Wednesday
Photo Essay: Momma T, MJ and Michele 1950s
What are the chances of anybody having such gorgeous grandmothers in 1952. They are stunning, glamourous women like two great actresses who effortlessly outperform one another. The competition between them, the awkwardness of the fit between the two families--one Jamaican and one from Florida, both spearheaded by young women who fled their homelands for New York City while they were still in their teens. Both women pretend to be wryly thrilled about the arrival of their baby grandchild to persons who have no job or security. My mother is 22, my father 25 but being a woman of this age myself and then some (both were born in 1903 and were therefore 49 years of age pushing 50) , I can recognize the signs of their delight that their granddaughter is so fit but also that they are worried about what will become of my future. These are not women who stand back and let things go as they might. Momma T has only one child, my father, although I guess you would have to say she had abandoned him for her second husband in a time of great need. Momma T is on her way back to Guam with her second husband who is in the military. MJ is probably deeply wondering when or how her daughter and her grandchild will be removed from this apartment where things are not going well for her own daughter. From what I understand, the uncertainty of their relationship was plain from the very beginning.
Photo Collection: Baby Michele 1950s
This picture of Aunt Barbara represents very much the way she was, somebody who confronted the camera, who was there to meet it. She adored me from my birth, she had told me endless times. In 1952 on Edgecombe Avenue in Harlem, what a beautiful baby I was with a beautiful aunt. Beauty was a pretty big thing for Aunt Barbara and God had blessed her with great beauty for much of her life. Here she is, somehow, very much as I remember her from the 50s. And me as the fat faced, big headed baby, alert and alive to the attentions of these beautiful women. This may have been the day upon which I was christened at Abyssinian Baptist Church with Mr. Morrison as my godfather and Aunt Doris as my godmother. Momma T had come from Guam in particular to see me. Everybody know a man's child, my mother reports she said upon seeing me. My mother was only 22 and already in need of a divorce from her musician husband, Earl Wallace, 25 years old.
Monday
New Lincoln Picture 1960s
This was me in the school year I graduated (1968/69), the fall of 1968 I believe but now my hair is in an Afro.
It was Revolution time in New York, in Harlem, at New Lincoln and everywhere else yet I would go from studying dance at Arthur Mitchell's new school of ballet in Harlem to studying acting at the National Black Theatre on 125th Street. Martin Luther King must have already been killed by this time because as I understand it, Arthur Mitchell had been motivated by King's death to start his Dance Theatre of Harlem. It had always been his dream to start a black ballet company. King's death was the wake-up call he needed not to put it off any longer, I discovered somewhat later when I had a chance to interview him.
The classes were held in the former or still present Harlem School of the Arts in the buildings of the little church still standing on the corner of 141st Street and St. Nicholas Avenue. This institution was and is still called the Harlem School of Arts. At first, Mitchell used this space and he had two classes, one for all the children who were beginners and one for the more advanced group which either had previous training or talent and physical grace to burn. By obvious background in ballet, I was placed in the beginner class. The first day was one of the most pleasant days I had ever experienced in my aspirations to study dance.
The teacher whose name I can't recall (maybe it was Walter, very good looking) was a young black male who was either already an important dancer himself or on the verge of being one. He immediately separated me from the others and used me to demonstrate correct positioning of the body in the barre exercises, in particular simple exercises including tendu and demi and full plies in first, second and fifth position, releves, ronde de jambe tendu and developee. I had a great pointe at the time, and a good background in basic ballet, which I had worked on very diligently on my own. I even took ballet classes during our summers in Provincetown. Dancing ran in the family and nice feet with good arches were a family trait so my ability to point my toes and to perform the basic leg movements made me stand out as more competent than a rank amateur.
Also, I was 16 so that's pretty old to be a beginner in ballet. The rest of the beginner class was composed largely of children, under 13 I would guess. Not only was I 16, although I was only 5'2" at the time, I prided myself on appearing sophisticated and as adult as I could muster. I now know in retrospect that I probably could have succeeded in transforming myself into a passably competent ballet dancer because of my physical abilities. I was strong and graceful in the athletic sense although I was shy and withdrawn but the shyness would not have necessarily been a hindrance in the corp if I had been willing to do as I was told and follow the group. But there was at the time a tremendous glass ceiling facing the black female dancer in ballet and ballet was actually the only form in which I felt entirely comfortable.
You could say that I loved ballet and longed, in the deepest sense, to be a ballet dancer. New York had a lot of ballet dancers and it was $2 to sit in the cheap seats at the ballet. Dance classes were also very cheap, maybe two to four dollars as well. But I lacked both the discipline and the determination to really make good on Mitchell's opportunity. You might say we were on a collision course with me heading someplace else entirely. I was there more for the exercise, the physical training, the beauty of the music and the other dancers, and had accidentally stumbled into an express train when all I really wanted was to see the sights. The early days of Arthur Mitchell's school was a terribly exciting, inspiring and uplifting environment.
Through the years of my adolescence I had been taking advantage of the array of dance classes available in New York. These had included classes at the Joffrey School, with Valerie Bettis and with John Wideman in what would now be considered NoHo. Besides taking classes fairly frequently at the Harlem School of the Arts before Mitchell's arrival, I also took dance classes at Leroi Jones Black Arts School in the summer of 1965 along with my sister and my Mom who took printmaking with Ed Spriggs. It was at Jones' school that I first took African Dance I believe when I was 13, which was a real revelation. In those days all dance classes were taught with the most magnificent live music. With my love for music, the live music alone would have been enough to keep me coming for more.
I found young (adolescent) ballet dancers and their mothers the most fascinating creatures in all the world of Manhattan. I found the dramas unfolding in the classes, the dressing rooms, the hallways and performances absolutely riveting.
At the conclusion of that first day in the beginner class, Walter took me to the more advanced class, introduced me to the teacher Arthur Shook, Mitchell's wise ballet master. He told me that from now on I should attend the more advanced class, which was the end of my happiness. In the advanced class there were a full range of people, including people who were obviously already professional dancers, people who had come in from Europe just for this opportunity because a door that had been closed was getting ready to creak open (although it took at least another 30 years for the deed to be well and truly done, I think black ballet dancers have finally arrived and are here to stay).
Morever, Shook was not the type to give false praise, or any kind of praise at all. He spotted me for a slacker I think from when we first saw one another. As I know all too well these days that the desire to avoid hard work is the first thing a teacher is inclined to notice about a young person. Meanwhile, Shook was into slow arduous painstaking technique, lots of sweat and fore bearance. Work was his first, middle and last name.
I don't know whether I imagined them but it seems to me I recall, as well, a number of parenthetical lectures about the shortcomings of the training of American ballet dancers, the lack of discipline, the mindless and shapeless fluttering of the arms. Mitchell was a product of Balanchine's training which he brought from Russia and France and Shook, who I think may have been a European of some variety and was much older than Mitchell, obviously came from hell. Or at least I felt like he did often enough. If Shook's class was slow and painstaking then Mitchell's class was like being asked to fly without benefit of elevation. Mitchell raced through the barre and moved on quickly to lightening combinations, leaps and all sorts of crazy stuff that you had to pick up and do faster than you could think about it or be left in the back of the room staring. And it's not like he would just ignore the people who were lagging. He would taunts you and make funny cracks about you to his own considerable amusement. He had a wonderful bright charismatic personality. He was one of the most handsome men I had ever seen and he frequently performed in class for benefit. He held nothing back. What strikes me now is how available he was to us, how much time he took.
The schedule was two classes every afternoon and evening after school during the week and all day Saturday. It was an absolutely grueling routine. I was always hungry, as I recall, always sleepy. It was clear to me from almost the start that I wasn't going to last. The back of the room was not a viable place to remain in the forthcoming company class. It was no place to relax. And shyness was not anything Mitchell seemed to respect. In my case, I was taunted and chastised for every move I made or didn't make. I think I was vaguely aware that I was receiving all this attention because they were both interested in my possibilities, but in my heart of hearts I think I always knew that it could never work out.
I know at some point I decided to abandon the classes there, in the middle of Karl Shook's class one day. It may have been a pointe class, which I had looked forward to all my life but which I hated in actual fact, and he had just demanded that we do something I knew I could and would never do. So I just grabbed my stuff and walked out.
There are some other things related to this. First, I was attending a real and seriously challenging school, a school in which the aspiration to be a dancer was regarded with thinly veiled contempt. Also, my mind was very much on the revolution in the streets, the transformation and revelation of my black identity, and I was greatly disappointed by the generally low intellectual level of the conversation and aspirations of the other future dancers. The only people who really seemed to like me were the young men in the classes who were also the only ones who encouraged me and told me how beautiful I was because Mitchell and Shook were always complaining that I was too fat. The Anorexic thing was really in in the dance world at that time. It only made it worse that I had never heard the word anorexic or bulimic yet.
The other thing that must have happened somehow in coordination with my straying away from Mitchell's school was that at some point I decided to apply at Julliard as a dance major. Modern dance. I dared not speak the holy name of ballet. Encouraged by the dancer I had worked with at Music and Art High School during the summer, I had applied and was scheduled for the day of interviews and the audition. My plan was to use the routine that I had performed that summer at Music and Art at the final performance but once I left Mitchell, I didn't do much preparation or rehearsal I suspect. As I recall, the way they did the interview process was that you were called in for the day with a number of other girls, maybe three or four and the group of you toured the facilities, were acquainted with all the teachers and the way that Juilliard did everything. Everybody was encouraging and sweet. It was like being in heaven.
The final event of the day was the audition, which I was dreading because I knew I was not prepared for it. I don't know which order I performed in but I remember that there was a panel of reviewers which included Jerome Robbins and Agnes DeMille. The room was chockablock with famous dancers whom I had been reading about in Dance Magazine. Rarely can I recall ever having been so afraid in my life. I wanted to run away again but I was determined I was not going to run the way I had run from Shook's class. Being a coward did not feel right.
