MY BOOK

INTRODUCTION

“REDEMPTION OF A DREAM”

( BLACK AMERICA FROM SLAVERY TO PRESIDENCY )

(How Barack Obama and the Obama family helped save Martin Luther King’s Dream and brought change to America)

                      Author:          Nat Sowah     “Redemption of a Dream” - A Non-Fiction, Historical Novel. 

                                                                                           COMING SOON 

The idea to write this Book

The idea to write this book came to me that Tuesday, January 20, 2009, the day of Barack Obama’s inauguration to the presidency of the United States. A day in American history and the history of the world, when every man, woman, and child on the planet, must have watched and witnessed the swearing in of the 44^th president and the first ever African-American president of the United States of America. The biggest leap to the highest office in the land of the free, the toughest job in the home of the brave. Leader of the greatest nation on earth. Commander-In-Chief of the most powerful army on the planet. Leader of the free world and yes, manager of the largest economy in the world.

A rugged, smart and humble man. A determined Harvard Law professor. A United States Senator and a US constitution expert. A city of Chicago community organizer, a dedicated husband and a father of two. Obviously, a man with absolutely no illusions about the task ahead. A man of trust and integrity. A noble man. A man after the hearts of all who voted him into power. A man elected president for all Americans. And, finally, the man who gave us the first ever African-American first-lady of the United States America. A uniquely significant day in the lives of African-Americans, the black race, all Americans and the human race. That day was the beginning of my research project to write this book: “Redemption of a Dream”. (Black America from slavery to Presidency).

The story of my book

“Redemption of a dream” is a story about African-American heritage, realized and established from centuries of life experiences in the struggle for freedom and equality. From the horrors of the slave trade in Africa, through the inhumanities of slavery in America. From the triumph over bigotry and injustice, through the pains and perils of the civil rights era, onto the presidency of the United States of America.

My story is about how Barack Hussein Obama Sr., from Africa, the ancestral home of the black race, brought hope to a bewildered nation, vindicated black America, joined with white America, energize all Americans and lent a whole new momentum to the ongoing struggle for the redemption of Martin Luther King’s Dream. A story that must be told to this generation and passed on to new generations in the future. Humanity must know and understand how European missionary work turned into colonialism. How greed and colonization powered the slave trade. How slavery created black African Diaspora in Europe and the Americas. How bigotry, segregation and discrimination gave rise to the African-American civil rights struggle. How the struggle for freedom and equality found favor in the eyes of the Almighty God. How the hand of God came to the “Redemption of Martin Luther Kings Dream”. How the Power of the dream brought Barack Obama Sr. from the ancestral land of Africa and how Barack Obama II, took over from where Dr. King left off. The struggle continues unabated. We’re not there yet. We know there still remains more work to be done. But,“ .........Thank God Almighty we’re free at last.” And, ………We as a people, will get to the promise land.” – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

It’s not the title of president, or the highest office in the land, or the commander-in-chief or the leader of the free world, per say, that is the focus here. Barack Obama’s presidency stands as a clear evidence of the many incredible contributions and achievements, made by generations of African-Americans in all sectors of American life. Obama’s presidency stands as the symbol and the manifestation of African-America’s triumph over the ills of slavery and the iniquities of man on his fellow man. Also, Obama’s presidency is a testimony to the whole world to the ultimate sacrifices made and the high prices paid by the Heroes of the civil rights era. Sacrifices and the corresponding outcomes that have brought total vindication to the black race, to African-Americans and to America as a nation.

In my opinion, though God created man in His own image, the ways of man are not exactly the ways of God.  In my research for this book, I have noticed a few striking similarities between my life story and the story of Barack Obama Sr. I tried to shed some light on some of the similarities between the president’s father and me.  I also tried to introduce the reader to a few significant similarities between the land of Kenya where Obama Sr. originated and the land of Ghana (former Gold Coast), the land of my own origin, each country located east and west coasts of the ancestral lands of sub-Saharan Africa..

Barack Obama Sr. and I, both native black African students, came to America from two separate but similar African countries, in our own different times, to fulfill our separate but similar dreams of college education in an American university, seeking to acquire the American experience and also secure the American dream. Obama Sr. came from Kenya, East Africa to America at the age of 23 in the year 1959. He arrived in the state of Hawaii, the very year Hawaii became a state in the Union, I came to America at the age of 24 in the year 1977 from Ghana, West Coast of Africa. Both Kenya and the Gold Coast were former British colonies. While Obama Sr. was born and raised in the little town of Nyangoma-Kogelo in colonial Kenya, I was born and raised in Christiansborg, Osu in colonial Gold Coast, now Ghana.

