YOUR INHERITANCE-----MY GENERATION'S BOOK COLLECTION

     In the cousin's Sunday night chat, I made the observation that I was spending my retirement "mad money" in acquiring a social/historical/library for you my beloved grandson. Once that library is in your hands, you may choose to keep or share (or toss) as you decide. My  self-appointed job will be finished  but before that time comes you are owed an explanation of how and why my (our) decision was made.

    1954 was a pivotal year in my life. The Thurgood Marshall lead Supreme Court decreed that "separate but equal" school systems  were neither equitable nor legal.  For me personally, it was a 90% end to the tyrannical, alcohol fueled, rage driven "education" provided (at state expense no less)  by my stepmother. I  would start public school that fall.  My future education would be the same as for any other school-age child in Fort Gay, West Virginia.  The greater majority of my teachers gave 100% of their efforts to ALL of their students every day.  I will never forget the English  teacher who researched and  and pointed out to me the poetry of Countee Cullen,  a black  poet born in  Louisville, Kentucky!

    The journey began..a journey that for me would last a lifetime.  Betty Billups had reached out and fueled  a search for relevance in a world that at the time featured few  black faces (for me) that were not  family.  I  was and am a voracious reader.  I would find books and I would devour them. The names of black writers would multiply over the years...James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Zora Neale Hurston, Margaret Walker, Toni Morrison,  Alex Haley,  Malcolm X, Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, Gwendolyn Brooks, Claude McKay, Lorraine Hansberry, Henry Louis Gates,Jr. ,  James Weldon Johnson, and the list would grow and grow.  I would expand that search for "my people" on and on and on. The thirst demanded...where had my people been...what were their life experiences,  what had happened ?!!!  Names would be added to the list of writers....Alexandre Dumas...Barack  Obama...Kwame Ture...and many more. Majored in English (because I wrote)  but never had a black history or black literature  class in my life...but the thirst was always there.  Will  my library ever be complete? Absolutlely NOT....nor will I stop adding to it...not in my lifetime.

WHY , THEN AND NOW

            The question has been asked and finally one young adult who made the 50^th Anniversary trip to Selma contacted me  and wondered simply if I would share my motivation and feelings about  both the original 1965 trip and the 2015 return trip.  To that young adult, I must apologize on two counts. First, I did not ignore your question but at the time that you asked I had the feeling that you deserved a more complete answer than I was able to verbalize off the top of my head. Second, as I indicated  to all present at the Friday night discussion before we left for Alabama, I am not  a public speaker…I am a writer and a person who has learned to think before I speak. Therefore, extemporaneous speech is not my preferred genre.

            The decade of the 1960’s was a tumultuous period for those of us coming of age.  The social changes that were coming  (much like the changes in process in current times)  caused a lot of furor  and consternation among  many naysayers of the time.  Certain elements of society will fight  change  because it frightens them and threatens their “status quo.”  As a journalist, it was critical for me to watch, listen, and analyze events surrounding me.  Part of my early training as a reporter required me to factually describe what I saw and heard  without  editorializing  (injecting a personal judgment).   Only in editorial writing was I free to touch on and discuss my analysis of events.  (Remember  my “keep your mouth shut” admonition at the Friday night panel discussion?)

            My decision to make the 1965 trip  (like many of my fellow travelers) was intensely personal, not professional.  As my fellow traveler and classmate told of forging her mother’s signature to the travel permission, I understood her reasoning very well. Since I was 21 and legally of age as well as a college employee, not a word was said to my father (until many years later).  That adult decision was me keeping myself in tune and in step with my personal beliefs.   I took my alma mater’s defining motto very seriously, GOD hath made of one blood all nations of men.  I believed that fact then, I believe it now. By that personal choice to believe….I refuted and condemned any person’s  option to denigrate, demean, disrespect  any other human being’s  origin (racial, ethnic, religious, even sexual)  in the nations of men!   Did I fully understand the symbolic cross I had chosen to shoulder?  Unconsciously yes, but consciously it would take me a lifetime to verbalize my decision openly in an understandable manner. Please do not misinterpret what I say, if Christ could shoulder His cross for the sins of mankind, I could certainly  take a stand for the equality of mankind…..all of mankind.