I don't know where my mother was but I don't recall anybody else's parents being there either. We were treated like adults, it seemed to me. So I performed my dance. It seemed to me that I had done so so poorly, that I was trembling and that I was a fake, somebody who had gotten into their midst on false pretenses. I was embarrassed, humiliated and ashamed, but then going to Julliard was really the only college I had ever dreamed of attending. This was enough to convince me that I never should or could be a dancer.
But I will always remember that Jerome Robbins encouraged me to try again, to continue training. At the time, I was so completely convinced that he didn't mean it, that he had said it out of pity and contempt. Of course being black in a room in which there were no other black people along with the implied assumption that serious modern or ballet was not our world didn't help the situation either. But I was only 16 and probably a good deal better and full of potential than I imagined. I didn't know then that there is almost nothing you can't do at 16 but it took moxie to go through with the audition given the odds of not being successful. The reviewers would have to be full out racists not to have admired me a little.
Not too many years after that, I saw a movie with my mother called FAME, which was about a performing arts high school. I watched the interviewing and auditioning process eagerly, gratified to see that not having a ghost of a chance or not having adequately prepared for an audition was not the most far out thing in an environment like that. One has to let these things go eventually. Also, I had the great pleasure of getting to visit my niece Faith during her time as a student at Bryn Mawr, a small private women's college where the Dance Department is extensive and well run. I attended a dance concert put on by their dance department. It was a Department in which I would imagine few of the students were expecting to have careers as dancer. But Bryn Mawr, like a lot of private colleges, had the view that instruction in dance could help to build character, taste, vision, good health, all the fine qualities that make you a wonderful human being.
Faith performed magnificently in an African dance troupe that was part of the classes offered at the college. We have the performance on dvd somewhere. Even more gratifying to me was to see the warmth and intimacy between Faith, the rest of the girls and the Dance Department at Bryn Mawr College. Once again I silently thanked the saints for leading Faith to Bryn Mawr and for making it possible for her to procure such a generous scholarship there.
More than 40 years ago. On a bench just outside of Central Park.
This was my yearbook picture, one grabbed on the fly by a patient student photographer.
It was Revolution time in New York, in Harlem, at New Lincoln and everywhere else yet I would go from studying dance at Arthur Mitchell's new school of ballet in Harlem to studying acting at the National Black Theatre on 125th Street. Martin Luther King must have already been killed by this time because as I understand it, Arthur Mitchell had been motivated by King's death to start his Dance Theatre of Harlem. It had always been his dream to start a black ballet company. King's death was the wake-up call he needed not to put it off any longer, I discovered somewhat later when I had a chance to interview him.
The classes were held in the former or still present Harlem School of the Arts in the buildings of the little church still standing on the corner of 141st Street and St. Nicholas Avenue. This institution was and is still called the Harlem School of Arts. At first, Mitchell used this space and he had two classes, one for all the children who were beginners and one for the more advanced group which either had previous training or talent and physical grace to burn. By obvious background in ballet, I was placed in the beginner class. The first day was one of the most pleasant days I had ever experienced in my aspirations to study dance.
The teacher whose name I can't recall (maybe it was Walter, very good looking) was a young black male who was either already an important dancer himself or on the verge of being one. He immediately separated me from the others and used me to demonstrate correct positioning of the body in the barre exercises, in particular simple exercises including tendu and demi and full plies in first, second and fifth position, releves, ronde de jambe tendu and developee. I had a great pointe at the time, and a good background in basic ballet, which I had worked on very diligently on my own. I even took ballet classes during our summers in Provincetown. Dancing ran in the family and nice feet with good arches were a family trait so my ability to point my toes and to perform the basic leg movements made me stand out as more competent than a rank amateur.
Also, I was 16 so that's pretty old to be a beginner in ballet. The rest of the beginner class was composed largely of children, under 13 I would guess. Not only was I 16, although I was only 5'2" at the time, I prided myself on appearing sophisticated and as adult as I could muster. I now know in retrospect that I probably could have succeeded in transforming myself into a passably competent ballet dancer because of my physical abilities. I was strong and graceful in the athletic sense although I was shy and withdrawn but the shyness would not have necessarily been a hindrance in the corp if I had been willing to do as I was told and follow the group. But there was at the time a tremendous glass ceiling facing the black female dancer in ballet and ballet was actually the only form in which I felt entirely comfortable.
You could say that I loved ballet and longed, in the deepest sense, to be a ballet dancer. New York had a lot of ballet dancers and it was $2 to sit in the cheap seats at the ballet. Dance classes were also very cheap, maybe two to four dollars as well. But I lacked both the discipline and the determination to really make good on Mitchell's opportunity. You might say we were on a collision course with me heading someplace else entirely. I was there more for the exercise, the physical training, the beauty of the music and the other dancers, and had accidentally stumbled into an express train when all I really wanted was to see the sights. The early days of Arthur Mitchell's school was a terribly exciting, inspiring and uplifting environment.
Through the years of my adolescence I had been taking advantage of the array of dance classes available in New York. These had included classes at the Joffrey School, with Valerie Bettis and with John Wideman in what would now be considered NoHo. Besides taking classes fairly frequently at the Harlem School of the Arts before Mitchell's arrival, I also took dance classes at Leroi Jones Black Arts School in the summer of 1965 along with my sister and my Mom who took printmaking with Ed Spriggs. It was at Jones' school that I first took African Dance I believe when I was 13, which was a real revelation. In those days all dance classes were taught with the most magnificent live music. With my love for music, the live music alone would have been enough to keep me coming for more.
I found young (adolescent) ballet dancers and their mothers the most fascinating creatures in all the world of Manhattan. I found the dramas unfolding in the classes, the dressing rooms, the hallways and performances absolutely riveting.
At the conclusion of that first day in the beginner class, Walter took me to the more advanced class, introduced me to the teacher Arthur Shook, Mitchell's wise ballet master. He told me that from now on I should attend the more advanced class, which was the end of my happiness. In the advanced class there were a full range of people, including people who were obviously already professional dancers, people who had come in from Europe just for this opportunity because a door that had been closed was getting ready to creak open (although it took at least another 30 years for the deed to be well and truly done, I think black ballet dancers have finally arrived and are here to stay).
Morever, Shook was not the type to give false praise, or any kind of praise at all. He spotted me for a slacker I think from when we first saw one another. As I know all too well these days that the desire to avoid hard work is the first thing a teacher is inclined to notice about a young person. Meanwhile, Shook was into slow arduous painstaking technique, lots of sweat and fore bearance. Work was his first, middle and last name.
I don't know whether I imagined them but it seems to me I recall, as well, a number of parenthetical lectures about the shortcomings of the training of American ballet dancers, the lack of discipline, the mindless and shapeless fluttering of the arms. Mitchell was a product of Balanchine's training which he brought from Russia and France and Shook, who I think may have been a European of some variety and was much older than Mitchell, obviously came from hell. Or at least I felt like he did often enough. If Shook's class was slow and painstaking then Mitchell's class was like being asked to fly without benefit of elevation. Mitchell raced through the barre and moved on quickly to lightening combinations, leaps and all sorts of crazy stuff that you had to pick up and do faster than you could think about it or be left in the back of the room staring. And it's not like he would just ignore the people who were lagging. He would taunts you and make funny cracks about you to his own considerable amusement. He had a wonderful bright charismatic personality. He was one of the most handsome men I had ever seen and he frequently performed in class for benefit. He held nothing back. What strikes me now is how available he was to us, how much time he took.
The schedule was two classes every afternoon and evening after school during the week and all day Saturday. It was an absolutely grueling routine. I was always hungry, as I recall, always sleepy. It was clear to me from almost the start that I wasn't going to last. The back of the room was not a viable place to remain in the forthcoming company class. It was no place to relax. And shyness was not anything Mitchell seemed to respect. In my case, I was taunted and chastised for every move I made or didn't make. I think I was vaguely aware that I was receiving all this attention because they were both interested in my possibilities, but in my heart of hearts I think I always knew that it could never work out.
I know at some point I decided to abandon the classes there, in the middle of Karl Shook's class one day. It may have been a pointe class, which I had looked forward to all my life but which I hated in actual fact, and he had just demanded that we do something I knew I could and would never do. So I just grabbed my stuff and walked out.
There are some other things related to this. First, I was attending a real and seriously challenging school, a school in which the aspiration to be a dancer was regarded with thinly veiled contempt. Also, my mind was very much on the revolution in the streets, the transformation and revelation of my black identity, and I was greatly disappointed by the generally low intellectual level of the conversation and aspirations of the other future dancers. The only people who really seemed to like me were the young men in the classes who were also the only ones who encouraged me and told me how beautiful I was because Mitchell and Shook were always complaining that I was too fat. The Anorexic thing was really in in the dance world at that time. It only made it worse that I had never heard the word anorexic or bulimic yet.
The other thing that must have happened somehow in coordination with my straying away from Mitchell's school was that at some point I decided to apply at Julliard as a dance major. Modern dance. I dared not speak the holy name of ballet. Encouraged by the dancer I had worked with at Music and Art High School during the summer, I had applied and was scheduled for the day of interviews and the audition. My plan was to use the routine that I had performed that summer at Music and Art at the final performance but once I left Mitchell, I didn't do much preparation or rehearsal I suspect. As I recall, the way they did the interview process was that you were called in for the day with a number of other girls, maybe three or four and the group of you toured the facilities, were acquainted with all the teachers and the way that Juilliard did everything. Everybody was encouraging and sweet. It was like being in heaven.
The final event of the day was the audition, which I was dreading because I knew I was not prepared for it. I don't know which order I performed in but I remember that there was a panel of reviewers which included Jerome Robbins and Agnes DeMille. The room was chockablock with famous dancers whom I had been reading about in Dance Magazine. Rarely can I recall ever having been so afraid in my life. I wanted to run away again but I was determined I was not going to run the way I had run from Shook's class. Being a coward did not feel right.
