Golden Poppies (Freedman/Johnson, #3)

by Laila Ibrahim

Our Lord is jus’ like a mama. He wanting what’s best for His children but not always able to make it so.” Mama patted Jordan’s hand and said in a raspy voice, “The Lord gave me a long life, a good life. I don’ need more. I can go in peace.”

assertion that the sins of the world could be remedied by the touch of human love. She wanted to believe her actions could make a difference; she just didn’t. She

There is throughout the whole United States this caste prejudice which is unknown in any other part of the civilized world. It differs only in degree North, East, South or West. If they do not lynch the negro in some of the States, they refuse him accommodations equal to those of other travelers; try to freeze them out at the public schools; give him no adequate political representation; and refuse to employ him in any other than the most menial capacities. It is almost as great a cruelty to educate youths in the public and industrial schools of this country and then shut the doors of the factories, mercantile establishments and trade unions in their faces because they are black, as it is to deny them trial

by jury and lynch them. In one case you kill the body, and in the other you murder all the higher aspirations which distinguish man from brute creatures. America has much to learn before she can be the justice-loving, Christian progressive nation that she deludes herself into thinking she now is.

“Despite the insults and abuse, perhaps because of them, we will find the strength to believe in a better tomorrow. It may take one hundred years, but someday we will have equal treatment and equal respect. I can’t say when it will happen—sometimes I fear it never will—but I have to believe it is possible, for without a vision a people will perish.”