In Troubled Times, A Message From The Musketeers
‘All For One, One For All’
Today’s column is an excerpt from the author’s keynote address to the Paducah/McCracken County annual Freedom Fund Banquet on Nov. 4.
By John W. Fountain
GOOD AFTERNOON. I am grateful and honored to be here this day to stand before you on this grand occasion in your beloved city of Paducah. Grateful to Brother Jewell Jones who extended the invitation. To the mayor, city, county and state officials and distinguished guests.
To the executives, staff and members of the Paducah/McCracken County NAACP.
…I promise not to be before you too long this afternoon. I want to use my time that remains to do three simple things:
No. 1: To reflect further on who and whose we are and how far we’ve come. For in order for us to move forward, we must reflect on the past—a lesson never clearer to me than when I stood in the cold spirit-filled waters of Assin Manso Slave River in Ghana.
No. 2: To impress upon you the importance of Telling Our Own Stories. “For until the lion tells the story, it will always glorify the hunter.”
No. 3: To try and unpack this year’s theme: “All for one and one for all.” To examine its meaning and its relevance for us today, and its inherent warning for us
if we do not consider and embrace the urgency of this matter
It is a theme so eloquently and poetically penned and made famous by Alexandre Dumas, author of the 1844 novel, “The Three Musketeers.”
I must forewarn you, however, that I am the grandson of a Pentecostal preacher. The kind with the proclivity—when presented with a large, uh, congregation, on a Sunday morning or afternoon, and armed with a microphone and permission to, “Let the Lord use you”—to resist the urge to preach and preach and preach. But I shall not preach at all. Amen?
My sermon, I mean dissertation, I mean, presentation, however, will take the form of poetic, spoken word vignettes, that will precede a final just-the-facts-ma’am conclusion of the whole matter. Amen?
‘Bittersweet Melodies’
I stand here today… On the shoulders of my great-great grandfather Burton Roy who was born an African-American slave. I hear the spirit cries of the Middle Passage. The blood of my ancestors flows through my veins.
I hear the whispers of my great-great grandfather, his prayers that for future generations there would be better days. This I’ll always remember. Like standing before the gray headstone that still marks his grave.
By heritage, I am—like so many of you—the son or daughter of ancestral mothers. Among them Mary McCloud Bethune—daughter born to slaves whose thirst and zeal for education led her to found a school for black girls, believing that knowledge equals empowerment and the chance to change the world.
Among our heritage mothers: Ida B. Wells whose scholarship and advocacy—by speech and by pen helped to lift America's cruel lynching hand. That we might alas journey as free men toward The Promised Land.
We stand among the daughters and sons of Dr. Daniel Hale Williams whose scholarship, brilliance and steadiness of hand helped him perform the first open-heart surgery known to man. We stand as the children of George Washington Carver whose science and academic rigor have been credited with innumerable uses for the peanut and sweet potato.
As the heirs of Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington, Ralph Ellison, Harriet Tubman and Langston Hughes, we are native sons and daughters whose planation-baked souls were birthed in the agony of slavery and the bittersweet melodies of the Delta Blues. We stand as beneficiaries of all of those courageous souls. Protestants or Catholic and every creed. Of all those whether Jewish, Black or White who valiant waged the war for Civil Rights
And yet, we find ourselves today still as Sojourners in a strange place, having come this far by faith, leaning on the Everlasting Arms but still having to fight for Freedom and Justice along the road we plod. Still trusting God. And never more compelled to Tell The Story
‘Lest the Hunters Rewrite The Story”
Tell your story. Let Our Voices Resound. Let them ring from the depths of our souls wet with the tears of our ancestors. That it may fertilize the ground For present generations and for generations to come. Let the stories of our collective tears, triumphs and also sufferings be the Golden Sun that is the warmth of other daughters and sons. And let not our dreams of writing be deferred to fester and run.
Tell Our Stories in the fullness of their redemptive splendor. Filled with the myriad complexities of life, love and tender memories. Of rhapsodies and the countless subtleties of our world in our time pungent with the fragrance of our music rhythms and rhymes. Of what obstacles we faced. Of those we embraced. Of the bridges we constructed. Of those who obstructed. And of those who denied us justice.
Tell the story of how we overcame. And let us forget not the bittersweet reminiscences of those who were slain. Felled by homicidal rain. Flooded by crimson, blood-filled rivers of pain. By consuming waters of raging insanity on destructive cresting waves of man’s inhumanity. So that there is a record for all eternity. Lest the hunters rewrite the story of you and me, tell the story.
…Tell the story of Paducah, Kentucky. Of its rich culture, its quilting, grand rivers and creativity. Of its strides, and yet, still room to grow toward that glistening jewel of possibility and racial harmony.
Tell the story of Black love. Of Black romance. Of pure burning Black passion and old-school yearning. Of Black slow dancing. Of Black Kisses. And infinite Black Bliss. Of Black Christmases and Black hopes, Black dreams and Black wishes.
