On Saturday, March 7, 2015, the United States, united as one, celebrated the 50th anniversary of the March from Selma to Montgomery, passing through the Edmond Pettus Bridge, where on the bloody Sunday of March 7, 1965, some 600 marchers were met with clubs and tear gas by the state police, helped by KKK members, causing injury and violence that shocked the conscience of America and of the world.

On that commemorative day, black and white were there, along with Democrat and Republican led by a black man as president of the United States to signify how far the country has come in treating as equal all the citizens of the union in the grand vision of Dr Martin Luther King: "I dream one day the color of the skin will be no more the dividing line in treating all citizens black or white as equal."

This long march started one century and half earlier on November 18, 1803, on the battlefield of Vertieres, near the city of Cape Haitien, Haiti, where Haitian soldiers defeated the mighty force of Napoleon Bonaparte that came on a mission to re-establish slavery in Haiti, this inhumane treatment abolished earlier by Toussaint Louverture through his leadership and his acumen.

Selma is the continuation of the fierce struggle where Capois la Mort in Vertieres defied death to lead his soldiers with gallantry and bravery to victory. It is also the continuation of the struggle to lead South Africa from apartheid, nation to nation-building nation in a gallant struggle led by Nelson Mandela.

But as President Obama said in his commemorative speech, victories have been won, but the ultimate battle for true integration and the end of segregation is a work in progress. Or as Charles Blow put it in an op-ed in The New York Times: "And yet there seemed to me something else in the air: a lingering - or gathering - sense of sadness, a frustration born out of perpetual incompletion, an anger engendered by the threat of regression, a pessimism about a present and future riven by worsening racial understanding and internal strife."

Whether in the Caribbean in general, Haiti in particular, in the United States or in the entire African continent, the big dream of Dr Martin Luther King is not only a work in progress but has taken some steps backwards. The torch of liberty ignited by Haiti in 1804 soon died down some two years later with the assassination of its founding father. That pioneering nation has not found yet a surrogate father that would rekindle the flame of liberty for all.

Abraham Lincoln in 1864, in the grand tradition of Toussaint Louverture and Jean Jacques Dessalines, led the United States into war to impose the fact the white face is no more dear to the Creator than the black one. His assassination two years later put a damper on nation-building in the United States. It was rekindled a century later through the march from Selma to Washington D.C. in 1965, when Dr Martin Luther King, on the steps of the Capitol, pronounced: "I have a dream of one nation under God".

Although significant results have been achieved, crowned by the election and the re-election of the first black president, Barack Obama, the United States is still the land where a name like Ferguson, resounds as strongly as Selma in the mistreatment of young black men.

Africa in general is a landscape filled with autocrat rulers in the stamp of vain and quite illiberal leaders such as Robert Mugabe. The project of nation-building is relegated to the second plan, with international organizations and de novo colonial powers grabbing the larger part of the natural resources of Africa to the detriment of the population.

Our own brothers in the United States, with a long hand that spans the entire globe, are sending the wrong message of morality, solidarity and ethical values. The black American airwaves that command the international media, project more often than not the image of violent sex, disrespect for women and the crass consumption of flashy gadgets.

One must ask the question whether Vertieres, Selma and Soweto were fought just for a flashier car or the biggest bottle of Moet at a weekend party. The international solidarity that should link together all those black nations in search of a better future is lacking. That the United States is under a black president does not seem to make a difference in the state of the black man either in the United States or in the rest of the world.

Africa without Mandela is languishing into a state of revisionism where the natural resources of each country are being grabbed up by China or multinational companies without proper return for the indigenous population. Haiti, where the star of freedom shone first on the horizon, is still a failed nation and its children are engaged in a sauve qui peut, taking the first boat that could help them leave the country as soon as possible. If Selma has an international resonance, Vertieres is not even in the international lexicon of seminal battlefields and Soweto has had very few improvements since the apartheid nation took a nosedive.

Haiti needs a new Toussaint Louverture and Jean Jacques Dessalines to rekindle the flame of freedom and self-realization not only for its own people but for the fate of black people all over the world!

o Jean H. Charles is  a syndicated columnist with Caribbean News now. He can be reached at jeancharles@aol.com. This column is published with permission from Caribbean News Now.

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