I don't know where my mother was but I don't recall anybody else's parents being there either. We were treated like adults, it seemed to me. So I performed my dance. It seemed to me that I had done so so poorly, that I was trembling and that I was a fake, somebody who had gotten into their midst on false pretenses. I was embarrassed, humiliated and ashamed, but then going to Julliard was really the only college I had ever dreamed of attending. This was enough to convince me that I never should or could be a dancer.
But I will always remember that Jerome Robbins encouraged me to try again, to continue training. At the time, I was so completely convinced that he didn't mean it, that he had said it out of pity and contempt. Of course being black in a room in which there were no other black people along with the implied assumption that serious modern or ballet was not our world didn't help the situation either. But I was only 16 and probably a good deal better and full of potential than I imagined. I didn't know then that there is almost nothing you can't do at 16 but it took moxie to go through with the audition given the odds of not being successful. The reviewers would have to be full out racists not to have admired me a little.
Not too many years after that, I saw a movie with my mother called FAME, which was about a performing arts high school. I watched the interviewing and auditioning process eagerly, gratified to see that not having a ghost of a chance or not having adequately prepared for an audition was not the most far out thing in an environment like that. One has to let these things go eventually. Also, I had the great pleasure of getting to visit my niece Faith during her time as a student at Bryn Mawr, a small private women's college where the Dance Department is extensive and well run. I attended a dance concert put on by their dance department. It was a Department in which I would imagine few of the students were expecting to have careers as dancer. But Bryn Mawr, like a lot of private colleges, had the view that instruction in dance could help to build character, taste, vision, good health, all the fine qualities that make you a wonderful human being.
Faith performed magnificently in an African dance troupe that was part of the classes offered at the college. We have the performance on dvd somewhere. Even more gratifying to me was to see the warmth and intimacy between Faith, the rest of the girls and the Dance Department at Bryn Mawr College. Once again I silently thanked the saints for leading Faith to Bryn Mawr and for making it possible for her to procure such a generous scholarship there.
More than 40 years ago. On a bench just outside of Central Park.
This was my yearbook picture, one grabbed on the fly by a patient student photographer.
Photo Essay: Michele in Anything Goes 1968
This is before I got an Afro, which means I was 16, maybe still dating Stanley Nelson, my boyfriend. I can hardly recall. I remember being that girl doing that routine but what else was going on in my life is fuzzy. Anything Goes was a New Lincoln musical production and great fun in the doing.
The summer before in 1967 Barbara and I had gone to Europe with MJ for two whole months while Mom Faith concentrated on producing her great murals DIE, THE FLAG IS BLEEDING and THE UNITED STATES POSTAGE STAMP TO COMMEMORATE BLACK POWER. During the day she painted at the Spectrum gallery on 57th Street with her friend Jeannine Petite, and in the evenings she avoided her own apartment where Dad was and went instead to MJ's smaller, less demanding apartment. Dad was effectively abandoned for the summer and eventually wondered away to establish his new apartment in 409. Faith tells me and tells everyone that this was the first time ever in her adult life that she had ever been entirely on her own, entirely alone and free to do whatever she wished without having to consider the wants and needs of her family. She was 37 years old and it had been a very long wait.
The summer before in 1967 Barbara and I had gone to Europe with MJ for two whole months while Mom Faith concentrated on producing her great murals DIE, THE FLAG IS BLEEDING and THE UNITED STATES POSTAGE STAMP TO COMMEMORATE BLACK POWER. During the day she painted at the Spectrum gallery on 57th Street with her friend Jeannine Petite, and in the evenings she avoided her own apartment where Dad was and went instead to MJ's smaller, less demanding apartment. Dad was effectively abandoned for the summer and eventually wondered away to establish his new apartment in 409. Faith tells me and tells everyone that this was the first time ever in her adult life that she had ever been entirely on her own, entirely alone and free to do whatever she wished without having to consider the wants and needs of her family. She was 37 years old and it had been a very long wait.
The sacrifice she made was that at the end of the summer, Dad and her were no longer living together. After the fall out from two month trip to Europe (to Paris, Rome, London, Florence and perhaps Nice) with MJ the summer of 1967, we were considered incapable of taking trips with adults. We had been rude with MJ, a problem we had never had before. I was consumed with guilt at the time because as I recall my one abiding thought in every beautiful European city we visited was how to get away from MJ so that I could have a cigarette. Barbara and I were both mildly addicted to cigarettes at this point.
Both of our parents smoked at home. Unfortunately, many of the kids at New Lincoln smoked. Cigarettes were easily procured from other students. We had a student lounge in which the major activity other than playing cards, was smoking and we had a little hangout down the street where the smoke was so thick you could cut it with a knife.
The kids at New Lincoln were very worldly and sophisticated, disrespectful and disdainful of both religion and authority, terrifyingly so in fact, and I am afraid it had a negative impact on my regard for MJ's more homespun style of childrearing and instruction. It was she who had given me my initial training in religion, deportment, manners, morality and ethics. I had always taken her very seriously, loved her food, her cooking, her clothes, everything about her. When we moved away from her house on Edgecombe Avenue to the Bronx, I had even tried to run away to go live with her, for which I got the only whipping that I can clearly remember.
We had only great times at MJ's house and even once we had gone to live in the Bronx or in 345, weekends, sick days and holidays were all spent with MJ. We were always welcome at her house. I often accompanied her wherever she needed or wanted to go. My relationship with her had always been easy, completely loving and warm. At MJ's house there was no housework and cooking, no holding back on the childcentered quality of the environment she provided. You were woken up early in the morning with a day of fun planned for you and then it was early to bed. Unlike my Mom, MJ could somehow easily manage this, all her housework, the cooking and her sewing too. Mixed in as well were delightful surprises of entertainments you had not imagined, foods you loved to eat but rarely saw in the Bronx and just the greatest fun you could possibly imagine.
Sometimes when it was warm, it was still light when we were put to bed. I know I would not have gone to bed so early for my Mom and Dad but for MJ, you did anything she wanted. So it was all the more surprising and unacceptible that we were starting to laugh behind MJ's back and keep secrets from her, sneaking away to grab cigarettes in the bathroom down the hall (in Europe we stayed all three of us in a single room in a pensione with a bathroom down the hall. Kids are not good at sneaking but we had to sneak to buy the cigarettes, sneak to smoke them, and sneak to keep them hidden from her finding them. It must have been truly terrible for her. All the time, i assumed she knew we were smoking although she never accused us of it. Years later my Mom told me that she never said we were smoking, only that we had misbehaved. I'll never know whether she knew or whether she didn't know that smoking was at the root of the problem.
So Barbara and I both spent the summer of 1968 in an arts program in Harlem at Music and Art, which was then located on the City College of New York campus. Given my superior training and maturity, I was soon drafted by the teacher as her demonstration assistant. Mom was chasing the Art World after the opening of her first one-woman show at the Spectrum Gallery in the fall of 1967, to which we invited all our friends from New Lincoln. We drank champagne and danced as the adults made a circle around us.
So Barbara and I both spent the summer of 1968 in an arts program in Harlem at Music and Art, which was then located on the City College of New York campus. Given my superior training and maturity, I was soon drafted by the teacher as her demonstration assistant. Mom was chasing the Art World after the opening of her first one-woman show at the Spectrum Gallery in the fall of 1967, to which we invited all our friends from New Lincoln. We drank champagne and danced as the adults made a circle around us.
Friday
Photo-Essay: Willi Posey, Faith, Barbara, and Andrew 1970s
"Primitive is a word I use in a positive way to explain the completeness of a concept in art. I like to layer and pattern and embellish my art in the manner of tribal art, and then, like a blues singer, I like to repeat and repeat it again. Fragmented, understated, or minimalist art forms frustrate me. I want to finish them. In the 1960s there was a minimalist aesthetic advocating "less is more." To me, less is even less and more is still not quite enough. "
Faith Ringgold, WE FLEW OVER THE BRIDGE: THE MEMOIRS OF FAITH RINGGOLD, Bullfinch 1995.
These words written to amplify her use of beads, feathers and embellishment on her masks inspired by her trip to Nigeria and Ghana the summers of 1976 and 1977, are also stunning to consider in relationship to much of the soft sculpture and painting Faith did in the early 70s. For instance, these soft sculptures which were part of an extended series of masks with costumes made by MJ in tribute to the memories of the families she knew growing up in Harlem, are relevant as well to her approach to primitivism as an aesthetic concept in which one would deliberately overdo, underscore and emphasize.
Many of these masks were of people no longer living and may have been in part inspired by the series of deaths of many older members of Faith's immediate family in the 60s and early 70s, as would be more strongly referenced in THE WAKE AND RESURRECTION OF THE BICENTENNIAL NEGRO. This particular sculptural group is of MJ, Mom and her siblings as children. All these years later, now that the others are dead (Aunt Barbara and MJ) as well as Uncle Andrew, these sculpture have a commemorative feeling to them. For me I had always thought of their faces as masks of death. The faces are placid like corpses displayed in an open coffin at a funeral, of which there were many we attended at that time.
As for the sculpture themselves, it is as if I had grown into the acceptance of them over time in replacement of the lost family members. At the time, when I would visit Faith, I remember the house slowly filling up with them and wondering what it might mean for the future.
One needs to be reminded that these soft sculptures (also masks with costumes attached) are designed to be abstract representations of MJ (Faith's mother), herself, her sister and her brother as children. Photograph by Barbara Wallace at ACA gallery earlier this year.
Faith Ringgold, WE FLEW OVER THE BRIDGE: THE MEMOIRS OF FAITH RINGGOLD, Bullfinch 1995.
These words written to amplify her use of beads, feathers and embellishment on her masks inspired by her trip to Nigeria and Ghana the summers of 1976 and 1977, are also stunning to consider in relationship to much of the soft sculpture and painting Faith did in the early 70s. For instance, these soft sculptures which were part of an extended series of masks with costumes made by MJ in tribute to the memories of the families she knew growing up in Harlem, are relevant as well to her approach to primitivism as an aesthetic concept in which one would deliberately overdo, underscore and emphasize.
