By Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr., President and CEO, National Newspaper Publishers Association
Last week, I was blessed beyond measure to witness and to join in the remarkable homegoing celebration of the life, legacy and liberation of The Honorable Reverend Dr. Joann Nichols Watson (1951-2023) in the splendid sanctuary of Fellowship Chapel United Church of Christ in the heart of Detroit, Michigan.
The Reverend Dr. Wendell Anthony, Senior Pastor of Fellowship Chapel and President of the Detroit Branch of the NAACP, rendered an impassioned and affirming eulogy for Queen Mother Joann N. Watson.
During the homegoing service, I was privileged to sit next to The Reverend Mark Thompson, a devoted colleague in the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA). While there were many important and timely affirmations made throughout the service from elected officials, civil rights associates, family members, and during the transformative eulogistic sermon by Reverend Dr. Anthony, there was one enduring message: We all still have work to continue to do. We have to keep fighting for freedom, justice, equality and equity at all levels as exemplified by the life of Joann N. Watson.
This is not the time to relax, retreat, or to revise our centuries-long struggle for liberation, empowerment, and sustainability. The legacy of Sister Leader Watson was her consistency, her courage, and her compassion for the least of these among us in America, in Africa and throughout the Diaspora.
Simply put, Joann Nichols Watson was a gifted, multitalented, ordained preacher, freedom fighter. She was one of a long line of committed Queen Mothers of our global freedom movement. Joan Watson had a very long list of “records” highlighted by Rev. Anthony. This sister leader had real “receipts.” Joann Watson had the grassroots and street credibility of Fannie Lou Hamer and the fearless courage of Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks along with the theological vision of Coretta Scott King and Winnie Mandela.
Watson was the first woman Executive Director of the Detroit NAACP, an elected member of the Detroit City Council, founding President of the National Association of Black Talk Show Hosts, and a leader of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (NCOBRA).
“Wake Up Detroit” was one of the famous and outstanding quotes from Queen Mother Joann Watson that hundreds of thousands of Detroiters would hear each morning on the radio throughout the city and Wayne County, Michigan.
Given the fact that today in America, Black Americans and other communities of color are being told to shut up, stay asleep, don’t stay woke, keep quiet, enjoy the benefits of enslavement, don’t vote, engage in self-destruction, be hopeless, and to accept consignment to poverty, police brutality, racial hatred and indignity, l believe that Joann Watson’s reverberant call on Detroiters to “Wake Up,” should be extrapolated to a national call to all Americans to “Wake Up.”
“Wake Up America.” We must defend the civil rights of all. We have to come up and get out of the slumber of do-nothingness and get up out of the long-suffering coma of hopelessness. We have to stay awakened. We have to stay woke!
“Wake Up America.” We must get up and reject the miseducation of the Negro. We must demand that the educational system in Florida and in every state across the nation teach the truth about the centuries-long genocide and the brutal enslavement of African people in America and throughout the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
“Wake Up America.” We must continue to demand and to ensure voting rights. Our fundamental right to vote is a God-given right that the U.S. Supreme Court cannot take away. We oppose all forms of voter suppression. In 2023 and certainly in 2024 we must GOTV (Get-Out-The-Vote) in record-breaking numbers in every precinct, in every congressional district, in every state, and across the nation in the upcoming national elections. The future of our families and communities is at stake. The future of American democracy is on the ballot.
“Wake Up America.” We must not relent. We cannot give up. We cannot get too tired. We must keep marching for freedom. It is time to end poverty in America. We support the Poor Peoples Campaign led by The Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II, The Reverend Dr. Frederick Douglass Haynes III and many others. We support attaining financial literacy led by John Hope Bryant and Operation Hope. We must continue to demand equal justice, social justice, racial justice, economic justice, environmental justice, and climate justice.
“Wake Up America.” In remembrance and in tribute to the indefatigable spirit of Queen Mother Joann N. Watson, we all have to stay woke, stay committed, stay active, and to stay involved as we strive to raise up a new generation of young freedom-fighting Generation Zs and millennials. Long live the spirit of Joann Nichols Watson.
Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr is President and CEO of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), Executive Producer and host of The Chavis Chronicles on PBS TV stations throughout the U.S., and Executive Producer and host of The Good News daily audio commentaries on local radio stations.
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