The power of words

I read the story of Fredrick Douglass as a teenager, learning of the struggles of slaves to be free. I heard my Grandparents tell me of their flight from Terry Towne, South Carolina, running ahead of a lynch mob. When my Grandfather found out I was joining the Army, he sat me down and told me of how the military was during the Korea War. He told me of how the doctors would not treat his friend who had been hit by a mortar round. My grandfathers’ friend died of blood lost in a foreign land serving his country because he was a black man. My Grandfather was a very large black man; he did not take the death of his friend lightly and made his anger know by hospitalizing a platoon of Military Police. My Grand Father told me this story and made me promise not to fight or do anything that would that would get me into trouble while in the military.
It was hard to do, like Fredrick Douglass; I understood that knowledge makes you free. I was a black man with knowledge of myself and that made it harder for the military to re-make me in an image of their choosing. I was rebellious of authority but amiable in manner, I was willing to follow orders but willful in my actions. I learned to operate within the boundaries of a soldier. I came to understand that knowledge is the key to freedom in all manners of existence. The slave cannot stay a slave if he begins to find himself with more knowledge then the Master. As Malcolm was in slaved by his own ignorance so are many others. I can remember my platoon sergeant telling me that in order to beat the man you have to know the rules of the game. In most occasions knowledge marks the difference between freedom and servitude. I followed the example of those in authority and learned the rules of military life, although they told me that it was something I didn’t need to learn. The books that held the rules and regulations of military law were obscure and hard to find. Knowledge is something that you have to want and to aspire to earn. For me it was that same way in my trying to get into college, it was an effort to find the right person or to find the right paperwork. Freedom is something that is found in the strokes of the pen; it sparks the tinder of knowledge and fires the flames of freedom. In the bible it is written that in the beginning there was the word. Words are the tools of creation, words live in books. When Fredrick Douglass learned how to read words, he found the power of the written word. When Hajj Malik Shabazz began to understand the power of words he worked to learn them and their meanings. There is power in the written word, for Fredrick Douglass it helped him free him from the chains of slavery. For Malcolm little it transformed him and freed him from the chains of his ignorance