            The 2015 trip was for me a pilgrimage, a journey to a place (and time) of moral significance.   In essence I was revisiting my first pertinent  and the most important step into my witness to the world.  There would of course be stumbling blocks ahead, some foreseen, some unforeseen.  The commonality of those stumbling blocks would be that each one required me to take a stand, an open and therefore public step into the discussion and the resulting decision.  

            Who says I can’t vote?  I will vote.  Who says I can’t live here because I am black? That was the day I discovered that sometimes those who are supposed  to police “equal opportunity” are afraid to use their legal baseball bats. Just because he is male and I am female (or he is white  and I am black) he gets the job?   That was the day I confronted a person bowing down to political pressure.  Because this student comes from a poor Appalachian family and you think he is undeserving…you the almighty counselor did not submit his paperwork? The student lost a full scholarship to a prestigious engineering school and I didn’t find out in time to confront the counselor.   Because this senior student just became a single parent and you refused to send makeup work home because you are against high school students who become pregnant, you flunked    her for an honors math class? The student was assigned a different instructor, made up the work and received a full scholarship to college while raising her son!   

            There are times when the voiceless demand that someone  stand up and be counted and sometimes we are the voiceless who must be heard. Through my 35 years in  underserved schools, I actively faced the stumbling blocks and plunged on perhaps in the back of my head also hearing the words of W.E.B. DuBois in his discussion of the “Talented Tenth.”   My one  separation from DuBois is that any/all minorities in the 21^st Century are confronted  with “stumbling blocks” which must be eliminated for the good of all  mankind.  Now in my seventh decade…I must pass the torch. You, the young adult generation must face the fight. The battle is not over and it should not be abandoned!

NO BOYS ALLOWED?!! SO NOT HAPPENING

 

       Several years ago, one of my sons was running track and cross country.   Climate change was already becoming an issue globally but the majority of us were blissfully ignorant of the ways our everyday life could be impacted. I was no different from anyone else until one Sunday morning in the spring.  the grass was green but the air was still cool early in the day.  The sun was shining when I arrived at the track facility. I walked from the parking lot to green space beside the bleachers. I didn't feel like crawling over the possessions  (and outstretched legs) of other parents so I chose to sit in the grassy spot partially shaded  by the bleachers.   I kicked my sandals off and let the sun kiss my bare feet.  By midday the sun had grown much warmer and I put my sandals back on.  The straps were not as comfortable as they had been earlier so I put some lotion on my feet thinking that my skin was dry and the new sandals were rubbing the tops of my feet.  By evening I knew how wrong I was! The tops of my feet were red, swollen, and quite tender to the touch.  My immediate thought was that I had been near some poison ivy....but I hadn't seen any.   Off I go to CVS and run into Jim the pharmacist.  He looked at my feet and laughed  at me while handing me some aloe gel.  "Its kind of early but I think you are sunburned !"   Imagine my shock....up until that moment I assumed black skin didn't sunburn.  Along with the aloe gel I left CVS with sunscreen lotion.  LESSON 1 LEARNED!

        LESSON 2 hit me at a cross country meet that fall. I came from  my job just in time to find my son being loaded in an ambulance!  He had stumbled  and nearly  passed out  while running!  Off we went to sports medicine at a local hospital.  He was still a little woozy and admitted to the doctor that he had run out of water and hasn't asked for more.   The scathing lecture I got from the doctor remains in my mind to this day many years after the fact.  Water, Gatorade,  etc. should have been  easily  available  to  those runners!   My kid was lucky....he got popsicles and I got chewed out!  LESSON 2 LEARNED!

