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“Watch for the new thing I am going to do. It is happening already – you can see it now! I will make a road through the wilderness and give you streams of water there.”
Isaiah 43:19
My Mom, Majestice, exited the world on March 1, 2006. She had passed on to me her zeal to fight for those who couldn’t fight for themselves in America and to assist Africa, and my heart burned with it.
Mom’s dreams came true the day I stepped into the prestigious Barnard College, six hundred miles away from Detroit, to study my dream subject, political science with focus on Africa. She had devoted the last eighteen years of her life, her earnings, and all her energy to make her dreams for me come true.
1968 to 1970 were years of mourning for me. I lost all my grandparents, who were mentally, physically, and emotionally drained by the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr in 1968. They had treasured him like a son, and his brutal assassination had been a great blow to them. Grandma Lilee passed on June 15, 1970, at the grand age of 103 years. Her prophecy over me when I was five years old in 1958 came true: ‘Don’t you ever let anyone call you a Negro, Ngozi! You are an African. And I predict right here and now before everybody present that you will be the first of us all to return to Africa.’
Twenty-three years later, in 1981, I married a Nigerian – Segun, an aeronautical engineering graduate, the most brilliant man I have ever met, who fits my life like a glove fits a hand. It was his integrity, humility, courage, and love for God that attracted me to him.
I remember the day I stepped into Barnard College with Mom and Aunt Ruth, after my education at Hillary College. I had an Afro twice the size of my head, and I was adorned in blue bellbottoms and a blue and white striped psychedelic shirt. I was so excited to be there, at the place that represented the gate to my career dreams. I had my own space – Room 713!
I later went to Wayne State University, where I had once visited with Mum to breathe its college air. I finished with a first class (summa cum laude). Like Mom, I understood that education was the key to unlocking doors, and so I had extended my study and achieved two PhDs. With knowledge as my armour and education as my weapon, I became an activist and whistle blower, bringing awareness to the plight of Black people.
Martin Luther King Jr, who was shot dead as he stood on the on the second-floor balcony of Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee at 6 pm on April 4, 1968 was murdered by James Earl Ray, who received a ninety-nine year prison sentence after pleading guilty. His death caused a national mourning and a sense of great anger in more than a hundred American cities where there was an explosion of rioting, looting, violence, and death.
Life is far better for African Americans now than those days of the 1960s, but the struggle for all Black African Americans to breathe air freely is still in progress. There are many like me who hold the fire and will pass the baton on to our next generations until the victory is completely won.
One day, Black people will breathe freely the way their white counterparts breathe air freely with no fear of harassment, oppression, and racial discrimination.