by Ann Nurse

Created on: November 27, 2010   Last Updated: January 08, 2011

The Tree to Slavery of Hate and Terrorism

Terrorism is not a new thing in the history of this country.  In America terrorism has a history of having been home grown.  The history has a connection  with "the tree" and lynching or murder by hanging.  Groups of hate filled people called the Ku Klux Klan terrorized black folk in the South.  This happened long before we had terror from the Middle East. There were terrorist here before 9/11. We learned to live with their terrorist acts on a daily basis.   They burned crosses to intimidate blacks.  They lynched Black people without having to answer for their crime in a court of law.  Blacks associated terrorism with men disguised and hiding behind covered faces.  Men riding in the cloke of darkness.  They did not have bombs or airplanes then-but they were definitely terrorists.  They not only terrorized Blacks but Jews and Indians.  These people did not have even the protection of due process under the Law of the land.

By day they did not look dangerous, except their eyes might have been filled with hate.  At night they donned white sheets, pointed hats and concealed their identity by covering their faces.   They were called Knights of the KKK.  Black folk probably walked past them in the cotton fields; they probably saw them in the country store during the day when picking up mail.  Blacks even saw some of them on their way to church.  They recruited members at church, believe it or not.  There was a period of time when terrorizing Black people was even sanctioned in some parts of this country.  It is now the twenty first century and sporadically racially motivated crimes still occur against Blacks and other minorities in America.

 There was a tree that stood on an old southern plantation in Alabama where my grandmother lived.  Grandmother Annie lived there all of her life; she was ninety-nine- year-old when she passed.  On many occasions my grandmother would read to us from the old family Bible about the tree in the Garden of Eden.  Sometimes she would read to us from the Book of Daniel about the tree whose top touched the sky.  This tree was an open symbol of something that needed to be told.  The tree symbolized Nebuchazzer, she would say. My grandmother Annie had a thick southern accent.  It always sounded like she was saying Neb-u-ca-cheezer.  As children that is how

• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next Page >>