Many of these masks were of people no longer living and may have been in part inspired by the series of deaths of many older members of Faith's immediate family in the 60s and early 70s, as would be more strongly referenced in THE WAKE AND RESURRECTION OF THE BICENTENNIAL NEGRO. This particular sculptural group is of MJ, Mom and her siblings as children. All these years later, now that the others are dead (Aunt Barbara and MJ) as well as Uncle Andrew, these sculpture have a commemorative feeling to them. For me I had always thought of their faces as masks of death. The faces are placid like corpses displayed in an open coffin at a funeral, of which there were many we attended at that time.
As for the sculpture themselves, it is as if I had grown into the acceptance of them over time in replacement of the lost family members. At the time, when I would visit Faith, I remember the house slowly filling up with them and wondering what it might mean for the future.
One needs to be reminded that these soft sculptures (also masks with costumes attached) are designed to be abstract representations of MJ (Faith's mother), herself, her sister and her brother as children. Photograph by Barbara Wallace at ACA gallery earlier this year.
Thursday
Photo Collection: Mom and Dad in 2009
Mom and Dad in 2009 at IHop. Pictures taken by their loving granddaughter, Faith Wallace Gadsden. Just brilliant!
Wednesday
Photo-Essay: Mom and Dad 1970s
This is Mom and Dad back in the day at 409 Edgecombe Avenue. The year is 1977.
My Dad is Burdette Ringgold. My mother Faith and he were married in 1962. In 1963, we all moved from the Bronx to 145th Street, where for the first time we had enough rooms for one of them to be devoted to a studio for my Mom's art work. Barbara and I shared the largest bedroom which had its own toilet attached, separate from the larger master bathroom.
My sister and I switched that fall from Our Savior Lutheran School in the Bronx to New Lincoln School on 110th Street and Central Park North. And what a switch that was.
First, a new Dad. Then a new school and a new neighborhood. I was definitely reeling from the culture shock, thoroughly intimidated by my new surroundings.
And then in November of 1963, while Barbara and I were still scrambling to adjust to New Lincoln's distinctly secular and progressive approach to education in which, for example, we called our teachers by their first names, something truly awful happened, something I can no longer really imagine but rather can only recollect based upon previous recollections ad infinitum.
I suppose the best thing about it was that I was a child and therefore had nothing to compare it to. But I can still remember something of the physical landscape of that day, that it was in the fall and I recall, the leaves were already turning.
When 9-11 happened in 2001, as it happened I was again living in the same building on 145th Street in Harlem where we had lived then. I thought of that previous day when President Kennedy had been shot and idly wondered if the experiences of school children were anything like the way it was for us. I hoped that it was because I remember only that I felt very protected when Kennedy was shot, not at all in any kind of personal danger. But then Jack Kennedy had been shot in Dallas, Texas which from my point-of-view at that time might as well have been Oz for all I knew about its connection to the part of the United States in which I was living.
The school day ceased to progress in a manner that was then entirely invisible to me but which I would always recognize from then on in times of emergency in educational settings. The announcement was made in a quiet and dignified way that the President, John F. Kennedy was shot, and I had occasion to recall this in particular recently when reading a reminiscence of that very same day written by my former 7th grade teacher, Helen Myers. It was good to learn that even though I had been only 11 years old that I had still gotten the essentials right.
I can't remember then how long it was from the announcement of his shooting to the announcement of his death, or whether I received any further information until I was actually with my parents but I remember that the next order of business was getting us home as quickly as possible where my family (and I guess I would assume all the other children's families) remained glued to our black and white television sets and the two or three television stations we then had for the duration, which I would guess extended over a period of days.
In the Christian tradition, getting a head of state properly buried, particularly if it also happens that he was assassinated while in office, was I would guess a protracted process, not a simple matter. And children are easily amazed at how long adults can take to do such things at such times. I think I can recall some aspects of the processional apparently patterned after that of Abraham Lincoln as called for by his widow, Jacqueline Kennedy.
I don't know if I actually remember seeing John John saluting his father's coffin that day or whether it is all the times I have seen it replayed in various forms. What stands out in my mind since then is that he wore those short pants that little boys up to a certain age were sometimes dressed in, and that that same boy became a man who died only a year after his own mother died of cancer.
From 1963 to 1977 was not such a very long time. Malcolm X was shot in 1965 and that was a highly personal occasion because it happened in Harlem and my family lived in Harlem. My parents and everybody I knew were deeply affected by his death. His processional, viewing and funeral all took place in Harlem. Then Robert F. Kennedy was shot in 1968, and this isn't to say that a great many other things didn't happen in between these dates, including the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. as well but I run the chronology through my mind if not daily, certainly often enough just so I won't ever forget the order in which things happened.
I asked my Dad whether he was sent home on that day, whether they closed the line down at General Motors in Tarrytown when John F. Kennedy got killed. He said they did. I asked because I know they rarely closed the line down and his coming home from work without completing his day was something that only happened on fewer days than I can count on one hand during the time he worked there. He then mentioned, as well, that he had come home early on the day that Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot but this time without authorization from the bureaucracy. I gather the black workers, including him, refused to work. His punishment was a 3 day suspension. So much for the widespread love and respect for MLK in 1968. But he says they didn't close the line down for Robert Kennedy either. What a crazy time.
Then I graduated from high school in 1969, went to Mexico during the first half of the summer, did not want to ever return to the United States but had to anyway, then spent the second half of the summer in the Sisters of the Good Sheppard Residence for girls in need of supervision across the street from Beth Israel Hospital in 17th Street.
Then I went to Howard University for one semester in the fall of 1969, personally delivered by my Mom with a suitcase full of new clothes and brand new bank account at the Howard University's campus bank. Dad came to visit me sometime in the fall, was shocked at the free floating cattle market on display on the campus green right outside my dorm, which had just started to allow boys to visit on weekends, and advised Mom to bring me home immediately.
I was back in New York at the City College of New York by February of 1970, working as an account adjuster at Best & Company during the day and attending night school. I truly loved that job at Best & Company but they soon went out of business forever. In 1974, I graduated from the City College of New York with a major in English and Creative Writing, under the careful tutelage of my mentor Mark Mirksy, now my colleague.
The summer of my graduation, the same summer in which Richard Nixon was impeached, I was working as a secretary in the office of the Editor-in-Chief of Random House at an exciting new job. The world seemed to pass through that office. I served coffee and did all the dictaphone typing.
In the fall of 1974 I had moved on to a job I liked even better on most days because I was no longer a typist and a server of coffee but a "research assistant" in the Book Review Department at Newsweek Magazine. Even more of the world flowed through these offices, which was known as "The Back of the Book," with Jack Kroll in charge. It was during the two and a half years that I was employed by Newsweek that I met the people and made the connections that would lead to my free lance writing career at The Village Voice, a literary agent and a book contract at McGraw Hill for an as yet untitled book on the sexual politics of black women and black men.
At the birthday party for my Dad, and his sister Gloria in September of 1977, at which this picture was taken, I was presumably then engaged in writing the manuscript that would become Black Macho and The Myth of the Superwoman in 1979. The contract money had already run out and I had just begun to work full time in the position of Lecturer in the Journalism Program at New York University. I was living at Washington Square Village, NYU housing. I had moved from 345 early in the summer of 1976 upon the occasion of the massively successful Sojourner Truth Festival of the Arts, which was given by a committee composed of Margo Jefferson, Pat Jones, Monica Freeman and myself at the Women's Interarts Center on the Westside.
See more of these pictures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/mjsoulpictures/sets/
My Dad is Burdette Ringgold. My mother Faith and he were married in 1962. In 1963, we all moved from the Bronx to 145th Street, where for the first time we had enough rooms for one of them to be devoted to a studio for my Mom's art work. Barbara and I shared the largest bedroom which had its own toilet attached, separate from the larger master bathroom.
My sister and I switched that fall from Our Savior Lutheran School in the Bronx to New Lincoln School on 110th Street and Central Park North. And what a switch that was.
First, a new Dad. Then a new school and a new neighborhood. I was definitely reeling from the culture shock, thoroughly intimidated by my new surroundings.
And then in November of 1963, while Barbara and I were still scrambling to adjust to New Lincoln's distinctly secular and progressive approach to education in which, for example, we called our teachers by their first names, something truly awful happened, something I can no longer really imagine but rather can only recollect based upon previous recollections ad infinitum.
I suppose the best thing about it was that I was a child and therefore had nothing to compare it to. But I can still remember something of the physical landscape of that day, that it was in the fall and I recall, the leaves were already turning.
When 9-11 happened in 2001, as it happened I was again living in the same building on 145th Street in Harlem where we had lived then. I thought of that previous day when President Kennedy had been shot and idly wondered if the experiences of school children were anything like the way it was for us. I hoped that it was because I remember only that I felt very protected when Kennedy was shot, not at all in any kind of personal danger. But then Jack Kennedy had been shot in Dallas, Texas which from my point-of-view at that time might as well have been Oz for all I knew about its connection to the part of the United States in which I was living.
The school day ceased to progress in a manner that was then entirely invisible to me but which I would always recognize from then on in times of emergency in educational settings. The announcement was made in a quiet and dignified way that the President, John F. Kennedy was shot, and I had occasion to recall this in particular recently when reading a reminiscence of that very same day written by my former 7th grade teacher, Helen Myers. It was good to learn that even though I had been only 11 years old that I had still gotten the essentials right.
I can't remember then how long it was from the announcement of his shooting to the announcement of his death, or whether I received any further information until I was actually with my parents but I remember that the next order of business was getting us home as quickly as possible where my family (and I guess I would assume all the other children's families) remained glued to our black and white television sets and the two or three television stations we then had for the duration, which I would guess extended over a period of days.
In the Christian tradition, getting a head of state properly buried, particularly if it also happens that he was assassinated while in office, was I would guess a protracted process, not a simple matter. And children are easily amazed at how long adults can take to do such things at such times. I think I can recall some aspects of the processional apparently patterned after that of Abraham Lincoln as called for by his widow, Jacqueline Kennedy.
