When a Colored Girl Speaks

Southern-born between the ellipses of segregation and desegregation, I journeyed colored, black, and white Americas, ultimately landing as an Ivy League-trained university professor burdened with racial silences of my own. It was a near hypertensive crisis that led me to gather up who I was and what I have become to reclaim the colored girl within.

1. Drylongso: African American vernacular, adopted from the Gullah dialect, means ordinary, customary, plain, or every day. Also, can be used to describe something previously rare becoming commonplace. See also John L. Gwaltney (1993). Drylongso: A self-portrait of Black America. New York: New Press

2. Glossolalia are utterances approximating words and speech, usually produced during states of intense religious experience, as in “speaking in tongues”: Glossolalia. (n.d.).

3. I’m Glad Salvation is Free. Hymn written by Isaac Watts (b. 1674 – d.1748). Performed by Manual Lloyd.

Going Home to Where I Been

I revisit what was, but I do not long for an American past or seek the romanticisms of a segregated ethnic enclave. I go home to places where I been for the same reasons all those people left my Aunt Fannie to be guardian of so many memories—to know I am, and we were.

1. Photograph. Boys on basketball court, A.L. Lewis Elementary (Homestead Florida), circa May 1962. (Aunt) Fannie Jenkins Collection, photographer unknown.

2. Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child: Recognized as one of the most well-known Negro (African American) spirituals dating to the era of slavery in the United States.

3. Song. Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child (track 14). Odetta as Carnegie Hall, 1960. Courtesy of Concord Music Group.

The Rich Davises

A generation beyond enslavement and into the twentieth century, my family sought freedom’s promise, something more than the American Dream. Gathered are fragments of stories told on the way of saying something else---stories of nation, family, and the tenaciousness of will.

1. Marion Post Wolcott, an American photographer, was commissioned by the Farm Security Administration, Office of War Information, during the Great Depression, 1938 – 1942. Wolcott, M. P. (2008). The photographs of Marion Post Wolcott. London: Giles.

2. Sea Lion Woman, performed by the sisters Katherine and Christine Shipp. Permissions granted by The Shipp Family. Recorded by folklorist Herbert Halpert on May 13, 1939 in Byhalia, MS for the Library of Congress. See also for more about The Shipp Family see also Beautiful Music All Around Us: Field Recordings and the American Experience by Stephen Wade. Published to Illinois Scholarship Online: April 2017

3. Shotgun house, a common southern housing architectural style during the 1920’s, had a rectangular and narrow shape with front and back doors in straight alignment with one another.

4. 1928 Florida hurricane, also known as the Okeechobee Hurricane, was a category 4-5 storm, killed at least 2,500 people in the state, of these nearly 30% were black. Victims were also buried (set afire) in mass graves due to the heat and health considerations. This is also the storm that Zora Neale Hurston references in her book, Their Eyes were Watching God. See also Nicole S. Brochu, Florida’s forgotten storm: 1928 Hurricane.The Sun Sentinel (September 14, 2003).; See Eliot Kleinberg (2016) Black Cloud: The Deadly Hurricane of 1928. Florida Historical Society Press. This was also my aunts' birthday, who was rendered unconscious by flying debris, she was 14 on that day.

5. 1945 Homestead Hurricane hit Homestead Florida on September 15. 1945. Wind gusts up to 150 mph, and sustained winds from 130 mph to 140 mph have been reported. 6.The Great War: World War I or the First World War. Fought in Europe from July 28, 1914 until November 11, 1918, and the United States entered the work in April 1917. It is estimated that 350,00 to 400,00 black men were enlisted in the U.S. Army.

7.The 1918 Flu Epidemic, also known as The Spanish Flu, affected over 500 million people, and global death toll is estimated that between 17 and 50 million globally, and up to 675,000 Americans died. See John M. Berry, The great influenza: The story of the deadliest plague in history. Viking Press (2004).

8.Camp Devens, U.S Army base built in 1917, located in Massachusetts, was at the epicenter of the virulent second wave of the pandemic. See Catherine Arnold, Pandemic: Eyewitness accounts of the greatest medical holocaust in modern history. St. Martin Press (2018). Byerly C. R. (2010). The U.S. military and the influenza pandemic of 1918-1919. Public health reports (Washington, D.C. 1974), 125 Suppl3, 82–91.