        There was no way I needed  to be knocked over the head again!  A case of bottled water would be in my car and/or my husband's car  for ANY future practice or meet! My kid would know that and his team mates would know it....you are thirsty....drink water.  The car windows are down, reach in and get your water out of the cooler.  No questions  asked!  Spring track began and the word was out. 

        LESSON  3   was coming down the railroad track like a speeding locomotive.  My son was in high school and high school track meets can be lengthy. Early spring meets were reasonably okay but the weather turned hot early.  An informal parent discussion in the bleachers resulted in the  (parental) purchase of a sun shade canopy for the track team (boys and girls).  The mothers thought the issue of hot and sunny afternoon track meets was solved (bottled water was available and the  canopy would solve the hot sun problem).  To our shock..the head girls' coach (a male newly appointed to the job) claimed the canopy for the exclusive use of the girls!  The boys were totally BANNED from the canopy! The word flew through the boys' parents.    The boys would be forced to use a tarp tied to a fence along with umbrellas provided by sympathetic onlookers.  After our family's years of  experience in CYO  (Catholic Youth Organization) track...I would always carry a cooler with fruit (usually grapes and bananas) , yogurt, bagels and cream cheese, peanut butter, orange slices, cubed melon  and Gatorade (for the kids) ......  and of course the tarp ( to shade parents in the bleachers).    Of course my son knew what I carried so he came and picked up the cooler and the tarp supplies and the boys assembled THEIR camp.   That day...parents had to "make do!"   

         In the vernacular of the day..I was smoking and the single eyebrow was raised ( trait  inherited from my father) when he was .....shall we say....ANGRY ?   This shenanigan was NOT acceptable and would be dealt with    MY .....WAY.   The meet day ended....round 2 would begin tomorrow after school.  It was time for a Walmart visit....to the sporting  goods department...my retaliatory mission had kicked in.  I found the perfect tent....large enough to fit the fellows and their gear bags.  A swipe of my debit card later...step 1 was done.  Evil smirk on my face, I grabbed a copy of the school insignia as I left   for work the next day. On the way out of the house the next morning.... woke my son and told  him to watch for my car in the parking lot and meet me with a couple of buddies to carry "stuff."  Did not explain further and admonished him not to forget.  

        Visited my friend (printshop instructor) as soon as I got to school and explained the banner I wanted and why.  He would do the setup for me but couldn't print it....that was okay by me because I was leaving our school  on time and could take the disk to a local (in my town)  print shop!  Later that afternoon, I walked into the local business....could they print a banner for me....well yes they could but if I wanted it today, they didn't have time to do set up.....no problem as I handed the owner   the disk with the set up!  He checked the disk format and yes....the print time in color would be 45 minutes. Think he was shocked for two reasons.....I handed him the set up already formatted and .....I did not blink at the price.  We shook hands and I left to complete my devious plan.  I had an extra Igloo cooler at home.....normal picnic size.  Went to the grocery store and filled it with water,  Gatorade, and ice.  Then I filled the smaller cooler with  the usual assorted fruit, my serving tongs  and paper cups (so each kid could get what he wanted).   Devious payback was almost complete....as I returned to the print shop to pick up the banner.

        I pulled into the parking lot at  the meet (in a nearby town) and several boys came running.  First cooler ,  second cooler ,  tent bag from the trunk, banner bag and as I reached for my chair in a bag,  that bag was grabbed by  another  young man. I handed  him the rubber mallet.  To his puzzled look, I simply smiled and said....."You will need it. Go set up your camp site!"   My son looked at me,  "Is that long bag what I think it is?"  I nodded my head.  To  his teammates he simply said,  "This is going to be fun." They flew back to their corner of the field.   By the time I got there, their tent was being raised close but not too close to the girls' team and they were busy figuring out how to attach their banner which loudly proclaimed  that this tent belonged  to their school's MEN'S TRACK TEAM!  They pounded the metal stakes into the ground,  entered the tent (no spikes allowed), unzipped the screened windows  and moved their gear bags into THEIR tent along  with the two coolers.  My chair was parked under the sun visor (guarding their space).  

