All my life I have had one over riding dream. I have had that dream since I was seven years old. That means I have had it for sixty two years now. I plan to tell you what that dream is but first I probably should tell you a bit about why I have it and why I have held it so long.
We hear a lot about poverty from time to time, especially during the Presidential Primaries and General Campaigns. That is nothing new as I have heard the promises of really doing something about poverty from the time that JFK, who was the first presidential vote I ever cast, was campaigning for the President. Yet while both he and then LBJ tried to get some things done we have never really addressed the real poverty in our country.
Then Bobby Kennedy was seeking our highest office and not only I but many others saw in him something that gave us hope that we would finally see real progress toward a more equal opportunity for all in this country. We are all sadly aware that he was not allowed to live to even try to accomplish the task. So today we still have a lot of real poverty right here within the richest nation in the world. Some may say I am wrong, but I can assure you I know what poverty is and I have lived it.
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Then our next shot at real hope was when we heard Bill Clinton campaigning and I can not forget how overjoyed so many of us were at his election because we felt we once again had someone who would really address the poverty problem. Little did I know the real disappointment that we would see when he turned out to be more political speak than true grit. It was really sad when he gave into the Republican dream of so called welfare reform which may have had good intentions, but really hurt a great many families that absolutely needed it. Any reform of any kind is only good if fairly applied. No Bill Clinton failed those who lived in poverty and some of us will never forget.
I stated above that I have had the dream since the age of seven and some may wonder why a seven year old would be thinking about something like that. I was old enough that I could see other people lived different and at the same time there was no way for things to be any better for us, the farm families. First let me say that I am about 3/4 Cherokee, although I have been considered white all my life.
I have seem my mother and father cry because their six kids were going to bed hungry yet another night. There were far too many of those times. I have seen the times when we felt like we were having a feast when we could find some wild polk weed which we could boil and called it polk salad. The polk salad with a small piece of salt pork and cornbread would be a complete meal. Other times it would be either dried butter beans or pinto beans and cornbread. When we had the flour and the rice, our breakfast consisted of baked biscuits with flour gravy over rice. Some times dad and I would go hunting for either squirrel or rabbit. If we were lucky enough to bag a few it was a really great day. That would be one of the few times we had any meat other than salt pork.
I can remember only two times that I ever went to a doctor before I joined the US Navy. You could not afford a DR. When one of the kids would get cut bad enough to need stitches my grandmother would sew us up. For other illness there was home remedies. There was no pain killer.
I was born at home and a midwife that lived about two miles away helped my mother during my birth. During my early years raised in the delta of MS, which was and still holds some of the poorest areas on our nation. The time period was during the 40s and early 50s. At that time if your family were farm hands you were expected to begin working in the fields 10 hours a day when you turned seven years of age. That work consisted of using a hoe to chop the weeds and grass from the corn and cotton fields during the growing season and then the back breaking work of picking the cotton when the bowls were opened. Much of the time between the other two was spent cutting and stacking wood to get you through the winter.
We lived on a huge farm which had about 3 nice family homes for the owner's family and then it had about a dozen old wood framed shacks, some which were old converted barns, and these housed the farm hands. Adults were paid $2.50 per 10 hr day and all, of us that were under 12 were paid $1.25 per 10 hr day. We had no electricity or running water, and you could see daylight through the walls and the old tin roof on the shacks. The nearest pump to get water for the house was at the other end of the cotton field which was about a quarter mile away. We had to carry all the water used at the house from there after working all day.
When we were working during the heat of the day the field boss would send a metal bucket around about mid morning and again about mid afternoon, that was your only opportunity to get a drink. You were not allowed to leave and go all the way to the pump to get a drink. You also had another chance to have a drink of water at lunch time which was generally thirty minutes long. Lunch as best as I remember usually consisted of sandwiches made of either livercheese or bologna or peanut butter. I liked the peanut butter best.
The families that were the farm hands had no automobiles, and groceries were doled out at the company store also located on the farm and at super high prices. During the times that there was no work, each family could run credit at the store which, was then paid back by withholding a huge part of your earnings when there was work. It was set up so that no family was ever out of debt.
During those years the children of the worker families were allowed to go to school only when there was no work to be done. This mean that they missed on average a third of each school year. In the course of the years we lived there I did not personally know anyone that finished high school except the sons and daughters of the owner's family. How my brothers and I were able to even pass any of the grades is still amazing to me. I suppose that being a real book worm helped me and I helped them when I could. My father had a third grade education and my mother a sixth grade. As it turned out not one of us kids managed to graduate. Thank god that on my seventeenth birthday with my parents signed permission I joined the Navy. It was a way of escaping the poverty trap. There I did proceed to get further education.While I am not rich or even middle class, I no longer live in what I call poverty. I am acutely aware that many still do and my cares and concerns are with them.
My point is that while that was all so many years ago and in most areas things have vastly improved from that time, but while that is so it is also true that there are still many areas within our country that are very little different today. I mean that in the sense of how hopeless it is for those who are trapped in the endless cycle of poverty. Just as wealth begets wealth, poverty begets more poverty. So for all the great promises of ending poverty the real base causes of it and the issues that it presents have never really been addressed. Addressing poverty with the intent of ending it is far more complicated than most people realize. It requires much more than just tackling education. It requires much more than any piecemeal stabs at it.
Over the years I have visited reservations, and poverty areas in several states and it is still like entering another country or world. Today some of the reservations have had the income from casino to help with their finances, but many of them are still in bad shape.
How anyone can witness pure poverty and how it robs those in it of hope, and not want to do everything they can to change it is beyond me.
Through all those years I have hung on to the hope that before my time here is over someone would really do something to rid at least this nation of real poverty. Through all those years even though at times it is hard to hang onto it, the dream has still been there that someone would come along who would start turning our nation into the great country it could and should be, which is a place where no matter who you are born to, you have just as much of an opportunity as anyone else.
We should never forget that Poverty is still with us although it has been much like racism in recent years kept out of sight and out of mind. Both are in dire need of attention.
Today we once again a candidate who proclaims that he will address the poverty and to help make sure that opportunity is open to all no matter color or what ever. He was not my first choice because John Edwards spoke more to the pain of those who live it daily, but at least we have someone promising once again that we will do something.
Will this time be different? I don't know and while I want it to be so badly, I also understand that our nation has far too many pressing issues facing it now that some will get lost along the way. I can still hope and keep dreaming that some day America will mean it when we say that all are equal. Being equal has to be measured in many ways.
I can dream it until either it happens or I am no longer here to dream.
I as well as many others will continue to dream and hope for a country that does not continue to sweep our obligation to our fellow humans under the rug as if a real problem does not exist.
Thank you if you stuck around and read this.
Peace
:)