I am of Her

My mother was not afraid of anything, and by that, I mean she did not fear the powerful. In the wake of the killing of four little girls like me, she pushed the color line with me in tow. I was to be on the frontlines of a movement, and so were all the other Negro children of my generation in the South who were called to do something that had not yet been done, something the nation still was not yet quite ready to do.

1. Hurricane Andrew was a destructive Category 5 storm, highest sustained winds 175 mph, that struck South Florida in August 1992, the eyewall moved across Homestead and Florida City which sustained substantial damage. Hurricane Andrew Fact Sheet
| III. (2017). Property damage $27. 3billion (192, US), and 65 deaths.

  2. Fort Valley State College A public and historically black university in Fort Valley, Georgia. Founded in 1895.

3. Jim Crow referred to de facto social customs and de jure state and local laws in the southern United States that codified racial discrimination against African Americans and other non-whites, this included education, transportation, housing, employment and recreation enacted in the 19th century (after Reconstruction) and early 20th century. Prior to this, Jim Crow was a popular character in 19th century ministry, where white men donned blackface and enacted the character in entertainment shows.  See A. Costly (2019). A Brief History of Jim Crow - Constitutional Rights Foundation; and Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, Ferris State University.

4. The Birmingham Protests and the Children’s Crusade was organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Alabama Coalition for Human rights Southern Christian. The protests were held in April and May 1963, The Children’s Crusade began May 1963 a series of nonviolent protest marches, with youth, 6 to 18 years old, were hosed, physically attacked by police dogs, and jailed. American Freedom Stories, Children's Crusade of 1963. See also C. Levinson. We've got a job: The 1963 Birmingham Children's March. United States: Peachtree Publishing Company (2018).

5. The Sixteenth Street Baptist St. Church, Birmingham, AL. was a large and prominent church in the African American community. Youth participating in The Children Crusade met here and left from this church for their march (May 1963). In September 1963, the church was bombed by white supremacist terrorist group killing four girls, Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and 11-year-old Cynthia Wesley. See George, D., McKinstry, C., McKinstry, C. M. (2011). While the world watched: A Birmingham bombing survivor comes of age During the Civil Rights Movement: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., and Four Little Girls, Spike Lee, Director.

May Day Queen

I was queen of the festivities and, like so many things in the colored world in which I was raised it was celebrated with great pomp and circumstance. As a kindergartener, I did not racially mark this moment because whiteness was immaterial to me, but this would not be so for long as more history was to be made.

1. The bunny hop is a popular novelty dance of the 1950s and 1960s, with a song.

2. May Day: Spring festival recognized as a public holiday celebrated on May 1st commonly celebrated at Negro schools. See May Day: America’s traditional radical, and complicated holiday, Part I. National Museum of American History.

3. Can can is a creolin and tulle slip worn to create bellowing skirt, most often worn under fancy dresses for girls.

4. Afro-American Life-Insurance Company founded in 1901 by Abraham Lincoln Lewis and his associates. A.L. Lewis, b. 1865 – 1947, would be Florida’s first black millionaire. In 1935, he purchased 200 -acre tract along the Atlantic Ocean, which he named American Beach, It was a thriving vacation spot for African Americans, from the 1930s to the 1950s. American Beach including homes, beach rentals, restaurants, hotels, and other businesses.

5. Ariel is a character in Danish fairy tale, The Little Mermaid, by Hans Christian Andersen first published in 1837. The character was popularized in the 1989 animated film The Little Mermaid. In the original tale, to walk and to dance on her new legs caused excruciating pain, as if daggers.

The Boots Were Made for Walking

I first laid claim to social protest on a walk from the “white” elementary school, as we still called it. I encountered two white boys with BB rifles aimed at my head; they fired, and I refused to run. All these years later, I wonder what it will take to walk the last mile of the way.

1. Nancy Sinatra These Boots Were Made for Walking, 1966.

The Shadow of Suns

My elders had seen everything there was to fear, and they knew that the power that resided in man was not the power of God. Because of them, I know what wisdom means and the gentleness of humility, and I know what only a communion with the dead can tell.