In Retrospect

The year,2012, is drawing to a close. It is now a matter of hours bdfore the countdown begins. Like all years, it has presented its challenges and bumps along the road and there have also been some interesting and surprising twists.

Out of the blue I was reconnected with a dear friend that I have probably not seen for thirty years. We formerly taught together in a northern Ohio city school Our Appalachian roots are similar except she grew up closer to the Virgina area of the Appalachia of my father's family. As a young woman, she lived not far from my paternal great-aunt and my maternal uncle and his family. Our friendship was formed because we were part of the community of Appalachian migrants. When you are far from home...and living in a society that is antagonistic to the intrinsic values of your "home" territory...the natural instinct is to find friendships with others who share those "home" values.

Sylvia and I shared adventures and friendship and for a time, a house. When my younger brother-in-law was shipped back from Vietnam to a west coast military hospital, he called one evening to report tht he was stateside and needed a care package....full of chocolate chip cookies. With our other housemate, we baked cookies and sent them....only to find out that when the other GI's in the ward smelled the package...they promptly opened the box, ate his cookies and left him the empty box and wrapping paper. I am sure the cussing from our end of the call probably shocked my brother-in-law but he was told that another package would be coming.

Off to the store we went. There would be a massive baking session that night after supper. We baked twice as many cookies as the first time. This time,we wrapped each batch in aluminum foil, packed the foil wrapped cookies in tissue paper`and plastic wrap, put the cookies in a huge paper grocery bag, put them in a box, sealed the box and next day, went down the street to the neighborhood post office. The package was delivered safely to the hospital ward...this time without being raided.

RANDOM RUNNING TOUGHTS

     A careful analysis of the world we live in is frightening, to say the least,  and maybe it always has been, I am not sure.   There was a time when I would feel perfectly safe getting up at three or four a.m., getting in my car and driving the three and a half miles to Walmart on my biweekly shopping trip to buy household supplies.  My unobtrusive 4 cylinder vehicle would be parked 20 to 25 feet from  the store’s only open door, my debit card was in my jeans pocket (I quit carrying any significant amount of cash years ago) and in I would go, grab a basket from the cart  corral, and begin amassing the needed purchases. You know…stuff like toothpaste, mouth wash, bath soap, Kleenex, laundry detergent, any extra school supplies my sons required and those extra large boxes of cereal….nothing extravagant.  I might take a few moments to look at the quick sale items for fancy tee shirts or sweat shirts in the fellows’  appropriate sizes (with 5 active growing sons, I always tried to keep a little ahead of the growth spurts and the “he wore my shirt to school argument” and the “I forgot to wash my clothes “ game).  Out of Walmart within less than an hour, I would duck through Walgreens or Krogers  for a weekly supply of milk and orange juice.  By 5:30, I would be home, unloading the car and making a bee line to the shower.  By 6:30 almost all of us had to be out of the house….me to work and my sons on their way to the school bus stop.  I needed to be off the hill before the bus runs started because of the 17 mile drive to work.

     I never thought about personal safety……after all we live in a somewhat sleepy small suburban town. Our house had a perfectly good alarm system one of whom just might be asleep in the passenger seat of my car…..a 12 year old lab mix…who loved riding in the car.   Her Belgian Shepherd mate and their offspring would be lying on the living room floor of the house peacefully sleeping…never waking fully unless a strange car (or human) came up our hill.  My traveling companion has now crossed the rainbow bridge and my sense of safety has literally vanished.  The fragility of black men’s existence confronts me every day…..on the internet…..on television….in casual daily life.    As the mother of sons…the grandmother of a adolescent male….the racist atmosphere being created by a certain political candidate and his supporters daily supports the unthinkable rhetoric of hate that in the last year has become permissible in American society.'