I don't know if I actually remember seeing John John saluting his father's coffin that day or whether it is all the times I have seen it replayed in various forms. What stands out in my mind since then is that he wore those short pants that little boys up to a certain age were sometimes dressed in, and that that same boy became a man who died only a year after his own mother died of cancer.
From 1963 to 1977 was not such a very long time. Malcolm X was shot in 1965 and that was a highly personal occasion because it happened in Harlem and my family lived in Harlem. My parents and everybody I knew were deeply affected by his death. His processional, viewing and funeral all took place in Harlem. Then Robert F. Kennedy was shot in 1968, and this isn't to say that a great many other things didn't happen in between these dates, including the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. as well but I run the chronology through my mind if not daily, certainly often enough just so I won't ever forget the order in which things happened.
I asked my Dad whether he was sent home on that day, whether they closed the line down at General Motors in Tarrytown when John F. Kennedy got killed. He said they did. I asked because I know they rarely closed the line down and his coming home from work without completing his day was something that only happened on fewer days than I can count on one hand during the time he worked there. He then mentioned, as well, that he had come home early on the day that Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot but this time without authorization from the bureaucracy. I gather the black workers, including him, refused to work. His punishment was a 3 day suspension. So much for the widespread love and respect for MLK in 1968. But he says they didn't close the line down for Robert Kennedy either. What a crazy time.
Then I graduated from high school in 1969, went to Mexico during the first half of the summer, did not want to ever return to the United States but had to anyway, then spent the second half of the summer in the Sisters of the Good Sheppard Residence for girls in need of supervision across the street from Beth Israel Hospital in 17th Street.
Then I went to Howard University for one semester in the fall of 1969, personally delivered by my Mom with a suitcase full of new clothes and brand new bank account at the Howard University's campus bank. Dad came to visit me sometime in the fall, was shocked at the free floating cattle market on display on the campus green right outside my dorm, which had just started to allow boys to visit on weekends, and advised Mom to bring me home immediately.
I was back in New York at the City College of New York by February of 1970, working as an account adjuster at Best & Company during the day and attending night school. I truly loved that job at Best & Company but they soon went out of business forever. In 1974, I graduated from the City College of New York with a major in English and Creative Writing, under the careful tutelage of my mentor Mark Mirksy, now my colleague.
The summer of my graduation, the same summer in which Richard Nixon was impeached, I was working as a secretary in the office of the Editor-in-Chief of Random House at an exciting new job. The world seemed to pass through that office. I served coffee and did all the dictaphone typing.
In the fall of 1974 I had moved on to a job I liked even better on most days because I was no longer a typist and a server of coffee but a "research assistant" in the Book Review Department at Newsweek Magazine. Even more of the world flowed through these offices, which was known as "The Back of the Book," with Jack Kroll in charge. It was during the two and a half years that I was employed by Newsweek that I met the people and made the connections that would lead to my free lance writing career at The Village Voice, a literary agent and a book contract at McGraw Hill for an as yet untitled book on the sexual politics of black women and black men.
At the birthday party for my Dad, and his sister Gloria in September of 1977, at which this picture was taken, I was presumably then engaged in writing the manuscript that would become Black Macho and The Myth of the Superwoman in 1979. The contract money had already run out and I had just begun to work full time in the position of Lecturer in the Journalism Program at New York University. I was living at Washington Square Village, NYU housing. I had moved from 345 early in the summer of 1976 upon the occasion of the massively successful Sojourner Truth Festival of the Arts, which was given by a committee composed of Margo Jefferson, Pat Jones, Monica Freeman and myself at the Women's Interarts Center on the Westside.
See more of these pictures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/mjsoulpictures/sets/
Thursday
Mme. Willi Posey in her Prime 1950s
Absolutely in her prime in a black suit designed by her posing for the camera at 363 Edgecombe Avenue in 1954, the day Barbara and I and Mom came to live with her. MJ was 49 years old. Always looking up. Photographer TBA.
Photo Collection: MJ with Her Favorite Model Anne Porter1950s
In the 50s, MJ had a particular favorite among her models. This was Anne Porter. The two of them sitting in the livingroom at 363 Edgecombe Avenue. Photographer TBA.
Photo Collection: MJ and Me on The Beach at Setauket 1980s
These were good times, the summer of 1980 or so with Momma Jones (MJ) and Pop-Pop on the Beach at Setauket. MJ married Pop-Pop, her teenage sweetheart, in the late 70s perhaps because her cataracts made her feel as though she needed a shoulder to lean on. I am 28 and the author of Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman. My sister Barbara, I suspect, is the photographer in this case. By this time, MJ had begun to wear a blonde wig, much to the consternation of her daughter Faith.
Monday
Chronologies and Documents: Hartford Insurance Fire Company
Policy Number 4043 Stock Policy
In Consideration of the Stipulations herein named and of eight and zero dollars premium does insure B.B. Posey for the term of 3 years from the 1st day of August 1, 1906 at noon to the 1st day of August 1909, at noon, against all direct loss or damage by fire, except as hereinafter provided, To an amount not exceeding Three Hundred, Fifty and zero Dollars, to the following described property while located and contained as described herein, and not elsewhere, to wit:
Dwelling Form$350 on the one story frame, shingle roof building and additions thereto, and fixtures for heating and lighting, as part of the building while occupied as a dwelling situate on west side of Peck Street at No. 203, Block 58, Sheet 13, of Sanborn's 1903 Insurance Map of Palatka, Florida. Loss, if any, payable to East Florida Savings & Trust Company, Mortgages, as their interest may appear.To comply with the Act of the Legislature of the State of Florida regulating the issue of policies by Fire Insurance Companies, approved May 31, 1899, the insurable values of the buildings herein described are fixed at the following amounts: $350.00.Lightning Clause. Electric Light Permit. Kerosene Oil Stove Permit.G. Loper Bailey & Co.Fire Insurance.Palatka, Florida.In Witness Whereof, this Company has executed and attested these presents this 30th day of July 1906. This Policy shall not be valid until Countersigned by the duly authorized Agent of the Company at Palatka, Florida. Geo. L. Chase, President.
Thursday
Sonny's Blues
- In connection with Sonny Rollins' receipt of an honorary Doctorate of Music at Rutger's University, Sonny Rollins joined Faith at her 50 Year Retrospective at the Mason Gross School of Art. Faith received her 21st honorary doctorate as well, and we celebrated with Rollins playing at her exhibition in front of her image of Sonny Rollins practicing on the Williamsburg Bridge.
Photo Essay: Sonny Rollins Plays At Faith Ringgold's Retrospective
Dr. Phillip G Zimbardo, Faith Ringgold, Prof. Abenia Busia, Sonny Rollins and Burdette Ringgold at Rutger's University, 2009
Sonny Rollins and Faith Ringgold, childhood friends from Edgecombe Avenue on Sugar Hill together again. And how sweet it is. Aside from my Dad, Burdette Ringgold, these pictures include Sonny Rollins, the great musician, Faith Ringgold, the great artist, and Dr. Phillip G. Zimbardo, distinguished professor of psychology at Stanford who is perhaps best known for the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment in which the innate corruptibility of situational dominance is explored. All three New York City bred. New York's Finest you might say.
Photos taken by Faith Wallace-Gadsden (copyright 2009)
Sonny Rollins and Faith Ringgold, childhood friends from Edgecombe Avenue on Sugar Hill together again. And how sweet it is. Aside from my Dad, Burdette Ringgold, these pictures include Sonny Rollins, the great musician, Faith Ringgold, the great artist, and Dr. Phillip G. Zimbardo, distinguished professor of psychology at Stanford who is perhaps best known for the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment in which the innate corruptibility of situational dominance is explored. All three New York City bred. New York's Finest you might say.
Tuesday
Photo-Essay: Who's Afraid of Aunt Jemima? I Don't Know!
This is a wonderful wonderful picture of the two Faiths at the Gala at Mason Gross. They are both exquisite 78 and 27. I just love this little grown up girl.
Who's Afraid of Aunt Jemima dates from 1981 and belongs to a Private Collector.
Meanwhile in front of the picture-- and I never realized it could be so much fun to have people juxtaposed with images--is Grandma Faith and Baby Faith. She was then 1 year old and now 27. The two Faiths. Who is afraid of Aunt Jemima? Not me!
Monday
Photo Essay: Coming To Jones Road
This is myself and Barbara standing before one of the key images of Coming to Jones Road, a theme extensively represented in the exhibition. Mom did the series Coming to Jones Road to commemorate the awful difficulty she had in getting to build the studio she wanted on the Jones Road property she purchased in 1992. Her white neighbors banded together and hired a lawyer to try to prevent her from completing her plan of adding a studio to her acre large property on the hill in Englewood, New Jersey. The subsequent struggle, which did not result in the building and modifications of the property until 1999, inspired her to return to the issue of how black people had escaped slavery--sometimes leaving in large groups and taking back roads to their destination and freedom.
New Jersey continued to have slavery right up until the end of the Civil War but much of it was rural and it probably always had pockets of resistance and refuge for slaves who had escaped the South. Sometimes this is called the Underground Railroad, which became all the more a necessity as the Supreme Court upheld Fugitive Slave Laws and the awful Dred Scott decision, whereupon fleeing slaves might stop briefly in a remote location and then continue on toward Canada where they might be free. In Coming to Jones Road, Mom has explored ad infinitum the theme of resistance with your feet headed toward freedom in a rural America.
Englewood is really no longer a rural idyll although sometimes it can look like one. There are lots of places that are still almost wild.
Photo-Essay: The Gala at New Brunswick
This is me and the prodigal son, Curlee Holton. It was also an exhibition for him as well as Mom since he is Mom's Master Printmaker and was closely involved with the production of the print/lithographs illustrating the Declaration of Independence. The wall text included a statement by Faith and one from him.