I wrote this book to be an easy-to-read account of how the stone that the builders rejected, became the corner stone of the finest building in the land. I believe that if one would take time to read this book with open mind, open heart and some humor, one could learn a lot about the past and the present events and occurrences that shaped the African-American experience from Slavery to American Presidency. This story is a blend between my youth experiences in Africa and my adult, grown-up years in America, woven into the African-American story of resilience and triumph over inequity. In my opinion, one must have a basic understanding of some of the cultures, beliefs and traditions of the people of Africa to help create a unique perspective on how the events in this story started, developed and unfolded.

Many of the treacherous acts that robbed the Blackman of his freedoms, dignities and self confidence, occurred on the African continent. Likewise, my story “Redemption of a Dream” (Black America from slavery to Presidency) also originated from the same part of the world. It goes without saying and the facts remain true, that Black America, rising from the ashes of slavery, through the doldrums of bigotry, intimidation and suppression, to the highest office in the land, is nothing short of a Devine miracle of biblical proportions. But what is even more miraculous is for this incredible epiphany of human triumph over greed and injustice, to manifest itself in this generation during our lifetime.

This is a non-fiction story about the centuries old black-American quest for freedom and equality, from the roots of slavery to the presidency of the United States of America. A struggle for freedom, justice and equality among blacks, whites and other ethnic groups in America. It is a story of the hopes, dreams and aspirations, the resilience and the accomplishments of African-American in the United States.

Through human slavery, able men and women, from their ancestral home in Africa, were sold and brought to America. While all other ethnicities came to America, willingly and yearning to evade tyranny and oppression in their own motherlands and embrace freedom and prosperity in the new world, black Africans were the only ethnicity, brought to the new world, owned by fellow humans, here to face tyranny and oppression. Millions of slaves from Africa were brought to the Americas, not of their own will, but rather pushed, pulled and dragged here, bound in chains and shackled in bondage. Many died in transit on the high seas, due to starvation and disease. Horrible conditions beyond imagination were the norm, not the exception onboard slave ships. Rotten sanitary conditions promoted deadly infections and disease.

In America, the already weakened slaves from the shackles and chains, found their living conditions, deteriorating even worse by the day. They were kept on the farms and huge plantations, like farm animals, used for large scale planting, harvesting and means of transportation. Like work horses, they were severely beaten, tortured and subjected to hard labor, ridicule and heavy-laden. In fact they were broken down mentally, physically and spiritually to the detriment of their society and the fiscal benefit of their owners. Therefore, to say today, that Americans of African origin were by far the most disadvantaged of all ethnic groups anywhere in the Americas, would be the saddest understatement of the this 21^st century.

The first Europeans arrived in the Gold Coast late 15^th century. The Portuguese were the first to arrive. By 1471, under the patronage of Prince Henry the Navigator, they had reached the area that was to become known as the Gold Coast because Europeans knew the area as the source of gold that reached Muslim North Africa by way of trade routes across the Sahara. The initial Portuguese interest in trading for gold, ivory, and pepper so increased that in 1482 the Portuguese built their first permanent trading post on the western coast of present-day Ghana. This fortress, Elmina Castle, constructed to protect Portuguese trade from European competitors and hostile Africans, still stands. Unlike the Akan groups of the interior, the major coastal tribes, were the Fante, Ewe, and Ga, were for the most part settled in their homelands.

Ghana succumbed to attacks by its neighbors in the eleventh century, but its name and reputation endured. In 1957 when the leaders of the former British colony of the Gold Coast sought an appropriate name for their newly independent state--the first black African nation to gain its independence from colonial rule--they named their new country after ancient Ghana. The choice was more than merely symbolic because modern Ghana, like its namesake, was equally famed for its wealth and trade in gold.

Arrival of European missionaries did the most good to the continent of Africa, especially in sub-Saharan region. They brought Christianity and the bible to the people. They built churches and numerous schools. I grew up in the tiny fishing town of Osu, on the Atlantic coast  of Accra. I attended mission schools all built and managed by European Missionaries. We lived in the castle-gate community called Amanfong, (meaning ghost-town) in Osu, Accra, the capital of the republic of Ghana. As the horror stories of slavery passed down from generation to generation, it became obviously sad and clear that the community we lived in was one of the most notorious slave trading, processing and shipping communities in the whole  of sub-Saharan Africa. The main route to the slave holding cell and dungeons underneath the heavily fortified Forts and Castles, where they were held, confined in cells, waiting for their turn to navigate through the infamous “door of no return”. They would be loaded, packed and shipped from their own ancestral motherland to the various distant lands in the western world, including Europe and the Americas.

                                                                      

Photo of remodeled Christiansborg, Osu, Castle, Accra, Ghana (former Gold Coast). The castle-gate community, my birth place, is this beach-side community, surrounding the main entrance to the heavily fortified colonial castle. The main entrance  to the castle is on the other side, the far right side behind the canoes. Nobody gets through the gates into the castle without going through our community. This was the seat of the colonial government, centuries ago and is currently the “White House” for the current President and his family, until the next elections. On the 6^th day of March 1957, Ghana became the first Black African country to gain independence from European colonialism.

