Historic Black Agriculture in California, Negro Hill Burial Ground Project

When I was a child I thought as a child...

3rd grade to be exact, a mini riot broke out in my classroom, thus began my strange career with the word Nigger. It was me against a class of 25, the only black child giving more blows than taking, suspended for a week and upon return from a mini vacation, my teacher, Mr. Keieswetter was removed from his teaching assignment, replaced by a community advocate, Mrs. Grenz.

A childhood girlfriend and next door neighbor of German ancestry were walking home were one day, through the olive orchard community, I was called nigger, and my red headed friend was called a nigger lover, we were young children and certainly not in love, running home very afraid.

The lessons continued through Valley High School, where my childhood friend and I became a highly sought after conflict resolution student counselors, racism remained a constant companion.

Vicious fights and often large scale race riots were a regular activity in 1978, Valley High School, Sacramento, California. This year will be my 30 year reunion and some things simply have not changed.

4 decades later, a similar role is my fate, facilitating cognition of a strange and troublesome word.

The scale is far greater and stakes much higher, patience, caution and courage have replaced fear.

Close to one billion dollars is the price to retrofit Mormon Island Auxiliary Dam, a U.S. Public Works project created to provide flood control along the American River, part of the Sacramento River Basin, one aspect of the broader California Central Valley Water Project, the word nigger remains a salient reminder of my role and responsibility.

Last week at an evening reception within the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank highlighted an elevated conversation about commodity markets and fiscal security on a global scale. The monetization of an extended global community of people of African descent quantified as “unknown niggers” in a futures market of limited utility is a public policy conversation that may happen with the rule making for the Dodd/Frank Act.

U.S. Congressman Dan Lungren, former California Attorney General, Chair of the House Administration Committee, has a portion of Mormon Island Relocation Cemetery within his congressional district and courageous staff willing to help facilitate a positive resolution to preserve the legacy of Negro Hill, California while providing dignity and respect to early California Pioneers.

Many people of African descent were extremely wealthy Gold Rush pioneers, with elevated cosmopolitan elegance and educational excellence when most were uneducated and impoverished.

2011 is the United Nations International Year for People of African Descent, we will gather some of the best minds in the world and monetize the word nigger and measure the ongoing global economic impact of a strange and troubling word, building upon the wisdom of Dick Gregory, Randall Kennedy, Charles Olgetree, Chris Rock, Paul Mooney and many other stakeholders with profound wisdom to share about how document facilitate a U.S. National Landmark, today misnamed by the U.S. Government, Negro Hill, California.

Within the current "U.S. Farm Bill" entitled the Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008 are sections concerning commodity trading regulations for the last plantation in America, the United States Department of Agriculture, to try and move beyond utilization of an 1862 economic and physical baseline that sustains rural America with system institutional racism as a guide.

If we utilize modern scientific advances to identify the bodies within 36 grave markers that read, Unknown, moved from Nigger Hill Cemetery, by U.S. Government in 1954 we may find a solution to my 3rd grade California Standards and Curriculum Social Studies question, what is the value of a nigger, tar baby?

Today, we have a few more tools to quantify and monetize a relative answer on a global scale, time will tell maybe the great sage, Richard Pryor had it correct, well at least we should keep an open mind.