Carmen Delgado Is Not Yet Born

By W. F. Twyman, Jr.

For many, many reasons, I believe in the coming of a better time. Even as family and friends are bullied to define fellow Americans as “Oppressed,” I know truth marches on. You cannot make a human oppressed just because you say so. Doesn’t work that way. In fact, you are likely to arouse the ire of individuals, particularly those raised with a strong sense of self and a strong generational family rooted in the land. A reader has suggested I write a second book about the Golden Age in Black Culture and Consciousness beyond the year 2050. I have a mind to do so.

But Carmen Delgado is not yet born.

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In every Black American generation, there has arisen a mind who saw beyond the nadir into the abundance of spiritual self-reliance. Peel back the layers, the sediment, of black intellectual life and what does one see? One views an abandoned baby with no prospect of distinction in this life. None whatsoever. As surely as I write these words, the poor house beckoned for this black baby in 1753, a time of slavery. That baby grew into a young boy of promise, a teenager of high aim, a man of the cloth, and the preacher of 5,000 sermons from his pulpit in West Rutland, Vermont. That woe begotten baby would be remembered as the only black American who defeated the racial caste system, according to the Colored American Newspaper in the 1830s. The name you ask? Rev. Lemuel Haynes (1753 - 1833).

Countless Americans, white and black, led higher lives because of one New England mind, a Negro preacher.

As Rev. Haynes passed away, another baby boy lived in Louisa County, Virginia. This son also knew the loss of both parents at a tender age. Thrown into the world as a free black on a plantation, family escorted the young child at the mercy of racial fates to Ohio and the guardianship of a trusted family acquaintance. This orphan had a mind that saw into the future a better life than becoming a carpenter, the fate of many free blacks during slave times. Over the skepticism of an older brother who doubted the value of higher education for his youngest brother, another brother interceded and insisted that the teenager return to Oberlin College in the 1840s and complete his education.

One day that orphaned youngster would become the second most influential free black in antebellum America. A prosperous Ohio lawyer and a public official, this attorney turned on his intellectual powers after the Civil War for the benefit of his people. He founded the law school at Howard University and served as Acting President of Howard before serving as the first college president of (now called) Virginia State University and the first black congressman from Virginia. And as he preached before newly freed blacks in barns and fields and churches, he repeated the secret of his success —Self Reliance. Who knows how many people were inspired to lead better lives of thrift, character and education due to the vision of this pioneer black lawyer, John Mercer Langston (1829 - 1897)?

As Langston passed away in Washington, D.C., a seven-year-old son in Paris, Tennessee was learning how to live a good life from his parents. His father worked six days a week and pastored on the Sabbath at a local church. His mom doted on her son and believed he was destined for great things in life. She scrimped and saved that he would have the best education and the best clothes for school. These influences from mom and dad led this child to be driven in life. The aim of a good life was to acquire the best education possible and to take the long vision in life. History records that this ambitious son of former slaves would deliver the commencement address before Harvard University in 1919. Times were horrible. The racial nadir was accelerating for Black people in this country. And yet this scholar turned Baptist preacher, like his father, was tapped by the Board of Trustees in 1926 to lead Howard University into the 1960s.

The rest is history. The name of this visionary mind of his generation? President Mordecai Wyatt Johnson (1890 - 1976).

The 1970s should have produced the next great visionary in intellectual life. It did not happen and the question is rightfully raised why? Could it be that the Black Power and Consciousness Movement neutralized non-conforming thought at a crucial juncture in Black American history? Could it be that the rise of Black Studies marginalized the potential Rev. Lemuel Haynes, John Mercer Langstons, and Mordecai Johnsons born in the 1970s? Are we due for the next great visionary of non-conforming thought in Black American life?

I think so. The greatest tragedy of the 1970s may have been the rise of the Acting White slur and the stillbirth of a natural cycle of black non-conforming leadership due to be born in the 1970s. It is a very interesting insight to consider.

Those born around 1976 would have weathered severe peer pressure to conform. Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism (1992) was all the rage in the 1990s when potential non-conformers would have entered their twenties. Did Professor Derrick Bell with his despair and pessimism short-circuit the natural cycle in the nature and character of black leadership for a generation?

I fear so.

However, generational cycles will not be denied. Those who are destined to be non-conformers will scale the heights of black intellectual life with a vengeance. Those born in the 1970s would be in their 60s starting with the year 2030. The next generation of non-conformers with the soul of Rev. Haynes, the self-reliance of Congressman Langston, and the vision of Howard President Mordecai Johnson will come into our racial world in the 2030s and 2040s. And they will resist racial conformity with extreme prejudice, I suggest. These babies will move into young adulthood and assume the intellectual reigns of power beyond the year 2050.

This is my intuition about the nature of racial generational cycles.

Conclusion: I wrote this essay because a reader felt bullied in the presence of conformers, enforcers of racial dogma. Take heart, dear reader, and know there is a season to every dogma. Once upon a time, those who believed in the individual and self-reliance, spiritual abundance and vision beyond the coming thirty years, set the feeling tone of life. Those times will return once again. We just have to wait a few more years for the birth of the beautiful ones. Children born in the 2030s and 2040s will fight against caricatures and stereotypes.

Being black tells one zero about a person’s inner life. If there are over 40 million Black Americans, there are over 40 million Black American life stories, experiences and perspectives. I share my unique me with you all every day.

I place my hopes on a baby girl. In my imagination, she is born around the year 2032. She comes into the world from a strong family, Black Harvard Law School professor Dad and Latina Attorney Mom. She will attend St. Paul’s, the best boarding school in New England, followed by Harvard College and Harvard Law School. She will change the world one day when she applies the trans energy to race. My readers know her name from my previous essays.

Carmen Delgado is not yet born.