Queen’s Chronicle: A Labor of Black Love

Gullah/Geechee Nation ♦ March 5, 2025 ♦ Leave a comment

The word “labor” has multiple synonyms including work, travail, toil, drudgery and grind. The latter is overused as people focus on making cash especially in the American society. Even those that put in very little intellectual effort and sweat equity like to say things that they heard in a rap song, “I’m out here grindin’ ” or “I’m on the grind.” The latter tends to mean that they are at work at a job that pays them a salary. The other can mean things are happening legally or illegally, morally or immorally. You have to examine “the grind.”

As I took the time to focus and meditate on this year’s theme for Black History Month, “African Americans and Labor,” I took time to think through and fully examine what I am seeing. Due to the rapidity of social media, I see a lot of mimicry disguised as “grind.” It takes little ability to watch someone else’s videos and read and/or view their post and then turn around and copy. That take a minimal amount of intellectual ability and doesn’t elevate to the level of prowess. Instead it is more like “prowling” about and “tiefin'” as we would say in Gullah/Geechee. Yet, due to the fact that many are now complacent and they don’t do their own research, they do not realize that these people are taking things from the work of others that toiled and travailed to build. So, those of us that continue to innovate and lead truly are doing this as a “labor of love.”

A labor of Black love becomes that much more complex when the people that you are laboring to lead and to uplift have attached themselves to the behavioral patterns of the very people that seek the destruction of their culture via assimilation, integration and miseducation. These tools have effectively led to many people of African descent in America buying into working against their own best interest by not working together in unison and supporting their own Black businesses and organizations beyond attending things that are entertaining. Black education is key to the upliftment of the global Black community for with it knowledge that can sustain nations is transported and as is proliferated among us allow us to grow stronger and make wiser daily decisions.

Each day many of us that are Black leaders awake to decide how to proceed for the day. We have to reflect on those that we are to go forth with in order to empower our people because as Biblical scripture tells us that Jesus said to the disciples: “The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few.” This statement still stands today amongst true leadership. We realize that amongst those that follow leaders of nations, political groups, civic and social organizations, etc., the laborers are few. So, nowadays folks have turned to using terminology that I first heard for computer technology-“They don’t have the capacity” to do this or that. Yet, those lacking the capacity to innovate still want to go ahead of those that are the innovators. However, if that isn’t their calling, they are relegated to copying and mimicry after the leader and innovator has set forth a blueprint for what needs to be built. Unfortunately, those individuals then knowingly or unknowingly act as distractions to those that need to focus on the labor at hand which is the upliftment of our people and our communities.

When someone sends me erroneous postings about Gullah/Geechee culture and things that detract from self-determination and nationhood, I shake my head and GOD always gets me immediately refocused. I am then reminded of what was written to the Corinthians by Paul: “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.” I always make it clear that I don’t work for people. I work for GOD. AMEN and Asé.

As I pause and meditate on the work that is assigned to my hands to do especially all that was done in February, I go back to thinking about labor and those ancestors that labored and toiled on land that I and many native Gullah/Geechees now own. I think about how much harder they had it and how some of us make them shame because rather than collectively working to build on what they left to us, you have those that seek to pull down elders and take what they built on the foundation that was laid by ancestors. I see the ignorance in not respecting collective consciousness and learning from the living that have been here toiling for ages to hold onto the land that our Gullah/Geechee legacy is built on. I find myself pausing and praying for the selfish and competitive amongst us. (Notice, I didn’t say the youth because many of the youth that are that way learned it from the adults and elders in their lives that condone that behavior. They never taught them true respect and being “a credit to your race.”). Some folks have been fully melted into America’s pot and do not realize that behavior comes from that culture not true Gullah/Geechee culture. This cultural blending brings about the burden that has to be carried during this labor of Black love.

I have watched videos and seen photographs of folks like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and El Hajj Malik Shabazz aka Malcolm X and A. Philip Randolph and I could see the tiredness on their faces and the concern in their eyes. As I thought of the word “labor,” I couldn’t help but think of the latter man since A. Philip Randolph was the founder of the “Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Maids” 100 years ago. That union was the first to receive a charter from the American Federation of Labor. I often think of the labor that many Gullah/Geechee women did cleaning for others in order to take care of their families and hold onto the land. I think of those that left the Black belt south to be live-in maids and the men that left aboard trains with or without a ticket and eventually made money to send back home and to obtain homes in the north because they were sleeping car porters who took care of the people aboard trains for years.

The tracks of the truths that were part of the ideology of A. Philip Randolph lead to the “Poor People’s Campaign” which Dr. King announced on historic St. Helena Island at Penn Center, Inc. in 1967. Dr. King used issues highlighted by Randolph’s March on Washington Movement to establish this campaign. They came together to labor on behalf of their people and to uplift people out of poverty.

Uplifting Black people out of not only financial poverty but spiritual poverty is truly a labor of Black love. Many have been taught not to believe that we are beautiful, intelligent and powerful. This used to be done in an overt manner but now it is covert via the media-both mainstream and social. Therefore, people buy into imagery that lures them away from taking pride in uplifting themselves and their own communities. Therefore, as a leader, one has to be careful about who is with you as you go about the work that must be done “And we beseech you, brethren, to know them which labour among you.”

I was blessed to labor with and among other Black people that take pride in being Black and that truly support the work of the Gullah/Geechee Nation. Many of them may not have been with us 25 years ago in this labor of Black self-determination but they now see the value and importance of this and they are standing with us. It is a blessing to find more laborers along the way that truly have the same goals in mind in the midst of the madness that is in the world. We honor our ancestors when we work together in harmony and teach the next generation how to do so. So, as I proceed into Women’s Herstory Month, I give thanks for this labor of Black love and for the wisdom, knowledge and understanding of how to continue edifying and elevating my people. I pray that the global Black community will commit to doing this 365 to 366 days of the year at all times. If we would, the labor would never be see as “drudgery” instead we would appreciate being a part of a labor of Black love. You can only love your neighbor as you love yourself once you begin loving yourself. I pray love be upon and surround you and carry you through.

Peace and love,

Queen Quet, Chieftess of the Gullah/Geechee Nation (www.QueenQuet.com)

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Tune in as Queen Quet, Chieftess of the Gullah/Geechee Nation delivers the Black History sermon, “Know Those that Labour Amongst You” which aired on Gullah/Geechee TV (www.GullahGeechee.tv).