Episodes
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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
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.
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