Ashamed to Die: Silence, Denial, and the AIDS Epidemic in the South | Teaching for Change's Busboys and Poets Bookstore

Ashamed to Die: Silence, Denial, and the AIDS Epidemic in the South | Teaching for Change's Busboys and Poets Bookstore

Ashamed to Die: Silence, Denial, and the AIDS Epidemic in the South

Ashamed to Die: Silence, Denial, and the AIDS Epidemic in the South

Searching for home

Searching for home

Bowling Green, Ky, Aug. 15, 2011

Some people search for the next big thrill. Others for wealth – how much money can they earn in a year. Meanwhile, there are those whose lives are devoted to a search for meaning – the big questions. Where did it all begin? Why am I here? Where did I come from and where am I going? Is there really a god?

I am going to confess to some of those predilections. There’s an emptiness in all of us that needs to be filled. Few can boast of their cup perpetually running over.

That sensation of being satisfied is a rare gift.

My search is not for happiness, for gold, for acclaim. Mine is for home – for a sense of belonging. To lose the permanent stain of outsider in favor of the mantle of belonger. I don’t want to be an insider.

There’s no desire for me to furrow that deeply. I just one to belong - to feel as if I am exactly where I need to be and not try to be someplace else.

I was acutely reminded of that internal debate during two recent outings. The first was to the Gadsden Cultural Center in Quincy, Florida. I drove to the Cultural Center to see “Rich in Spirit,” an exhibit of artist Dean Mitchell’s work. Mitchell grew up black and poor in predominantly black Quincy. His work celebrates the people and places of his boyhood. His watercolors capture real life texture in ways no photograph can. They evoked a sense of place that teased my heart anew.

Recently as I drove from Bowling Green to Franklin, Kentucky, the route was marked by strip malls and chain restaurants and payday loan storefronts before giving way to cornfields with stalks as tall as giants. Silos stood over open fields like guards. Barns, their red paint stark and rich against a sea of green leaves, interrupt the flow. Even at 40 miles an hour, those images evoke a time and place that speaks to my heart, that beckons and seduces me. Is this the kind of place to find emotional solace? Can cornfields and red barns be the cure for my restlessness?

My greatest fear is that one locale will yield to another. This modern day nomad will continue looking for the next horizon. That the ache, the need, the yearning for home, will never end.

I suspect that I will never find home as long as I keep looking for it. Home needs to be in the here and now, where I am at that moment. That place is less geography but an emotional terrain, a spiritual place. When I find it my wanderings will cease. I’ll know it. I’ll feel as if I belong. There will be no boasting but a quiet affirmation that I’ve found it. When I do, I won’t ever let it go. I promise.

Sunday Journal: Teens' island romance made summer of 1978 magical - St. Petersburg Times

Sunday Journal: Teens' island romance made summer of 1978 magical - St. Petersburg Times

Lawrence of Jamaica: A touch of crass - Editorial - JamaicaObserver.com

Lawrence of Jamaica: A touch of crass - Editorial - JamaicaObserver.com

Becoming an American

ATLANTA 2000 - My journey ended Friday.

Following four years of bureaucratic bottlenecks and political delays, the floodgates to citizenship had finally been flung open for me. In a matter of minutes, I completed my cultural and intellectual transformation that began on a December night in 1984. I became a U.S. citizen, a proud American. I joined more than 190 other immigrants in the ground-level auditorium of the Richard B. Russell Federal Building in Atlanta and took the Oath of Allegiance.

"I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty," I read aloud from the written oath issued to each of us.

"I will bear arms on behalf of the United States I will perform noncombatant service in the armed forces when required. I will perform work of national importance."

Each line I read amplified a commitment that had been made unconsciously in my heart years ago but was now written in ink. Each pledge reminded me that the promise of America was not just in the opportunity and freedom she offered immigrants like me but in the responsibility that we new citizens have to ensure the door remains open for those who will follow.

I felt the cloak of citizenship weighing on my shoulders. It was a burden I was proud to bear. And, looking around the auditorium, I knew that sentiment was unanimous. Friday morning's gathering was part of the Immigration and Naturalization Service's massive push to swear in 1.3 million new citizens by Sept. 30, 2000.

Similar ceremonies were taking place in South Carolina and throughout the country. Like those other ceremonies, ours was filled with natives of India, Vietnam, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Surinam, El Salvador, Mexico, Canada and Greece -- all soon-to-be Americans drawn to this country by dreams of opportunity.

Each person waiting to be sworn in had a different story -- a unique path that brought them to this place. Yet everyone in the room, regardless of language, culture or religion, shared a common destination. The concept of citizenship holds rich meaning for immigrants. They may pay taxes and live lives of civic responsibility, but citizenship promises to fulfill their desire for access and opportunity.

