.
We have been injured so
badly, Lord, that we know NOT who we are;
We come to you as your
very own people, Lord, pleading, praying for mercy.
Teach us the lessons of
Mother Africa all over again.
Impart into our spirits
your Truth, wisdom, and direction...one more time, Lord.
Enable us to regain the
capacity to be the beings you created us to be.
We are
lost...struggling amidst a state of affliction, loss, devastation....
Have mercy on us,
Lord.
We pray for these
blessings in Jesus’ name. Amen.
By Theressa G. Wesley
6-15-13, 12:02 a.m.
