The Noise Of Your Songs

 

AMOS 5: 24

'But let justice run down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream.'

For many people, living around the Chesapeake Bay was an uneven, reactive dynamic.

Justice was too often at the discretion of enemies of the very concepts and practices of justice - particularly for certain peoples.

Righteousness, though, more often than not, became decidedly a matter of choice.  

The 'justice', approach enshrined victimhood.  'Righteousness' (the path taken by most Black citizens) offered a sense and spirit of empowerment.  "I can be made righteous by my own hand."

In the daily milieu, the socio-economic environment (down around places like Salisbury, Cambridge, Vienna, Princess Anne, and Deal Island), Christian morality codes informed, and sometimes forced, a mostly advancing set of social norms.  The aggregate effect produced a positive community, one that maximized most all it had.  

 Self awareness, imminent family connections, a deliberate approach to the 'everyday', were mixed  with aspiration, striving, guts,  grits -  the ingredients of worthy things.

The nature of rural communities - especially their relative isolation -  too often encouraged forces that when combined and repeated did limit the rights and opportunities for lots of Black Americans living around the lower eastern shore, especially before the Korean War.

If you were a Black person, living on the Eastern Shore was a very real challenge - just because you were black.  What was so remarkable, however, is how fruitful and rewarding the shore's black citizens made their lives.  (Make no mistake, they worked hard, harder then some others ever had to, and, notably, the last lynching in Maryland was carried out in the courthouse yard, in Princess Anne.)  In spite of all the negative forces constantly pushing against them, Blacks living on the shore were upbeat, innovative, entrepreneurial and more.  In many cases, Blacks were as successful as any number of their white, nearby neighbors.  (The Eastern Shore had long been the economic step-child of Maryland, in spite of the economic bounty of the Bay. Many whites on the shore had little or nothing either.)  'Separate but equal' defined much of life on the shore - but both parts were real.  Racism, lack of available capital, restricted investment knowledge, no legacy of wealth building, all these challenges (and more) combined to require and inspire, 'you must be twice as good, to gain half as much'.  Yet, gain they did. 

Credit the Bible, both with what to do; and what not.  Justice and righteousness are found there, by the Bay.  Bring your Bible.