Sharing!
Bobcat,
The video clip contained in the accompanying narration is the Marion Barry that DC's white folks and their Negro collaborators so deeply feared. What the future so-called "Mayor-for-Life," said in his conversation with this angry young black man so many years ago, is as true today as it was then. As a pre-teen l overheard a quote by Frederick Douglas in my barbershop during a discussion by a group of adult black men on power. Douglas said simply, "Power concedes nothing without a struggle, it never has and it never will." Overhearing this conversation prompted me to go to the Petworth District of Columbia Public Library to locate and view Douglas' quote for myself. As a result of reading and discussing this quote with my childhood friend Ralph Featherstone, later a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee activist in Mississippi, I was able to fully understand what this quote should mean to blacks fed up with the disparate racial segregation that in 1952 permeated many aspects of life for black people living in Washington, DC, the city of my birth. Throughout my adult life when l have been confronted by obstacles erected to impede my progress simply because of my color, l have simply smiled to myself and kept on pushing.
l encourage recipients of this particular email to take the time to carefully review it and think about what could have been if Marion Barry's brilliant mind hadn't been addled by his abuse of alcohol, illegal drug addiction and reckless womanizing. Be Blessed my friends and email associates.
Clarence Edwards
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