“As long as the mind is enslaved, the body can never be free. Psychological freedom, a firm sense of self esteem, is the most powerful weapon against the long night of physical slavery. No Lincolnian Emancipation Proclamation or Johnsonian Civil Rights Bill can totally bring this kind of freedom. The Negro will only be free when he reaches down to the inner depths of his own being and signs with the pen and ink of assertive manhood his own Emancipation Proclamation.”
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Two Christian organizations in New Haven joined in an effort to promote healing from the emotional legacies of enslavement within the African American community last month.
The St. Luke’s Community Healing Ministry and Christian Community Action co-sponsored “The Emotional Emancipation of Black People,” a conversation and healing service held on a Saturday morning in October. The leaders say that despite the one hundred thirty-three years since the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation eliminated physical enslavement, the legacy of slavery still binds African Americans to self-destructive attitudes about themselves and their relationship to America.
“It is clear [Black Americans] still suffer mightily from some of the devastating effects” of the legacy of slavery, Reverend Victor Rogers told an audience of more than one hundred who attended the service hosted at the historic St. Luke’s Episcopal Church of New Haven.
Lack of emphasis on education, low achievement and the breakdown of moral values, instigated by slaveholders, are some of the present day effects of hundreds of years of oppression, he said. “Though we know we are as capable as any other groups we still lag behind. We are here today to embrace the Christian power of healing,” said Rev. Rogers, St. Luke’s rector.
The service inaugurated the Community Healing Network, a collaborative movement among community organizations dedicated to creating safe spaces for the spiritual and emotional healing of Black people. In a written message, Rev. Bonita Grubbs, executive director of Christian Community Action, and Rev. Rogers said that through the network they seek to spark an “emotional emancipation” from lingering negative attitudes which directly affect Black people’s destiny.
As director of Christian Community Action, an agency serving some of New Haven’s neediest citizens, Rev. Bonita Grubbs told the audience she has observed the debilitating affect of internalized negative attitudes every day. “I’ve seen many people accepting the lowest level [of personal achievement.] They live below their inherent [potential] because that is what they are told they deserve,” she said.
The co-sponsors said that many of the problems plaguing the Black community “are rooted in the lie of Black inferiority first told centuries ago to justify the dehumanization and enslavement of African people.” They said too many “of our church members” are victims of domestic violence, drug abuse and gang violence.
Rev. Grubbs said that Christian power is redemptive, turning negativity to encouragement and inferiority to positive views of one’s self and one’s community.
The service included a call and response prayer for emancipation, a reading about the brutal treatment of an enslaved girl, Mary Prince, and a symbolic act of washing away the personal pain of enslavement when each person in the audience walked to the altar to drop a stone representing suffering into a large clear vase of water. Three community leaders also addressed the audience during the program, commenting on the penetration of negative attitudes among children and lifting up the need for community healing.
Enola Aird, founder of The Motherhood Project, gave an example of how negative attitudes sown over hundreds of years still shape Black Americans’ ways of thinking, including children’s attitudes. She cited a recent study in which twenty-one teenaged Black girls participated. When given a choice between white dolls and black dolls, fifteen of the girls preferred the white dolls over the black dolls.
“This is a small example of a big problem: too many children still do not love themselves,” Aird said.
“The diabolical genius of white enslavement convinced us of some very wrong but powerful views,” she said. These views “undermine our ability to love ourselves and to love each other. This requires [Black people] to be aggressive about dispelling these ways of thinking in themselves,” Aird said.
Dr. Charles Morgan, chairman of the psychiatry department at Bridgeport Hospital, cited another undermining attitude among African Americans that impedes healing. “There is a myth that we take care of our own; therefore, [many Black people believe] it is betrayal to seek professional mental health,” Dr. Morgan said. The distrust of mental health care is born out of historical experience in which psychiatrists “misdiagnosed or degraded Blacks,” he said.
Rev. Jerry Streets, the chaplain at Yale’s Battell Chapel, drew upon the profound thinking of Dr. W.E.B. DuBois. He cited DuBois’ emphasis on “our story, our song and our spirit” as a source of strength and inspiration. The African American stories of survival and endurance in America hold useful application to African American healing. Rev. Streets said a self-esteem action plan is called for in order to take care of the whole person, physically, mentally, spiritually.
“A self-esteem action plan puts us in a frame of mind to consider our possibilities and to exercise our potential to live authentically, without shame,” he said. “We must reclaim our birth stories and continue to give those stories to our children,” Rev. Streets said.
Audience comments touched on several areas where African Americans, they said, must be responsible for their social improvement. They include increased civic participation—attending aldermanic and board of education meetings, for example—preparing released inmates to re-enter society, honoring African American service men and women, and mentoring young people. Barbara Fair of People Against Injustice asked how the community might emancipate the emotional state of our incarcerated. “Let’s ask ourselves, are we are brother’s keepers?” she said. “If we are, we need to demand an end to the drug war,” she said. Lucille Mapp, a member of St. Luke’s, encouraged the audience to mentor young people and to share books with then. “Buy at bookstores, book clubs or go to the library. Share information on Black history from the [NAACP] Crisis magazine. Corral your children,” she said. “I wish some one would promote reading.
“Releasing ourselves from the history so that we can be free to love ourselves and each other” is what emancipation is about Enola Aird said.