It means the right to vote, to serve as jurors, to fight -- and die -- for their adopted homeland. It offers membership in a culture that is envied and copied around the world. Many of the new citizens I met in Atlanta had applied within the last year or two. Not me -- my application was first submitted in 1996 in New Jersey. Subsequent moves to Charlotte and then to York County pushed my application to the bottom of the pile. Eighteen months ago, in desperation I asked U.S. Rep. John Spratt's office to intervene. Through Spratt's office I learned that the INS had lost my application. I had to produce copies of my petition and show a canceled check to prove I had paid the $95 fee. Failure to produce the document could have delayed my citizenship application even further. Thus, with my application revived, I received a trail of correspondence during the last 12 months from the INS: requests for fingerprints in Charlotte, an interview appointment in Greer, and finally, a swearing-in date at a location 220 miles away in Atlanta.

Friday's ceremony marked the end of a long journey for myself and for dozens like me. As we rose to take the Oath of Allegiance, beside me stood Henry Romero, a 24-year-old construction foreman from El Salvador.

In 1987, Romero flew to the United States to join his parents, who were among the thousands of El Salvadorian refugees that had fled the murderous civil war in their homeland. On Friday, dressed in a beige sport coat and matching pants, Romero took his place in the nation of Americans.

"I want the right to vote. That's the important thing," said Romero, who lives in Lawrenceville, Ga. Romero believes that voting is a right not appreciated enough by his neighbors. "Americans -- they don't know what they are missing," he said.

Immigrants will sometimes speak of "they" to refer to native-born Americans, those whose birthright has spared them the indignity of standing in the "alien" line at airports or waiting before dawn outside an INS office, only to be sent home for yet another document.

"A lot of people don't think about the pressure," Romero said. Then he cherished a new realization: "This is the last time I have to walk into an INS building."

A few rows from where Romero and I stood, Donna Butler Williams, a physical education teacher from Summerville, was also becoming an American. For the native of Canada and Winthrop University graduate, citizenship means not having to worry about her retirement benefits.

"I didn't want to work all these years and retire and not reap all my benefits," said Williams, expressing a common concern for immigrants. Many worry that changes in immigration law could restrict social security and other benefits to non-citizens, even those who have lived and worked in the United States for years.

Williams' family settled in Hilton Head when she was in junior high. After 28 years, she said she already felt like an American.

"I've been here that long," she said.

In the next row was Edet Ikpeme, who came to America from Nigeria to attend Northeastern University in Boston 20 years ago. In 1998, he decided it was time for him to become a U.S. citizen.

"I've been living here so long, I might as well become one," said Ikpeme. With a wife, an eight-month-old baby and a promising career as a quality assurance analyst in Atlanta, Ikpeme's American dream was still incomplete. He couldn't vote; he wasn't a citizen. "It felt like unfinished business," Ikpeme said.

Minutes later, after all the oaths had been said, citizenship certificates distributed and family pictures taken, Ikpeme and the rest of us new citizens walked out into the midmorning sunlight and blended into the pedestrian traffic of downtown Atlanta.

Each of us clutched our citizenship papers with the certainty that our place in America had been legally secured.

Baptism at Wakulla Springs

An afternoon at Wakulla Springs

One of the earliest lessons children in Florida learn is that swimming in fresh water can be dangerous. Beware of the alligators signs are everywhere. But the Sunshine state is also blessed with more than six hundred fresh water springs, some of which are open for swimming and communing with nature. Andrew Skerritt recounts his first visit to Wakulla Springs, located deep in the forests of North Florida.

Baptism at Wakulla Springs

Every cell in my body seems to protest as I step gingerly into Wakulla Springs. The average water temperature is about sixty-eight degrees, but on a steamy-hot Florida afternoon, it feels near freezing. But I’ve come twenty miles from home in Tallahassee; it’s too late to turn back. It’s time to be baptized into one of the deepest and largest freshwater springs in the world.

To read and hear the complete essay, visit Living On Earth at www.loe.org

Montego Bay state of Mind

A languid common-ness. That was my first impression on setting foot in Montego Bay, Jamaica, one November afternoon. Cars zipped by. Pedestrians strolled at that easy, unhurried, 'no problem' pace. School children in uniform walked by in twos and threes. They could have been from anywhere in the Caribbean. From one island to the next, the rhythm always seemed to be the same. Easy does it. But Montego Bay though with its history, the colonial architecture, the market place, the waterfront, the food, the people, all represent a world worth discovering. Stay tuned.

Meditations on voices of a common tongue

Melda oh you making wedding plans

Carrying me name to obeah man

All you do, you can’t get through

I still ain’t goin married to you.

Obeah Wedding - Mighty Sparrow

The crowd sang in unison, its partially inebriated state adding folly to the chorus. Singers crooned at the top of their untrained and unrehearsed voices. But they maintained the tune of the almost drunk. But their oneness came from much more than the sharing of imbibed and imbued spirits. They spoke the same language. Not just English or some dialect thereof.

In singing that song on that Saturday night in Atlanta, those of a particular generation demonstrated a shared oneness, the things that keep them united, that draws them like black sand soldiers to a steel magnet from cities far and near.

