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This was drafted as an editorial around the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s (MLK), I have a dream speech when I decided to use The struggle for freedom as the theme for an editorial. However, it sat unused but is now edited to conclude with a tribute to the life struggle of Nelson Mandela.
During the Abolition and later Civil Rights struggles, the story of Moses liberating the people of Israel from slavery under their Egyptian masters, with God’s help, as recounted in Exodus was inspirational. Then the LORD said unto Moses, Go in unto Pharaoh, and tell him, Thus saith the LORD God of the Hebrews, Let my people go, that they may serve me (Exodus 9:1), is central and celebrated in many spirituals.
Jesus spoke in Aramaic and obviously was a great (the greatest?) preacher and early in his ministry his Sermon on the Mount speaks to the freedom of the Jews, particularly. In the Beatitudes, Matt. 5: 3-12, He states in part (KJV) Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness; for they shall be filled. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Jesus is talking there to a subject people under the rule of Rome-not benign rulers, and clearly was promoting freedom, justice & mercy.
In the Old Testament, there are many stories of leaders struggling for freedom from tyrannies and this is followed in history by the Roman Empire subjugating many peoples with many martyrs, such as Spartacus, as well as the successful Armenius whose victories stunted the northern expansion of the Empire.
The commercial scourge of slavery to provide labour in cultivating the Caribbean Islands and the plantations of the New World led to racial divide, to be countered by the long struggle for freedom. From within the British Empire, which benefited much from this trade, many Christians led in this.
During the late 18th century, William Wilberforce led a long struggle to abolish slavery in the British Empire:
God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners.
Let everyone regulate his conduct . . . by the golden rule of doing to others as in similar circumstances we would have them do to us, and the path of duty will be clear before him.
So enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable did the (slave) Trade's wickedness appear that my own mind was completely made up for Abolition. Let the consequences be what they would, I from this time determined that I would never rest until I had effected its abolition.
In 1833, the year of his death, the freedom bill for all the British Empire, including Canada, was passed. Canada became the refuge for slaves escaping the U.S. in the Underground Railroad as also featured in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
In the US abolitionists including William Garrison, John Whittaker and many Quakers, freed slaves such as Frederick Douglass and the Langston brothers. They were joined in this by women, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852. Stowe said,
I would write something that would make this whole nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is. ... the enslaving of the African race is a clear violation of the great law which commands us to love our neighbor as ourselves.
Abraham Lincoln greeted her in 1862 as the little woman who wrote the book that made this great [Civil] war.'In his most famous speech, the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln said,
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Edward R. Murrow said of Winston Churchill’s WWII speeches “He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.” In many of the speeches Churchill trumpets the cause of freedom. In one small example, after the famous Finest Hour speech, he concluded a tribute to the rescuers of the London blitz with
We shall never turn from our purpose, however sombre the road, however grievous the cost, because we know that out of this time of trial and tribulation will be born a new freedom and glory for all mankind.
The conclusion of Martin Luther King's famous I have a dream speech (1963):
From every mountainside, let freedom ring. And when this happens, and when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
Nelson Mandela reflected King's rhetoric in many speeches, including his 1994 swearing in speech:
Let freedom reign. The sun never set on so glorious a human achievement. God bless Africa.
For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. (Long Walk to Freedom, autobiography,1995)
Mandela was inspired by many of the above, as well as by Ghandi, in the struggles to defeat apartheid peacefully rather than by civil war. In Canada, the efforts of Brian Mulroney to lead western and Commonwealth countries to apply trade sanctions against apartheid South Africa were recognized as critical to change.
Our country which has a proud history in developing a caring society, has remaining problems with racial strife, but has been in the forefront of changing attitudes. One Canadian artist who contributed in this was Oscar Peterson whose composition, Hymn to Freedom, was dedicated to Nelson Mandela expresses the feeling:
When every heart joins every heart and together yearns for liberty,
That's when we'll be free.
When every hand joins every hand and together moulds our destiny,
That's when we'll be free.
Any hour any day, the time soon will come when men will live in dignity,
That's when we'll be free.
When every man joins in our song and together singing harmony,
That's when we'll be free.
Mandela and Peterson met once, in 1999.
Nelson Mandela was a giant in our generation, who achieved so much in attaining liberty for his people. And through the generations, men and women, famous and unsung have had the dream of freedom. In the world today there remains much work to be done in reducing poverty, improving education and still ending slavery, tyranny and subjugation of women in some countries.
Iain McGilveray (December 7, 2013)
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