Our ancestors were brutally forced to an unknown land to be enslaved and looked down upon as animals by the white man.

On June 13, 1969, Monifa Edwards got up to speak at her junior high school graduation.

She was the valedictorian, and that was the first line of her speech.

They were separated from their tribes and unable to speak to their own people because of language barriers.

Forced to speak the language of the oppressors,

they have since that time been struggling from what was considered the lowest of worldly creatures,

slaves in bondage, to achieve a respected place in the world.

That voice you're hearing right now? That's Monifa, 50 years later, reading her own speech out loud for the very first time since that graduation day.

Today, black people are still technically in bondage. The man has been limiting our education, keeping us from getting jobs, and keeping

us in slums. Though our black men are the last to be hired in times of peace, they are the first

to be hired to die in times of war. Remember, this was Monifa's junior high school graduation.

She was 14 years old.

We must be aware and proud of our blackness.

I feel that we must also get out of the hate white bag that so many of us developing awareness fall into.

A white person may be a great friend and a valuable asset to your career later on.

But remember that even God first helps those who try to help

themselves. So how does an eighth grader come up with this? She went to 271.

In the late 1960s, junior high school 271 was at the center of a bold experiment in community control of schools

in the central Brooklyn neighborhood of Ocean Hill Brownsville.

After decades of neglect from the Board of Education,

Black and Puerto Rican parents in Ocean Hill Brownsville were given power over their own public schools.

But as they tried to exercise that power, they collided head first with the teachers union. Leading to the longest teachers' strike in American history.

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