It defines who they are and always will be. It is the shared language of the exile. For them, distance from home is calculated not by time and space but by memory. Theirs is a shared memory of a time and place, when and where they listened to the same songs, heard the same stories, believed in the same rituals. The words evoke particular images of a particular time and place. That stamps them as a member of a particular tribe. The name of their tribe distinguishes them by geography and history, but also biology and anthropology.

Their song is one of longing, a desire for home, to belong even when they don't. It is a cry of affirmation. To see them is not to know them, but to hear them is to begin to understand them. But only just a little. For understanding takes time, requires patience, and a generous portion of honesty and introspection. People from a small place they are. And always will be.

Going Home-A remembrance of things past

from the archives

Under the ash, home
By ANDREW J. SKERRITT
Published January 8, 2004

OLVESTON, Montserrat - I finally went home again. Eight years after my last visit, I walked down the gangway of the Opale Express, an Australian-built catamaran, and stepped on the concrete jetty.


Ahead of me the landscape rose sharply in parched bluffs and rock outcroppings. Wooden shacks lined the road from the waterfront. Unfamiliar faces greeted me at the customs house.


My return home was a familiar ritual, to bury family, my father. But on that placid October afternoon, none of that mattered. I was home, even if home was a vastly different place.


Montserrat, the 38-square-mile island where I grew up, had been sliced in two when the volcano rumbled to life in July 1995. It uprooted most of my relatives, friends and former neighbors. Some of them stayed on the island, but most left. You can find them mostly on the streets and in double-decker buses in London, Birmingham, Leicester and Manchester, England, or in New York and Miami.


Those who remained inhabit a truncated world of exclusion and safe zones, ash gray and tropical green, fear and hope.

Click here to read the entire article
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/01/08/Floridian/Under_the_ash__home.shtml

Geoffrey Philp's Blog Spot: Lorna Goodison: One of the Best Writers You’ve Never Read

Geoffrey Philp's Blog Spot: Lorna Goodison: One of the Best Writers You’ve Never Read

Bread A Lifelong Love Affair

Hot Bread: A love story.

A journey of the senses..

Tampa, Fla

The red light seemed to take forever to turn green. I tapped my right foot on the brake pedal, impatient to reach home. On the passenger seat next to me sat a long white package. With the windows rolled up on a cool Florida evening, the air inside my car was saturated with the irresistible aroma of hot bread. I reached my right hand over to the passenger seat and touched the white wrapping from Mauricio’s Bakery. Home was less than five minutes away, but as the aroma of hot bread filled my car, it seduced me; I couldn’t hold out that long. With one hand on the steering wheel, I balanced the three-foot long loaf on my knee and broke off the heel, poking the soft moist bread into my mouth. I chewed, swallowed and bit again. I savored the hot soft white loaf, present and past converged, realizing that much of my culinary life was spent in a pursuit of hot bread, butter a must, with cheese if necessary. I’d prefer some butter but savored the warm moist loaf. Within minutes I pulled into the driveway. Bread and butter and meatloaf. Before the night was over, all that was left of the loaf of bread were the crumbs scattered on the granite counter top.

From Jubilee to Johannesburg

 

The black and white photograph sits timeless in my photo album. It shows a team of gangly youth. The players look westward towards the horizon. Behind them stands a cinder block wall. In the distance,  mountains  loom large, like giant hedges protecting the players’ backs.

This was the Montserrat national under 19 soccer team. Circa 1978.  I was 16. In the front row, I crouched low and squinted against the afternoon sun.  The players standing behind me were boyhood friends: Oscar, the star striker who could dribble through a school yard of rampaging  boys. Norman, the left footed striker and midfielder. Dwight, the goalkeeper. And his brother Gershom, a striker. Their father was a Seventh Day Adventist minister so Saturday games were off limits.

Eddy was the right winger. His skill was to work the ball down the right side of  the field and  cross it over in front of the goal, where one of the forwards would either head or kick one time into the goal.  I was the right midfielder. Eddy and I were an inseparable tandem.  We worked the one-two, the give and go, like Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan, with feet instead of hands.

 It was almost psychic. Without looking for Eddy, I sent passes into his speeding path. Opponents took to calling us hyphenated: Eddy and Andrew in one breath. That’s how quickly we zipped through defenses. We played domestic league football on a team made up of students from the island’s only high school, our teachers - Peace Corps  volunteers and the British equivalent - and employees from Higgs & Hill, the international building contractor that constructed the pier at the harbor. We were a lethal mix of old and young, black and white, skinny and brawny.

As we raced up and down those hard-baked fields, the youth players dreamed of international soccer glory. But those illusions were dashed each summer as our national youth team was thrashed in the regional competition. It wasn’t for a lack of effort.  Half of our summer vacation was dedicated to two-a day practices. As each day dawned, my coach and teammates woke me with a knock on my louvered windows so we could jog three miles to the park.

