|
Beyond the 17th Cloud
If you travel long enough and far enough
and well enough and kind enough, and
if you can see lies behind the truth, and
know that truth comes in many disguises,
and if you can listen with a wide-open heart
and can learn the songlines,
word for word,
beat by beat,
rhythm by rhythm,
fate by fate,
eventually,
you will arrive at the land
just beyond the 17th Cloud.
In January 2004, I traveled to island of Haiti--the first black independent
nation in the Western Hemisphere. Haiti led the way to freedom for African Americans and its ousting of the French in
1804 terrified Southern American planters and slave holders. Two hundred years later, Haiti is again in turmoil.
Who knows the outcome? Perhaps Frederick Douglass. Travel with me to the island of Haiti and listen as Douglass,
guides us through the uniqueness of the "Land of Mountains" with text taken from his speech on Haiti at the World's Columbian
Exposition, January 2, 1893.
My subject is Haiti, the Black
Republic; the only self-made Black Republic in the world. I am to speak to you of her character, her history, her importance
and her struggle from slavery to freedom and to statehood. I am to speak to you of her progress in the line of civilization;
of her relation with the United States; of her past and present; of her probable destiny; and of the bearing of her example
as a free and independent Republic, upon what may be the destiny of the African race in our own country and elsewhere.
- Frederick Douglass, 1893
|