1. The Holy Ghost referenced in the Christian faith as God, and the third member of the trinity, “The Father, The Son and The Holy Ghost (Spirit).”

2. A Charge to Keep I Have is a hymn by Charles Wesley first published in 1762. Discipleship Ministries. (2019). History of Hymns.

3. A Charge to Keep I Have. Performed by an untitled church congregation

4. Zora Neale Hurston, African American author, anthropologist and filmmaker. Author of the groundbreaking 1937 novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Me, MLK, and the Quietness of Death

On Easter vacation in April 1968, I stood with my mother at Martin Luther King’s graveside, in quiet peace, recalling the anger, horror, and dark teary shine of a people bereaved. No longer did the most horrid things exist only in fairytales; it was the land of the living that now frightened me.

1. Rev. Dr. King was assassinated on April 4th 1968. According to witnesses, while standing on the balcony near his room at the Lorraine Motel Rev. Dr. King was shot in the face and rendered unconscious. Within the hour, he was transported St. Josephine Hospital where he remained unconscious and died, April 4, 1968 | The Assassination of Martin Luther King.

2. “Free at last…” A climatic excerpt from Dr. Martin Luther King’s speech I Have a Dream speech presented on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28th, 1963. King, Jr, M. L. (1963, August).I Have A Dream.March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

3. Spelman College and Sisters’ Chapel. A private historically Black women’s liberal arts college located in Atlanta, GA. Spelman College.(2017). Considered sister school to Morehouse, King’s alma mater.

4. Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ‘Round. A civil rights movement freedom song. See Freedom Singer’s Performance,1. White House Celebration of Music from the Civil Rights Movement, 2014.

5. Martin Luther King speech, Youth March for Integrated Schools, April 18, 1959. “become a dedicated fighter for civil rights. Make it a central part of your life.”

The Yellow Sentinels

White children finally arrived at my neighborhood Negro elementary school eighteen years after Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education (1954) brought an end to school segregation with all deliberate speed. New books and fresh paint, traffic lights, and a pedestrian crosswalk arrived with them. Silver posts arose too with square yellow heads: crossing lights, like sentinels to be the guardian of white children.

1. HERBERT PATE, et al., Plaintiffs, versus DADE COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD, et al., Defendants. (1969) FINAL JUDGMENT. It is ordered and adjudged that: The Board of Public Instruction of Dade County, Florida, and Edward L. Whigham, as Superintendent of Public Instruction, and his successors in office, are permanently enjoined from operating a dual system of public education segregated by race, and shall henceforth operate a unitary system as described above.2. The transfer of students shall be made effective August 1, 1970 and thereafter. 3. The Court retains jurisdiction of the cause and the parties for the purpose of insuring that the plan here adopted and the required amendments are carried out and the school system operated consistently with the requirements of the United States Constitution. Done and ordered at Miami, Florida this 26th day of June 1970. (Signed) C. Clyde Atkins United States District Judge.

2. Pate v. Dade County School Board, 315 F. Supp. 1161 (S.D. Fla. 1970)

God Chooses Only the Best

“Blood done signed all our names,” my daddy said. My thoughts turn to my sixteen-year old cousin’s 1974 murder in sight of her high school, where, five years earlier, black girls would never have been, of how her death was publicly marked, and of the alchemy of emotions I felt as connected to what was then—and to all that was unsaid.

1. Beverly Marie Ferguson, “God Chooses Only the Best, “ The News Leader, February, 1974 (front page)

2. Timothy Tyson (2005), Blood Done Signed my Name, Crown Publisher. Title take from the African American spiritual, Blood Done Sign my Name. For a listen, as Performedby Tri-Faith, a family Christian singing group, Christmas, 2014.

