For Honoring African Unpaid Laborers
There is something we can do about the past. The ultimate honor that can be paid to these people who have made the prosperity of America possible is to restore the character and image that was purposefully stripped away to justify their enslavement. They were vilified to justify forcing them to work generationally to enrich others.
If we leave unpaid laborers where early America left them in our history-as insignificant, inferior, and even subhuman-we become complicit in the mistreatment of those people. If we allow others to take credit for their labor and their valor, we become co-conspirators in robbing them. Unpaid Laborers have had enough taken from them. We must not be guilty of robbing them of their legacy.
Unpaid Laborers built the foundation of what has become the most powerful nation in the history of mankind. Now that we understand how critical they were to America's success, if Americans continue to deny the indispensable role Unpaid Laborers played in America's development, then we become accomplices in their robbery. There is nothing we can do about the generational horrors they endured while they were enslaved. But we commit a current injustice if we don't give them credit for what they have done in building this nation.
Juneteenth
Our nation's newest national holiday offers a perfect opportunity to educate the country on how vital the collective contribution of 10 million African Unpaid Laborers were to the United States existence. This education must be a prerequisite to honoring them.
Juneteenth is the first national recognition of America's slave past. The Juneteenth holiday celebrates the end of American slavery. Perhaps we should broaden the meaning of the holiday by honoring the people who were enslaved, the people who built the physical and economic foundation of the USA. This could and should also become a national day of enlightenment. A day set aside to teach the nation about the indispensable contributions of the first 12 generations of Africans in America. Perhaps someday the country will be able to give them their rightful place in American history.
The single black stripe in the American flag is a symbol of the magnitude of the Collective Contribution of the first 12 generations of Africans in America to the birth, growth, and survival of the United States of America.
We "Hype the Stripe" to honor them right!
Wearing the Unpaid Labor lapel pin is an excellent way to advocate for honoring the first 12 generations of Africans in America for their indispensable contribution to the birth, growth and survival of the United States of America. Another way to express your appreciation and honor of those 10 million African Unpaid Laborers is by displaying the symbolic Unpaid Labor flag at home or at work.