Some may find it best to stop reading now; or, as some cautions warn, continue at your own risk!

Contributed By:Dorothy Nevils

Jobs… jobs…jobs… Over and over, like a song, those words are repeated. “They need jobs.” It becomes a dirge, and it spreads from soul to soul, household to household, as if Paul were himself sending letters to the churches of Corinth! “Jobs” is held as the magic bullet.

I live, as do most residents who wear my skin and all but the last digit of my zip code, in an area that has changed astronomically in the past half century! In fact, if it were a jigsaw puzzle, one could pick it up, make a few adjustments in outline and size, and set it down at a hundred different places on the map!

Fair warning: Some may find it best to stop reading now; or, as some cautions warn, continue at your own risk! I will do the same.

This month we pause to reflect on what has happened to my kin in my country since my ancestors were brought here, and take time to commemorate those who have made it possible for us to “be all we can be,” some dying in the process.

We call them giants; but alas, we take them lightly! Many gave their lives to keep their families safe, to keep them together. They stood in the face of death so that their children would have an opportunity to learn, and learn from the same books, in the same schools, as their paler counterparts.

Our feet found footing on their shoulders; yet, too often, those feet now flee in the darkness, a purse dangling, ripped from what could very well be an ancient aunt’s hand. There’s not even a backwards glance to see her rising, like a four-legged animal, trying to get her balance before dusting off, and continuing into a house of worship with glasses that now won’t help her through the hymnal.

Maybe a job might have stood between the thief and the thief’s unfortunate kin’s purse. Maybe there was a young child at home, and a box that yesterday held Cheerios. Maybe the lights no longer lit its dark room, and the mournful cry from hunger and fear pushed him out into the street where the good sister made her way to the building…and singing… and hope... Maybe…

Maybe there is room for another maybe… Maybe there was a schoolroom, a few years back, with desks and books, a bit worn, but usable, and a teacher that assigned writings by Arna Bontemps; girls with minds as sharp as NASA’s ”black human computers,” the best kept secret of the 1950s; and assemblies where classmates learned the efforts of Sojourner Truth, Dred Scott, and Martin Luther King. Maybe that was “boring.”

Yes, jobs are needed. However, jobs don’t “just” exist outside reality, like “fairy seed” weeds. They are tied to reality, a reality the roots of which are in our reality.

Unless you’re unfamiliar with my writing, you know that generally the concept of, if not the word responsibility, runs all through it.

That has been the foundation of the long string of people we honor this month: They were honorable, generous, and proud. They cared about family, and family went past the porch and past “blood.” Those working should be friendly, respectful, and capable so that people leave pleased.

If our young would follow in the footprints of the giants, many of whom died for the freedom to learn and to be a part of community, I believe that jobs would come, and people would stay.

Story Posted:02/10/2017