Over the period of Black History Month, I had the opportunity to refocus on issues germane to this history given the numerous articles and contributions in both mainstream and social media.

One thing that continues to intrigue is how many of our contemporary writers and activists, in their enthusiasm to celebrate and in some cases make heroes out of historical personages, often lump persons who were at times philosophical opposites and even rivals all in the same basket.

I do understand and stand in line to applaud all the thinkers, activists and legendary persons who fought and struggled to attain freedom and dignity from oppressive circumstances. At the same time, the search for true freedom, when viewed through the lens of all the lives of presumed heroes, can be a twisted tale of competing philosophies and ethics.

Let’s take a few names such as Marcus Garvey, William Dubois, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. Each led respectable movements, but given the divergence of positions, it would be hard to imagine them all in the same room.

Garvey garnered perhaps the largest transnational movement of them all. However, Dubois, who led the National Association for the Advancement Coloured People — which became the bedrock of the black movement and the strength of which was inherited by King — was totally against Garveyism.

Malcolm X, often referenced by his radical phase as a follower of Elijah Muhammad when he would be more akin to Garveyism, made a 180-degree reform from that ideology and was killed just as he began his more inclusive message as el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz.

The Reverend Richard Tobitt lost his post and was removed as minister of the AME Church because his position as a representative of the Garvey movement clashed with the position of the AME Church.

Added to the conundrum is the advent of the Marxist protagonist, who had a diametric clash with the Garvey movement and who some claim were collaborators in Garvey’s demise. This spawned early Sixties movers such as C.L.R. James, George Padmore, Eldridge Cleaver, Stokely Carmichael and Bermuda’s own Roosevelt Brown.

The Marxist group favoured unionism and, as collaborators with the Soviet Union, were entirely against the capitalist instincts inherent in Garveyism and the movement of Booker T. Washington, who led the black economic empowerment wave up until his death in 1916 and prior to Garvey’s.

The one thing they all had in common was they were each feared as persons capable of arousing the hope of the beleaguered black masses and of engaging their collective strength. This fear was not an ephemeral glance, but rather a sustained and aggressive surveillance and counter-strategy put together by the likes of J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI, along with systemic economic suppression by governments and mega-corporations against any movement that economically empowered or advanced black people the world over. In that regard alone, they are brothers but, as regards methodology, politics or economic vision, they were miles apart.

It is understandable that contemporary activists can espouse the heroism of these legendary persons. However, it remains the greatest imperative to understand the “golden means” of what brings true advancement and freedom to people. Life is a struggle, and progress is essential to all. No doubt, there are aspects of progress that can be gleaned from each of our past Trojans. However, we must be able to ascertain what aspects of their ideological positions are enduring, while at the same time acknowledge which aspects of their thoughts should be discarded as useless and even counterproductive.

One principle that separates the meat from the bones, and distinguishes the path towards eternity and ultimate success from a path to ruin, is the idea that is consistent with the love of and oneness of all humanity. This is one world that we share, under one creative source, and a world we recognise that we each need to gain our existence.

After viewing the histories of all our past legends, we can measure each of them against those universal principles.

Particularly when we teach our young, it is important for them to be able to contextualise the history of past leaders and activists to gain objectivity and to build a better and sustainable future.