Angelia Vernon Menchan

Angelia Vernon Menchan is an author, publisher and public speaker who owns two publishing companies, MAMM Productions and Honorable Menchan Media. Mrs. Menchan is also a Budget Officer and former Job Corps Counselor. To date she has published twenty-three books of her own work, both fiction and non-fiction and more than eighty ebook novellas on amazon.com. You can access her bibliography on www.amazon.com search words: Angelia Vernon Menchan




Contact information:
Website: http://acvermen.blogspot.com
Email: acvermen@yahoo.com
Phone numbers: 904 714 2272 904 303 2679

Monday, January 21, 2008

What Happened...

I wasn't sure I was going to do a Martin Luther King day blog,
Still am unsure if that's what I am doing...
But for several days, since Wednesday in fact, after a conversation left me completely bewildered, one of those back and forths about those who do and those who don't...
I have asked myself what happened,
I think back to the early seventies, when so many of us were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed,
As we headed off to college, government jobs or other employment opportunities...
There seemed to be so much enthusiasm and hope...
For at least a generation...
But something occurred somewhere in the interim that set everything on it's ear,
At least in our communities...
Was it social programs, drying up...
So many of my friends started work with those programs and went on to progress up the career ladder in ways their parents and ancestors hadn't been able to...
Or was it the way we came to accept things that were once unnacceptable...
I can remember the first time I saw a young girl pregnant in school...
I didn't know how to feel, she was one of the purest minds I knew, she and I were always in competition in our predominately majority school for some academic success, we were often the victors,
I can remember years later seeing her, beaten down by too many kids, men and substances and wondering what went wrong, the shame on her face still leaves me with a visceral, painful sensation...
Wondering if how easily people accepted her choices at such a tender age, helped to propel her to where she went...I don't even know, I am of course simply rambling...
Many say that choosing to take prayer out of schools was a begin of the decline...
I don't know if that is it either...I do remember loving the early sixties, those Wednesdays when Ms. Ivey came to the school to teach us bible passages and having to remember verses for the next Wednesday, we all seemed to enjoy it and get something from it...
Or maybe it happened when the neighbors were no longer allowed to correct and chastise children, without fear of being cussed out by the kids or their parents...
I can remember walking home from school past so many folks who knew me and who I knew took a vested interest in what I did and how I did it and wanted me to succeed,
I can even remember some my associates who slept around, did drugs and drank, profusely applauding the fact that I didn't and being glad about me being me...
So what happened, I am sure I don't know....
There are so many more of us these days, who are more successful, at least materially and on paper...but that seems to be more a dividing issue than an empowering one...
I simply want to know, What happened?
I do know that to fix it, we had all better be prepared to get involved in any small way we can...

Blessings,
angelia

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

As I read your post, you made me remember things. In the 80s, it was still somewhat of an embarassment to be a teen mother, but now in 2008, the young ladies wear it as a badge of honor. Times have definately changed.

I know I sound like a broken record but we just have to do what we can and hope that it spreads.

Angelia Vernon Menchan said...

Shelia,
it will take those of us who sound like broken records to do something...some of the best music gets played over and over again...

Blessings,
angelia

Gwyneth Bolton said...

I think 8 years of Reagan and 4 years of Bush had a lot to do with some of the regression and backwards progress since Civil Rights and Black Power. And as much as black folk love Clinton, a lot of the most detrimental economic reform that hurt many poor black folks happened under his watch. That has a little something to do with what happened ...

Gwyneth

Angelia Vernon Menchan said...

Lady Gwyneth,
Me thinks you are right and since we often can't see the flowers for the trees, these things continue to manifest...Thanks...

blessings,
angelia

Poetic Genesis said...

I can't tell you exactly what happened but I'm sure it had a lot to do with what you have posted about prayer in school AND the village doing it's thang... I also believe it only made it worse when they removed corporal punishment out of schools, reduced school busing, and momma's started averaging 16 years old... not to mention outreach from church's has dwindled tremendously....

like I said... Ion know, but you're right, we have to do our part or what will become of them? and us for that matter...

Angelia Vernon Menchan said...

What will happen to us...indeed...

smooches,
mama deep