In 1978, as in the years before and after that, our endeavors proved fruitless. Undersized and overmatched, heart and energy were no answer to our man-sized opponents, who were mature enough to grow beards. But the results didn’t matter. We danced and cheered partied afterward. Desire, friendship and  a game of soccer on a tropical Sunday afternoon.

I loved soccer before I loved girls. I grew up with cricket but soccer conspired to steal my heart early. One afternoon after Sunday school,  I walked to the park to watch a league game. Arrived early. One team was a few players short. They scoured the sidelines for scrubs to make up the numbers. Somebody heard I was good, so they selected me.  But I was ill-prepared to play. My t-shirt was fine, but my bell bottom pants and imported English shoes were not soccer wear. Undeterred I dashed on to the field. Somewhere, somehow, the ball fell at my feet and I smashed it into the net. Exhilaration. Triumphant. Goooooal!  I was hooked. I was a soccer prodigy. I was going to be a star.

That was a long way from kicking a deflated netball barefooted on asphalt in front of my home in Jubilee, the small village on Montserrat, the Caribbean island where I grew up. Kicking with toes meant unkind collisions between skin and gravel. Games often ended in blood and sweat but never tears. Those are the ingredients of soccer dreams. For many of the players competing at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, that is where their soccer dreams usually begin.

I even dreamed of migrating to England to play soccer professionally. But eventually, reality intervened. I settled for the mundane; I became a government civil servant.

But I got lucky.

 I discovered journalism by writing about soccer. From early on though, I vowed never to be a sportswriter. I wanted to go to the games to cheer on my team. I would always be a fan.

Soon my fandom becomes the ultimate fantasy. My soccer journey will take me from Jubilee to Johannesburg, the scene of the 2010 World Cup.

I will be a fan of the game and a journalist at the event. I will have the best of both worlds. I

 will write about the host country and enjoy the spectacle of the competition. Best of all, I will

 share it with the world. Come along for the ride.

Tiger Woods

Some events will always be inextricably linked in my mind. Today it's my daughter's birth and Tiger Woods winning his second Masters championship.

It was Sunday April 8, 2001.  The day began with labor pains and an early trip to Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, N.C.  My wife had made a similar trip twice before. I had never been invited inside the delivery room. The third time was different. A nurse came outside and invited me to don hospital garb and step inside. I entered armed with my camera. 

As I sat awaiting my daughter's arrival, my mind wandered to the other big events of the day. Tiger Woods was on the verge of winning a second Masters Championship. I couldn't help but wonder how he was doing. Did he win? Could he seal the deal?   My daughter emerged kicking and screaming, healthy and strong. She had the cheeks of an African princess.  She was my princess.  

As I drove home that day, I turned on my car radio to hear the sports scores. Tiger was leading and he eventually won.  Much has happened in the nine years since that Sunday afternoon. My daughter is a fun third grader. My heart jumps each time I talk to her on the phone. 

For his part, Tiger has shown he can close the deal. But he has also shown he is all too human. The world has seen a dark side of  TIger. Now we know Woods the Womanizer. There's nothing pretty about that person. But in a way, he is no different from most of us. He fooled around. He cheated on his wife. He betrayed his family. What separates him from the rest of us is that he is wealthy, talented and, he is Tiger Woods. 

Today, he tries to make a comeback. Today he tries to change the headline of his personal and professional narrative. He tries to help us remember by making us forget. It doesn't matter how this tournament ends. It doesn't matter whether Tiger wins or loses. What matters is that he regains his moral  center, that he realizes that in order for Tiger to be Tiger, his public and private personas can't be at odds. We want him to succeed because a successful Tiger is good for his family, good for the country and, most important, good  for him. If Tiger makes the cut, I'll watch the back nine on Sunday afternoon. Imagine the emotional powder keg if he wins it all. 

A birthday memory

On April 8, 2001  I sat in the operating room at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, N.C., dressed in a medical gown, camera in hand. My wife lay on the operating table as surgeons performed a C-section.  It didn't take long before they reached in a pulled out a baby girl with cheeks the size of plums. I grabbed my camera and snapped pictures, then I held her. My voice was the first she heard. I don't remember what I said, but I just kept talking to her as if she could understand me. She probably did. She still does. 

I was a father again. I had a daughter. 

Now she is nine.  She lit up my life that day and she still does. 

An excerpt from "firesticks"- Short story by Andrew J. Skerritt

 

She remembered everything as if time were an accordion. Fifteen years felt like fifteen minutes; it was 1981 again; Leroy was on the phone and the line between love and loyalty, trust and treachery had not yet blurred in her mind.
 "Good evening, Lorna Mae. Is Jerry home?" Leroy was her husband's boyhood friend. He lived in Boston.
"No, he’s not in,” she answered.  “Don't you remember?

“Remember what?”

“It’s volleyball season,” she said. “Jerry isn't sixteen anymore, but he still lives as if he is.”
"Good for him,” Leroy said. “I wish I could trade places.”

“Be careful what you wish for,” she teased.

