Advent | An African American Twelve Days of Christmas

INVOCATION

O Wisdom, Lord and Ruler, Root of Jesse, Key of David, Rising Sun, King of the Nations, Emmanuel—Come Lord Jesus! 

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NEWS SO GOOD HOW CAN IT BE TRUE

Luke 1:67-71 | Worldwide English New Testament 

Then his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke words from God.
He said:

Praise the Lord God of Israel!
He has remembered his people, and set them free.
He has chosen one from the family of his servant David.
He has given him power to save us.
That is what he promised through his holy prophets of God long ago.
He said he would save us from our enemies and set us free from those who hate us.

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READING 

Excerpt from NPR’s Fresh Air Interview with Jesmyn Ward author of the National Book Award-winning novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing:

FRESH AIR: Parchman Farm, the Mississippi State Penitentiary, looms large as sort of a symbol of that in your book. Is that true?

JESMYN WARD: That's totally true.

FRESH AIR : Can you tell us a little bit about it?

JESMYN WARD: Parchman prison is the large state - Mississippi State Prison. And when it was established, the people in power sort of changed the laws and criminalized really small offenses or criminalized things that, you know, weren't even really criminal acts, like loitering - right? - vagrancy, right? They also criminalized a lot of, like, petty thievery. And they did all of this in the hopes that they could arrest and send a lot of black men to Parchman and populate Parchman because basically, they wanted to work them, right?

They wanted free labor, and that's what they did. You know, I mean, Parchman was mostly black - mostly black men. They were basically enslaved again, and they worked the fields, right? So Parchman prison was basically a big plantation in the 1930s, the 1940s. Those inmates were also - so they worked the plantation. They worked Parchman prison.

But they were also rented out to regional, like, industrial barons. They were rented out to these men who used them to, you know, clear large tracts of land, to lay train tracks, right? So any jobs that, you know, these men wanted them to do, that's what they did. And so, yes, they were re-enslaved. I mean, Richie is based on a real - real children who were charged with petty crimes and then sent to be slaves - right? - and to die in Parchman prison.