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STRUGGLE==EDUCATION     CAMPBELL

relationship to a state, then the benefits of that slave labor must have gone to the creating and developing of this state. It may very well sustain a major part of it today. This raises another question and that is: what is the relationship of labor to the state? And, what is the difference between slave labor and the labor of the citizens of the state? We need to know the relationship of our labor to this land and its development. It was not a contribution as many curriculum guides are beginning to teach. Which leads to the question of the distribution of land. Is this land distributed fairly? What is the history of the distribution of this land? Is this land distributed according to the labor people have invested in it to win it from nature? Or has it been distributed unfairly by the state? To whom does this land really belong?

The most important period for Afro-Americans to study is that period when our political relationship to the state organization called America was slave. It is no accident that today we do not understand that political relationship, are embarrassed by it, are reluctant to study it and, in general, avoid it. We have been taught to believe that, if we study the period when politically we were slaves, we will be teaching hate! Rubbish! This is our most important historical period for thorough study and accurate political understanding. We should be able to understand better the kind of state organization be that this was the first totalitarian state in the West and that state operated in relation to the enslaved Africans it contained. In studying that period of our political life here, we would be able to clear up many of the myths which proliferate today and which are the basis of so much of the present confusion.

Much of our labor went into winning this land from nature: so much of this land is ours if labor has anything to do with it. The indigenous people-the Indians-had, with their hands, won large sections of this land from nature by the time the Europeans appeared. Being ashamed of that period of our labor to the state and for the state is the reason for our economic and political illiteracy It is the most strategic period in this nation's economic history and we are a key part of that development.

The next question on the agenda of man's evolving political consciousness is the right of hereditary economic power.

We are placed presently in the historical position of having to raise the next question in the evolving political consciousness of mankind. That question arises out of our specific historical experience as a
                                                 
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---------- Reopened for Editing 2024-02-14 12:10:52