Physiological needs are very powerful because survival depends on their satisfaction. Our manners and customs go for more in life than our qualities. The love of social superiority, the very impulse of the human heart, which is the mainspring of civilization and the chief source of all human improvement, is able, when suffered to work on, uncontrolled by other more generous emotions, to corrupt man’s whole nature, and to drive him to acts the most horrid and detestable. The single word slave, what volumes does it speak! It speaks of chains, of whips and tortures, compulsive labor, hunger and fatigues and all the miseries our wretched bodies suffered. It speaks of haughty power, and insolent commands; of insatiate avarice; of pampered pride and purse proud luxury; and of the cold indifference and scornful unconcern with which the oppressor looks down upon his or her victims. Slavery speaks of crushing fear, and base servility; of low, mean cunning and treacherous revenge. It speaks of humanity outraged; manhood degraded; the social charities of life; of hope extinguished; and the light of knowledge sacrilegiously put out. Slavery speaks of humans deprived of all that makes them amiable or makes them noble; stripped of one’s soul and sunk into a beast. Grant me freedom and health and give me a fair goddess Liberty as my companion.  Humans share a kinship with every aspect of nature, and you and nature have a mutual, interacting, parallel relationship that is at the heart of ecology.

At some point, every race and culture on this planet has been enslaved, even in modern times. Having light skin does not mean your family was not a slave. Even rich Europeans have been forced into slavery. In Britain, slavery was practiced, after the fall of Rome. The trade was picked up after the Viking invasions, with major markets in Chester and Bristol, supplied by Danish, Mercian, and Welsh raiding of one another’s borderlands. By the year 1086, nearly 10 percent of the English population was slaves. Slavery was so popular in early medieval Europe, the Roman Catholic Church repeatedly prohibited it—or at least the export of Christian slaves to non-Christian lands was prohibited. So slavery is not something that is unique to neither America nor Africans. With the collapse of 250 years of Slavery, in American, in 1865, freedom meant many things to everyone. Women no longer would be sexually exploited. Citizens of all colors were free to learn to read and write, without facing death or execution of the teachers. Sovereignty meant people could organize churches, and move around without having to obtain permission. Autonomy meant that your labor would produce economic benefits for the laborer, not the former master, and freedom meant working without being whipped. Individuals were free to own land, cultivate it and live in it. Liberty also meant that if you were charged with a crime, you could have a trail before jury, instead of simply being accused and convicted, without any proof. Freedom meant you could have a family, without them being kidnaped, killed or sold.  Freedom meant that everyone had the same rights, no matter what color their skin was, culture, religion, race or creed.

As slavery ended, the most urgent need for many freed people was finding family members who had been sold away from them. Slavery had not destroyed the African American family. They still have their pride and religion. After the civil war, husbands, wives, and children went to great lengths to reassemble their families. They walked from city to city and state to state looking for their kinship. And many placed advertisements in Newspapers appealing for information about missing relatives. There were emotional reunions as family members found each other following years of separation. Mr. Ben and Mrs. Betty Dodson had been apart for twenty years, and when Mr. Ben Dodson found his wife, in a refugee camp, after the war, he praised God. One may think that the African Americans where angry with the dominate population after the fall of slavery, but not all were. When interviewed by Union officer, near Opelousas, Louisiana, a young African American man told the Union officer, when his master begins to love him, then it will be time enough for me to love him. He explained that he wanted to get away from the plantation and be free.  Of course not all newly freed people felt the same about bondage. Those human impulses which have seemed throughout our history to be deepest, to be most instinctive and unchangeable, to be most widely spread throughout mankind (the impulse to hate, to be jealous, to be hostile, to be greedy, to be egotistic and selfish) are now being discovered more and more to be acquired and instinctive. They are almost certainly neurotic and sick reactions to bad situations, more specifically to frustrations of our truly basic instincts.

However, in early 1866, Congress attempted to provide land for freemen with the passage of the Southern Homestead Act. More than three million acres of public land were set aside for African Americans and European Americans, who had remained loyal to the Union. However, shortly after the Civil War, an orgy of brutality and violence swept across the South. Much like the African American community is lashing out against the police and the government about the unfortunate loss of a young man, Michael Brown, many lashed out at African Americans for the loss of millions of dollars worth of labor and property. There were beatings, murders, rapes and riots, often with little or no provocation, much like the destruction we are seeing in Ferguson, Missouri. However, remember, wisdom cannot be grafted on the stock of slavery (mental or physical): justice cannot be established without denunciation and disapproval of wrong. Though we are not perfect, God loves us and made us in his image. At times, we may feel lost and without and lack direction, but God loves every one of us, even if we are  perfect, imperfect, disabled, homosexual, no matter what color or culture we are, and we should accept our brothers and sisters and show them God’s love.

A single deed of violence and cruelty affects our nerves. It is understand that people are upset about the death of a young man, but perhaps the current form of protest are outdated. Showing up in the streets, in masses, and threatening your fellow brothers and sisters makes you look crazy. Burning down buildings, assaulting people, and looting stores makes all Americans look bad, no matter what color we are. The World is watching and they are in shock. Instead of creating chaos, write letters, make phone calls and visit congress to show them that you are mature, educated and wise, tell them the changes you want to see. Just like when you were a child and acted up, did you parents give you your way? No, they usually punished you and you got in more trouble. However, when you explained to them why you hurt someone or broke something and were polite, they would more than likely listen and be compelled to understand that you need more attention and your needs are not being met. Those who never have been guilty of any indiscretion are generally people who have very little active virtue.

I would like to share another true story with you. In the Bronx borough of New York City, four boys were at play, hollering and screaming like they had lost their minds, and racing in and out of an apartment building. Suddenly, from a second-floor window came the crack of a pistol. When the boys looked around, they noticed one of their friends sprawled out dead on the pavement. The victim happed to be Roy Innis, Jr., age 13, and the son of a prominent African American leader, but there was no political motivation for the tragedy. The killer was also African American, and he confessed to the police that he was a night worker, who had lost control of himself because the noise from the boys prevented him from sleeping. The moral of the story is when you result to violence, you may hurt yourself or an innocent bystander.

This other account is more recent, but has not made headlines yet. On 25 November 2014, the body of Deandre Joshua, as 20, was found around 9am, inside a white Pontiac, with the driver’s side window shout out. The car and body was located near the Canfield Green Apartments in Ferguson, Missouri, within close proximate to the police station. Mr. Deandre Joshua, an African American man was minded his own business, and is now dead. No one is sure if this is a result of the protest. The case is now being investigated as a homicide. The idea of death is one of terrible contemplation. We should always esteem the danger, however boldly we may advance to meet it. All the sentiments of Worldly grandeur vanish at that unavoidable moment which decided the destiny of men. Time goes forward and, and you go round. Speak to the point. Romans 5.8 reports, God shows his love for us, in that while we are still sinners, Christ died for us. All lives matter and so does the law.