 “I hate this time of year, with the cold and the way the time change robs the afternoon of its sunshine," he said. "Darkness comes much too early."
From where she sat she was a stranger to his world. The island breeze filtering through her wooden jalousies smelled like roasted asphalt, just like it did on hot nights in the village where she grew up. Lorna Mae sat up in bed, her check book and unpaid bills scattered among the cotton-stuffed pillows. The TV watched itself.
 During the 80s, many of Lorna Mae's former schoolmates traded in island living for American dreams houses and Yankee accents. But hearing Leroy complain about the cold weather reminded her of why she refused to leave Margarita.
“What are you complaining about,” she said feigning impatience. “Don’t you get all the sunshine you need?
"I guess nature gives and the government takes," he replied, turning on his trademark wit.
"How's work?" she asked trying to throw him off balance.
"It's office politics and subtle racism as usual at AT&T," he said.
"Talking about politics, whom do you like in next week's election?" She remembered Leroy was one of  the few radicals on Margarita to call the government radio station to protest the 1983 U.S  invasion of  Grenada.
"I'm voting for Ralph Nader instead of Bill Clinton,” he said. “Nader won't win, but at least he's not a bagman for the big corporations.”

“You haven't changed much, have you. So how’s Donna and the twins?” she asked struggling to carry the conversation.
"She's at her mother's for a few days. Her mother isn't feeling well," he replied. "Renate and Sara are asleep. I'm washing the dishes.”
She heard the sound of water on china and the metallic chaos of cutlery being wiped and stacked.
"I have a thing for men who don't mind washing the dishes," she said. "I wish Jerry would follow your example."
"Jerry isn't much of a follower," he reminder her. "Plus, this is therapeutic for me. Even though we own a dishwasher, I prefer to wash the dishes by hand. It gives me time to think."
Jerry always said Leroy spent too much time thinking. Her husband preferred to act first and think later.
"So what’s on your mind tonight?"
“You,” he chuckled. “That's why I really called.”
She was taken aback by his forthrightness. If he could have seen her an ocean away, Leroy would have seen her face glow, flush with surprise. She held her breath and waited; she felt her heart wanting to hear more.
“There’s a full moon out tonight. I can see it from here,” he said. “Full moons always remind me of you.”

“I don’t get the connection,” she responded. “Why me?”

He paused for a few seconds before answering. When he did, his words were more a jazz riff than a response to her two-word question.  He said full moons exerted a certain cosmic pull on his soul, made him feel vulnerable and restless.

“Restless enough to step outside on to a moon beam, keep walking and never look back,” he said.
He sounded closer than usual; his word flowed freer.
“Sounds like you're trying to get away from something or is it someone?”
“Who said anything about escaping.”
“Not me,” she played along.
“I don't confuse my fate with my fantasies,” he said.
“You’re in an interesting kind of mood tonight,” she countered.
When he turned off the faucet and the sound of running water died, she heard the light switch click. She pictured Leroy standing, lanky and long in the hushed darkness of his kitchen, his refrigerator humming and wheezing, moonlight slicing through his window. She pictured him staring at the moon with hungry dog eyes, whispering to it as if courting her, like he courted her fifteen years before.
 This was the first time Leroy had ever hinted at what they had done with and to each other. Until then, it were as if they had imposed a no-fly zone on their dual memories. Since their break up, they had conducted no autopsy, sought no reassessment, had never asked each other why, after all the promises they made to each other, they both ended up with someone else.

2010 Montserrat Creative Writing Contest Results

POETRY

 

Title                                                              Author

 

1.  Daily Bread                               Chadd Cumberbatch

2.  Word Processing                       Clover Lea

3.  Balandra                                    Chadd Cumberbatch

 

Special Merit

 

The Bird                                          Laura Taylor-Scotland

 

 

Honourable Mention

 

Dead in Some Places       Laura Taylor-Scotland

Take Me Home                  Maxx Maynard

W. H. Bramble                   Shirley Spycalla

 

SHORT STORIES

 

Title                                                              Author

 

1.   Night Again                              Gordon Buffonge 

2.  Firesticks                                  Andrew J Skerritt 

3.  Sins of the Mother                    Laura Taylor-Scotland

 

Special Merit

 

Jack-O-Lantern                              Shaumen Thompson

Honourable Mention

Volcano Jumbie Dance   (Screen Play by Capt. John Howes)

 

The Box                                                                              Clover Lea

 

Snapshot from Boy to       Manhood                   Margaret Dyer Howe

Cotton - the fibre of lives past and present

Cotton – the fiber of lives past and present

Driving north through South Georgia in early November, I am struck by the expanse of cotton fields on either side of the highway. I speed past churches, their steeples pointing directly to heaven, like spiritual antennas connecting to God. They stand alongside the Florida-Georgia Parkway, like sentries guarding the entrance to the palace. This is no palace. Though it used to be home to a king- king cotton, if you please.

The sight of cotton stirs my emotions. I am traveling to Atlanta to celebrate the past. A boyhood friend turned 50 and I was invited to celebrate with him, with family, with long separated friends.

