What if the time of the demise is not the timing of the oppressed he controlled for so long? Didn’t the young Israelites wandering in the wilderness have a set time to when the wandering would be over? 

What if its all the timing of the Heavens?

At the same time of the great turmoil, great grief, great upheaval and great relief, there is a great God who is present.

There is a time for everything, says the prophet in Ecclesiastes.

How the uprising was planned. How  victory is spanned out across all the peoples of the earth is all part of how things are planned in heaven. 

The King had no idea of David’s plan to take down Goliath. He gave him the blueprint often used. However, this weighed David down. WIth great spontaneity, David removed that cloke of the past and met that giant with five smooth stones. He lifted his voice and said with emotions still felt today, “I come to you in the name of the Lord!” His words, actions and behavior opened up away for what was already planned in heaven: He would be king someday. 

We study the structure. We study the movement. We mourn our loss and we clench our fist upon our victories. But, what if none of these structures can be replicated by the young today? 

You had to be there, the elderly tell us, for you to have a truly understanding of Harlem in the 1960s, you had to be there. Even for us, you weren’t a part of the revolution until you were working in the revolution. Your presence was needed. The movement cannot be repeated.

We are now living at a different time that calls for new organizing and new organizers.

Read the past. Yes.

Learn the past. Yes.

But know your contribution, your calling, your now is a little higher than that of the past. 

It’s all planned in Heaven.

My thoughts after reading some of This is an Uprising by Mark Engler and Paul Engler for Professor Fort’s class, Topics in Black History: The Freedom School

Image take at Brooklyn Museum in 2025 at the Elizabeth Catlett’s show, A Black Revolutionary Artist and All that it Implies