May there be freedom, equality and brotherhood among all men. May there be morality in the relations among nations. May there be, in our time, at long last, a world at peace in which we, the people, may for once begin to make full use of the great good that is in us.
I grew up wondering who all the people were on the covers of the magazines that were spread on my grandmother’s coffee table.
A symbol of Black pride, they were all so beautiful. They were all so significant.
One in particular comes to mind, forty years beyond my recollections of the visits and 73 years beyond its original publication: Ralph Bunche. No…I don’t remember it on the table but instead on the wall. My grandfather made a wall collage of the covers dating back into the 1950s–overlapping excellence, draped over pegboard in the party space of the basement.
Ralph Bunche was on the cover in 1950 and 1955 (I have come to know)…I don’t remember everyone but I know they were there…lovingly set out for us to see ourselves…to learn of our progress and celebrate our success. Our history and our biography, tied together and photographed, printed on glossy paper and distributed throughout the world.
Ralph Bunche was the first (of only four) Black American Nobel laureates.
Ralph Bunche was one of the first to rally the world to pursue peace in Palestine.
When paired with Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms speech (delivered almost a full decade before), World War and the chronic fight for civil rights, a Black American man became a global mouthpiece. So, I say it loud:
I am Black and I am proud…of Ralph Bunche and all the Freedom Fighters whose work outlines my own journey.
Excerpt from “Four Freedoms” speech of Pres. Roosevelt, January 6, 1941.
Ta-Nahesi Coates is among the generational voices who are willing to once again say it loudly.
Words mean something.
Justice. Peace. Liberty. Freedom.
These words mean everything.
“War is evil.” is what he said in 2023.
“There can be no moral equivalent to something so immoral a procedure as war”, she (Pearl Buck) said in 1949. This is an Americanargument that deserves our full attention.
It is lazy to say that it–war and competition–is inevitable.
Joy Barnes-Johnson, Ph.D. 