Venturing north means traveling through the South- Tallahassee to Atlanta - one capitol to the next: Florida to Georgia. The link is strong, fibrous- cotton. It stands in the fields stretching for acres as far as the eye could see. Fields of green speckled with white, like snow drops on the leaves. This cotton used to be indeed king. But even though it is no longer king, it still holds much sway.

Georgia is the third largest cotton producing state in the union it once tried to destroy. The state has 1.03 million acres under cotton crops – second most in the U.S.

It’s ironical that South Georgia cotton would move me, an island boy with sea island cotton in the recesses of my genes. There is a long romance between Georgia and sea island cotton. Georgians were importing sea island cotton from the West Indian islands as early as 1785, less than a decade after Independence, according to The New Georgia Encyclopedia. Chances are some of that cotton came from Montserrat. Cotton was being exported from the island in 1782, the year the French captured the British colony, Sir Howard Fergus writes in Montserrat: History of a Caribbean Colony.

In the 1780s, white folks even tried planting sea island cotton in Georgia, but the conditions were only favorable on the coast because of the long growing season. Cotton, white as snow, is forever stained with blood. The westward migration of English settlers to the Georgia interior, the invention of the cotton gin and the growth of cotton production coincided with the aggressive removal of Indian tribes and occupation and possession of the fertile Georgia soil for cotton cultivation. The path from cotton cultivation to the slave plantation is short and direct.

Cotton demands many hands. The demand for cheap labor prompted Georgia land owners to look to the slave trade and Africa for labor. They bought record numbers of slaves. As their ventures prospered, it fed the demand for more slaves, who planted and picked cotton. According to The New Georgia Encyclopedia, cotton production increased 2,000 percent in the 10 years from 1791 to 1801. Fast forward the Civil War, Emancipation, end of chattel slavery, Reconstruction, sharecropping and the age of Jim Crow. South Georgia cotton in now the domain of big agribusiness. Cotton no longer picked by hand. Large machines sweep through the field snatching the fiber from the plants. As you drive by, huge bales of cotton, stacked like large boxes of paper tissues sit astride the road. A year earlier, before the general election, the bales were painted with graffiti: Saxby, the writing shouted; a salute to Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss, who was in a tight run off race. Chambliss is a South Georgia boy. He’s from Moultrie, in the heart of Colquitt County, about 65 miles from the Florida state line. Chambliss and cotton seemed an apt partnership: the ole boy from the old South.

Sea island cotton was loved for its strong, long fiber and the ease with which the fiber separated from the seed. No one ever told me that. But instinctively I should have known after all the summer days I sat on my front porch on a pile of cotton separating the fiber from the seeds by hand. My grandmother assigned me to the task. This wasn’t just make work. My efforts bore economic reward. The seedless, clean cotton sold for more at the cotton gin than the seeded cotton. By separating the seed from the cotton I was adding to the wealth of my grandparents’ household. I never thought about those benefits. I fretted about the time lost away from my friends. But I should have fretted instead about the injustice and the inequity about the whole exercise. Not my loss, but my grandmother’s loss. Although she didn’t know it - she hadn’t read the history books; they weren’t written yet. The landowners cheated the peasants; they fudged the scales; they deducted 10 pounds for shrinkage. They demanded clean cotton. After the death of sugar, cotton was king on Montserrat from 1910 to 1960 - a year before my birth. It paid the bills; it sent children to secondary school. It paid the passage for young men and young women to buy tickets to board those passenger ships to flee to England to seek better lives beyond the hot sun and dusty cotton fields. They sailed away to lives where they would wear cotton but never again have to plant it, to pick it, to separate the cotton from the seeds, to feel it cling to their shirts and plants and hair. Like them I left the cotton fields, but on a Saturday morning driving through South Georgia, I realized that no matter how far I run, the fiber of that cotton will always weave a tapestry of fond memory, an unbreakable bond between the man that I am and the boy I used be.

Nov. 20, 2009

CBS Network journalists visit FAMU

Together they possess more than one hundred years of network television experience. They have reported hundreds of stories. Their faces have flashed on the millions of television screens.

 But on Thursday Oct. 22, 2009, five black CBS network newsmen shared one stage for a historic coming together in Tallahassee, Fla.

 Harold Dow, Russ Mitchell, Byron Pitts, Randall Pinkston and Bill Whitaker appeared at a public event together for the first time to celebrate the 35^th anniversary of the Florida A&M University School of Journalism and Graphic Communication.

Kim Godwin, a senior producer for the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, organized the event. A FAMU alum, Godwin was director of the school’s division of journalism before she went to the network. Godwin said when she emailed the five journalists about the event they all immediately responded. All said yes. One person said, “absolutely.”

The forum was an inspiring, emotional and educational exercise. Each journalist talked about his journey from anonymity to network news then aired one of his favorite stories.

