ABSTRACT
Barbara Ann Teer has always believed in the autogenesis of dignity, confidence, and esteem. In the 1960s many Blacks blamed Whites for their circumstance in life. Teer felt that this negativity would defeat Blacks, increasing their hopelessness and pain. Pain, she believed, could be salutary but only if it instigated treatment of an underlying problem. Wrote in 1984:
All that is present, is a conversation we are having among ourselves, talking about the injustices of slavery, oppression, suffering, poverty and pain. And I assert that this conversation has limited our future possibilities here in America. 1