      A friend, an immigrant of Middle Eastern  descent….fears sending her young adult son to her own church…..her feeling  (and reasoning) is that he is safer attending church with his Christian father!  I want to tell her she is wrong…but I can’t…..because my fear is that she is right.    My adult son….driving his car in the town he has called home for more than 30 years  comes to a stop at a traffic light behind a pickup truck proudly displaying Ku Klux Klan bumper stickers….in broad daylight!  My stomach is still churning and no…it is not gas.  Two months ago….two of my sons were driving in the through lane in front of a shopping center 1.5 miles from the house and an angry male of another race became livid because they didn’t stop the car to let him merge into the through lane from a turn lane in moving traffic no less. This other driver was so irate that he followed them home (on a dead end street off  a dead end street)! A call to police brought two  squad cars. The officers were able to diffuse the situation but……my sons were followed HOME and this clown blocked our driveway!   Stopped at the neighborhood gas station one afternoon, one son pumping gas and the other decided to go in for some Gatorade.  A high school aged couple (mixed race) strolled down the side street to the main  drag  which goes downtown and just as my youngest son walks out of the gas station….a female voice screeches a racial epithet from a passing car at the young couple….several times.    My youngest jogs up to the couple to chat for a supportive moment as the passing car speeds off.

     Isolated incidents? Doubtful.    In isolation, each incident could be blown off and forgotten in time but when the time frame narrows to four months and each event occurs less than 2 miles away from a home we have lived in for 36 years….the events become more unsettling. A new pattern of “acceptable” behavior is emerging and this behavior is perturbing at best and frightening at worst.   As a nation, the face we display to the world is supposed to be better than this.  Sadly, I think we are fooling ourselves.

FIFTEEN YEARS AFTER 9/11

Will I ever forget 9/11/1?  No WAY.  As a country, as a people, we had always taken pride in the fact that we had NEVER been faced with an attack (of war) on our own soil.   (Pearl Harbor was technically not a part of the United States when it was attacked  during WW II. Hawaii  did not become a state until 1959 and you birthers can STFU since President Obama was born in August of 1961.)

My classroom  was occupied with students  reasonably on task that morning when I heard a key in my door. I looked up and in walked a student, “Ms. Jane…..turn on the TV…they flew a plane into the World Trade Center!”  He grabbed the remote off my desk and turned on the television set. I was so shocked that I never asked where he got the key to my classroom…..but he knew there was a large screen (31 inch)  television in my room purchased by my Spanish 3-4  classes.)

In silent shock, my students and I watched the unfolding horror.  They began to scoot their chairs closer to my desk until they surrounded my corner of the room. The stunned silence in the classroom was deafening as we watched the unfolding horror…..the second plane hitting the tower…the collapse of the building  and the utter devastation….of World Trade…the Pentagon.  The bell rang for class to end, most of the students DID NOT MOVE.  I flew down the hall to my friend’s classroom and yelled at her to call her daughter (who worked at the Pentagon).  She looked at me like I was crazy and all I could say was…”Call her NOW!”  Ran back to my room, pulled my AT&T calling card out of my portfolio and frantically dialed my brother’s number in suburban Washington.   To my surprise and shock, he answered the phone and all I could say was …”Are you okay?” (I remembered that after the riots when Martin Luther King was killed…the government had blocked phone communication in and out of  D.C. )  To this day, I don’t remember any other part of our discussion.  I remember my friend coming to my room to say she had finally talked to a friend of her daughter’s and her daughter was okay….hadn’t been in the Pentagon that day.

Numbness set in…as a side effect of the shock.  Students sort of wandered the building looking for a seat near a television they could watch…the building was eerily silent. Probably for the first time in their teen age lives, the young people were emotionally shaken….this catastrophe was bigger than whatever violence they saw/felt/experienced in their neighborhood…..especially as speculation  about the number of people who died began.