I remember vividly, back in the days when I was a child, it was just a short walk from home to the beach. More than a decade after colonial rule, and a few more years before the colonial powers would pack up and ship out to their own country, the United Kingdom, the current, reigning Queen of England, Queen Elizabeth II, (head of the colonial government), Prince Philip, ( duke of Edinburgh) and the rest of the members of the British monarchy were our frequent guest visitors in Christiansborg. For one thing, we the school children, from around the city of Accra, would be assembled along the streets and byways in and around our communities, waving British flags, welcoming Her Majesty into the castle.

On their arrival, we the children, the local chiefs and village elders were the natives who were invited into the castle. We spent time there singing, dancing and entertaining the foreign guests. Those were celebrations of pomp and pageantry. It was lots of fun waving flags at Her Majesty when her Majesty waves back at us. The best time in our lives is when the Queen stops her official duties, descends to ground level and begins to shake our hands during the celebration. We were just kids and it was like God Himself has come down from heaven and living with us in Christiansborg. 

We would almost melt like ice cream when Her Majesty the Queen congratulated us and cheered us on for our “lovely performance” in her own words.  We didn’t know much about anything. Not anything about colonialism or Imperialism or Pan-Africanism or Independence or even Government or none of those big issues. We were just kids and the Queen is with us.

The only problem I remember I had growing up in the shadow of the huge castle with the cool beach around us was this. All of us children had been warned against going skinny-dipping or swimming in the ocean across beside the castle. Both mom and dad would kill us, should any one of us disobeyed the rules of the house in their absence. The single most important rule was that: No one went swimming  in the ocean without an adult supervision. Our beach front community was known to lose at least one kid each year to drowning in the blue sea. Losing a child to drowning during playtime in the shallow sea waters had always been a huge concern for all parents and families in Christiansborg, Osu. I was the 4^th born of 10 children. I attended Osu Presbyterian primary mission school, located by the main Presbyterian church in the town center. School started at 8:30AM and closed at 2:30PM. It was a pretty long walking distance from home to school and back. Grandpa was always home but mom and dad didn’t get home till 6PM.

My friends and I would run home after school, change out of my school uniform into street clothes and then head straight to the beach. Grandpa would try to stop me but always failed. My plan was same as the many other kids in the community, to stay in the water for as long as we get back home before mom and dad gets home. Grandpa never spanked us. He would warn us over and again about the dangers of playing in the ocean waters without adults presence. When mom and Dad came home, the first thing they  did was check if any of us had been in the ocean. There will be spanking and whipping, wailing and crying, everywhere in our house each evening. Dad had an ingenious way of knowing which one of us had been swimming in the ocean waters . He would pull each one of us closer to him, get out his tongue and lick the back side of your ear. If he tasted salt, you are in trouble. The taste of salt behind your ears is an indication and dad’s sure evidence that you’ve been swimming in the ocean. We try to wash down in the shower before he got home but I think, we were just being kids. He was right every time. You would think taking a bad whipping from dad just last night would stop us from breaking the rule of the next day.

Each evening after meals, it was story-telling time. We loved the very sad stories Grandpa told us about the ancient slave trade. Grandpa would shed tears of sadness each evening, telling us the story as it was told to them, of the pain and indignation suffered by the frequent queues of heavily shackled, loosely but rigidly chained, one to each other, as the prisoners were taken through the alleyways within our neighborhood, headed to the dungeons below the slave forts. They were led not through the main gates, as the story went, but through the designated slave entrance gates. Grandpa would say “but all these wickedness we did to our own people, our sons and daughters, when we sold them to the white traders”. If grandpa were to witness what was done to their sons and daughters on their arrival in the new world, he would shed tears of blood, not tears of water.

The most oppressed, suppressed, subdued, segregated, discriminate against, denied, refused, tabooed and disenfranchised, is the ethnic group that rose above the shear hopelessness of the situation, broke off the chains, cast off the shackles, shook off the yoke, invested in their own God-given talents and abilities. They fought to overcome the overwhelming odds against them and went on to produce the first ever non-white president of the united states of America. The only ethnic group that have broken the all-white, men-only, 43 consecutive presidential monopoly of almost 3 centuries since independence and end of colonialism.

My book tells the story of how Barack Hussein Obama Sr., a 23-year old black African student, from the ancestral land of Kenya, on the east coast of Africa, brought hope to the black race, vindicated black America, joined with white America, energized all Americans and lend a new momentum to the ongoing struggle for the redemption of Martin Luther King’s Dream. Through the concept of non-violent push for social change, the heroes of the civil rights struggle, custodians of Dr. King’s dream and the guardians of African-American Heritage marched on forward ever, backward never. They never turned back, never faulted, never dueled on the past. They looked back only in remembrance of the ancestral mothers and fathers, by whose sacrifice, future generation will be free at last.

