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.