Success Among Despair. You Are Not Required To Suffer

In 1950, Poet Gwendolyn Brooks became the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize, for her book Annie Allen. Born in Topeka, Kansas, on June 7, 1917, she moved to Chicago while she was a child. After writing and publishing many works as a teenager, she became famous for her 1945 collection titled A Street in Bronzeville. In 1950, she became the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize, for her book Annie Allen.

Ralph Bunche served in the US War Department, the Office of Strategic Services, and the State Department during WWII. He also negotiated an armistice between Palestinians and Jews, for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize. He worked on atomic energy issues and in the Congo with the UN and set up a department of political science at Howard University. His Nobel Peace Prize was the first for an African American. He received it in 1950.

Also in the early 1950's, racial segregation in public schools was normal in America. Though, Plessy vs Ferguson dictated that all the schools in a given district were supposed to be equal, most black schools were far inferior to their white counterparts. In Topeka, Kansas, a black third-grader named Linda Brown walked one mile through a railroad switch yard to get to a black elementary school, even though a white elementary school was only seven blocks away. Linda's father tried to enroll her in the white elementary school, but the principal of the school refused. Brown went to the Topeka's branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and asked for help. The NAACP was eager to assist the Browns, as it had long wanted to challenge segregation in public schools. With Brown's complaint, it had "the right plaintiff at the right time." Other black parents joined Brown, and, in 1951, the NAACP requested an injunction that would forbid the segregation of Topeka's public schools.

The stories above were selected to illustrate that joy, pain and the relative condition of man is subjective to time and space. While some blacks were dealing with segregation, discrimination and bigotry, others were achieving great things. The ability to achieve was dependent upon opportunity and the ability to ignore or successfully overcome barriers. Depending upon what those barriers were determined your limitations. Children who had to suffer with the inequities of an inferior school system couldn't be expected to achieve as much as children who didn't.

We have a tendency to discount our potential because of someone else is  suffering. Everyday is filled with both joy and pain, hope and despair. Just because someone is hurting doesn't mean that you have to be. There are people who have declared that the US is headed in the wrong direction while some people are profiting from it. Ultimately your point of view depends upon what you believe your potential to be. 

What is my point? Don't wait on others and don't wait on any conditions in your life to change. Change the the conditions in which you live. Some things are beyond your control but what you perceive your strengths to be is entirely up to you. It is possible to have a joyous life. It is possible to be the oyster that holds the pearl. It is possible to be a Pulitzer Prize winning African American from a city that denies your race a quality education. It is possible to win the Nobel Peace Prize for serving in the same military that was segregated and discriminatory.

All things are possible.