I was supposed to write for their book but I couldn't quite make their deadline although I have an essay for them now. The Declaration of Independence book is a very limited edition, maybe 1000 or so and very expensive so I wasn't particularly eager to be included in such a book. Moreover, for me the issue of the Declaration of Independence is a question of how things were in the 18th century, not my favorite century. Nonetheless, I wrote the essay and have included on this blog above.
I was fascinated by the difficulties Thomas Jefferson, Phylis Wheatley, David Walker and Maria Stewart all present to the visualization of issues intersecting race, gender and American Independence. These four would be my favorite subjects in 18th century America along with John Adams and his wife Abigail Adams from the standpoint of someone who loves to read about history and to read literature.
Sunday
Photo Collection: Mom at the Gala
Photograph taken by Anthony C. Dominiczak. All images property of the Institute for Women and Art, Rutgers.
These photos belong to IWA.
Saturday
Photo-Essay: Once in Awhile
http://www.amazon.com/gp/mpd/permalink/m1LFIKVV2ZC2AL
The Man of the Moment--1963
It is the upcoming graduation ceremony at which both the master jazz artist Sonny Rollins and my Mom Faith Ringgold will be presented with honorary doctorates. This event will take place next week. Sonny Rollins, my Mom and my stepdad all knew one another as children and teenagers who hailed from Edgecombe Avenue and St. Nicholas Place.
To give this a musical hook, I would direct your attention to the release of the Jazz Icon DVD of Sonny Rollins playing in Denmark in 1963 and 1965. He performs several of his classics, most majestically for me the fabulous St. Thomas, which he could probably continue to play for hours and hours. He does a fabulous job here. So cool. So right. So perfect.
It has autobiography (Soul Pictures), stunning pictures (Talking in Pictures) film (Michele's Movie Talk), the drama of African American culture unfolding in the course of the 20th century (Blues People Curriculum) and great blues people inspired music (Blues People-The Music). Actually Sonny Rollins as well as Arthur Taylor both played for Aunt Barbara's wedding, the event that anchors this blog. It doesn't get any better than this.
Enjoy and remember! http://jazzicons.com/vid_rollins.html
Friday
Photo Collection: Michele on the Last Day of School
Stacy took pictures yesterday on one of our terraces at CCNY. He asked me to show the disapproval I felt when a student had said something ridiculous. I don't know whether this was one of those but in any case, this is me with my hair blowing in the wind in May of 2009 at the ripe old age of 57.
Critical Essay: The Final Stage Approaches
The Final Stage of Soul Pictures--translating the amorphous process of scanning pictures, tracking events, photographers, proper names and dates for the lives of the women in my family into a series of specific, finite projects which may, in turn, become a chapter or chapters or even book projects of their own--will be protracted. I don't know how long it will take, except that I would like to finish at least one book project from it during my sabbatical, just because that's the measure of a successful sabbatical. If you come out of it with a book ready to deliver to the publishers, you had a good one.
It's been a few weeks since school more or less ended (it never really ends) and I have begun to imagine completing the book faster than I had once imagined it. My sense is that it could consist of a series of chapters as follows:
The Introduction will be devoted to Dr. Baby Faith, my neice, her birth in 1982 and the series of paintings Mom did in her honor: Willi and Baby Faith, a series of lovely abstractions. This section will be composed of the photographs of Baby Faith, her photographs and Faith's art in this period, including the Dah Series and Emanon--all abstract paintings on canvas.
In each section of the book, the overarching theme will be provided by a particular set of Faith's art work. In this section the rubric will be provided by We Came To Jones Road.
Chapter One will be devoted to Faith and Burdette's experience purchasing a home in Englewood and their struggle to build a suitable studio combination house for herself. In 1999, Faith also initiated the activities of the Any One Can Fly Foundation, including the Garden Party, the Lifetime Achievement Awards and the Scholars Grants.
Chapter Two will look at the origins of the Posey family in Rocky Grove, SC.
Right now the way I am thinking is in terms of a set of discreet projects named after the focus of research and the available documents. Each has to do with questions I wish to pose to the sources. Most would focus on African American family life in a series of locations:
Rocky Grove, SC Project: Apparently, my great-great grandfather, the grandfather of my mother's grandfather was named Free Posey. He is named the head of the family in the 1880 Census, born about 1813, which would make him 67. His wife Matilda was born in 1830, making her about 50. There may have been another wife before her since Free Posey apparently had so many children, maybe 22, quite a few of them older than my great-grandfather Professor Benjamin Bunyon Posey.
Hampton/Tuskegee Project. As part of this project, I would like to go to Tuskegee just to get a better understanding of the role of these two institutions in the development of the struggle of HBCUs for self-definition. Of course, there were many other schools--Spelman, Atlanta, Morehouse, Fisk and Lincoln--which were very different from Hampton and Tuskegree but I am interested in the geography and the landscape of such places since their patterns must have impacted all the rest, regardless of whether the pattern was followed. The idea of an educational system having to be formed under such prohibitive constraints as segregation and apartheid is deeply intriquing to me. I have no ancestral links there so far as I know, only that B.B Posey and all the other Posey probably admired Booker T. Washington's work there.
Palatka/Jacksonville, Florida Project--These two places are the starting points for a substantial portion of family history in the 20th century, in particular the Poseys, who lived in the little town of Palatka, which my grandmother MJ remembers and describes so well in my interviews with her, and Jacksonville, the place of the Binghams, the family into which B.B. Posey married. There were also other Poseys and Binghams who were not my direct ancestors. Both places had racial segregation and yet MJ seems either unaware of it or very reluctant to talk about any firsthand experience of it.
the Addiction Project--my Dad, my Uncle Andrew and my cousin Jimmy died of drug overdoses of heroine all in the 60s before any insight into the treatment of addictions had come. The family assumption has always been that racism killed them but with all this work on genes, I am beginning to wonder if there might not be some insight there. Afterall the death rate in the family has been truly astounding. It includes my paternal grandfather and my Aunt's deaths related to alcoholism.
the CCNY Project--Mother went to CCNY, Grandpa Bob briefly taught chemistry there, and Barbara, myself and my former husband attended their as undergrads. I now teach there and have done so for almost 20 years. Have been asked to supervise the writing of the formal history of the English Department, which should allow me to master the history of the school, some of which would be relevant to Soul Pictures. I am curious about the link between Max Bond, Keith and Mamie Clarke (who were responsible for the research which contributed to the defeat of the Separate But Equal decision), the Northside Center and New Lincoln where I went to school.
the New Lincoln School Project--both Barbara and I went to school here from 1963 through 1970. The impact on my life is incalculable. Also, my neice Faith went their briefly when they incorporated with Walden.
the Public Schools in New York Project--mother taught in the public schools of New York for 17 years while I was growing up in the 50s and 60s. Aunt Barbara also taught. MJ attended Wadleigh High School in the early 20s. Mom and Aunt Barbara went to P.S. 136, Stitt and Morris High School in the 30s and 40s. Uncle Andrew went to the same schools. Dad went to George Washington High School in the 40s. My sister Barbara taught in the public schools for a number of years. I, myself, never attended or taught in a public school. As such, I find them fascinating to consider. Most schools have rich histories which are largely neglected.
NAAFAD Project: National Association of Fashion and Accessories Designers
the Black Feminism Project
I am currently working with a chronology encompassing all relevant events in which the main women in my line have been engaged from roughly 1900 to 2000. Both of my grandmothers were born in 1903. Both grandfathers were born slightly earlier, which gives me a nice frame for the century, and the story their lives and the lives of their descendants can tell about the culture and civilization in which we participated. A major theme is the Great Migration and its outcomes.
A major focus of the project is to render most things in a visual form and to search for language that can further assist the images in characterizing the times for a book reading public. The blog form, as far as my concerned, is a means through which to endlessly explore possibilities for the book. This book will also be for me my first, most sincerely intend book with its own structure of self-sufficient narratives.
Right now the way I am thinking is in terms of a set of discreet projects named after the focus of research and the available documents. Each has to do with questions I wish to pose to the sources. Most would focus on African American family life in a series of locations:
Rocky Grove, SC Project: Apparently, my great-great grandfather, the grandfather of my mother's grandfather was named Free Posey. He is named the head of the family in the 1880 Census, born about 1813, which would make him 67. His wife Matilda was born in 1830, making her about 50. There may have been another wife before her since Free Posey apparently had so many children, maybe 22, quite a few of them older than my great-grandfather Professor Benjamin Bunyon Posey.
I am assuming that both of them were former slaves, and guessing as well that they are living not too far from the location of their enslavement. A brief period of researching the Posey name in cemetaries in that county would seem to indicate that Posey was a very strong and widespread name both among whites and blacks in that particular location and that a site visit would be likely to render some insight into how this name functioned locally.
It looks as though Rocky Grove has experienced a county name change but that it remains a fairly small community, which should be good for tracking ancestral history, and getting a sense of what it was like from 100 to 200 years ago.
I have gathered the names and locations of the various Posey siblings, their spouses and from subsequent papers, letters written on the occasion of the death of Lawrence O. Posey, who was living in Washington D.C. early in the 20th century. Also apparently Benjamin Bunyon Posey, Mom's grandfather, were among those former slaves and their children who were most eager for education and opportunity and travelled in search of it. So this story should be an adventure I think, another chance to explore the mysteries of the rural South and how my ancestors fared in this strange place. I love South Carolina anyway because of its rich history as the earliest states where slaves outnumbered free, also the state that was the first to succeed from the union and to join the confederacy. They were instigators and a place where they liberally continued to import slaves from Africa long after it was illegal to do so in the entire U.S. It may be possible that Free was an African. What a name.
Washington, D.C. Project: A branch of the Posey family settled in Washington D.C. Benjamin Bunyon Posey (my great-grandfather, MJ's father) lived with a branch of this family in order to pursue the education that prepared him to be a teacher and to start schools in Palatka, and other places in the South. I would like to track the fortunes of the Poseys in Washington D.C. after the Civil War, and the manner in which D.C. became the hub of Reconstruction and the first place in the country to see widespread efforts to educate the former slaves.