 More than 40 years ago, Dow began his television career in Omaha, Neb., where he was the first African American to appear on the local station.  Since 1990 he has been a correspondent for 48 Hours. Prior to that he was a correspondent for the CBS newsmagazine Street Stories and a reporter for the CBS Evening News.  Dow has been recognized for his work with five Emmy awards, including one for a story on American troops’ movement into Bosnia.

Dow shared the story that aired on inauguration day when he spoke to the widow of Medgar Evers and her children about the meaning of Barak Obama’s election to the presidency of the United States. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/01/20/national/inauguration09/main4741387.shtml

When the piece was done, there was hardly a dry eye in the room. Even Dow, a tough, no-nonsense newsman, was in tears. He got a lengthy standing ovation.

That emotion deeply affected Pinkston, who is from Jackson, Miss. He spoke about Evers appearing on local television to make the case for civil rights – it was part of the Fairness Doctrine- and how he became the target of white hatred. Pinkston’s voice broke as he spoke of the historical significance of Evers’ sacrifice and the opportunities it created in the television industry for journalists of color.

Pinkston, who has been a New York based-CBS News correspondent since 1994, shared his 2007 story about the young man who went from living on the streets of Baltimore to playing for the Morgan State football team.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/12/04/eveningnews/main3575848.shtml

Mitchell has been with CBS News since 1992, when he was a co-anchor of the overnight show, Up to the Minute.  For the past three years, he has been anchor of the CBS Evening News Sunday Edition and the Early Morning Show. Mitchell shared his interview with Maya Angelou as she responded to the Don Imus controversy a few years ago. Angelou’s “Don I messed up Imus” line was unforgettable. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0n9Pq1LNLwM

Pitts was promoted to correspondent for 60 Minutes and chief national for The CBS evening News with Katie Couric in 2008. He was one of the network’s leading reporters covering  the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He received an Emmy award for his coverage. He spoke of his early struggles. He didn’t learn to read until he was 12 years old. A therapist recommended that he be institutionalized. He stammered terribly until he was 20. When he went to CBS, a producer told him he wasn’t good enough to be at the network. Pitts’ motto: plan your work; work your plan. Set definite, reachable goals. Find five people whose job you want. Then figure out how they got where they were. He cited Sam Donaldson, the former ABC White House correspondent. Pitts didn’t want to be obnoxious like Donaldson. Dan Rather -he worked hard. Diane Sawyer. She was graceful and classy. “You can’t accept no for an answer,” he said.

He also credited his mother’s unwavering faith. She wears a mustard seed in a locket on chain around her neck. His favorite story was the piece on the Iraqi war veteran Carmelo Rodriguez, who died of a misdiagnosed melanoma and whose family was trying to sue the federal government for medical malpractice. The piece was all the more powerful because Rodriguez died while Pitts and the camera crew were at his home. Federal law may be changed as a result of this case. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/05/19/eveningnews/main4109454.shtml

Whitaker, who is from the Philadelphia area, is the CBS News correspondent based in Los Angeles, where he covers the US-Mexico border, illegal immigration and the Mexican drug wars. He was the lead reporter for both O.J Simpson trials. Whitaker shared a story about the desperate journey Salvadorans make to reach U.S borders.

 

The furor isn’t unexpected. If it could happen to him, it could happen to anyone else.
Yes, I am talking about the recent arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Skip Gates on his front porch by a white city of Cambridge police officer. Some of the facts are being disputed, but to me a few things are clear:
Gates has been writing and talking about race for his entire professional life. A week ago, he received the most profound personal lesson about race in America. The intellectual has become personal.
No matter how big, how prominent a black man becomes in America, he will encounter moments of utter and abject humiliation. At those moments, he will rightly blame race and racism. But at those moments, he must reach deep down and find the will to not let the bigots win.
I don’t know Gates, never met the man,, but I couldn’t help but feel that his anger, his righteous anger at that Cambridge police officer, was fueled in part by frustration- after all the work he has done, after all the things he has accomplished, a three-striped cop could reduce him and his Ph.ds to ashes and he becomes just another brother under criminal suspicion.
I believe as part of our education, every black man needs to experience the helplessness of being unjustly handcuffed. It’s a grounding experience; it’s a life-changing experience. Below is an account of my arrest one night in Fort Mill, S.C.
A version of this essay appeared in the St. Petersburg Times' Floridian section.

