Editorial by Contributing Writer Judith Pugsley, a White woman from Rocky River, Ohio who asks whether Blacks have truly progressed since slavery

- January 25, 2012

ROCKY RIVER, Ohio- Judith Pugsley, a retired professional and supporter of Civil Rights, wrote Cleveland Urban News.Com and The Kathy Wray Coleman online News Blog. Com on whether Blacks in America have truly progressed since slavery.

Pugsley has based the aforementioned assessment in part on an analysis of the Pulitzer Prize winning 2010 book titled "The Warmth of Other Suns." It is an epic story of America's great migration, including the depiction of how Blacks migrated from the South to the northern and western American cities after the stain of having been illegally taken in chains from the fields of Africa to be vilified as slaves in the country's homelands.

Her editorial is as follows:

By Judith Pugsley, Contributing Writer

Let's take a look at the progress of blacks in America from slavery up to modern times.

Obviously, the slave trade dehumanized black families and tore them apart for 246 years. No one had rights, and terror ran rampant.Then came the emancipation, reconstruction, and the imposition of Jim Crow laws.

For his entire lifetime in America until after Would War I, the black man was kept by the whip in economic bondage. Then when he tried to escape to higher ground to find a better life, he found himself whipped by negative attitudes in the north. This too had economic roots.

Other ethnic groups perceived blacks as threats to their economic advancement. Since blacks couldn't hide in plain sight because of skin color

they bore the brunt of human cruelty for which there was no logic.

I think that if the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were here today he would see the fruit of his labors and feel that he did not die in vain.

There has been a lot of progress toward Dr. King's dream that people of all colors and stripes be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. But if Dr. King were alive today, he would see that there is more to do.

As President Barack Obama says, "we will get there."

Judith Pugsley can be reached by email at jem2@cox.net