Because of the price they paid for the sacrifice they made to this day. As President Obama said, “Though it’s been long time coming, change has come to America”. But, we’re not there yet, and we know it. More work is needed for the total redemption and the ultimate fulfillment of Dr. King’s Dream. President Barack Obama and the entire Obama family have become the manifestation and the symbol of the change that is long overdue. Barack Obama has brought a new reality and a whole new momentum behind the African-American civil rights struggle. He has rekindled and rejuvenated and reinvigorated Martin Luther King’s dream. Barack Obama has reset “The Dream” on a clear path for success for the next generations of African-Americans, all Americans and mankind as a whole.

Why I wrote this book: I wrote this book primarily for people who have the interest in knowing how Americans of African origin, went from the institution of slavery to the institution of presidency in the United States of America. I also wrote this book to fulfill my thirst for the truth and the details of what happened to the black race from the horrors of slavery out of Africa, through the trials and tribulations of the African-American civil rights era, to the first black presidency of the United States of America.

My book is for every interested man, woman and child in America and around the world. Interested persons of every race, ethnicity, color, religion or creed. Europeans, Africans, Asians, Australians, people on all the seven continents of the world. This book is for parents and teachers alike. Mothers and fathers of the sons and daughters of this generation to share. So that the world may remember what happened and how to be sure not to repeat same tragic events and occurrences. A source of comprehensive account of what really  happened and to pass on to future generations to come, in remembrance of what happened to their ancestors of generations past. Where the struggle for freedom, justice and equality has brought us today.

Finally, I wrote this book to share my research findings, and my understanding of what actually happened to African-Americans, starting with the horrors of slavery from Africa, to America, through the civil rights era, through the centuries, to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., to the presidency of the United States of America. From whence we may ask ourselves, how do we go from here on to the promise land as seen in Martin Luther King’s “Dream”?

What’s important to remember

I think the following are the most important issues to focus on and questions to find answers to. As you settle down, relax and read this book. Be reminded of the ultimate price paid by the heroes of the civil rights struggle and the lessons we must learn in order to prevent the repeat of same or similar deeds by the wicked in the future. What is Dr. King’s Dream? What is the civil rights struggle? Who are the heroes who laid their lives on the line, made the ultimate sacrifices and paid the ultimate price in the struggle to bring change into American society.

The kind of genuine and lasting change, that can be realized only by the total redemption and the ultimate fulfillment of Dr. King’s Dream. How and where did it all begin? What’s the current state of the non-violent struggle? Where is the struggle going from here? Is the Dream still alive? Has the Dream been fulfilled? What’s your personal assessment of  the dream. Is the dream achievable? What would Dr. King feel about the future of his dream if he were here today? And, finally, how will we know when we get to the promise land?

His able leadership in the civil rights movement, working to bring change into American society, was magnified by his unequaled eloquence in the delivery of his commanding speeches. His unyielding dedication to peace and the truth, won him the Nobel Peace Prize. His father and child conversation in his sleep, gave us the “I have a Dream Speech”. A speech that proclaimed and declared our freedom for generations to come. His “Mountain Top speech” was followed by his ultimate sacrifice, paid for with his life. The civil rights struggle, was and is today, without question, the most significant human reaction against slavery, bigotry and all other forms of injustice which started from the continent of Africa to the continents of Europe and the Americas.

I am writing this book to give you the actual facts in the events and the circumstances that gave birth to the civil rights struggle. The world may by the record of these events understand the root causes of human suffering and the true reasons for the struggle. Where it all begun and what have been achieved in this generation by previous generations. Readers have different interests they gravitate to when reading the story of a book. My story is a combination of the African-America story and my own life story, from Africa to America. Reader who gravitate further towards the intricate details of the occurrences of the major events in the story, will have the opportunity to follow the details and direct the facts as I tell my story.  

Emancipation not the answer

This is no funny business, this is a serious issue and yes, black America has moved on, and still moving forward. Americans of African origin didn’t do anything to deserve such ridiculously insensitive and cruel treatment of their ancestral fathers and mothers of past generations. They shrugged off the blows and kept moving on. Like Joseph in slavery, they kept hope alive. Always aware of the risks involved in not knowing where they came from and where they are going to. To successfully get to the promise land, they knew they must each be subscribers and believers in the dream. Each generation must be good custodians of “The Dream”. We’ve suffered too much, come too far, paid too high to turn back. We’ve crossed too many oceans, moved too many mountains, sacrificed too many lives to stop now. There will be more rest in the promise land. We are not there yet. More work is still needed. There should be no illusions that there is no room for complacency. We must always practice what we preach to our friends.