Washington, D.C. Project: A branch of the Posey family settled in Washington D.C. Benjamin Bunyon Posey (my great-grandfather, MJ's father) lived with a branch of this family in order to pursue the education that prepared him to be a teacher and to start schools in Palatka, and other places in the South. I would like to track the fortunes of the Poseys in Washington D.C. after the Civil War, and the manner in which D.C. became the hub of Reconstruction and the first place in the country to see widespread efforts to educate the former slaves.
When I was a little girl, Mom took Barbara and I to visit Lottie Bell and Junior who had moved their from Atlantic City. We spent perhaps a month with them on a quiet little residential street when we were 5 and 4 I think. It's the first trip I can remember taking in the summer. Lottie Bell, as I recall, was the very stuff of which life is made, a joy to be around. We played with lots of black kids and had a fabulous time. This would be in 1957.
I adore Washington D.C. I attended Howard there briefly in the fall of 1969 and had a completely unforgettable time. I would like to understand this very African American place's link with my family history. Who were the black people who built this magnificent city? Were some of them Poseys? It must have been a fascinating place after the war. Also, apparently my stepfather's grandfather also named Ringgold was in Washington D.C. after the war, possibly a soldier in the Civil War. I had thought before of Washington D.C. being a transitional space in the fortunes of African Americans but I think it probably was crucial.
Hampton/Tuskegee Project. As part of this project, I would like to go to Tuskegee just to get a better understanding of the role of these two institutions in the development of the struggle of HBCUs for self-definition. Of course, there were many other schools--Spelman, Atlanta, Morehouse, Fisk and Lincoln--which were very different from Hampton and Tuskegree but I am interested in the geography and the landscape of such places since their patterns must have impacted all the rest, regardless of whether the pattern was followed. The idea of an educational system having to be formed under such prohibitive constraints as segregation and apartheid is deeply intriquing to me. I have no ancestral links there so far as I know, only that B.B Posey and all the other Posey probably admired Booker T. Washington's work there.
Mother often mentions that Uncle Cardoza Posey, MJ's oldest brother was a Republican. He graduated from the Florida Baptist Academy in 1915, three years after the death of his father BB. Posey, and he often participated in reunions there.
He moved to Orange New Jersey as a young man and proudly participated in the 369th in France during WWI, emerging from the military with the rank of sargent. Born in 1892, he was active in the NAACP and a number of other organizations, including the Masons. He worked in the Post Office all of his life, maintained a vigorous correspondence with family and friends, and spent his vacations hunting down Poseys across the country. My Mom has inherited his papers and his photographs. His role in the family that Mom grew up in is as chief advisor and patriarchal figure to his sister's children. He never had any children of his own although he was married three times. The home he lived in when he died in 1968 is still there and occupied his stepdaughter by marriage who is a teacher. Been meaning to get over there to Hempstead to see what she's got for at least a decade. The last time I spoke to her, she said there wasn't much left. Mea culpa.
Provincetown/Martha's Vineyard Project--Almost every summer from 1957 until 1966 my Mom sister and I spent in Provincetown as part of the artist colony there or in Martha's Vineyard with the Goldsberry family. The Cape Cod summers were a crucial aspect of my life growing up.
Camp Craigmeade Project--Every other summer we spent at Camp Craigmeade and all black, very rustic camp in the Catskill Mountains run by a lady name Helen Meade with her husband and her two older sisters. We called all of them Aunts and we had so much fun that usually we didn't want to go home. Mom would come up and spend a long weekend with us up there along with the other parents. She painted many beautiful paintings of the landscape around Camp Craigmeade. I long to relocate this camp and the family who started it. This all black camp gave me great strength and resilience throughout my life in integrated schools where being black was never the best thing to be.
Palatka/Jacksonville, Florida Project--These two places are the starting points for a substantial portion of family history in the 20th century, in particular the Poseys, who lived in the little town of Palatka, which my grandmother MJ remembers and describes so well in my interviews with her, and Jacksonville, the place of the Binghams, the family into which B.B. Posey married. There were also other Poseys and Binghams who were not my direct ancestors. Both places had racial segregation and yet MJ seems either unaware of it or very reluctant to talk about any firsthand experience of it.
From the reading and map gazing I've done, it sounds as though Palatka is or was a beautiful place with a natural water link with Jacksonville. Also it is very near both historic Eatonville and Daytona Beach, as well Orlando. This will be a visit, and to some degree a search for surviving family and insight into the family's choice of location there. My husband was Naples Florida and I just love the place anyway--the swamps, the aligators, the palm trees and so forth.
Atlantic City Project: In the summer, MJ took her children to Atlantic City where there was a thriving black resort community. They watched black movies all summer and luxuriated in the black section of the boardwalk and the beach. Their visits were always with Lottie Bell, a very close friend of my grandmother's and her son Junior, who was a life of the party type. I look to visit this place and learn all I can of this lovely community and what became of it.
the Bronx Project: A few members of our family, in particular my Mom and my sister and myself lived in the East Bronx for about six years in a building known as St. Mary's Projects, Mitchell Lama housing I believe. We also attended a Lutheran School in the Bronx on Williamsbridge Road. What became of this house and of this school?
Atlantic City Project: In the summer, MJ took her children to Atlantic City where there was a thriving black resort community. They watched black movies all summer and luxuriated in the black section of the boardwalk and the beach. Their visits were always with Lottie Bell, a very close friend of my grandmother's and her son Junior, who was a life of the party type. I look to visit this place and learn all I can of this lovely community and what became of it.
the Bronx Project: A few members of our family, in particular my Mom and my sister and myself lived in the East Bronx for about six years in a building known as St. Mary's Projects, Mitchell Lama housing I believe. We also attended a Lutheran School in the Bronx on Williamsbridge Road. What became of this house and of this school?
The Harlem Project--Needless to say, this was everybody's destination on both sides of my family. And they lived within a one mile radius pretty much for the entire time of their existence, Edgecombe Avenue, St. Nicholas Avenue, and St. Nicholas Place from 145th to 155th Street. As a child to me it had all the qualities of life in a small village of black people. I loved it and miss it still.
Other Possible Location Projects:
the San Diego Project
the European Tours Project
the West Africa Project
the Brooklyn Project
the Englewood NJ Project
Also, there are some topics focused on institutions:
the European Tours Project
the West Africa Project
the Brooklyn Project
the Englewood NJ Project
Also, there are some topics focused on institutions:
WWI Project--Uncle Cardoza, Uncle Fred and probably Thomas Morrison were soldiers in WWI. This is a fascinating war from the point of view of issues of race. Black soldiers had to go through so much just to even get into the battle. The other kinds of "household" and "maintenance" services they rendered have always been belittled and dismissed, although I am not sure why. Anything anybody did in WWI automatically placed the soldier in harm's way.
WWII Project--Uncle Hilliard was a soldier in WWII and would serverely wounded, ending up with a metal plate in his head and also maintained a close relationship with the Veteran's Hospital in New Jersey for the rest of his life. Mom's Dad Andrew Jones volunteered to fight in WWII and cried when they said he was too older. Grandpa Andrew was an emotional man. It may also be that Uncle Cardoza was in the national guard or saw some kind of service in WWII. He was very patriotic.
the Addiction Project--my Dad, my Uncle Andrew and my cousin Jimmy died of drug overdoses of heroine all in the 60s before any insight into the treatment of addictions had come. The family assumption has always been that racism killed them but with all this work on genes, I am beginning to wonder if there might not be some insight there. Afterall the death rate in the family has been truly astounding. It includes my paternal grandfather and my Aunt's deaths related to alcoholism.
the CCNY Project--Mother went to CCNY, Grandpa Bob briefly taught chemistry there, and Barbara, myself and my former husband attended their as undergrads. I now teach there and have done so for almost 20 years. Have been asked to supervise the writing of the formal history of the English Department, which should allow me to master the history of the school, some of which would be relevant to Soul Pictures. I am curious about the link between Max Bond, Keith and Mamie Clarke (who were responsible for the research which contributed to the defeat of the Separate But Equal decision), the Northside Center and New Lincoln where I went to school.
the New Lincoln School Project--both Barbara and I went to school here from 1963 through 1970. The impact on my life is incalculable. Also, my neice Faith went their briefly when they incorporated with Walden.
the Public Schools in New York Project--mother taught in the public schools of New York for 17 years while I was growing up in the 50s and 60s. Aunt Barbara also taught. MJ attended Wadleigh High School in the early 20s. Mom and Aunt Barbara went to P.S. 136, Stitt and Morris High School in the 30s and 40s. Uncle Andrew went to the same schools. Dad went to George Washington High School in the 40s. My sister Barbara taught in the public schools for a number of years. I, myself, never attended or taught in a public school. As such, I find them fascinating to consider. Most schools have rich histories which are largely neglected.
The Marriage Project--the key occasions would be Aunt Bessie's marriage in Jacksonville in the teens, MJ's marriage to Andrew Jones in Harlem in 1923, Aunt Barbara's marriage to Jo Jo in 1950, my Mom's elopement with Earl (Dad) in the same year, my mother's subsequent re-marriage to Burdette Ringgold in 1962, my sister Barbara's marriage to Glen Gadsden in 1980, my marriage to Gene Nesmith in 1989. Marriages are fascinating events drawing together all sorts of people who would otherwise have nor reason to associate with one another. A wedding is the only event I have ever given where the attendance rate is very close to 100%. It was 20 below the day I got married and yet everybody I asked to come was there. It was crazy.
the Howard University Project--I attended Howard University in the fall of 1969.
