I admit it: I’m a hoarder.
Any doubt about the validity of that reality was erased last week as my wife, and I moved my home office from one side of the basement to the other, unearthing a ton of materials I’ve collected over the last 30 years.
Sorting through the material was, indeed, a walk down memory lane. Good and bad. Pretty and ugly. Timeless and forgettable.
Some of my discoveries and reactions follow:
An hour into my disentombing project, I found a brochure for a ‘Reach for the Stars’ workshop held at a local government school on December 10, 1985.
I only vaguely remember the event, but I remember the catalyst: educator and activist Janice Anderson.
The workshop was one of several projects to address the dual problems of poverty and fatherless in the African American community.
Reach for the Stars, Anderson explained in an article in the MCJ, was necessary to address what she called “those feelings of hopelessness and futility associated with the ramifications of being born in the female-headed household paradigm that has become the new normal in the Black community.”
The organization was a unique mentoring program that sought to provide products of dysfunctional families with a vision, discipline, and crafted goals. It was hoped the involvement of similar programs would slow the devolution of Black dysfunctionality.
At the workshop, 48% of Black households were headed by an impoverished sister. Today that number is over 72% and is a significant reason why Milwaukee hosts the highest Black poverty rate in the country.
Among the boxes of photographs I’ve started sorting through was one of a Nazi rally on the appropriately titled ‘Southside.’ In contrast, the Nazi rally was redundantly called to ‘end forced busing,’ an erroneous appeal since the only students forcibly bused for school desegregation was African American.
Moreover, the southside was as segregated as it was two decades earlier when hundreds marched for open housing.
The late Donna Rogers and I were the only Black journalists covering the rally. Ironically, we were forced to stand in a space reserved by the sheriff’s department inside the roped-off area.
The fact that we were among the racist roaches was bad enough. Worse was the aim of Black protestors (who had marched across the viaduct) carrying cartons of eggs which they pelted upon the racist roaches—and us.
While trying to clear away some space in the storage room (that’s Black folks speak for combination furnace room/closet), I discovered a box marked ‘Mom’s junk.’
I was given the box following my mother’s passing several years ago.
There was no date or indication of what was in the box.
Still, I figured it was about 40-50 years old. It contained a rotary dial telephone, a percolator coffeemaker, and an envelope with several black and white photos of my parents.
One of the photos told of a communal event with women dressed to be seen and men in their Sunday best with processes, including my father.
There was also a metal clothes hanger in the box. And since there was no clothing, I assumed it was used by us ‘po (not to be confused with poor) folks as a television antenna.
One of my first jobs was serving as my father’s robotic remote control.
As such, I could be in the outhouse, but when Pops called out to me, I discontinued whatever I was doing and ran toward the black and white 25-inch television.
I didn’t need to know what channel to turn to since we only had three during my youth. It’s hard to believe today, but television during my childhood went off the air at 11 p.m. At that point, all sets played the national anthem—again, and again, and again– to indoctrinate us.
I found a half dozen posters that reflected various periods of American Apartheid—history that puts a stamp on Critical Race Theory.
One of the posters was of a musical called ‘If the Man in the Moon were a Coon,’ by Fred Fischer. Don’t know who he was (but I hope he’s in hell, and the devil is a former slave). The musical starred White folks in ‘blackface,’ eating watermelon and chicken.
The play opened in the early 20th century in New York. Don’t know if it won a Tony.
Another poster featured international superstar Josephine Baker, performing topless ‘banana dance’ in Paris in 1925. Baker gave up on America and moved to France, where she felt she was treated like a human being vs. a neo-slave.
Another poster highlighted baseball legend and pioneer Jackie Robinson, who, as the first African American in the major leagues, endured the rants of racists and death threats because he dared to play ‘America’s game.
Few people know that Robinson and Harry Belafonte, and Sidney Poitier formed an organization to bring young Africans to America to attend college. One of their ‘clients’ was named Barack Obama, Sr.
I can’t remember why I kept a clipping of a 2006 event that featured former NFL quarterback and Superbowl MVP Doug Williams as the keynote.
From Grambling State, Williams broke the NFL color line, proving, among other things, that Black quarterbacks are as intelligent as white ones. Think about that.
Williams was the first Black player selected in the first round of the draft (only one team expressed interest) despite a college career that bordered on being great.
After facing discrimination, he left to play in Canada, returning in the mid-1980s to back up a Washington Redskins’ team that he led to the Superbowl championship.
There were two reasons why I kept a copy of a column I wrote early in my career that carried the headline: Who Really Killed Danny Davis?” We couldn’t electronically store archives, and the column marked an unexpected turning point in my life. This eye-opener put both the paper and myself in physical danger.
That possibility existed because people in the last century, as they do today, take information at face value. Few people read an entire article unless there’s a coupon or link to gangsta rap lyrics at the end.
Danny was a childhood friend, a physically imposing brother whose formal education didn’t match his street smarts.
He was among five of us who planned to enter the military in lieu of high school graduation but failed the entry test.
It was several years that I ran into him, unfortunately after being arrested while home on leave for not paying a driving fine which I learned he had actually received while using my driver’s license.
When next we met, it was after my enlistment ended.
Danny was throwing an elaborate ‘going away party after reportedly running afoul of a White criminal entity. Before he could escape, the word was out that blood would be spilled, and if it wasn’t his, it would be a family member.
Danny reportedly turned himself in and was executed.
My column focused not so much on the circumstances leading to his murder but on the contributing factors.
If you read the entire column, I posited we all contributed to his death—the education system that failed him, the village that turned its back, politicians who maintain the walls of apartheid around our plantation.
Apparently, some fool didn’t get to the end and assumed that I knew who actually pulled the trigger by the headline.
A few days later, a family friend– -a hard-working, old school Christian brother who prioritized family above all else—visited my office and cautioned me to leave the situation as it was.
If I had specific info about Danny’s assassin, I should leave it to myself or face a similar fate.
In retrospect, I was more upset by the message or the messager.
Among my crats of photos was a black and white of a press conference led by Howard Fuller and Mike McGee describing the latest in a series of demonstrations by the Justice for Ernie Lacy Coalition.
Lacy was our local George Floyd and was murdered similarly—albeit by a member of Milwaukee’s Finest (although I can think of another word starting with an ‘f’ that would be more appropriate).
The police union sought to subvert a trial of the assassin and went so far as to threaten the district attorney, E. Michael McCann, with a recall election if he pursued an inquest.
Another box (I returned to its honored hole in the wall) contained dozens of campaign buttons. Each of them details how little fruit has been collected despite our blind allegiance to the Democratic Party over the century.
You may not realize it, but the Confederacy was started by the Democratic Party. They also proudly lynched thousands of Black and whites to keep them from voting and organized the KKK and other hate groups.
The party even tried to stop funding for public/government schools to stop us from learning and blocked every civil rights initiative until the 1970s.
One of my favorite buttons is a Jesse Jackson for President promotion.
To be honest, I’ve never fully trusted Jackson (and expressed disdain for him when he was paid thousands of dollars by the teachers union to denounce school choice, even though he sent his kids to private schools). His story (as opposed to history) will suggest Jackson’s presidential bid in 1988 was derailed when he was overheard by a Black journalist referring to New York as Hymie Town (a negative reference to Jews). But the truth was, neither America nor the Dems were ready for a Black president.
And some say it still isn’t.
Sorry, I’ve made it through about 50% of my stored materials, but the paper’s deadline approaches. More next week.
Hotep.