Even President Abraham Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation, by executive order, plus the willingness and understanding, shown by some states in the then fledgling union, while other bigot states hardened their hearts against human decency and change, despite whom came the eventual freedom of slaves in United States. Although the freedom for slaves was of immense importance to African-Americans and will always be for generations to come, the act was not at all the answer to the broader issue of  civil rights, justice and equality under the law. Barack Obama, by his unique achievements and effective leadership, has set the civil rights struggle on a path, for the ultimate fulfillment of Dr. King’s Dream.

What amazes me the most. 

What amazes me most in the African-American story from slavery to presidency, is not  that “change has come to America” but that, change has come to America in this generation during our life time. Yet we know this is just the beginning of the change that must come. As a native African boy, from Ghana, the former Gold Coast, one of the most notorious slave trading British colonies on the continent of Africa, I came to America in the year 1977 to pursue my college education. I see myself in much the same mirror as Barack Obama Sr. President Obama’s father, who arrived here in America eighteen years before me, in 1959 also in pursuit of further college education.

Looking into American society after a good 35 years of my life, what amazes me more than anything in this life is what I call “the resilience of the African-American spirit”. If I haven’t discovered anything at all in this country, I have witnessed the African-American spirit rise up from the depths and doldrums of despair. Black-America would not be where she is today without the come-back-kid attitude the indigenous African heritage. Certainly, black America would not have come this far without the help, support and the ultimate sacrifice of famous black heroes as Martin Luther King Jr. and famous white heroes as president J. F. Kennedy.  

Of all the many ethnic groups that made it to America, many centuries ago, the one group, that did not come in willingly, but was actually forced in, in bondage and in chains, that was by far the most disadvantaged ethnic group of all the groups, who suffered the most horrible bigotries, abuses, denials, discriminations, segregations, insults, mistrusts, name-callings, disenfranchisements and the other horrors and inhumanities of slavery and the aftermath of slavery in America, this ethnic group, severely beat up and wounded in spirit, turned out to be the one ethnic group, that has come the farthest in life,  registered the greatest lifetime achievements per capita in American society. From the biggest stars and superstars in academia, to professional sports, to music superstars, to movies stars, to church leaders, to military chiefs, to Congress men and women, to executive cabinets positions, to owners and CEOs of big business, to television station owners to the highest numbers of millionaires per capita, even to president of the United States of America. This is totally overwhelming to me an African with over 35 years experience and understanding of the larger American society.

on the path of redemption from the horrors  of slavery to the Presidency of the United States. I don’t know about you, but for me, probing from without and looking within, I am simply amazed at the quality of people that make up this black American ethnic group. The lifetime achievements and the major difference that African-Americans as a people, have made in the larger American society. The most oppressed and deprived ethnic group among the rest, turns out to be the only ethnic group that have broken the three centuries of white-male monopoly over the Presidency of the United States of America, in our lifetime. To me, this feels much like the Joseph and his brothers story in the scriptures.

What is “The Dream”?

As the favorite son of African-American heritage proclaimed, “I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream today!”  ---Martin Luther King Jr.

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.” I have a dream today!”

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!”

“I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today.”    ---Martin Luther King Jr.

His dream, as he eloquently laid it out, was and is still indeed abundantly self-explanatory, full of hope and void of parables. No, not this time, he went straight to the point, the specifics of what he witnessed in this spirit-filled dream. Dr. King’s dream is essentially his inner spiritual foresight into the future of the struggle for freedom, justice and equality in American society. The expectations of the people and the direction of the civil rights and equal rights reforms together form the basis of the Dream. A dream not for just one ethnic group alone but for all Americans, regardless of race, color, religion, sex,  gender, national origin or disability under the law. Not one set of laws for one ethnic group and another set of laws for the next group.

When the different ethnic groups came to America, from their ancestral homes, to gain their freedom from oppression back home on the continents, African-Americans were the only ethnic group that came to America, from their ancestral homeland of Africa to lose their freedom under centuries of oppression and be subjected to torture in chains and hard labor.

Where did it all begin? Make no mistake about it, the true causes and the primary reasons why the struggle for freedom, justice, equality under the law, civil rights, voting rights and social change in American society became a necessary struggle that must be won at all costs, has it’s origins not in America, but rather originated from Africa, the ancestral homeland of the black race. The evil partnerships made between our ancestral forefathers, the tribal leaders, village elders and the European slave traders. From slave trading posts, inside those holding cells and dungeons, deep below the heavily fortified colonial Forts and Castles, all the way to the “Door of no Return”, along the shores

of both the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean, from colonial Gold Coast to colonial Kenya and the many European colonies in between.

With the exponential growth of European plantations in the New World during the 1500s, which suddenly expanded the demand for slaves in the Americas, trade in slaves soon overshadowed gold as the principal export of the area. Indeed, the west coast of Africa, especially the Gold Coast, now Ghana,   became the principal source of slaves for the New World. The seemingly insatiable market and the substantial profits to be gained from the slave trade attracted adventurers from all over Europe. Much of the conflict that arose among European groups on the coast and among competing African kingdoms was the result of rivalry for control of this trade.

