Albert Raboteau is the dean of African-American religious history. His book Slave Religion is a classic and still remains on the reading lists of many graduate students in both history and religion.
Over at the Huffington Post religion page, Raboteau reflects on the meaning of Black History Month. Here is taste:
Our nation has need of tears, tears for all those lynched, maimed, whipped, shamed, and debased by our history of race hatred. Our country has need of tears for those who suffered and for those at whose hands they suffered. For they, by denying the humanity of others, denied their own. We remain connected to the past by memory, and the nation, like individuals, must come to terms with the past. There is a way out of the evasion and willed amnesia of our racial trauma — listening to the voices of our ancestors, expressed in story, song, sermon, and texts, offers one such way as a telling of memories, an expression of mourning, and, by means of listening and mourning, to begin the process of healing the wounds, personal and social, inflicted by racism.
Read the entire article here.
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