My Mom received a lifetime achievement award from the Porter Colloquium there about three years ago. In 1963, James Porter, Art Historian at Howard University, was the first person to buy one of his paintings. The Bridesmaid or Bride of Martha's Vineyard was painted the summer we spent in Martha's Vineyard.
the Wallace Family Project--the topic here is the families of my father, Robert Earl Wallace, who died in 1966 of a heroine overdose. Before then, he had an interesting life. He was a master classical pianist and jazz pianist but apparently without the ambition or drive to succeed at anything. He is and was an interesting person himself, somebody whom I saw on many occasions and spoke with although I cannot say I knew him well. I was forbidden to see him but my grandmothers conspired together to make it possible for us to see one another. Afterall, my two grandmothers lived right next door on Edgecombe Avenue.
In addition to Earl himself, there is another whole cast of characters made up of my grandfather, Grandpa Bob, my grandmother, Momma T, and my step-grandfather Chiefie who was Momma T's second husband. All of these people were originally from Jamaica, W.I. although in Earl's case, he had no trace of an accent. Like his own father Grandpa Bob, he ewas a brilliant man who loved to do intellectual things. Each grandparent brings with him or her a rich array of subsidiary figures. My father's father's people are among the ones I know the best at this point. They educated people so this is extremely helpful.
NAAFAD Project: National Association of Fashion and Accessories Designers
the Black Feminism Project
The intimate memories project--this section will focus on topics related to my intimate personal life. Sex, married life, personal emotional stuff that doesn't belong anywhere else. Herein would also belong my reflections on issues of mental health and their impact on my family.
I am currently working with a chronology encompassing all relevant events in which the main women in my line have been engaged from roughly 1900 to 2000. Both of my grandmothers were born in 1903. Both grandfathers were born slightly earlier, which gives me a nice frame for the century, and the story their lives and the lives of their descendants can tell about the culture and civilization in which we participated. A major theme is the Great Migration and its outcomes.
A major focus of the project is to render most things in a visual form and to search for language that can further assist the images in characterizing the times for a book reading public. The blog form, as far as my concerned, is a means through which to endlessly explore possibilities for the book. This book will also be for me my first, most sincerely intend book with its own structure of self-sufficient narratives.
Monday
Chronologies and Documents: Family Genealogy Site
Perhaps a year or more ago I established a family tree on Ancestry.com, which I try my best to maintain and keep up. The service has been very helpful in terms of supplementing the material i Had on the members of the family I knew. Among the things made available by Ancestry.com are census figures, social security records, military records, death and birth records. It is considerably easier to track males, even if they have common names such as Jones and Wallace, as opposed to female who are expected to change their names as soon as they become adults.
In any case, as I understand it, my tree is open o the public and would appreciate any useful imput from outside.
Go to http://www.ancestry.com and then search for Benjamin Posey's family tree. This is my great grandfather and Mom's maternal grandfather. There are 89 other people in the tree, which includes Barara, my sister, my Mom and I. Earl's famly (that of my biological father and mother) and Burdettte's family (that of our adopted stepfather) are included.
In any case, as I understand it, my tree is open o the public and would appreciate any useful imput from outside.
Go to http://www.ancestry.com and then search for Benjamin Posey's family tree. This is my great grandfather and Mom's maternal grandfather. There are 89 other people in the tree, which includes Barara, my sister, my Mom and I. Earl's famly (that of my biological father and mother) and Burdettte's family (that of our adopted stepfather) are included.
Sunday
Critical Essay: This Whole Blogging Thing is Crazy
You never know whether anybody is reading this stuff or not, or whether you are just playing with yourself in public. In any case, last weekend I was honored to participate in the Porter Colloquium at Howard University. Everything about it was just a blast from the past. I saw and heard artists William T. Williams, Frank Bowling and Mel Edwards talking about and showing their own work on an artist panel. Also in attendance was Deborah Willis moderating a Collecting Panel.
I managed to completely exhaust myself by insisting upon walking from the hotel to Howard University's campus but it gave me a wonderful opportunity to reacquaint myself with a little bit of Washington, D.C., particularly that part immediately around the campus. My own presentation was called The Soul Century and was focused on pictures and stories relating to the development of the women in my family since my grandmother's birth in 1903 through the final years of the 20th century.
I tried to use my pictures on Flickr with an internet connection, hoping I would be able to set it on automatic slideshow but that was a disaster, probably because of fluctuations in the internet connection. Subsequently I was forced to narrate my images rather than reading from the text of the two chapters I have prepared on Soul Pictures. One of the texts will appear in an anthology on The Black Bougeoisie, which should be out in about a year.
This is why you have to use powerpoint when you do public lectures. Powerpoint is boring and inhibiting but it is ideally constructed for the rigors of a public lecture. So I've started rounding up my powerpoints and will begin to work on them again. Unfortunately, they take up so much space on a hard drive and I've got a lot of material. I have to get a new computer just to be able to handle it all.
I should think each chapter of Soul Century will have its own powerpoint presentation for public lectures. And that the chapters that will make up the book will be entirely different from the lectures because you can show a great many more pictures in a public lecture than you would ever want to put in a book, or that I would want to put in a book. You could have postage stamp pictures but I don't like those in books.
The reception for my work at Howard, despite my technical difficulties, seemed warm and enthusiastic and I was much heartened by the questions that were asked. They were as follows:
Does your family have re-unions. If not, you should because this is a great way to access further material. The answer to that is that we don't have family reunions because we have so little surviving family. Almost everyone is dead. It was not a prolific family so far as offspring to begin with and the death rate among the young men was high--my biological father, my Mom's oldest brother and my Mom's cousin Jimmy. Of MJ's two brothers, neither of them had children. MJ had the most children but they are all dead except Mom who has two children, my sister and I. I have no children. My sister has three children, all girls none of whom is married or who has any children.
Another question. Had I ever heard of any Posey's in Oklahoma City? No I haven't but Prof. B.B. Posey had 22 siblings and it seems as though they may have wandered far and wide so Oklahoma City would not be a surprising place for some of them to end up. It was one of the places blacks went at the turn-of-the-century in hopes of reversing their fortunes.
Another question. Am I interested in genealogies? Not so much as i am interested in learning about the pulse of our cultures and societies during the early through the middle twentieth century. The mixtures of the varieties of human personalities and how the children who are nurtured in them turn out is fascinating to me. Since I am less wedded to the precise genealogy of my family of origin, this frees me to include Burdette's (Dad) kinships and whatever else about their contemporaries that is interested in my picture of the century.
What has been happening is that I've started to get interested in Darwin's theory of evolution and the elaborate observations of plants and animals that led to them. I am interested in the human genome as well, and how surprisingly genetic variables can turn out in combination.
What happened to Earl? What happened to Andrew? They both died prematurely of drug overdoses, in 1966 and 1961 respectively.
The other thing that really struck me was how much work it would be to completely archive and digitize Faith's entire collection of family records. I am thinking perhaps it is too ambitious for me, not to mention my wallet, so I am going to stick to something I can handle--the book on the Soul Generation.
I managed to completely exhaust myself by insisting upon walking from the hotel to Howard University's campus but it gave me a wonderful opportunity to reacquaint myself with a little bit of Washington, D.C., particularly that part immediately around the campus. My own presentation was called The Soul Century and was focused on pictures and stories relating to the development of the women in my family since my grandmother's birth in 1903 through the final years of the 20th century.
I tried to use my pictures on Flickr with an internet connection, hoping I would be able to set it on automatic slideshow but that was a disaster, probably because of fluctuations in the internet connection. Subsequently I was forced to narrate my images rather than reading from the text of the two chapters I have prepared on Soul Pictures. One of the texts will appear in an anthology on The Black Bougeoisie, which should be out in about a year.
This is why you have to use powerpoint when you do public lectures. Powerpoint is boring and inhibiting but it is ideally constructed for the rigors of a public lecture. So I've started rounding up my powerpoints and will begin to work on them again. Unfortunately, they take up so much space on a hard drive and I've got a lot of material. I have to get a new computer just to be able to handle it all.
I should think each chapter of Soul Century will have its own powerpoint presentation for public lectures. And that the chapters that will make up the book will be entirely different from the lectures because you can show a great many more pictures in a public lecture than you would ever want to put in a book, or that I would want to put in a book. You could have postage stamp pictures but I don't like those in books.
The reception for my work at Howard, despite my technical difficulties, seemed warm and enthusiastic and I was much heartened by the questions that were asked. They were as follows:
Does your family have re-unions. If not, you should because this is a great way to access further material. The answer to that is that we don't have family reunions because we have so little surviving family. Almost everyone is dead. It was not a prolific family so far as offspring to begin with and the death rate among the young men was high--my biological father, my Mom's oldest brother and my Mom's cousin Jimmy. Of MJ's two brothers, neither of them had children. MJ had the most children but they are all dead except Mom who has two children, my sister and I. I have no children. My sister has three children, all girls none of whom is married or who has any children.
Another question. Had I ever heard of any Posey's in Oklahoma City? No I haven't but Prof. B.B. Posey had 22 siblings and it seems as though they may have wandered far and wide so Oklahoma City would not be a surprising place for some of them to end up. It was one of the places blacks went at the turn-of-the-century in hopes of reversing their fortunes.
Another question. Am I interested in genealogies? Not so much as i am interested in learning about the pulse of our cultures and societies during the early through the middle twentieth century. The mixtures of the varieties of human personalities and how the children who are nurtured in them turn out is fascinating to me. Since I am less wedded to the precise genealogy of my family of origin, this frees me to include Burdette's (Dad) kinships and whatever else about their contemporaries that is interested in my picture of the century.
What has been happening is that I've started to get interested in Darwin's theory of evolution and the elaborate observations of plants and animals that led to them. I am interested in the human genome as well, and how surprisingly genetic variables can turn out in combination.
What happened to Earl? What happened to Andrew? They both died prematurely of drug overdoses, in 1966 and 1961 respectively.
The other thing that really struck me was how much work it would be to completely archive and digitize Faith's entire collection of family records. I am thinking perhaps it is too ambitious for me, not to mention my wallet, so I am going to stick to something I can handle--the book on the Soul Generation.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Subscribe
Posts
All Comments
Michele Wallace: Talking in Pictures
Barbara, MJ, Michele and Mom in the background in sunglasses at a fashion show in the early 60s