Fifteen years later…time and War has moved on. At least one student I know of was killed in battle in Iraq.  I went to his visitation….not his funeral…the school building has been torn down….my friends and I have long since retired.   Many students have gone to War….a kid from the neighborhood was killed in battle….the young man my children call their “youngest brother” has been deployed three times and come home safely. More people have died in War than 9/11 claimed and the empty spaces in the hearts of a nation still ache.

For some reason….the idiots who own cable news…think it’s time to rehash that horrible day.  I refuse to turn on the television….because I DO REMEMBER….to the end of my days….I will NOT forget. It is NOT a day to be celebrated or to be made into unthinking political fodder.   The extreme HATE which  created  a 911, which fomented two wars in the 21^st Century, which continually stirs up religious,  racial , social, political and yes even gender anathema in this world is  a direct representation of pure EVIL rampant in our society and it needs to be stamped out and erased from the human psyche. My prayer today is for the HATRED to end unequivocally.

WAKE UPAMERICA - MY REALITY

          Get it straight from the beginning and don’t let anyone else try to interpret what I am going to say.  If you have questions as to my meaning, my motivation . my purpose, ASK ME!  These are turbulent and dangerous times for a young black man.  In the past year these are the events that scare, in the vernacular, the living hell out of me.  A young father goes into Walmart talking on his phone. He wanders through the toy section (as I have often done) looking at different TOYS.  I can only guess at his thoughts….and compare them to mine.  I am sure he noted prices (as all parents do) because toys are not inexpensive…even at Walmart.   I am sure he was thinking  of his children and what   he might able to buy with the available money in his pocket.  Lying loose and unpackaged on a shelf…he sees a TOY  pellet (beebee….in my generation)  gun.  Perhaps he had a similar toy as a young man..who knows?  Idly… he picks up the gun…still strolling through the toy section…still talking on his phone.   Less than five seconds later…he is dead….shot dead by a cop…..all because of a toy gun!  One of my sons works less than a half mile from the site of John Crawford’s death!  The Grand Jury found his MURDER justifiable!

            As a black woman, as a mother of black sons, I am outraged.  It has been over a year and my anger has NOT dissipated, has not lessened.  This incident which occurred less than 25 miles from my home, my supposed safe place wakes me in the middle of the night…seething with rage and anger and the emotions  are coalescing into a fury I do NOT want to name. During this past year…so many other names and faces have been added to this list of senseless, unjustified deaths…the most recent of which also occurred less than 25 miles away from my supposed “safe place.”   Handling a toy in a variety story, handling a toy on a playground, changing lanes without signaling, selling loose cigarettes,  having a missing license plate (in a two plate state)….on and on and on with a litany of excuses which ultimately fade to one excuse…being BLACK in America…..because the dead are all black people and the perpetrators are  white cops!  I no longer hope for JUSTICE for any of these prematurely dead folk because I no longer believe in the corrupt social system that masquerades as JUSTICE in a “civilized “ society.

            I have walked this earth over 70 years and what I see is modern day lynching…a continuation of the “overseer” from slavery times.  I see elements of white society deliberately blinding themselves to reality, willing to hide behind excuses and obfuscations so extreme as to be unbelievable.  The excuse I hear is…” I know  (fill in the name blank).  He is good people…he wouldn’t do such a thing!”  REALLY? ARE YOU SURE?   I think of the wife who told her husband (of another race) that one of his friends/coworkers had made an extremely distasteful verbal pass at her and attempted to grab part of her anatomy.  I think of the teacher who had taught one of the cop perpetrators….who didn’t seem to know that this was the second  person killed by this “cop”.   I think of the government official  who was warned about the racist tendencies of his town’s police department and professed disbelief along with questioning the veracity of the person who reported the incident.    I think about the cop caught on video with his knees in the back of a young teenage woman in a bikini after he hurled her to the ground….the same person who pointed a loaded gun at  the young teenage men who objected to his treatment of their friend.  I could go on and on but I won’t.

WAKE UP AMERICA!  My greatest fear at this point in my life is for the safety of my family.  I have witnessed too much, I have heard the current lie “I was afraid for my life!”  way too often