Taraji P Henson, Toni Morrison, and Mental Healthcare for African Americans

Mental health. This has been on my heart for many years concerning Americans in general, but it is especially crucial in the African American community because some of us have accepted the myth that it does not affect us. News flash: IT HAS ALWAYS AFFECTED US! When examining it from a historical perspective, there are countless narratives from the Antebellum era here in America of African Americans exceeding a psychotic threshold of no return. For example, there was the fugitive enslaved woman, Margaret Garner, who when cornered during a siege in 1876, butchered her children to prevent them from returning to slavery. The narrative was so terrifying and compelling that writer, Toni Morrison, based her novel, Beloved on the event. Even though Nat Turner attributed his actions to being under the direction of the Almighty God, what was his mental state?

I could go on with countless stories, but the bottom line is that mental health should be taken more seriously, and it should be daily concern as we move forward in the hectic world in which we live. We simply cannot live without it. So, thank you Ms. Henson for shining a light on this very serious topic. God bless you as you continue to battle your own mental health. May all of us follow that example and deal with our own. I think that it would make all the difference.


References

Larson, J. L. (n.d.). A Rebellion to Remember: The Legacy of Nat Turner. Retrieved June 12, 2019, from https://docsouth.unc.edu/highlights/turner.html

Margaret Garner Kills One of Her Children Rather than Permit Her to be Returned to Slavery. (2019). Retrieved June 12, 2019, from http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=510

Margaret Garner, a fugitive slave from Kentucky, killed one of her children rather than permit her to be returned to slavery. She drowned in a shipwreck as she was being brought back to slavery.