Monument to Man

that his educational opportunities are being enriched. We each can recall incidents in our school days which taught us that a good education is very precious, so precious that black people, especially poor ones, had to work twice as hard as white people in order to achieve. That is one lesson the slaves had passed on to their freed children by letting them know education had been forbidden by law. These children of slaves who became sharecroppers and tenant farmers had their own experiences of inequality in education under racially segregated school systems; they added their stories to the lesson being passed to the next generations. So now in the 1990s that lesson is being passed on to Gideon and to other young people. Get all the education you can because what you put in your head nobody can take away from you. Gideon, at his young age, may not fully understand this lesson yet. However, his aunts and uncles will do whatever is necessary to see that Gideon and his cousins know what it is like to live "upwind." Being all too familiar with the smell of poverty and segregation, Gideon's family is determined to have one of theirs return to Lankford some day as a doctor, even if that future has to be paid for by yard sales. Note: AU the incidents are true but the names have been changed to protect privacy.—J. B. Monument to Man Silent sentinel, pitted stone, engraved in sacred trust; Etchings dulled by nature's wear, proclaim the sculptor's dust. -Willie Hardison Eckles 33 ...