God made us all in His image. We are to form relationships with Him and each other. The first commandment is to love Him with all our heart, soul and mind. The second is to love our neighbors as thyself. (Matthew 22: 37-39, King James Version). If you can change the hearts of people, you can change the culture. He placed it on my heart to share my story as a living testimony to help and empower others. If I can get out of the wilderness of poverty, so can you. It is not a solo journey. God has people strategically placed to help you as you travel across rough terrains of life. You can brave elements you never thought you could. You can climb over obstacles too high for your short legs. You can declutter your life and mind from unhealthy cobwebs of despair. Doors will shut in your face and windows will open. You will fail according to the world’s standards. Those same failures will be success according to God’s standards. Failures will become your strength and help you grow. People will disappoint you, don’t disappoint yourself. Part of living is dying. Let negativity and other unhealthy behaviors die. Overt racism will become covert. You will learn to recognize both. Keep your head up and focus on your goals. During my journey, I experienced all this and more. My personal and professional life involved many “isms,” to include racism, sexism, classism, and colorism. You have to want to live a good life, believe it, and fight for it. This involves changing your mindset and educating others to change their mindset. As the saying goes, “Don’t talk about it, be about it!’
After finishing the manuscript to my book, my purpose changed from book to blog. Writing a blog enabled me to reach more people. I lived in poverty my entire childhood. There are various stages of poverty. Poverty can be the result of temporary situations, generational where people are not equipped with the necessary tools to progress and the cycle repeats, or absolute where people did not have basic necessities. The first fourteen years of my life was spent living and surviving absolute poverty. Civil rights workers fought tirelessly to change racist laws that kept black people and minorities oppressed. Many were killed, lynched and beaten. My parents did not allow my siblings and me to forget their unselfish fight for equality. We had a responsibility to improve ourselves. We had a civic duty to vote, a personal duty to respect others, obey just laws and question unjust laws. We could not afford to be apathetic. We had to know what was going on in the world and learn how to make a difference. There were many conversations around our pot belly stove. We honored God and believed in His word. He did not say that life wouldn’t be difficult. We are human and made many mistakes but He nudged us back on track. We may forget about Him but He never forgets us. When we were in the fire, He was there with us. He gave us great parents and mentors to guide us on our way. Everyone can make a difference in some way.
I grew up in an era where only the strong survive. I learned survival skills to not only take me out of poverty, but to keep me out of poverty. It is a long process that involves economic equality, racial equality, personal responsibility and changing the mindsets of those in poverty and those who never experienced poverty. Some people believe poverty is the result of poor choices and behaviors. Changing the mindset of those who never experienced poverty involves recognizing that people are discriminated against based on race and economic status.
Magazines like Ebony, Jet and Sepia were my primary news sources. People in the neighborhood discussed what was going on in the nation. Families had different levels of poverty but every black family in my community was either poor or low income. Some parents were able to find steady work, others did not. Some had intermittent and menial low wage jobs. Some parents worked hard on low wage jobs without benefits. There were long periods of time when no one was able to obtain employment. Work in the cotton fields barely paid enough to put food on the table. I shared in previous posts that Dad was almost sixty years old when he obtained gainful employment. Until then, he was at the mercy of someone to hire him for menial low wage jobs. Our entire family worked in the cotton fields. We couldn’t change laws, therefore we changed our mindset. We had a vested interest in the actions of the civil right leaders and the politicians. The civil rights workers demanded politicians implement programs to help the poor.
I was becoming the CEO of Francie Mae and invested in me so I could invest in others. So far I had hope and a strategy. Now, I needed a tactic. I had something to look forward to!
One of the biggest factors for changing negative habits into positive ones is believing that you can
Read more in my memoir. It’s available for purchase in the book section of this blog.
References
“Civil Rights Act 1964.”Wikipedia. Accessed January 17, 2020.
“Civil Rights Act 1968”.Wikipedial Accessed January 17, 2020
“Poor People’s Campaign.” Wikipedia. Accessed January 17, 2020.
“War on Poverty.” Wikipedia. Accessed January 17, 2020.