Tell the story… Of why Kaepernick knelt. Of why Trayvon Martin, Philando Castile, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Laquan McDonald and Tyre Nichols were dealt the penalty of death at racism’s hand. Denied due process in Freedom’s Land where liberty still remains elusive and discrimination’s plan to suppress, dispossess and disenfranchise the Black man are still at hand.
Still. More than 400 years after African slaves arrived in Jamestown in the year 1619. Still facing these same old systemic issues in the year 2023. And yet, still we rise.
Tell the story…
‘All for One’
The story… Central to Alexandre Dumas’ story called, “The Three Musketeers” is their mantra: “All for one and one for all”
The ‘Three Musketeers’ are technically four, since (eh-) Athos, Porthos, and Aramis are joined by their new recruit, D’Artagnan) in Duma(ah)s’ swashbuckling adventure tale about a fictional elite unit of France that was the King’s guard.
Often outnumbered, it is their strength-in-unity that enables them to overcome overwhelming odds. Their famous signature was declared by putting forth their swords, touching as one, as they stood encircled, with one shouting, “All for one” And all of them shouting in response in unison, “And one for all!”
In Dumas’ original novel, the phrase appears in French: “Un pour tous, tous pour un.”The phrase has also been translated into Latin: “Unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno.” In this form, it is the unofficial motto of Switzerland.
The phrase is an example of chiasmus, a rhetorical device in which two clauses are balanced against each other by reversing their structures: so that “one for all” becomes “all for one.”
Although popularized by Dumas, the phrase appears to have originated 250 years earlier by William Shakespeare. But the sentiment of ‘one for all and all for one’ is even older. It is arguably the same ethos or moral behind several of Aesop’s classical fables.
The phrase might be translated as “United we stand; Divided we fall.” To the notion that each person contributes to the whole. Meaning that if there is trouble, then every single person should do their part to help out. Inherent in the phrase is the idea that Nobody is left behind. That if one person is facing problems, then it’s a problem for the entire community.
Translation: Each individual should act for the benefit of the group, and the group should act for the benefit of each individual. In plain English, it might be stated: “The whole of us relies on each of us, and each of us can rely on the whole of us.”
…All for one and one for all. It emphasizes solidarity and support within a group. That the group—irrespective of individual cosmetic, cultural, racial or any other differences—will support its members and its members will support the group.
That one person represents all, and that all must do everything for one. True Brotherhood.
That is the crux of the matter. The glue essential to the posterity and protection of the Musketeers and of something greater than themselves. The phrase literally means: That success comes from sticking together and that to do anything else is to invoke disaster.
‘A House Divided’
“All for one and one for all” is a concept invoked by Abraham Lincoln who, on June 16, 1858, at the Illinois Republican convention in Springfield, Illinois, as he kicked off his bid for the U.S. Senate with a speech in which he cited St. Mark 3:25: “And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.”
Known as Lincoln’s "House Divided" speech, it referenced a country deeply divided over the question of slavery and expressed Lincoln’s efforts ultimately to bring the country back together again. It took a bloody civil war to preserve the Union. But the “war,” some would argue, still has not been won. For we remain today still a deeply divided nation.
I submit to you this afternoon that perhaps that is because the “real war” was never against slavery alone. In fact, I would argue the real war is not for the preservation of the Union but a war of ideology. A war for the human heart and soul. A war that has existed throughout time among all of humanity.
A war for mankind to see in others—regardless of race, religion, color or creed—the humanity that is a reflection of ourselves. The war to resist the evil of dehumanizing others—of reducing them in our own perspective and by derogatory names that work to assassinate their humanity, that reduces them to subhuman caricatures and that ultimately help to justify their annihilation long before the first shot is ever fired.
It is a war to acknowledge, ensure and protect the rights of all humankind assigned by our Creator. Dr. King, quoting the Declaration of Independence, put it this way: “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’”
The real war is the war for justice, for equality and for freedom for all men. And the real enemy—evil—is against all of humankind. The real enemy is not each other. Not humankind. Not my sisters, not my brothers.
Who is my sister and my brother?
You are!
The real enemy is evil itself—evil—pure and unadulterated. The evil of sin that has always crouched at the door of the human hearts—as it did many centuries ago, according to the scriptures—when God forewarned biblical Cain before he made war against his brother Abel, committing the first murder.
And yet, Cain allowed evil to prevail. He chose to sow divisiveness over unity. Death over life. Theft over bestowal. Betrayal over brotherhood. Hate over love. Bloodshed over healing. Evil over good. War over peace.
And today, the question before each of us—even as the sins and evil of envy, hate, greed, pride, wrath and racism crouch at our door—is still whether to choose good over evil. Love over hate. Unity over divisiveness. Life over death. Brotherhood over betrayal. Peace over war.
‘It All Runs Red’
In these troubled times—and throughout the history of humankind—man has, in various iterations, often chosen war over peace to a collective apocalyptic toll. Chris Hedges, former New York Times foreign correspondent, writes: That of the past 3,400 years, humans have been entirely at peace for only 268 of them, just 8 percent of recorded history. That at least 108 million people were killed in wars in the 20th century alone.