Handcuffs that won’t come off
By Andrew J. Skerritt
As the light turn from red to green, I lurch forward. Half a block away a white sedan slips into the traffic behind mse, sitting in my lane. The blue lights on the roof of the cab are unmistakable. They are coming for me. I drive using my rear view mirror mostly. What's behind me is more fearsome than what's ahead. That wasn't always the case, not until I got four traffic tickets in one month. Two stops, three tickets in less than one week and you're spooked. You think of what you'll say when the officer comes to your car door, how you'll phrase the apology: ‘I didn't know the speed limit, officer.’
‘Is there a problem, officer? How fast was I driving?’
Each flashing blue light and I am dragged backwards to the Thursday night in February. Every one remembers their first time. The sharp edge , the silver steel bracelet. the powerlessness, the shame. I kept thinking it was a dream. I'm respected. I'm innocent. This was supposed to be Pizza Thursday night and I was driving home. My son sat in the back seat reading with the light on. Pizza pepperoni and mushroom rested on the floor. As we turned around the bend, a police patrol car came flying in the opposite direction. Soon after it passed me , it made a u-turn and fell in behind me. Unperturbed I kept going. I slowed down turned the corner. lights flashed. I pulled over. I sat; I waited.
License and registration. I waited some more. My son wants to know why we have been stopped. I ask the question. There has been a report of a white car overtaking and driving recklessly with no lights coming over the bridge, she replied.
I wait.
Sir you have no insurance. We will have to take you in. Do you have anyone to take care of your son?
I stall, unbelieving. I paid insurance the week before. My wife wouldn’t let our insurance lapse. I stalled further, knowing she would drive up soon and show the officers that we had insurance. Passersby slow down and stare at another black man being stopped by police.
My wife arrives and transfers the pizza and my son to her car. Mine will be towed at my expense. She reaches for her handcuffs. Is that necessary, I ask in protest.
She must follow regulations. I'll handcuff in front, not behind your back, she promised. I was grateful for that a major concession. It made me feel better already.
There is a peculiar view you get of the world from the back seat of a police cruiser. The world seems less safe, smaller, less colorful. It is mostly gray, black and white. But this was my movie, I could choose the colors. This was all a mistake.
But the black dye under my fingernails when I awoke the next morning was real. So was the slow, unbuckling of my belt, loosening my silk paisley tie; removing my wristwatch, wedding bands and chain, posing for the mug shot.
I was quiet and cooperative, even though I seethed inside.
At any moment I expected someone to say it was all a mistake, apologize and let me go home. After all I was a newspaper columnist; my picture appeared in the paper three times a week. They'll know who I am and release me on my own recognizance. I lived in town. I owned a house down the road.
That kind of treatment was reserved for a different kind of suspect.
I'll have to lock you up in the cell until the magistrate arrives, the booking officer said. He should be here around 9:30.
The short walk to the cell empty except for one cellmate who had made up his bed and slept fitfully. I sat on the concrete slab. Inside I wanted to scream, but I remained silent. There was no one to hear me. So I wrapped my soul in the comfort of innocence. But how many others had been brought here before me loudly protesting their innocence only to spend the rest of their life behind bars?
The worst I could do was thirty days in a county jail. But I refused to contemplate that eventuality. I had insurance. I had the card to prove it. I was innocent.
I counted the bars in the cell. I read the hate mail my predecessors left behind for jail guards. Bereft of my watch I could only imagine time. The metal caged my spirit. I couldn't relax. I couldn't sleep. The police officer brought me a blanket. Did he expect me to sleep overnight? I replayed the entire day in my mind. The ifs. if i had used the other route home instead of driving through town. What if I hadn't gone for Pizza? The answers astounded me. In order for me to have been stopped required a series of coincidences, too random to fathom. I was here for a reason. Someone wanted to teach me a lesson. I needed to remember who I was; what I was. No matter who people saw you as, it was who you were that truly mattered. Secretly I kept hoping one of the officer would recognize me. "You're the fella from the newspaper. I like your stories," I waited to hear her say. But she never does. Her eyes remain hard, steely, suspicious. She cuffs me with the practiced indifference of crime wary big city cop. I was her anonymous thug unconventionally dressed in jacket and tie.
She didn't recognize me. I wasn't going to drop names. In the South, being known is, even more than race, everything. If the officer who pulls you over knows your or your family, your chances of driving away with an admonition to ease up off the accelerator increases dramatically. But if he doesn't know you or your kin, you'll help him make quota this month. But how could I claim to be a black man and never been arrested?
The only moments I've spent behind bars were on guided tours of county and state prisons. I had to earn my badge. Every black man had to be arrested at least once. It was a rite of passage. Mine had been delayed. There was no postponing it.
Later that night, the magistrate arrived at the station house. He recognized me, alright. ‘You’re Mr. Skerritt from the newspaper.’
He demanded $350 bail before he released me. I could call a bail bondsman if I needed help. Instead I called my wife. When she arrived, the magistrate sent her back to get exact change. Later, as she drove me home, my son wrapped in a blanket in the back seat, she tapped my knee. Are you doing okay, she asked. Yes, I said. I'll be fine. The sense of innocence wrapped even more tightly around me. salving my sense of being wronged. But it also bolstered the knowledge on that February night that when I walked into that jail cell, I walked through a portal, the one of experience shared by millions of other black men in America. But unlike so many others I walked out unsullied and unbowed by the experience. At the same time, I drove home knowing that each time a police patrol car pulled in behind me, I would always see those blinking blue lights tinged with chrome, the color of handcuffs binding my wrists, humiliating me in public, reducing me to just another, anonymous thug unconventionally dressed in jacket and tie.