Stay in the That Line

Letter to Editor

By James Hankins

      You are voting by mail or standing in a long line. Your “bad angel” says stop the hassle because you can lie to your family and friends and say you voted. Your “good” angel is saying we need every vote, STAY IN THAT LINE. Six groups of our ancestors are looking down from “Heaven” at you and saying STAY IN THAT LINE.

1. Those who were captured by slave kidnappers, thrown in the bottom of ships, and brought to America and sold are whispering, in their different languages, STAY IN THAT LINE. (2.) The slaves who worked from sunup to sundown for no pay and treated less than dogs are singing, STAY IN THAT LINE. (3.) All our black sisters and brothers who were beaten, raped, whipped, stabbed, boiled in water, used as alligator bait, experimented on by quack doctors without anesthetics, hanged, injected with syphilis, or shot are crying, STAY IN THAT LINE. (4.) All of our relatives who suffered because of inadequate treatment on jobs, in courts, in doctors’ offices, in hospitals, churches, schools, nursing homes, and other places are pleading with you for the sake of their children, STAY IN THAT LINE. (5.) All blacks who were the last hired but the first fired. Their pay was always less than their white co-worker who had little or no education or superior skills; paid just enough to live above abject poverty but never enough to build wealth, taught to mistrust and hate each other, and themselves are praying, STAY IN THAT LINE.

(6.) Our North Carolina, Brunswick Country, New Hanover County, and Wilmington freedom fighters: Kelly Alexander Sr., Carolyn Q. Coleman, Attorney Julius Chambers, Eugene Gore, Jesse Bryant, Abraham Galloway, Attorney Robert Bond, Attorney Lisbon Berry, Thomas Jervay Sr., Father John Swift, Monsignor Thomas Paul Hadden, Thelma Bull, Joe Wright, Dr. Daniel Rome, Dr. Leroy Upperman, Dr. Hubert A. Eaton Sr., Dorothy Johnson, Rachael Freeman, Carolyn Hankins Oliphant, Mary Mosley, and Mary Alice Jervay Thatch are chanting, STAY IN THAT LINE. We have two choices; vote for BIDEN progressives and move on up, or TRUMP election denier’s cult” and back-to-back of the bus, 2^nd class citizenship. In 2016 black votes decreased, white votes increased and the class clown/village idiot /draft dodger/tax cheat/racist/homophobic/xenophobic/pathological liar/ skirt chaser/career criminal TRUMP, became President. We reaped what we sowed. Let us honor our ancestors and level the playing field for us, our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Remember how we came out and elected Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012? Author—James Jerome Hankins