Moreover, Hedges estimates the total number killed in wars throughout all of human history ranges from 150 million to 1 billion people.
War also holds devastating consequences for civilians as well as soldiers. Hedges writes: That between 1900 and 1990 alone, 43 million soldiers died in wars. During the same period, 62 million civilians were also killed—shot, bombed, raped, starved, and driven from their homes…
Even if it doesn’t have to be, war, unfortunately, is as inevitable as the sunrise. War is also admittedly sometimes unavoidable in the face of encroaching evil to repel man’s inhumanity to man. War is like the wind… It is ever present.
Today, we see the impact of war unfolding and streaming live in HD, on social media, CNN and Al Jazeera: Blood, unspeakable horrors and anguish amid a human toll of women and children being obliterated in wars that no one, in the end, really wins. Wars where whether it is Ukrainian or Russian, Palestinian or Jewish or American blood spilled, it all runs red.
Fact is: If I see two anguished fathers—one clutching the remains of a dead Palestinian baby the other a dead Jewish baby, all I see are two dead babies and two grieving fathers, evidence of lives lost, and generations fractured by the death and destruction of war.
‘The Antidote To War Is Peace’
War, incalculable war—foreign and also domestic. Evidence of war appears even on the frontlines of America—both social and political. Beyond the battlefields of warring foreign nations. The wincing pain of war wails in the blood-laden streets of urban America, where Black sons and daughters—murdered mostly our Black sons in an unofficial undeclared war—die in genocidal proportions.
There is the carnage of war in schoolhouses across our great nation fueled by active mass shooters armed with assault weapons and spurred by evil that seems on a mission to disrupt any semblance of peace and safety. Signs of war manifest on university campuses. At a grocery store in Buffalo, New York. In small-town America, in places, like Lewiston, Maine and Uvalde, Texas. And it seems to have taken up permanent residence in my hometown Chicago.
Whether we realize it or not, we are now in an undeniable war for our own survival. For the lives of our children. For our posterity as a nation, where what’s at stake is our very existence. And yet, I can hear my sweetly saved and sanctified grandmother ask: Is there a word from the Lord?
‘My Brother’s Keeper’
I came to tell you this afternoon that there is a word from the Lord: “Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil. Cleave to that which is good.” Rom 12:9
“A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.” St. John 13:34.
There is a word from the Lord: Proverbs 14:34 says, “Righteousness exalts a nation; but sin is a reproach to any people.” Moreover Psalm 133:1 says, “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!”
The word from the Lord today is: “And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.”
It must be one for all and all for one. Unity over division. Community over chaos. For the result of war is death. The residuals of war and death are hate and revenge. The byproduct of revenge is more war. For war is circular in nature: What goes around comes around. But so does love.
The antidote to war is peace. The way to peace is love. The byproduct of love is unity. So then we must choose: Babies over bombs. Not partisan politics, but compassion. Not hate, but brotherly love. Not bullets, but community and nation building. Not war on other nations, but a relentless war on hunger and poverty.
Not nuclear proliferation, but equal access to quality education. Not oppression, but an obsession with love. Not separatism, segregation, oppression, discrimination, or subjugation, but justice, equality, social uplift, freedom and justice for all.
And we must summon the courage and willingness to stand united for truth and democracy in a country where a Black football player taking a knee during the national anthem as a stance against racial injustice and police brutality can cause him to be blacklisted from the NFL and labeled as un-American.
A nation, where a twice-impeached former U.S. president four times criminally indicted on 91 felony counts can fuel a fake election-fraud conspiracy and fan the flames of an insurrection that threatened our very democracy. And yet, still wrap himself in the flag and still be the leading Republican contender for the next presidency.
We must muster the courage and moral turpitude—amid a raging sea of homicide, fratricide and genocide—to choose humanity’s side.
We must have the courage to stand united in a time when there are those who rail against the teaching of unadulterated non-revisionist history. The courage to choose to be the United States of America rather than the United States of Amnesia.
The courage to stand together, holding forth the sword of truth in the spirit of love and unity. Courage to stand like those great American musketeers or drum majors for justice, freedom and democracy who came before us and who now implore us from heaven and from the great annals of history to pick up the mantle and continue to fight the good fight for a more perfect union. United as one—red and yellow; black and white; Jews and Gentiles; Republicans, Independents and Democrats; Protestants, Muslims and Catholics.
Understanding that there is but one America and only one Race: The Human Race. And that our future, hopes and dreams are irrevocably tied to one other. For as Dr. King said, “Injustice Anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
If we don't all make it, then none of us makes it.
So let us declare: I am my brother's keeper. A global citizen. Called to the peace and posterity of all humankind.
Let us declare, “All for one” and… “One for All.”
May God bless and keep you. Amen.
Email: Author@johnwfountain.com