It is important to mention, however, that the supply of slaves to the Gold Coast was entirely in African hands. Although powerful traditional chiefs, such as the rulers of Asante, Fante, Ga, and the Ewe  tribes  were known to have engaged in the slave trade. Individual African merchants such as John Kabes, John Konny, Thomas Ewusi, and a broker known only as Noi commanded large bands of armed men, many of them slaves, engaged in various forms of commercial activities with the Europeans on the coast.

The importation of slaves into the United States was outlawed in 1807. In the same year, Britain used its naval power and its diplomatic muscle to outlaw trade in slaves by its citizens and to begin a campaign to stop the international trade in slaves. These efforts, however, were not successful until the 1860s because of the continued demand for plantation labor in the New World.

That’s the true origin of the black African struggle for freedom and the true cause of events that gave rise to the African-American civil rights struggles. Yes, you’re probably right, the hatred, the bigotry, the segregation, the hard labor, the oppression, the denials, the outright discrimination, and the most ridiculous disenfranchisement of black people, started the civil right movement. But the actual cause of the problem, why a civil rights movement became necessary and badly needed for survival, started from human slavery. The hatred and the bigotry were treatment of contempt and disrespect by the white race as a result of black Americans being slaves while being black. The white race looked at blacks as sold and purchased like cattle in a livestock auction. And, they treated the slaves as work horses in the field.

 

How did it all begin? Well, they say civilization actually began from the continent of Africa. I have absolutely no reason not to believe that. But, sometimes I just can’t help but wonder how our ancient native African forefathers, the ancestors of the black race, should allow European ancestors to mislead, misuse, abuse, disrespect and take advantage of them like they did. I find it difficult to comprehend how our own ancestral mothers and fathers would fall for the tricks of the white European settlers to allow them get away with all precious metals they mined and took away to their own countries.

One thing I will never forget about my growing up in Christiansborg, Osu in our Castle Gate community was the constant temptation in our lives as children living next to the ocean, There was just a street between our family house and the sea. Children drown accidentally almost every time swimming regarding the proximity of the beach surrounding our neighborhood. Unfortunately there were no organized safety monitoring systems or guards available at any of the beaches. The first thing we would do as soon as we get home from school was to go to the beach. We were all ten children by our mom and dad. Mom and dad both have warned us never to go to the ocean without an adult company. My senior brother went swimming and he almost drowned in the Atlantic ocean. We had some of our friends taken away by the ocean. The lifeless body would resurface

Being a child of the early fifties, born and raised in the Gold Coast, today’s Ghana, west Africa, I had the opportunity to witness the beginning of the end of colonialism. Human influence and control on other human beings, started from the Christian Missionaries, from Europe, centuries ago. The American Peace Corps, from the United States, just came in the early sixties. The Peace Corps were amazing organization. They became our teachers in every grade level in our schools all over our newly gained  independent country,  Ghana. What a great team of teachers and mentors, those Peace Corps men and women were. The new nation of Ghana benefited so much from their services to us. Like my class-mates in all schools around the country, we were fortunate to have the Peace Corps teach and mentor us from secondary Form1 through the nation-wide GCE “O” national exams to Lower Form 6 and Upper 6 and the GCE “A” level national exams. I received 7 years of teaching and instructions from those wonderful men and women.  The American Peace Corps teachers and instructors gave us the best opportunity to excel in school. I cannot possibly relate to you the account of all the good training and mentoring those Peace Corps men and women did for us. They were our teachers in all grade levels. But, not only that, our schools had no books or any of the tools needed in any of the grade levels. they even brought us the relevant text-books, pencils, pens, and all the stationery from the United States, for every course work and grade level.

I was also there to witness the final stages of colonial rule by the British colonial masters, before independence.  They came as missionaries of the Word. They brought us the Bible, the good news of Jesus Christ and showed us the way to the Almighty God, through His Son. I must first thank the Omnipotent God, for giving our ancestors and our fathers, the opportunity to know Him through the white European missionaries and the able teachers of the American Peace Corps. I won’t be writing these memories of an indigenous African tribes man, living here in America, were it not for the good job they did teaching and mentoring us as school children.

The European missionaries also rendered wonderful service to our ancient fore fathers. They built churches of different denominations and introduce our ancient fore fathers to the knowledge of God and the bible. They were the primary influence on our ancestral mothers and fathers that brought the fear of God into African societies. They created jobs for our native ancestors to get up and become productive.

When it became apparent to the Europeans, the magnitude of precious metals and other mineral resources, including Platinum, Gold, Diamond and the combined richness of the land, human greed began to set in and some developed a few new ideas and strategies. Missionaries became colonial rulers or colonial masters. Colonial masters became slave traders.

