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Viewpoint
True Freedom: None Are Free Until All Are Free!
by Makeda Dread Cheatom
All my life, I was searching for freedom. When I was young, I tossed and turned in my sleep over freedom. I realized that as an African American, I had very little freedom in this country. On TV, I saw a youth from Chicago, Emmett Till, being murdered for “whistling at a white woman.” School and church bombings and the murders of civil rights workers were also abundant at that time. Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney, the young men who were lynched for registering black people in the South to vote brought big media attention, later inspiring a film called, Mississippi Burning. The fact that black people could not vote blew me away. Then came the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X—how could I ever think I was free?
Racism in my own community in San Diego was also rampant, back in the day when the police arrested you if you were in a certain area. I questioned freedom and always wanted to go back to Africa. I didn’t feel at home here in the USA, let alone in my hometown where we lived in fear.
Yet I always felt a sense of home in Indigenous communities. Mexican people and their cultural identity were and still are a blessing to me. Learning the ways of the Native Americans, the keepers of this land, also gave me a better sense of home. My Choctaw blood made my entrance into the community even more meaningful. I learned about culture from many immigrants who have given our country her richness. I learned the ways of my ancestors here in America on my father’s side, the Gullah People of the Georgia Sea Islands. I journeyed to St. Helena and experienced the Gullah People struggling to preserve their language and direct connection with their African ancestry. They had the same old story of their land being taken away. This was the place where Mother Harriet Tubman crossed so many slaves to freedom. In Beaufort County Georgia, I stared at the water that she waded through. I pondered again: Where is our freedom in America?
Still, I longed for a home in my head, my soul and my body. Do I return to Africa to be free? Even with all the pain and strife caused by the colonial system that has torn her apart, there is still a richness there. I realized that after slavery, African Americans were in limbo because although we were taken away from our original land, America was now our home too.
We’re all standing on the shoulders of African American giants that built this country. My mother was a maid all her life and my father was a shoeshine boy for many years. My grandfather was born into slavery. Both of my parents picked cotton in the fields in the South. Should I stay here where my ancestors suffered and died for me to be free in this nation? Where blacks, whites, Jews, and all races marched for my freedom here on Earth?
In the search for freedom, I looked everywhere. As a little girl, I grew up with a missionary who came to our house. The missionaries taught all the young African American children of the wonders of Yeshua, Christianity. As a teenager, I converted to Catholicism. Later I studied compassion and the nature of suffering. I started reading philosophical books to understand and find my freedom.
One day I read Frederick Douglass’ famous speech about the Fourth of July and freedom:
“Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.”
With African Americans making up over half of the prison population, how could we be free? Something is wrong. The chains might be off our bodies, but they’re still on our minds!
Knowing that freedom had to come from within, I started to realize that my soul was in bondage, not my physical body. I went on to meet a great lady named Beulah Smith, who was teaching Transcendental Meditation in Coronado, CA. What a wonderful lady who saved my life! I made some changes and started meditating. My militant separatist views melted into meditation and understanding myself. Certain fears that I’d had since childhood were transforming.
I was just coming to understand that the Olmecs were black people, here before Columbus or any other conquistador. The Olmecs came and they had a Hopi connection. My ancestors were already here in the Americas; their blood intermingled and flowed together here.
So I am Indigenous from America. My ancestors are here and they will be discovered. As the Dogon Tribe of Mali have spoken of the Blue Star, Sirius, the Native American Hopi talk about the same star. The similarities among the cultures that were here long ago are rising in this new age and in this new time. I realize that we are a Global Family and our survival depends on our connection. None are free until all are free.
When Barack Obama became President of the United States, I unpacked my bags for the first time. How could this happen—a black President? I never thought I would unpack my bags!
I sought truth through many disciplines. After years of searching, the door opened. I realized that true freedom was within me and that no one could take that away—not even the greedy, self-serving folks that have put this planet into chaos.
I also discovered that old beliefs, conditioning and programming are barriers to freedom. They are the ego’s identification with the part of your personality that feeds the separation from the whole and the fear of change and impermanence. The Earth is going through a great purification on its way to the year 2012. And we all can rejoice as we move into peace, compassion, love and tolerance. Here is the thought to remember always: All are hungry until all are fed. None are free until all are free. Harambe!
Makeda Dread Cheatom is a radio and television personality and is the Executive Director of the WorldBeat Cultural Center, a non-profit organization that is healing the world through music, art, dance, technology and culture. Contact her at Makeda@worldbeatcenter.org or learn more at www.worldbeatcenter.org, www.worldbeatglobal.net, or www.oneworldreggae.com.