God's Chullin' Gots Black History

from anovagrrl - Sunday, February 08, 2004
accessed 1198 times

Prissy McQueen sits with me at the Friends Meeting House on Sunday mornings. She has something she wanted to share with "the children of the children." If you aren't religious, please don't be put off by Prissy's way of talking. It's her culture.

I done prayed this mornin’ and I is ready to speak of the days when Massa Dave ran the plantation, and God‘s chullin' was mighty sore afflicted by the slavers' lash. I do testify that the truth the Lord gimme ‘bout those days is not mine to claim, but the teaching of Brother Minister Malcolm X.

Now those of us what cling heart and soul to the Lord need not fear to listen and judge whether the servant of Allah has spoke the truth ‘bout what it is that cause God’s chullin’ to suffer though they be free now from the auction block and the slavers' lash.

Brother Minister Malcolm X say, It ain’t nuthin’ to bein' free if’n yore mind ain’t free. He say there is this slave mind what causes God’s chullin’ to be back on the plantation with Massa Dave. He ‘splain how it wuz back then with the house negras and the field negras. The house negras, which is what I iz, they ate and drank in Massa’s house. They learned the ways of them fine ladies and gents, so’s they could be proper han’maids and servants fo’ they massas.

While all the time we house negras was well-fed and maybe even learnin’ to read (when little Massa Jon and Missy Deb was kindly disposed to share they books and such), them pore ‘ole field negras was livin’ like beasts with the plowin’ and plantin’ and bringin’ in of crops. They was a dirty, nappy-headed bunch, them field negras was, and we house negras got to thinkin’ we was better than our own blood out there pickin' and shuckin' in the fields. We house negras could taste the milk and honey of the Promised Land up there on the hill with Massa Dave.

So when them Yankees came and Mr. Lincoln said we was all free to go, us house negras thought, well, we thought maybe we might jest go on servin’ Massa Dave by keeping them dirty black field hands from comin’ up and gettin’ they fair share in the promised land. We got that slave mind, you see, that says we is somehow better off actin’ like Massa Dave. The dirty secret, says Brother Minster Malcolm X, is that some of us house negras is really Massa’s Dave’s colored kin. He says this right out loud, and he is one fine, high-yellow house negra hisself!

But God’s chullin’ don’t have to take my word for this thing 'bout the dark-skinned field negras and the light-skinned house negras, and how Massa Dave’s legacy is to keep us from ALL from sharin’ the dream together.

Brother Minister Malcolm X say, We do God nor ourselves no honor actin' like we got nuthin’ better to do with our black asses than get back up on the auction block and sell ourselves for a mess of pottage. Ya’ll can read this fo’ yo’self in the Brother Minister's autobiography, and do yourself the honor of celebratin’ yer black history.