The African Americans’ story is one that seems to be a repeated commitment to a scenario for success and failure. With each failure, the blow is that much more traumatizing until finally one reaches a point where there is to some degree an internalization, skepticism, fatalism, and expectation that it isn’t going to work.
Blow
A good boxer, in striking the round blow, instead of loosening body and arm, gathers himself into a heap of muscularity and begins his blow where all blows ought to begin, from the solidarity of the right foot.
When the human race neglects its weaker members, when the family neglects its weakest one – it’s the first blow in a suicidal movement. I see the neglect in cities around the country, in poor white children in West Virginia and Virginia and Kentucky – in the big cities, too, for that matter.
You know how fighting fish do it? They blow bubbles and in each one of those bubbles is an egg and they float the egg up to the surface. They keep this whole heavy nest of eggs floating, and they’re constantly repairing it. It’s as if they live in both elements.
Ah, lives of men! When prosperous they glitter – Like a fair picture; when misfortune comes – A wet sponge at one blow has blurred the painting.
The men whose manhood you have broken will loathe you, and will always be brooding and scheming to strike a fresh blow.
The government is tottering. We must deal it the death blow an any cost. To delay action is the same as death.
What I didn’t know that by sticking to craft we would blow open some doors that I never saw opened before.
My friends, whoever has had experience of evils knows how whenever a flood of ills comes upon mortals, a man fears everything; but whenever a divine force cheers on our voyage, then we believe that the same fate will always blow fair.
I shall go the way of the open sea, to the lands I knew before you came, and the cool ocean breezes shall blow from me the memory of your name.