Free Your Mind

“Won’t you help to sing these songs of freedom?” Bob Marley asked a generation. In a few minutes of music he retold the story of African slavery, the continued pursuit of liberty, and quoted a line from Marcus Garvey that is now almost a hundred years old.

Garvey, a Jamaican-born descendent of slaves, was a controversial figure in his day. Incendiary with his words and actions, he met or instigated conflict everywhere he went. Yet, his influence was profound, leading Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to compliment him as the first man of color to lead a mass movement toward freedom.

It was Garvey who said, “Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery; for none but ourselves can free our minds.” And regardless of whatever quarrels African-American, Jamaican, or white leaders may have had with his means and methods, on this count Garvey was absolutely correct: Freedom begins in the heart and…