3. Pate v. Dade County School Board, 315 F. Supp. 1161 (S.D. Fla. 1970); HERBERT PATE, et al., Plaintiffs, versus DADE COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD, et al., Defendants. (1969) FINAL JUDGMENT. The Board of Public Instruction of Dade County, Florida, and Edward L. Whigham, as Superintendent of Public Instruction, and his successors in office, are permanently enjoined from operating a dual system of public education segregated by race, and shall henceforth operate a unitary system as described above.2. The transfer of students shall be made effective August 1, 1970 and thereafter. 3. The Court retains jurisdiction of the cause and the parties for the purpose of insuring that the plan here adopted, and the required amendments are carried out and the school system operated consistently with the requirements of the United States Constitution.

Done and ordered at Miami, Florida this 26th day of June 1970. (Signed) C. Clyde Atkins United States District Judge.

Moonlight in Liberty

I came of age in the years after what historian C. Vann Woodward called the Second Reconstruction. I would enjoy its fruits, and there would not be the Nadir that followed the first Reconstruction, but there was a mitigated darkness. I slid in and out of the colored-negro-black world in which I was raised, travelling between the Ivy League and my homeplace, but it was being overtaken by something that was not us.

1. Woodward, C. (1957). The political legacy of reconstruction. The Journal of Negro Education, 26(3), 231-240.

2. Highways gutted American cities. So why did they build them? - Vox

3. Overtown is a neighborhood of Miami, Florida, United States, just northwest of Downtown Miami. Originally called Colored Town during the Jim Crow era of the late 19th through the mid-20th century, the area was once the preeminent and is the historic center for commerce in the black community in Miami and South Florida.

4. Woodward, C. (1955). The strange career of Jim Crow. New York: Oxford University Press. (1955).

5. Attorney General Orders Tougher Sentences, Rolling Back Obama Policy - The New York Times (nytimes.com), Rebecca C. Ruiz, May 12, 2017; Memo by Sessions to U.S. Attorneys on Charges and Sentencing - The New York Times (nytimes.com).

6. James Baldwin interviewed by Kenneth Clark.The interview took place in 1963 immediately following a meeting of Baldwin and U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

7. Asch, C. M., & Musgrove, G. D. (2017). Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation's Capital. Chapel Hill, NC: UNC Press Books; From Chocolate City to Latte City: Being black in the new D.C. - The Washington Post

8. ACLU Releases Crack Cocaine Report, Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 Deepened Racial Inequity in Sentencing | American Civil Liberties Union

9. How Political Districts With Prisons Give Their Lawmakers Outsize Influence | KOSU; Who Benefits When A Private Prison Comes To Town? : NPR; Rural Towns Turn to Prisons To Reignite Their Economies - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

A Circle on the Verge of Closing

In his second inaugural address, President Barack Obama evoked the American history of the civil rights struggle as a sojourn made in increments and bold strokes, and that sojourn is the history of my family and so many others whose American story began in this land as indentured servants and as human chattel. In the lifetime of futures, they knew this day, too, would come

1. President Barack Obama Inaugural Address, January 21, 2103.

2. Tesler, M., & Sears, D. O. (2010). Obamas race: the 2008 election and the dream of a post-racial America. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

3. JFK (President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, assassination 1963), MLK (Rev. Martin Luther King, assassination1968) and RFK (Robert Francis Kennedy, assassination 1968). 4. Hughes, L., Collier, B., & Linn, L. (2012). I, too, am America. New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. 5. Seneca Falls Convention - HISTORY; Selma to Montgomery March; 1969 Stonewall Riots - Origins, Timeline & Leaders - HISTORY

6. Lift Every Voice and Sing (also referred to as a national anthem for African Americans) was first written as a poem written by James Weldon Johnson. It was performed for the first time by 500 school children in celebration of President Lincoln's Birthday on February 12, 1900 in Jacksonville, FL. The poem was set to music by Johnson's brother, John Rosamond Johnson, and soon adopted by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as its official song.

7. Lift Every Voice and Sing, performed by Veronica Thornton. For full lyrics and additional background.

Epilogue. The Ruins of Memory

My student searched my face as if my own blackness held what was lost to him. It would take a lifetime of stories, and even this would not be enough, but still it is those fragments of memory that hold us one to another—and these are mine, and I give them, for us.

1. Keep Your Eye on the Prize, performed by NitroVoX, and Felix Cross, Arranger. See, NitroVoX
2. Keep Your Eyes on the Prize: A Civil Rights Movement Anthem