Thanksgiving in the United States, for African Americans and Americans in general, has been a tradition since 1621. Essentially, it has been a territorial and state-based celebration of “good tidings” and good harvests. It did not become a national holiday until 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln declared it so for two separate occasions in August (to celebrate the Union victory at Gettysburg) and November (for the fall/winter harvests). Even then, however, succeeding presidents had to declare the holiday annually, and the fourth Thursday in November came to be accepted as the official day. President Franklin Roosevelt declared that day in 1941, and Congress, in 1944, finally passed legislation that made the official national holiday we now celebrate on the fourth Thursday in November every year.
But African Americans have always had several celebratory days to thank God for having survived the open hostilities of American life another day, week or year. Sundays, for example, have traditionally looked a lot like mini-Thanksgivings, with customary family gatherings for dinner in the afternoon or early evenings. Fried chicken, biscuits, macaroni and cheese, or rice-gravy or mashed potatoes, with collard greens, green beans or other vegetables was the typical fare, with a long thankful prayer being given at the beginning by a visiting minister, a father, uncle, or when no such male was present, the female head of the house. African Americans have regularly been very quick to give “thanks to the Lord” for His blessings—large or small.
The biggest celebratory day for African Americans for more than 150 years in this country has been Watch Night, December 31. It was established as the eve of the great day of blessings and gratitude associated with the Jan. 1, 1863 implementation of the Emancipation Proclamation and its promise of freedom and independence for free Blacks and the enslaved. For the past quarter century, however, as African Americans have moved into different parts of the country, Watch Night has not traveled well, and more and more young people know little about it.
Today, it is the Thanksgiving holiday that African Americans share with the rest of the country. Mass marketing, Black Friday shopping deals, and the media-insistent urge towards Christian charity for the homeless and dispossessed have spread the gospel of the Thanksgiving holiday as the primary day to give thanks for one’s blessings and to offer prayers for more bountiful days ahead.
For African Americans, this country’s favorite unresolved population issue continues to be what, this year, do they have to be thankful for?
First, with so many recently gone from here, African Americans still extant must give thanks for their continuing lives, whether healthy, painful or sickly. One cannot overcome troubles, after all, if one is no longer alive.
Secondly, African Americans are thankful to still have President Barack Obama alive, in office, mentally agile, and laying down huge policy tracks for successors to follow. Spiritually speaking, many, many Black Americans feel they have prayed Mr. President to safety and significance, and see that as a major blessing. Smart Black men still live a very dangerous existence in this country, and he is the most important symbol of that fact. POTUS is also the only president known to many of this generation’s youth, and many see him as the role model for what they can become, as described recently by Black males in a California middle school, who said in answer to what they want to be in life— president of the USA.
African Americans girls can be thankful for first lady Michelle Obama, who has shown relentless dignity, poise and grace in the face of unceasing negativity from some loud voices in the media and the political sphere. Mrs. Obama has remained a woman of character, clarity and common sense, and she has demonstrated time and again how to be a Black woman of substance, support and intelligence on the biggest stage in the world. Outside of their own mothers, sisters and grandmothers, Mrs. Obama remains THE most important role model to young Black girls for what a real Black American woman is, looks like, and carries herself. And, of course, she is the first lady for the entire country.
African Americans are also very thankful that there has been no hurtful scandal emanating from the presidential couple. As hard as some media forces have tried to whip up nonsensical flaps and false situations, the Obamas have not fallen victim to any of the reality TV-type of hyper-dramas and scandals. They are a typical married couple, certainly, but they have managed to keep their married private lives out of the media circus, against all odds, and their marriage remains a role model of the institution.
African Americans can celebrate the fact that they now have more than 10, $ 900 elected public officials in this country who are Black. Clearly, that fact has not always been helpful in providing needed benefits and relief to the various Black communities in the USA, but it is much better than the alternative. Look at the situation in Ferguson, Mo. as an example of what happens in the absence of Black elected officials when there could have been and should have been.
African Americans can be thankful for having more than 5 million sons and daughters in American colleges and universities currently, to add to the more than 35 million who’ve already graduated. Education is still a major plank in Black American success in this country.
African Americans can be thankful for continuing progress in achieving major leadership positions in America’s military (in all branches), in business and finance, in university administration, in computer technology, in sales and real estate, in medicine and research, in arts and literature, etc. African Americans have excelled in every aspect of American life.
Some, many in fact, African Americans can be thankful that decent jobs have returned and they can pay their bills again. The unemployment rate for Black Americans has decreased significantly across the country within the last two years, and now stands at 10.9 percent. That is still high, but far less than it was as early as 2012.
According to current stats, there are more than 841,000 African Americans (39.4 percent) out of 2 million males in American prison, many of them for non-violent—sometimes first offense-drug convictions. This is a continuing part of America’s total failure called the war on drugs, based on the so-called Rockefeller laws. One of the persistent protest movements in recent American history has been aimed at reducing and eventually eliminating the mandatory-minimum sentencing structure that is responsible for a great deal of the African American prison population. Well, one of the things African Americans can be thankful for in 2014 is some light at the end of that tunnel.
Number one, President Obama rather recently signed federal legislation that reduced the penalty discrepancy between rock and powder cocaine (the Fair Sentencing Act, of 2010). Secondly, the U.S. Senate in January/February of this year passed a bill called the Smarter Sentencing Act that substantially reduces the mandatory-minimum sentencing from 20 years, 10 years, and five years to 10, five and two years, to follow through with the Fair Sentencing Act. The bill is also aimed at permitting 8,800 federal prisoners (87 percent of which are Black) who are presently imprisoned for crack cocaine crimes to come back to court to seek fairer punishments in line with the Fair Sentencing Act.
The House, however, as has been its character since 2010, has refused to conference over the Senate bill or to even consider it so far. But at least there’s been some movement forward, and the president has already indicated his willingness to radically reform the structure of such sentencing, and to increase the dispensation of real justice in the courts.
Seguing with this issue has been the Department of Justice’s investigation of several urban police departments and their relationships with various Black communities. These include, besides the Ferguson, Mo. police department, New Orleans and Newark. The DOJ is considering issuing consent decrees in each case to force positive changes in those departments, and this is something else the Black community can be thankful for. Los Angeles, until last year, was under a similar consent decree.
Certainly, there are many, many problems and frustrations that still plague Black Americans in 2014. But, all in all, this last year has been better for Black folks in numerous ways than the earlier years of the last decade. And for all of that, African Americans must be grateful this year. This is another year of meaningful thanksgiving as they march purposefully forward into an illuminated future.
