Updated 8/10/2011 Memorial for James Craig Anderson was held at First Hyde Park M.B. Church in Jackson Mississippi on July 2nd.




(In response to the news of the killing of James Craig Anderson posted on CNN today.  Click here to see article.)
To the family of James Craig Anderson:  We express our deepest heartfelt sympathy to you in the loss of Brother James Craig Anderson.  You are in our prayers and petition our Heavenly Father to bless you in this time of grief.  We pray that you will feel the love and closeness of family and friends and community.  
We are prayerful that your family will be kept safe and that everyone responsible for this terrible criminal act will come to be brought to justice.  All that we do to educate and strengthen from this day on at Over Troubled Water will be done in the memory of the life James Craig Anderson and all of the countless and nameless fallen victims of hatred and racism.  
We pledge to continue the dialog surrounding 2011 being the United Nation's International Year of People of African Descent, and we will continue to identify the things we can do to discourage racism and hatred in all forms but with an even stronger zeal than we have previously demonstrated.
To learn more:


Surveillance Video Documents Metro Inn Murder
Witness:  Fatal Hit-And-Run Racially Driven
What James Craig Anderson's Killing Means to America
Bond Set For Teen Involved in Fatal Hit and Run
DA Seeks To Revoke Teen's Bond
Pastors Says Dedmon Launched 'Campaign of Harassment'
Video:  Mississippi Hate Crime Caught On Video

Cover of The HelpNo song resonates more with Over Troubled Water than the song from the soundtrack of "The Help" by Mary J. Blige entitled "Living Proof."  You can listen for yourself below.  Our stories whether oral or gleaned from the annals of history validate who we are, where we come from, and what we have been through.

We have a personal history and so do our ancestors.  We simply cannot make it unless we acknowledge these stories. Our experiences have not been easy and we bare the scars.  A great measure of our pain comes from the secrets and the denial of what we have endured personally and as a people.

We owe it to ourselves, to those who did not make it, to those who did, and to our children to document and tell the stories so that history cannot be questioned, changed, denied, or repeated.  Gathering and preserving the history qualifies us.

Talk to our people and we all will continue to identify ways to heal, to be strengthened, and to grow.  Herein lies the power:  In the story!  How can we know which way to go if we do not know where we have been?

"The Help"  will come to a theater near you on August 12.  It is a story in the words of African American maids in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1960's.  They left for work walking or perhaps on buses to the homes of white people where they cleaned, fed, and took care of another household. We will see the treatment they endured, and my goodness I learned that they even nursed the babies from my daughter who recently read the book.

The maids in this community got together to tell their story against all odds.  I am anxious to learn of the impact it had on their lives and community.  After August 12th, that impact will more than likely become even more immeasurable.  Then again, that is the power of a story. Are you ready?

Thanks to African Traced Descendants of the Diaspora for posting!