And so you see, it all started with perfectly noble intentions, but since humans will be humans, mission work overseas, turned into colonialism, went from colonial rule over tribal African states, which finally turned into the lucrative buy, sell, auction  and trading business of the human slave trade. But, I’ll tell you this, the European slave masters did not trade with themselves. You will find out as you read on, some of the desperate actions African tribal leaders took to prevent the abolition of slavery in the European Parliaments, in the white man’s country Even when the white Europeans (not the traders) in parliament tried to legally abolish the trade, our own ancestors strongly resisted with threats on the foreign law makers.

Our ancestral African brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers and forefathers, were forced into slavery by our own tribal chiefs and our village elders in partnership with the descendants of colonial rulers and slave traders, for their own selfish gains, without regards to the dignity of the black man , nor the sinful horrors of slavery, beyond the “point of no return”. The wickedness, the horrors, the inhumanities and the effects of human slavery, beyond the point of no return, will never be told in full. That’s how black Africans were sold, weighted  in chains and shackles. Some were shipped across the Atlantic Ocean and brought to the new found land, while the rest transported across the Sahara Desert, and sent to Europe. They were our slave ancestors. They were force into camps of hard labor and the meanest jobs that no one would do.  I must therefore thank heavens, for having brought our brothers and sisters this far, from whence we came, to where we are today, knowing where we were, yesterday. Where we’re going, as a people, is mainly in our own hands.

Chosen for a purpose

Barack Hussein Obama Sr., was divinely chosen by the power of “The Dream”. He came to America on a mission. A mission much larger than himself, yet he came willingly, without asking any questions. Little did he  know, what his life’s mission was designed to accomplish for African-Americans, as a people, for the black race, as a whole, and ultimately, for all Americans as a nation.

What many people in this internet generation haven’t yet figured out about life, is what I  refer to as “The Power of the Dream”. To begin to understand what constitutes the power of Dr. King’s dream, you need first to get a deeper insight into the details of how Barack Obama Sr., President Obama’s father, secured the opportunity, that enabled him to come to America in the first place. 

Choosing Obama Sr. to help reset the civil rights struggle on a new path for success, didn’t just happen out of the blue. It was by Devine Intervention that the same ancestral homeland of the black race, Africa,  that sold her sons and daughters into slavery, step up to the plate and initiate a redemption of the black American dream of freedom and equality. Remember, “The power of Prayer”? The “Thank God Almighty, we are free at last” that Dr. King confidently proclaimed, at the very end of his “I have a dream” speech, is what actually released the power of the spirit of the dream.

Try it to believe it. If you sincerely give thanks to the Almighty God, even before your prayers are answered, that’s how you get your prayers answered by the Almighty. That’s when He makes things happen for you. 

Remember also that Martin Luther King Jr. was a man of God. He loved the Lord. And he obeyed the Lord.  The Lord spoke to him in his dream regarding His plans for the Redemption and the ultimate fulfillment of His word.  It was a long conversation in the dream. His “I have a Dream” speech, was the vehicle that carried the spirit, that released the Devine “Power of the Dream”, that started the process of redemption and the vindication of African-Americans. Knowing the Him, He will not stop until Dr. King’s dream is fulfilled to the last letter of the word. When my wife Lydia, said to me, “Barack Obama is the chosen one”,  the lights shone so bright on my mind and it promptly appeared to me that what she was trying to tell me was that,  President Barack Obama was chosen by the power of the dream, to take over from where Martin Luther King Jr. left off. Bringing a whole new momentum behind the struggle from here on forward to the ultimate fulfillment of  the dream.

This is how it happened:

Barack Hussein Obama Sr. was an intelligent, high achieving, very smart student. A consistent straight “A” student in the little village in Rachuonyo District, on the shores of Lake Victoria, just outside Kendu Bay, in Kenya Colony, at the time of colonial rule, by the British Empire. He was raised in the village of Nyangoma, in Siaya,  District, in Nyanza Province, Kenya. Barack Obama Sr. was somewhat well known before he graduated with excellence in Economics, Mathematics and Statistical Economics.

Obama Sr. easily became a Kenyan Government economist upon graduation. A good beginning in life, with good income. As a young man, he had a wife, a boy and a new baby girl on the way. He didn’t need to travel or leave Kenya, let alone even leave his homeland Africa. But now, check out the people involved here, in making it attractive and possible for Obama Sr. to pack up, leave his wife and kids and head off from Kenya to America. You see, Some things in this life, don’t just happen, you know.

