“As we clear away the debris of a hurricane, let us also clear away the legacy of inequality," said President George W. Bush during a national prayer service at the National Cathedral on September 16, 2005. A Multicultural clergy from the devastated Gulf Coast states delivered prayers of mourning to grieving Americans. Hurricane Katrina exposed America’s poverty and the inequality that still persists in our society. Hurricane Katrina was one of the most malevolent natural disasters in our Nation's written history; we are still counting the displaced. Katrina took away her victims earthly goods but did not take away their spirits nor their heritages and origins. Etched within their hearts and minds of Katrina's survivors, exists the instinct to preserve their heritages and cultures. For this reason many of the survivors will come back to rebuild their unique cultures that Katrina could not obliterate.

To achieve this goal of equality that our president has set before us, we need to go back in time to the founding fathers of this great Nation. We need to redefine what the genetic makeup was of Americans during the American Revolutionary War era. We must ask ourselves who were the Americans? Before the American Revolutionary War the Americans as a people didn't exist. The Old World people were colonizing the New World for almost three centuries before the American Revolutionary War. The population during this era was a mixture of numerous diverse cultures from other continents who survived the wrath of Mother Nature and attacks by rival countries.

Anthrogenealogy, the science of genealogy by genetics, has brought into light the fact that we truly are one big human family, and the Melungeons a sixteenth century southeastern people of alleged unsolved origin provide the human linkages that have quietly but undeniably linked all Americans, white, black, red, yellow, and brown, together.

I had a dream about the late President Ronald Reagan. He was speaking to a multitude of people gathered around the Lincoln Memorial. He was proclaiming, "Mr. President, build up those walls, make them well-built and they will stand as a testament through out time in honor of these almost forgotten men, women and children, these precious souls who sacrificed everything for all to have freedom." There is no doubt that this righteous saintly man wanted to see this memorial built on the National Mall before he passed away in 2004. 

We can begin our Nation's new legacy by preserving what we have from ALL of our past and present cultures, for all Americans to celebrate, honor and remember. By building this national monument, we will be remembering and honoring, these forgotten souls through the times, no matter what those earliest American's ethnic origins may have been.

I plead to the 109th Congress to pass legislation, and President George W. Bush sign it, by October 27, 2005, to give National Mall Liberty Fund D.C. the exclusive right to build the memorial or it will die and the work of thousands -- over generations -- will go for nothing.

how you can help...

“Land is already set aside between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. However, the current authorization is due to expire on October 27, 2005. Should that date pass, and Congress fails to authorize National Mall Liberty Fund DC to build the memorial, the land will be lost forever as a place for this memorial. This site is on hallowed ground. Two years ago, Congress declared it a completed work of art and off-limits to future memorials, except those that was previously-declared to be of “preeminent historical and lasting significance to the nation,” said Maurice Barboza, who founded the project with his aunt Lena Santos Ferguson in 1985.

Contact members of your state's congressional delegation and urge them to support the

National Mall Liberty Fund D.C.

"The spirits of thousands of enslaved Americans, who helped win the Revolutionary War and sought freedom from bondage, have waited over 200 years for recognition.

Americans must not allow their voices to remain anonymous forever. They deserve the remembrance founders and patriots are entitled to receive from a grateful nation."  Maurice Barboza

Photo Courtesy of The National Museum of the American Indian