My inmate number is ND7568. The title of this piece is “Black History Month 2023.” This is Kenjuan Congo, Jr. calling from a prison camp behind enemy lines.
This is Black History Month. The thing about this month is- it has its significance because we really don’t know our own history as Black people. We’ve been cut from our roots. We don’t know our language, we don’t know our culture, we don’t know history, where we come from, and then when we come over here during this month, they teach us that we were cotton pickers.
They never take us back home to the east. They just have us saying that we were cotton pickers and slaves trying to run and get away. Then they say that everything we accomplished was under the tutelage of white people. That’s their trickery way of taking credit for all of our accomplishments. We were cotton pickers, they freed us, and they taught us, and everything that we did was only because of them. Now it’s as if they’re actually doing us a favor.
But when we go back home to the east and reconnect with our roots, our culture, our language, and our history, we realized that they aren’t doing us a favor. We did them a favor. In fact, we brought Europe out of the dark ages. It’s a time where we call Morocco Spain, even historians acknowledged it was Morocco who went to Spain and brought Europe out of the dark ages. And even famous historian Ivan Van Sertima wrote a book “They Came Before Columbus.” It details how we Black people came here before Europeans as well, so when we go back home to the east, we realized that we are in this position right now due to social imposition.
It’s not that we are inherently inferior. We are in here because of social imposition. It’s like we have two boxers. You take one boxer, tie his arm around his back, blindfolded him, and don’t throw him in the ring, then you point with the boxer with his arm tied behind his back and say, “Look, look, he can’t fight as good as the one that’s not blindfolded.” That’s what happened to us here in the United States. They use this to justify our mistreatment.
But when we know our true history, it allows us our reality, they’re doing us no favors and we are in this position due to social imposition. And that enables us to fight for freedom for all of our people. This month is important not to just focus on what we did here on the west. Now go to the east and look at what we did, our great accomplishment, before we even came here, to how we actually did them a favor by bringing Europe out of the dark ages, that we have civilizations going back tens of thousands of years.
This is Kenjuan Congo, Jr. calling from a prison camp behind enemy lines.
These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio.