In 1959, Obama Sr. received a scholarship in economics through a program organized by nationalist leader Tom Mboya. The program offered Western educational opportunities to outstanding Kenyan students. Initial financial supporters of the program included Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Jackie Robinson, and Elizabeth Mooney Kirk, a big literacy advocate who provided most of the financial support for Obama Sr.'s early years in the United States, according to the Tom Mboya’s archives at Stanford University. Funds provided the following year by John F. Kennedy's family paid off old debts of the project and subsidized student stipends, thereby indirectly benefiting Obama Sr. and the other members of the 1959 group of scholarship holders. The combined efforts of these true “custodians of    the dream”, formed the power that urged the President’s father to grab the opportunity and run with it.

When Obama Sr. left for America, he left behind his baby son, Roy, and his young wife, Kezia, who was pregnant with their daughter, Auma. So, JFK, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Jackie Robinson, old Mooney Kirk, Tom Mboya and a few others and their project, some called it “The Dream Project”, others called it “Power Of The Dream Project” others, “Spirit Of The Dream Project”. What ever you want to call it, I simply call this group “The Dream Team”. They made it possible for Obama Sr. to see an attractive, all paid,  foreign scholarship offered to him,  stepped up to the plate, responded to the call to help provide a new leader to take over the civil rights struggle from where Dr. King left off. So, called by the power of the dream, guided by  the spirit of dream, he asked no questions. In his human mind, his only hope and aspiration, coming to America, was to acquire higher education in a great country, where he knew that Americans of African origin are at least free and not in slavery anymore.

Obama Sr. came to America clueless of what his true life’s Devine calling was. He started pursuing his higher education alright, still without any idea what kind of change and how significant a difference he is destined to manifest in the lives of every black American as well as the entire American society. One thing I’ve always known about us, indigenous, native, Africans from the motherland is that, we know the looks and feel of a beautiful woman when we see one. Barack Hussein Obama Sr. met and befriended Ann Stanley Dunham, the president’s mom. Married her in holy matrimony and both were blessed with a single baby boy between them. Barack Obama was born to a white American mother and a black, tribal Kenyan father. They were both young college students at the University of Hawaii.

When Obama Sr. left for Harvard, she and Barack Jr. stayed behind in Hawaii, and his father ultimately returned alone to his  fatherland, Kenya, where he continued his work as a government economist. Barack's mother remarried an Indonesian oil field manager and moved to Jakarta when Barack was just six years of age. He later recounted Indonesia as simultaneously lush and a harrowing exposure to tropical poverty. He returned to Hawaii, where he was brought up largely by his grandparents. The family lived in a small apartment - his grandfather was a furniture salesman and an unsuccessful insurance agent and his grandmother worked in a bank - but Barack managed to get into Punahou School, Hawaii's top prep academy. His father wrote to him regularly but, though he traveled around the world on official business for Kenya, he visited only once, when Barack was ten. The best gift from father to son.

Obama attended Columbia University, but found New York's racial tension inescapable. He became a community organizer for a small Chicago church-based group for three years, helping poor South Side residents cope with a wave of plant closings and the resulting joblessness. He  went on to attend Harvard Law School, and in 1990 became the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review, the most prestigious industry review in the country.  He turned down a prestigious judicial clerkship, choosing instead to practice civil-rights law back in Chicago, representing victims of housing and employment discrimination and working on voting-rights legislation. He also began teaching at the University of Chicago Law School.

He married Michelle Robinson, a fellow attorney.  He was elected to the Illinois state senate, where his district included both Hyde Park and some of the poorest ghettos on the South Side. In 2004 Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat, representing Illinois, and he gained national attention by giving a rousing and well-received keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. In 2008 he ran for President, and despite having only four years of national political experience, he won. In January 2009, he was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, and the first ever African-American ever elected to that position. As the president of the greatest and most powerful nation on earth,

President Barack Obama left America for a visit to the black ancestral homeland and motherland of Africa. Record showed that Ghana, the old colonial Gold Coast was the only country in Africa he visited. While there Obama too time to reflect of the most horrible events that were perpetrated again the ancestors of black people, human slavery’s worse slave posts, through underground dungeons death cells through to the “doors of no return” all three Slave trading posts at Christiansborg, Osu, Castle, Cape Coast Castle and Elmina Castles. Everyone, including the President, the first lady as well as their 2 daughters were in tears coming out of these heavily fortified slave trading posts. These were the true beginning causes of human suffering that brought about the need in America, for the African American Civil Rights movement. We must never forget the true cause and effects of slavery. We must never forget the ultimate prices paid in the ultimate sacrifices made by the heroes, custodians and the guardians of Martin Luther King’s dream. As I’ve said earlier, African-Americans have moved on. We are not oblivious of the fact that evil still exists in the world. We don’t have any illusions that the way forward from here is going to be easy, problem-free and smooth-sailing. We must remain focused on “The Dream” of our heroes, the heroes of the Civil Rights Movement. As Dr. King saw clearly in The Dream, “…….. I may not get there with you, but we as a people, will get to the promise land".

Copyright © 2012 Nathan A. Sowah. Rainbow Media Enterprise LLC. All rights reserved.

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